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About Auction Campaigns

Powered by the strongest machine learning technology for retail, Auction campaigns deliver the right product to the right shopper at the right time on relevant search, category, and product detail pages. This gives advertisers the opportunity to increase their share of the digital shelf and sales.

An Auction campaign runs a first-price auction on a cost-per-click (CPC) model. Advertisers can choose the bid they’re willing to pay every time a shopper engages with their ad and take part in the inventory auction for a chance to win the placement.

Onsite Sponsored Product ads can be built for Auction campaigns. Sponsored Products match each retailer’s site and app pages for a seamless shopper experience. They consists of a sponsored SKU that blends in with organic content. The product images are taken directly from the retailer site so you can be sure the image a shopper sees in the ad matches the images a shopper sees on the retailer site.

Campaign Overview

Campaigns in CMax group your ads by their advertising budgets and attribution settings. They are the foundation of your advertising strategy and one of the core pillars of CMax.

You can view and manage campaigns in the Campaign Section of the platform.

A campaign is characterized by 3 things: name, budget, and attribution model.

Campaigns and Line Items

Each campaign consists of one or several line items, which group your ads by retailer, dates, format, SKUs and targeting. You can run an ad only after creating a campaign and at least one-line item.


After building a campaign, you will be immediately prompted to build your first line item under that campaign. A campaign without an line item will not spend.

Campaigns and Balances

Each campaign is linked to one or several balances, which are the funds available for your ads and indicate how much the ads can spend. You cannot run an ad without creating at least one balance and assigning your campaign to it.

Balances can be managed in the Billing Section of the platform. Note that one balance can be linked to several campaigns.