Ad Journeys — Sequential Ad Campaigns

Ad Journeys let you run multi-step ad sequences across newsletter audiences. Each step delivers a different creative to subscribers who already engaged with the previous one — no opt-in required, no ESP changes needed.

What is an Ad Journey?

An Ad Journey is a sequential campaign of 2–5 steps. Each step targets subscribers who received and opened the prior step's ad. You write one campaign with one base CPM — MailAdx handles the sequencing, eligibility checks, and delivery automatically.

Common use cases:

• Awareness → Consideration → Conversion: introduce your brand, then deepen with product proof, then close with an offer
• Product sequences: Feature 1 → Feature 2 → Trial CTA
• Onboarding flows: Welcome → Setup tip → Success story

How subscribers advance through steps

A subscriber advances from step N to step N+1 when two conditions are met:

1. They received an impression of step N (their email client fetched the ad at open time)
2. The minimum wait period (minWaitDays) has elapsed since that impression

Advancement runs automatically in the background every few hours. On each subsequent newsletter send, MailAdx checks the subscriber's journey state and serves the correct step — or skips if they are not yet eligible.

Setting up your first journey

1. Navigate to Dashboard → Advertisers → [your advertiser] → Ad Journeys
2. Click New Journey. Give it a name, select your advertiser, and set a base CPM
3. Add 2–5 steps. Each step requires a creative (native or image banner format) and a minimum wait days before a subscriber is eligible for the next step
4. Optionally set start/end dates and a total budget cap
5. Click Activate

No ESP template changes are required. The journey ads serve through the same open-time ad tag already in your template.

Creative requirements

Journey steps support both native and image banner formats — you can mix formats across steps within the same journey.

Native creatives must include:

• Headline (max 60 characters)
• Body copy (max 120 characters)
• Sponsored-by label
• Thumbnail image (recommended 300×200 px, JPG/PNG)
• Click-through URL

Image banner creatives must include a hosted image URL and click-through URL. Standard sizes (600×200 px recommended).

Upload creatives via Dashboard → Advertisers → Creatives → New Creative. Choose type = NATIVE for native format or STANDARD for image banners.

Budget and billing

You are billed only for the step that actually serves on each open. There is no charge for subscribers who are mid-journey but did not receive an impression in that send.

An optional Total Budget (in USD) can be set on the journey. If provided, MailAdx splits the budget evenly across all steps — each step gets totalBudget ÷ numSteps as its per-step cap. Pacing follows the standard budget-pacing algorithm and pauses delivery automatically when a step's cap is reached.

Publisher requirements

The publisher's ad unit must have Journey Ads enabled (on by default). Publishers can disable journey ads per ad unit from their Publisher Portal → Ad Units → settings.

Analytics and reporting

Journey-level reporting is available at Dashboard → Ad Journeys → [journey] → Stats. You will see per-step impressions, clicks, spend, and click-through rate. The step funnel view shows how many subscribers progressed from step 1 through each subsequent step.

Pausing and resuming

Journeys can be paused at any time from the journey list. Pausing halts delivery of all steps immediately. Resuming restores delivery — subscribers retain their step position, so they continue from where they left off on the next eligible send.

API reference

All journey operations are available via the MailAdx REST API. See the Partner APIs doc for authentication details.

Limits

• Minimum 2 steps, maximum 5 steps per journey
• Minimum minWaitDays per step: 0 (same send eligible) up to 90 days
• Supported formats: NATIVE and STANDARD (image banner); formats can be mixed across steps
• One journey step served per subscriber per newsletter send