Quora Ads Guide on Campaign, AdSets, Ads Specs, Targeting with Examples

1. Account Sign up

To start advertising on Quora, you need to first sign up on Quora by using this link. While signing up you need to give your business information such as business name, addresses, phone number, etc.

2. Installing the Quora Pixels

Just like Facebook, Quora also has the base and standard events based conversion pixels. I have covered this part separately in a blog on Quora conversion tracking. Before we go into creating a campaign, you should also add your billing information which you can find out in the right-hand side top corner dropdown.

3. Creating a campaign in Quora

Once you’re in Quora Ads, you will see your dashboard, the Ad Manager. It looks like this. Initially, there would not be any data

In the dashboard, you can see campaign pieces of information such as campaign name, impressions, clicks, CTR, cost per click, conversions, spend and your remaining budget. Once you update billing it’s time to create your first campaign. First, click on the button “Create Campaign” in the top right corner of the page.

3.1 Campaign Fields

Once you start creating a new campaign. You shall have to fill the following fields as shown in the picture below:

Most of the fields are self-intuitive. Quora initially gives you four options as campaign objective:

• Conversions
• App Installs
• Traffic
• Awareness

Only with conversions as chosen objective, you will see the option of selecting a conversion type. With other fields, you do not get to choose conversions which is obvious. Under the conversion type, you will see two types of conversions in Quora, standard conversions and custom conversions as shown below. You usually set up the pixels and conversions when you create the account. I have already written an article on Quora pixels and conversions. Please refer to the article if you want to know about it in more details.

3.2 Quora Budget

Next thing you do is to set up the Quora budget. There are two options here:

• Daily maximum budget and,
• Lifetime budget

If can select both of the options or either of them. Daily maximum budget is the maximum that you want to spend on a daily basis or you can simply put the lifetime budget and Quora will optimize the spend for you.

4. Create an Ad set in Quora

Just like Facebook, all the targeting parameters such as audiences, location, bidding, targeting type, device, etc. are available at the AdSet level. If you have already used the Facebook ads manager before to create campaign and AdSets, it should be pretty easy for you to set up an AdSet on Quora too. Here is a screenshot from AdSet creation on Quora:

If you look at the top right-hand corner, you can already see that there is an option to import other AdSets or to clear the AdSet setting. Besides those, Quora offer you the following targeting options:

4.1.1 Topic Targeting

• Your ads will appear next to content associated with specific topics across Quora or in placements without content specific context like in Quora’s feed.
• Topic Targeting on Quora should be considered for brand awareness or consideration based campaigns for an affinity audience who are interested in a topic or topics for a very long time such as travel, education, life experiences etc. A topic is what keeps a reader engaged in Quora.
• Topic targeting also utilizes the declared data from a user. If you remember, when someone signs up on Quora, he or she has to choose the topic of their choice. Just like Facebook, Quora also utilizes such declared data in topic targeting.
• You have to start typing the name of the topics that you want to target and Quora will start automatically filling them up. In my case, I began with the topic about Canada and you can see different suggestions such as Immigration to Canada, Visas in Canada and different cities name, etc.
• You can also select more than one topic.

4.1.2 Question Targeting on Quora

Using Question targeting, you can target two types of users on Quora.

• Show ads to users reading about a question
• Show ads to users who previously read about a question. In this case, you can also select the question date range from 1 to 30 days.
• Please note that the target questions are autocompleted or suggested by Quora just like topic targeting. You do not get to promote your own question rather chose a question already available on the Quora platform.
• This targeting is more like an in-market segment targeting from Google ads platform
• You can also target more than one questions.
• Question targeting should be considered for an in-market audience or a set of audience who is currently highly interested in something or in the long run such as immigration, study, travel etc.

4.1.3 Audience Targeting on Quora

Your ads will target members of an audience that you previously specified. I have covered about Audiences on Quora completely in a separate blog – Audience targeting on Quora. I would suggest considering Audience targeting on Quora for remarketing or conversion based campaigns targeting the website visitors and visitors from conversion events, be it standard or custom conversions.

You can also create a lookalike audience of your already available audience. I have also created a separate article with a complete detailed guide on creating an audience for the different levels of the marketing funnel.

