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.

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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.

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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.

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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. 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Judging delivery

A campaign with a goal reports two different things, and they answer two different questions. Pacing answers “is the budget being spent on schedule?”. It compares spend to the flight and to the budget, and it is available on every campaign. Goal progress answers “is the campaign achieving what it set out to?”. It is a planned read, not yet part of delivery: it will compare the number the goal is counted on (clicks, purchases, store visits) against the asked target and the seller’s commitment, 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.
• 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.

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The seller’s record

A seller’s record against past commitments is planned, and depends on goal progress. Once a buy with a commitment completes, the platform will keep what was asked, what was answered, what was delivered, and whether the seller beat, met or missed its commitment. Aggregated per seller and objective, and split by commitment kind, because a kept guarantee and a beaten best effort are different facts, that record will feed product ranking and automatic selection, and be readable on the seller so you can ask before booking.

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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.

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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.