Your guide to success on Universal Ads

Get started with Universal Ads and learn the proven practices that help advertisers maximize their TV investment.
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How does UA set you up for success?

How does Universal Ads set you up forsuccess? Built for business owners and marketers alike, Universal Ads combines an easy, social-style setup, access to massive reach across premium TV inventory, and real-time performance tracking directly from the biggest publishers in the business. Our platform drives measurable results that align to your brand's KPIs and business goals.

What is TV advertising?

TV advertising reaches your audience wherever they're watching, whether that's on a smart TV, through acable box, or on a phone or tablet via a streaming app. Universal Ads gives you access to all of it, putting your brand in front of viewers across every screenand every way people watch today.

First Steps

Create your account

Select “Login” on the Universal Ads homepage and then select “Create an Account”

Log into the platform

Once your account is approved log in at https://manage.universalads.com

Get familiar with your dashboard

The UA dashboard is your homebase where you can see  your campaign results thatmatter most including reach, actions, and spend
Mobile login screen for Universal Ads showing email and password fields, login button, and account creation link.

Blueprint for launching an effective TV campaign in Minutes

A successful TV campaign starts with the right foundation. Use this blueprint as your guide through the essential setup steps, helping you launch quickly, avoid common pitfalls, and start driving results with confidence.
01

Understanding the building blocks

Before you start building, it's important to understand how Campaigns, Ad Sets, and Ads work together to deliver your advertising goals.
Two campaign option cards labeled Performance+ and Content Select, each with a purple Create campaign button.

Campaign

A campaign is your overall advertising strategy. Start by choosing how you want your ads to run: Performance+, which automatically delivers your ads where your target audience is watching, or Content Select, which gives you control over where your ads appear by letting you choose specific publishers or events. Then set your total budget, campaign duration, and campaign goals.
Ad set options showing four buttons: Age (highlighted), Income, Gender, and Location.

Ad Set

An ad set is where you control how your campaign is delivered. Define the audience you want to reach, set your budget and delivery preferences, and enable tracking to measure actions like website visits and conversions.
Woman holding phone watching video ad on TV, with upload button and text document icons.

Ad

An ad is the creative your audience sees on TV. This is where you bring your message to life with video, branding, and a clear call to action. You can include multiple ads within an ad set to test different messages, creative approaches, or offers.
02

Define your goals and prepare your creative

Establish what success looks like for your business and make sure your creative is ready to reach viewers effectively.
Selection menu with Awareness chosen, options for Web conversion and App promotion unchecked.

Choose your objective

Are you looking to drive awareness (get more people seeing your ad and brand), or conversions (have viewers take specific actions like buy your product)? Define what success looks like.
TV and smartphone showing Spread the Love 25% off storewide offer with smiling woman opening closet.

Ready your TV creative

No big-production fancy commercial? No problem! With our creative gen tool, you can repurpose your existing social and web content or utilize our creative partners to do it for you.
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Adjust at any time

After you go live it's easy and flexible to adjust your TV campaign. Just set your campaign live, give it a few days to gain momentum and in real-time see how it performs and adjust when you want.
03

Best practices to maximize results

Set your campaign up for success with pro tips for targeting, budgeting, creative, and campaign structure.

Targeting

Avoid adding too much targeting which will narrow your audience too much. This may make it harder to deliver your goals and drive up your CPM (the cost to showyour ad 1,000 times). Stick to 1-2 targeting layers max at first, then refineas you go.

Bidding/Budgeting

Your bid is the maximum CPM we will use to deliver your ad. You can bid at your desired price and adjust over time to optimize performance if you want to increase delivery or lower CPM. If you don’t know where to start, we recommend $10 so you can be competitive against most of our inventory.

Flighting

The best results come from running your campaign for 4-6 weeks. TV ads prove to bemost effective when you reach your audience at least 3x per week over your campaign time period. For that reason, give it 1-2 weeks before scrutinizing performance!

Creative

To build high-impact TV commercials that drive results, grab viewers’ attention within the first 2-3 seconds, communicate your brand and message clearly, have a distinct CTA, and maintain consistent branding. Feel free to test distinct creative versions, you can run more than 1 creative per ad set! Always reference our creative guidelines  to ensure your creative is up to par.

Structure

For your first campaign, stick to a target audience that you know resonates with your brand and keep set up simple, 1 campaign, 1 or 2 ad sets and 1 or 2 creatives. Once you give the system time to run and you being to see results you can adjust targeting, creative, or bid selection to see how the changes impact your performance. Keep optimizing to find your perfect TV advertising recipe!
05

Measure performance and optimize

Think back to the goals you defined for your campaign...
Were you looking for awareness? Check out our Reach metrics.
Looking to drive conversions? Make sure your pixel was connected and you’ll see what actions the campaign drove.
The most successful campaigns are actively monitored and optimized over time. Check your results dashboard regularly, and we'll help you turn insights into a plan that drives business growth.
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