Goal-seeking campaigns

A campaign should be trying to achieve something, and you should be able to tell whether it did. A goal-seeking campaign states its goal in a form sellers can price against, keeps what each seller committed to, carries that commitment onto the booked media buy, and judges delivery against it. Take a buyer who says “find dog lovers in Slovenia and get them to my online store, €5,000”. Store traffic is how they will know it worked. Their agent turns that into a goal statement: clicks, at €3 or less per click, counted by the seller’s ad server, from a seller willing to guarantee the price. Sellers answer on those terms. One guarantees €3 per click and forecasts 1,700 clicks; one can only aim for €4.50; one does not sell on clicks and passes. The agent books the first. At the end of the flight the campaign reports 1,740 clicks at €2.90, which beat the target. This page explains each part of that loop. The field shapes live on the campaign and media buy guides; the request flow is in the buyer workflows.

​

The goal statement

A goal has four parts. You should be able to read all four in one line: clicks, at €3 or less, counted by the seller’s ad server, guaranteed. The first goal in the list is the primary goal. Sellers see the whole ranked list; commitments and delivery verdicts are judged against the primary goal.

​

Stating a cost or return target

A cost per result (“clicks at €3 or less”) and a return on ad spend (“4 back for every 1 spent”) are not stated on a goal in V3. They are the campaign’s bidding policy, in AdCP 3.2’s own shape, and apply to the primary goal:

• bidding: { cost_per: { amount, strength } }: the average cost per primary goal result, in the campaign currency. cap keeps the average at or below the amount and accepts less delivery when necessary. target aims at the amount while balancing volume and spend.
• bidding: { roas: { value, strength } }: the return per unit of spend. floor prefers less delivery to knowingly going below the return. target aims at the return. The primary goal must be an event goal whose every event source names its valueField.

strength is required, and a campaign carries one of the two, never both. A primary goal that already has a rate or “as much as possible” target cannot also take a policy. A goal holds one target, so the save is refused and asks you to keep one. Neither strength is a guarantee per result. What a seller commits to is in its answer to your goal (see what a seller can promise). bidding: null clears the policy. Reading campaigns with V3 get or search returns each campaign’s bidding, including a target set through V2, with a missing strength read as cap for a cost and target for a return. save_campaign refuses a cost_per or per_ad_spend target on any goal, and the refusal names bidding. In V2, performanceConfig.optimizationGoals[].target still takes those targets with an optional strength. A campaign written either way reads back the same: in V2 the policy shows as the primary goal’s target. A V2 campaign can carry a cost or return target on a goal other than the primary one, which V3 cannot state. V3 leaves that target alone when a save sends the same goal back unchanged. When a save removes or changes that goal, the target is removed and the response names it.

​

Who counts the result

Every goal is counted by exactly one party. Choosing a goal chooses who counts it, and each choice needs something different from you. Sellers never see your event source id, tracker configuration, or the names of your custom events. An event goal reaches a seller as its event type (for example purchase) and value field only.

​

What sellers see

When you request proposals, every solicited seller receives the same brief. Alongside the flight, geography, channels, formats and audience requirements, the brief carries a goals section: for each goal, its kind, metric or event type, target, priority and attribution window. A seller reads a line such as “clicks, target cost 3.00 or less per click in the buy currency, counted by the seller’s delivery metrics” and prices against it. A seller that receives the canonical AdCP 3.2 request_proposals call can also receive the primary goal in structured form, as criteria.outcome_target. It gets one only when it declares media_buy.outcome_target and its features.bidding_policy accepts a media-buy cost_per cap. The target names the goal’s metric and its cost per result as cost_per with an amount, the buy currency and strength: cap. It carries no volume. The primary goal qualifies when it has a cost target and is a delivery metric the outcome target can name (clicks, views, completed views without a view duration, engagements, follows, saves, profile visits or reach) with no attribution window. Every other goal travels in the brief only. The seller answers the cost it can plan to in its proposal’s terms (see best effort). The campaign budget stays withheld. The platform never turns a cost target into a volume for sellers (budget divided by cost per click), because that would hand every seller the budget. Sellers quote a price and forecast a volume; you decide how much of the budget to place with each.

​

Which goals a seller’s packages carry

The brief tells every seller about every goal. The media buy is stricter: each package sent to a seller carries only the optimization goals that the package’s product says it can optimize. AdCP products declare this in metric_optimization (metrics the seller measures, and the target kinds it accepts), conversion_tracking (conversion-event goals), vendor_metric_optimization (a measurement vendor’s metric) and max_optimization_goals (how many goals one package accepts). Some sellers reject a whole package that carries a goal they did not declare, so sending that goal would stop the buy rather than being ignored.

