Differences between First and Second Price Bidding

LiveIntent is designed with your goals in mind. Our prediction engine understands that brand advertisers might have slightly different objectives than a performance advertiser would have, and it allows you to tailor campaigns to your goals. 

CPM campaigns can bid in the real-time auction as 1st or 2nd Price.

First Price

These campaigns will prioritize spending the entirety of the budget allocated while performing the best that it can. In this pricing model, if your campaign wins inventory, you pay the amount of your bid. 

For example, in a 1st price auction:

• Advertiser A bids $2.00

• Advertiser B bids $3.00

• Advertiser C bids $4.00

• Advertiser C wins at $4.00

The following types of optimization are available:

• Maximize CTR is available if you want to optimize your campaign toward a higher click-through rate.

• Maximize Conversion Rate is available if you have a conversion goal that you want to optimize your campaign toward.

Second Price

Second price campaigns are goal-oriented, optimizing your CPM to a specific CPA, CPC or CPM goal, and may stop spending budget if it is missing the goal. In this pricing model, if your campaign wins inventory, you will pay $0.01 above the second-highest bid in the auction.

For example, in a 2nd price auction:

• Advertiser A bids $3.00

• Advertiser B bids $4.00

• Advertiser C bids $5.00

• Advertiser C wins at $4.01

The following types of optimization are available:

• Target CPC optimizes your campaign towards your specified CPC goal

• Target CPA optimizes your campaign towards your specified CPA goal

• Target CPM optimizes your campaign towards your specified CPM goal

For example, bidding 2nd price with a $10 maximum CPM and CPA goal of $1, our engine will attempt to find inventory that will convert at $1, yet keep the spend under $10 CPM.