This article details how the Recommendations for a Strategy are calculated and sent to the publisher.

Columns

The campaigns grid has new columns showing the Strategy recommendations:

Publisher Support

Marin provides recommendations for the following publishers:

• Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Yahoo Japan, Meta, Snap, TikTok, Pinterest

Recommendations will be provided regardless of campaign type, so even campaign types that cannot be edited through Marin will have a recommended Target and/or Daily Budget.

Date Ranges

By default, the recommendations are based:

• On a Monthly cycle in a Target Spend strategy 
• On a 28-day rolling window in a Maximize Conversions and Maximize Conversion Value strategy if created in via bulk or monthly if created in the side panel.

Target Spend Strategy Calculations

In a Target Spend strategy, if the total forecast spend, including the spend-to-date, is greater than the target set in the strategy, campaign daily budgets across all campaigns in the strategy will be reduced. If the resulting value is smaller, campaign daily budgets across all campaigns in the strategy will be increased. The recommended adjustments will depend on how far off target the spend is currently trending. As there is no performance indicator in this Strategy type, there is no re-allocation between campaigns. 

Maximize Conversion / Value Strategy

The budget and target recommendations are generated based on the performance through the month so far, and the expected performance for the rest of the month (including today).

For each campaign, we have forecasts/simulations of how each campaign will perform above and below the current target. Marin looks at the best marginal return for each spend increment until the strategy target is met.

Recommendation Adjustments

Recommendations are based on the hitting the target for the Strategy, but they are also subject the rules applied to the strategies. These are the values that will be sent to the publisher. Adjusted recommendations take into account:

• Maximum Budget change: applied to budget recommendations
• Maximum Budget: applied to budget recommendations
• Maximum Bid change: applied to Target ROAS/Target CPA recommendations
• Shared budgets: excluded from budget recommendations
  • Google only as Marin does not sync Microsoft Shared Budgets
• Campaigns in publisher portfolios: excluded from Target ROAS/Target CPA recommendations
• Campaign overrides: campaigns on override are excluded from budget, Target ROAS, and Target CPA recommendations
• Campaign status: only considers active campaigns

Adjustments are applied prior to recommendations being generated, so the adjustments impact how Marin allocates spend across campaigns to hit your objectives (i.e. a budget cap impacting a well performing campaign might cause Marin to recommend spending more on lower performing campaigns). 

Recommendation availability

The unadjusted recommendations ('Rec. Campaign Target' and ‘Rec. Campaign Budget’) are almost universally available, with the exception of deleted or ended campaigns.

The adjusted recommendations ('Adj. Rec. Campaign Target' and ‘Adj. Rec. Campaign Budget’) may not be available due to the rules that are applied, in particular when the rules are very restrictive (for example a Max. Budget Change of say 5%)

Campaign Override

Campaign overrides are set through the campaign multi-edit menu. These overrides are taken into account in the constrained recommendations in that the campaign performance so far, and the projected further performance, are taken into account to evaluate performance against target. However these campaigns will be considered ‘fixed’ and therefore not be part of recommendation decisions.