• A goal the product does not declare (its kind, metric, target kind, reach unit, view duration, viewability standard or vendor metric) is left off that product’s package.
• When the product accepts fewer goals than you set, the highest-priority goals are sent: priority 1 first, then the order you listed them.
• A product that declares no optimization capability at all receives no goals: AdCP ties support for each goal kind to its declaration, so a product with none can optimize to none. The seller still sees every goal in the brief, and you can still buy the product; it just isn’t asked to optimize.

Goals left off a package are reported when the campaign executes. The execute response carries an optimization_goals_dropped warning for each affected media buy, naming the product, the goal and why it was not sent. The campaign keeps the goal, and other products that declare it still receive it.

​

How a package carries a cost or return target

AdCP 3.2 moves a cost or return target off the goal and into the package’s bidding policy, bound to the package’s primary goal. A seller receives that shape when it declares, in features.bidding_policy.package.fixed, the mode (cost_per or roas) and the strength the target needs. The package’s primary goal then has no target, and the package carries bidding.cost_per (an amount and a strength) or bidding.roas (a value and a strength). The amount is the target you set. A cost target with no strength is sent as cap: the seller keeps the average cost at or below the amount and delivers less if it has to. A return target with no strength is sent as target. Every other seller receives the target on the goal, as before. A package also keeps the target on the goal when it carries a bid price, or when a goal other than its primary goal has a cost or return target, because AdCP does not allow the two shapes on one package and the policy can express only the primary goal’s target.

​

Seeing it before you book

You do not have to wait for execute to find out. The same declaration, read with the same rule, tells you before booking which goals a product cannot optimize to:

• Each proposal’s goal answers and each proposal-less product returned by request_proposals carry a goalCoverage: whether the product can optimize to your primary goal, and each goal it cannot optimize to, by priority, with the reason code.
• Auto-select carries the same coverage on every product it selects.

A product that declares no optimization capability, or whose declaration does not match the AdCP schema, shows every goal as one it cannot optimize to, the same goals execute would leave off its package.

​

Expected performance against your goal

When your primary goal is on viewability or video completion and has a target, goalCoverage.expected also says what the product’s inventory is expected to deliver, read from the ranges in the seller’s forecast. For example, “expected 78%-88% viewable vs your 70%”. The verdict is likely when even the low end meets the required rate, possible when only the expected or high end does, and unlikely when the high end misses. Rates run from 0 to 1. There is no expectation when the goal has no target, the seller’s forecast has no range for the rate, or a cost goal has no CPM price in your campaign’s currency to judge it at (a CPM in another currency is never compared with your target). A cost per viewable impression also needs the forecast to say how many impressions were measured, because unmeasured impressions are paid for but never count as viewable. Click goals never get one: click-through rates differ too much between advertisers and creatives for a seller’s history to predict yours. The forecast describes the inventory before the seller optimizes toward your goal, so treat the verdict as a conservative read. A seller whose products cannot optimize to your goal still receives the brief, and you can still book them. Auto-select prefers products that can: it puts every product that can optimize to your primary goal ahead of every product that cannot. Among the products that can, it puts likely first, then possible, then products with no expectation, then unlikely, and keeps its usual order (historical score, or lowest CPM) within each group. A product that cannot optimize to the goal is chosen only once the budget reaches past every product that can. It is booked without the goals it cannot take, and its commitment is report_only unless its price is on the outcome itself.

​

What a seller can promise

AdCP is explicit about liability: a seller’s bid target is “not a per-result guarantee”. The guarantee, when there is one, is the price. A seller that sells a fixed price per click on a guaranteed product is on the hook for that price. A seller that sells impressions and promises to aim for €3 per click is trying. The platform reads each proposal’s commercial terms and labels every allocation with one of three commitment kinds. Two things follow. A seller’s prose (“we are confident in strong click-through performance”) never changes the kind; only terms do. And a proposal is only as committed as its least committed part: if one allocation is guaranteed and another is report_only, the proposal’s commitment is report_only.

​

How proposals answer on the goal’s terms

Each quoted proposal carries one goal answer per allocation and a proposal-level commitment. The answer names the pricing model and fixed price, the delivery type, the measurement terms, the goal you asked for, the target the seller’s terms actually commit or aim at, and the resulting commitment kind. The proposal-level summary gives the weakest kind, the worst answered cost, and whether every allocation meets your asked target. That lets your agent compare sellers on the goal’s terms rather than on price alone: a guaranteed €3 per click and a best-effort €2.50 per click are different offers, and the second is not cheaper. Field by field, see Read what a seller committed to. A seller that returned no structured answer is labelled as such. The platform does not guess a commitment from how well the prose aligns with the brief.

​

What the booked buy carries

Accepting a proposal books media buys, and each buy carries a goal commitment: the goal you asked, the target the seller answered, the commitment kind, the per-product answers, and the proposal version they came from. A buy created without a proposal still gets a commitment from its own terms, so a fixed CPC on a guaranteed product reads guaranteed even if you stated no goal. The commitment is fixed at booking. A later change to the buy books a new row with its own commitment, so the record of what was promised when you spent the money never moves.

