PPD Bidding Help

The following information is designed to help you plan and execute your PPD campaign more effectively. If you are new to the program or require further assistance, please contact us.

General Help

Submitting a PPD bid

In order to participate in the PPD program, you must have a live product listing on CNET Download.com, with a current subscription to a Basic, Premium, or Free Listing Package. Submitting a Pay-Per-Download bid is easy and takes only minutes:

Log in to your Upload.com account.
Click the Manage Bids tab located in the Pay-Per-Download-Center.
Choose a product that you would like to submit a PPD bid for.
Enter a Completed Download Rate and Spend Cap to preview your rank.
Check the boxes indicating that you agree to our terms and conditions.
Confirm your bid details, enter payment information, and submit the form.

You should receive a confirmation e-mail within one hour of placing your bid. Be sure to check the PPD bidding pages regularly after placing your bid in case your estimated rank changes before the close of the bidding window. You can sign up for optional e-mail alerts to let you know if your estimated rank changes.

Monthly timeline

Each PPD campaign runs for one calendar month. Promotion begins on the first of the month and ends on either the last day of the month, or when the spend cap is hit (whichever comes first). Exact dates vary each month (check the front door of Upload.com for specific close date), but the following general timeline is used:

Day 1: Campaigns begin for month's winning bidders.
Day 3: Bidding opens for the next month.
Day 5: Past month winners sent under delivery credit.
Day 23-28: Bidding closes.
Day 21-25: Bids analyzed and ranked.

Winning bidders are charged the full spend cap at the start of the month, and any unused portion is refunded at the end of the campaign. If you hit your cap before the end of the month, you will be contacted and given the option to renew your bid. If you choose not to renew, your PPD slot will be offered to a publisher on our waiting list.

Minimum bids

The minimum bid for most categories is a $0.15 CPD with a $250 cap. However, the Mobile category has a slightly lower minimum Completed Download Rate of $0.10 (the minimum Spend Cap remains $250). Please note that while a minimum bid may be sufficient to win a slot for some categories, more competitive categories might require a significantly higher bid to win a top five slot.

Ranking and promotion

We take the following variables into consideration when evaluating your PPD bid:

Completed Download Rate relative to other PPD products.
Spend Cap relative to other PPD products.
Effective yield to CNET Networks (bid amount multiplied by projected downloads).

Rank, while awarded based on this calculation, is not guaranteed. Although rare and at our discretion, it is possible that during the month your product's ranking may increase or decrease due a variety of factors. These factors include the drop out of another product in your category (this may increase your rank) or the inclusion of a CNET Network wide campaign in your category (this may decrease your rank).

Sponsored rotation on CNET Download.com post-download pages and other areas of our partner network is based on similar considerations and cannot be guaranteed.

Keywords

As a program participant you may select up to 10 additional keywords for your PPD product. Keywords can help increase the likelihood that your product will appear at the top of relevant search results on CNET Download.com. Once your product is participating in PPD, you can request keywords by contacting us.

Reporting

Upload.com provides Basic and Premium participants with access to daily reports that highlight page views, download counts, and budget spent to date. In addition, monthly reports also are available to help you identify trends in your campaigns.

To access PPD Performance reports:

Log in to your Upload.com account.
Verify that your PPD product also has a Basic or Premium subscription.
From the Upload Manager page, click on your product name.
Then click the PPD Performance link under Available Reports.

Performance reports are only available to Basic and Premium subscribers at this time.

Additional Tips

Verify that your product is Live

You can only submit PPD bids for products that are Live on Download.com. If your product is still in the Processing status, you may need to wait a few days for processing to complete. Product status and estimated publish date are available via your Upload Manager (click product name to see the estimated publish date).

Check your weekly downloads

Your PPD bid is evaluated against your product's download performance from the previous week. If your product is new to Download.com, you may need to wait a few days for download counts to appear. The optimal time for submitting a PPD bid is the first two weeks after a new version is published, while your product is being featured in the CNET Download.com New Releases.

Budget your spend cap

Avoid potentially exhausting your spend cap before the end of the month by budgeting ahead of time. You can use the following formula to estimate a spend cap that will last you through the entire month:

Find last week's initiated download count for your product on CNET Download.com.
Divide the initiated count by two to approximate weekly completed downloads.
Multiply that amount by four to get your projected organic monthly count.
Multiply the projected monthly total by 1.5 to account for your estimated PPD increase.
Multiply the new figure by your Completed Download Rate to get the final Spend Cap.

Estimate your completion rate

You can budget your Spend Cap more accurately by estimating your actual download completion rate. Completion rates can vary due to a number of factors such as file size and product category. The chart below may be used as a general guideline for estimating download completion rate by file size:

File size:: Average completion:
Less than 1MB: 71%
1MB to 5MB: 68%
5MB to 10MB: 58%
10MB to 20MB: 55%
More than 20MB: 47%

Monitor your category

Visit the Manage Bids page regularly after bidding. Keep in mind that estimated rank and spend are for preview purposes only, and may not reflect the latest bidding activity. If you get outbid, submit a new and higher bid at that time. We accept the last bid we receive (time-stamped upon submission), even if that bid is lower than previous bids.

Contact an account representative

The majority of PPD bids are placed in the last 48 hours before the bidding window closes. Although you can monitor the status of your bid via the Manage Bids page, you may also contact us during this time each month if you are unsure whether your bid will win and need advice.

Build momentum

If your product is new to the site or has a low download count, you may need to offer a higher Completed Download Rate in order to win a slot in your category for the first time. However, as a result of participating in the PPD program, your product should gradually increase its download counts over time. Once you've gathered some momentum from previous campaigns, you should be able to lower your Completed Download Rate and still win.

Maximize your campaign

Completed Download Rate is the most important factor taken into consideration for the final rankings. Even top-ranked products can gain significantly more downloads during a PPD campaign by raising their Completed Download Rate. We award additional out-of-category promotional rotations to products with the highest bids. The higher your bid relative to other PPD products, the more visibility your product may receive in promotional rotation across our partner network.