4.1.4 Interest Targeting on Quora

Quora says that your ads will behaviorally target individuals who show interest in specific topics across Quora. I also feel like interest targeting on Quora is more geared towards user behavior. A user might show a different interest when he or she joins but later with time, a user might develop an interest in other things as well.

• Interest targeting is between topic and question targeting.
• This is mostly for the in-market audience for the consideration based marketing

4.1.5 Keyword Targeting on Quora

Keyword targeting helps you find relevant question pages to display your ad on Quora based on words or phrases you specify. Keyword targeting can also help advertisers tailor their ad copy to map closely to the targeted keywords.  Quora offers 2 types of keyword matching: broad match and phrase match at the ad set level.

These different matching types help you control for how closely related the question needs to be to your keywords for your ad to be displayed. Here is an article from Quora on Keyword targeting which you might find useful.

• Keywords are not suggested by Quora
• You can also exclude some keywords which are the same as negative keywords on Google
• You can add as many as you want keywords.

4.1.6 Broad targeting on Quora

Your ads will target the broadest possible audience of Quora users. This option sometimes comes very handily if your audience is too narrow or location-specific and your ads not getting enough impressions or reach, in that case, I just open up the targeting of my AdSets and set the targeting as broad.

4.2 Location Targeting

You can target the city, region, or country level. You can include as many locations as possible and the same for exclusion as well.,

4.3 Exclude Questions or Audiences

Exclude questions or audiences are most important from the online reputation management point of view. I really liked this option of excluding what you do not like or threaten your online reputation. You can add as many questions and audience possible as many you want.

4.4 Set a bid on Quora

Setting up a bid on Quora is only available through CPC option. Other platform automated bidding options are not available currently. CPC is really cheaper on Quora. Mine was around CAD $0.07 for a very hyper-targeted market around Vancouver.  You can try at $0.20.

5. Create a new Ad on Quora

There are basically three types of ad that you can create on Quora.

• Image Ad
• Text ad and,
• promote an answer

Although these ads types are self-intuitive and obvious then can be used for different purposes as well. You can also see Import ad option at the top right corner which is just like copy an Ad.

5.1 Image ad on Quora

The above image shown above is from the Image ad interface only. An Image Ad requires the following items:

Quora Image Ads Specs

• Business Name (Limit 40 characters)
• Headline sentence (Limit 65 characters)
• Body Text (Limit 105 characters) and,
• Call to Action
• Landing page URL (Limit 1024 characters)
• Display URL (Limit 30 characters)
• Logo or Hero image (30×30 pixel)
• Hero Image (1200×628 Pixels)

I would suggest an image ad mostly for brand awareness or traffic based campaigns on Quora. The image ad is similar to a single image ad on Facebook or Instagram which appear mainly on feed or other placements. Followings are the CTAs (Call to Actions) available on Quora.

• Apply Now
• Book now
• Contact Us
• Donate Now
• Download
• Follow Us
• Free Trial
• Get Quote
• Get the App
• Learn More
• Play Now
• Read More
• Show Now
• Sing up
• Start Now
• Watch more

5.2 Text Ad on Quora

Text Ad on Quora is almost similar to an Image Ad but without any logo or Image. Rest of the fields remain the same. You can also notice that Quora offers your tips on how to write its ad copies under the preview section. You can also preview your ads on Mobile or desktop. Text ads are more away from brand awareness campaigns. I would consider text ads for consideration and conversion based ads.

Quora Text Ads Specs

• Business Name (Limit 40 characters)
• Headline sentence (Limit 65 characters)
• Body Text (Limit 105 characters) and,
• Call to Action
• Landing page URL (Limit 1024 characters)
• Display URL (Limit 30 characters)

5.3 Promote an Answer on Quora

An ad that promotes an existing Quora answer so that it appears more prominently for users on Quora. This ad format just needs a link of any Quora answer. There are no other fields. I found this ad type very amusing because this can be used in building an online reputation on Quora regarding a business. It can also be used for personal branding if you answer a lot of questions on Quora.

Your personal branding can generate a lot of upvotes, best answers, and followers. That, in turn, can be used for driving a lot of traffic from Quora to your blog, website or product, etc.