​

Judging delivery

A campaign with a goal reports two different things, and they answer two different questions. Pacing answers “is the money moving on schedule?”. It compares delivered spend with how much of the flight has run — not with the budget alone, because a buy three days into a thirty-day flight that has spent a tenth of its budget is exactly on pace, while a buy on its last day that has spent the same tenth is nine tenths undelivered. Goal progress answers “is the campaign achieving what it set out to?”. It compares the number the goal is counted on (clicks, completed views, viewable rate, leads) against the asked target and the seller’s commitment. The two are reported side by side, because “spend 200 a day at 80% viewable” is two answers, not one: a buy can be on pace and missing its quality bar, or hitting its quality bar and underspending. Both read on Get reporting metrics. In the Campaigns view, open a campaign to see its goal bar beside pacing, and again on each media buy. The bar shows what you asked, what the seller committed to, what has been delivered, and whether the result is on track, behind, or beat target. A campaign or media buy with no goal and no seller commitment shows no bar. The view reads goal progress for a campaign’s first 100 media buys; for a campaign with more, buys beyond the first 100 show no bar there. Get reporting metrics carries goal progress on every media buy block it returns. Goal progress is judged on these rules:

• Achieved, not estimated. The achieved cost per unit, rate, or volume is computed from the same delivery metric the goal names. A missing metric is reported as unavailable, never as zero.
• No verdict without evidence. A verdict of on track, behind, or beat is given only when there are enough observations for the metric to mean something. On day one, or when the seller has not yet reported the metric, the campaign says why there is no verdict yet instead of guessing. A rate is judged on how large the population it divided by was, not on its own count, so a low rate over a large, well-measured population is still a real verdict.
• Basis. Every number says who counted it: the seller, a measurement vendor (with its coverage), or your own event source (with its attribution method and window). A seller’s click count and your pixel’s click count are both real and can legitimately differ.
• Freshness. Every number says how final it is: the period it covers, the measurement window, whether a later window supersedes it, and which metrics the seller committed to report but has not yet.

​

The seller’s record

Once a buy with a commitment completes, the platform keeps what was asked, what was answered, what was delivered, and whether the seller beat, met or missed its commitment. It rolls these up per seller, per goal objective (for example clicks, or an event type such as purchase) and per commitment kind, because a kept guarantee and a beaten best effort are different facts. The record covers completed buys whose delivery was last reported in the past 180 days, judged the same way as the goal progress you see on your own buys. It also informs how automatic selection ranks products, for accounts that use product scoring. Each cell of the record reads: Buyers read it on the seller, in the pilot. Ask for it with include: ["commitmentRecord"] on search or get with kind: "seller". Without the include, a seller read is unchanged. The record pools every buyer’s buys with that seller, so a cell is shown only when at least 3 distinct buyers and at least 5 judged buys stand behind it. Cells with too little evidence are not shown, which means a seller can have no cell to show yet; that is not the same as a seller that missed. The record never names a buyer, a campaign or a media buy, and never says how many buyers stand behind a cell. An account outside the pilot that asks for it is refused with FEATURE_NOT_ENABLED; it is never handed an empty record that could be mistaken for “no record”. Sellers see their own record. A seller asks for the same include on its own seller read and sees every cell for its own Storefront, without the floor above. Each input is the seller’s own evidence: its answers to goals disclosed to it, judged on the delivery it reported. It still names no buyer, campaign or media buy. A seller that can see its record can question it.

​

If you do not state a goal

A goal is optional. Without one, sellers price against the brief alone: the brief they receive carries no goals section. Each proposal still carries goal answers and a commitment kind read off its terms, but they answer no goal of yours. The asked goal and meetsAskedTarget are empty, and the kind only says whether the seller priced on an outcome at all (a fixed price per click on a guaranteed product still reads guaranteed). Compare such offers on price, forecast and fit to the brief. You can add a goal later. Sellers answer the goals in the brief they received, so a proposal round requested before the goal existed does not answer it; request a new round for sellers to answer on the goal’s terms.

​

Three questions to ask before you book

How will you know it worked? Name the number and the target. If the answer is “more sales”, the goal is a purchase event and the target is a cost per purchase or a return on ad spend. If the answer is “people saw it”, the goal is reach or completed views. Who counts it? A metric goal is counted by the seller, so the seller can guarantee it. An event goal is counted by your event source, so you need one set up, and the seller can only aim for it unless it can read your events. A vendor-measured goal is counted by the vendor. Is the seller liable? Only when the commitment kind is guaranteed: a fixed price on the outcome itself with guaranteed delivery or a makegood policy. A best-effort target, however confident the prose, leaves the risk with you. Read the commitment, not the pitch.