Making Facebook my friend (13)
Hey guys,
Decided to start follow along to put my thoughts on paper.
Traffic: Facebook
Why facebook? I like facebook for its segmentation
Creative: World Of Tanks (US, CA) - one of most favorite in peerfly
Why this creative? I think it should be the easiest one cause it performs for a lot of people
Going to share some failed creatives and ideas for future
Day 1: Started CPM campaign. One of first mistakes is doing CPM first. Targeting 18-26 males, which likes similar games
Hmm some scarcity? or just going with FREE, not sure yet
Almost 0 CTR but managed to get 2 leads. Made me happy cause offer can convert
Or it should convert
Also had many different text combinations. Biggest crap was:
New 3D tank driving experience. Join now to start playing World of tanks. Few spaces FREE - which got 0.001% CTR
Day 2
Then it was time to create some CPC. Took same ads and made CPC, got bigger CTR 0.03% but clicks were 0.6 GBP and no conversions.
New angle: Let's take 13-18.
Maybe kids play more games?
Much bigger CTR, 0.1% but only 2 leads out of 30 clicks
Then found great tool qwaya.com and started to do some split testing. 2 Images, 1 body, split testing each age group. CPM. Haven't gave any results. I assume too small demo. Took best performance and increased bid = no luck.
Day 3 Did some research on demographics. Age visiting site 18-34. Did some segmentation for that age group. One year seems to perform, but nothing special
After watching seminar about fb (sorry can't find link) time came for some boobs.
Sad that couldn't get approved
Now running another 2 girls images, there is some hope. Need to get click for 0.2 GBP but now it is about 0.4
Spent: 56$
Earnings: 6.4$
My thoughts:
a. Demo is too small(2-89k depending on country and segmentation) you should get a bigger one
b. Your demo is over attacked. Everyone is approaching from same angle for this game. Find new one
c. How the hell get the cheaper clicks
Hello and welcome to the Follow-Along Club! Looking forward to your updates.
I'd definitely recommend split-testing World of Tanks across a few networks - it's one that lots of networks have, and you'll almost certainly find the conversion rate varies quite a bit.
Your biggest challenge is likely to be offer blindness - from experience, most online players have already heard of WoT, so you've got to present it in a new and intriguing way. Definitely try a lander for this one as well. WoT's visuals are pretty strong, so you might want to try some video on there to entice people in.
Look for images that "pop" more, too. Both of the images you used initially, to my eyes at least, are a bit of a confusing riot of colour. Look for things with strong shapes and sillhouettes that the eye can immediately identify.
It may also be worth testing alternative demographics - people interested in tanks rather than people interested in games, for example.
I'm curious if a landing page with actual in-game footage would work, a simple YouTube embeded video. Just pick the most viewed youtube vid of the game and use that as presell?
The funny thing is that the main site of WoT is split testing their landing pages. Some are with video, some with images, some just plain form.
Yesterday did some with girls and now have one ad which is positive ROI, the biggest problem with this is that it is only 5-10k demo which is not scalable or will die very soon.
I like caurmen approach. I was thinking of doing who likes WWII or similar stuff. This time will start with CPC and bigger demo.
Will keep updated of new angles
Here are some scattered comments from me:
I wouldn't recommend running WoT on FB, at least not in English speaking countries. The fact is the game has been around the block and been done to death by affiliates, not just on FB. There have been so many ads for it that blindness will be at an absolute high. I have seen stupid ads as well such as "The sexy tank shooter for adults!" with a picture of an army chick, so chances are Tanks + girl is going to turn people away as well. If you're going to run WoT see if you can get it in far less saturated markets - South East Asia for example.
As for images, tanks can be difficult to work with - tanks are inherently detailed so tiny images of them can be hard to get looking good.
Don't target tank-related things. You want gamers, not people interested in tanks. It's a multiplayer game so is going to appeal more to people who play traditionally multiplayer games such as MMOs, FPS's like Battlefield, Call of Duty etc. It can be difficult to narrow targeting down well since the user bases who like e.g. "First-person shooters" or "Call of Duty Series" are huge but span across people on console and PC.
"I think it should be the easiest one cause it performs for a lot of people" - How so? I mean, what tells you it performs well for a lot of people? The network EPC? Remember the game has been around for a long time so chances are the majority of traffic being driven now is by affiliates who have found profitable traffic sources and placements, e.g. display ads on certain gaming sites where the user is far more prequalified than on FB. Also, scarcity like "only a few places left!" on gaming ads are unlikely to work. Most gamers will call bullshit immediately, unless it's a closed beta - and if it is, many gamers will realise they don't just accept people on a first in first serve basis.
Targeting wise I have found 18-21, 22-25, 26-30 and 31+ age groups can convert very differently. Quite often there is a huge pocket of users somewhere in the 18-30 bracket that converts like crap but eats up a tonne of your impressions and clicks.
Finally, try a different offer. MMOs tend to do quite well on FB and typically have eye-candy full landers. Go non-English, you will learn while spending less and will have less trauma with horrible CTRs and high CPCs. Turkey and Poland are both quite good places to try if you want a reasonably responsive demographic and low CPCs. Turks love Metin2 (targeting hint). Might be hard to find offers in these countries which also allow FB ads, depends on your network.
Anyway, I'm waffling.
Yep, I'd definitely second the suggestion to try a different offer. WoT has been done to death. Not saying it can't be made profitable, but everything Zeno says there is right on the nose. I've certainly found WoT one of the trickier offers to make profitable in the gaming sphere.
(As an added bonus problem, people click on pictures of fantasy chicks in skimpy "armour" more than they click on pictures of main battle tanks in not-at-all-skimpy armour.)
Thanks zeno, caurmen,
It is really useful information.
I fully understand that 18-30 has gaps in performance. I did tests in range 13-34 (testing each year separately). This tool helped a lot qwaya.com. (Got many questions from people who cloak or have multiple acc. It is safe tool to use because of the nature how FB operates. FB gives Key to software. And each time software uses that key it can act as you. No IP, no other identification from your side)
I wasn't expecting that age group 13-18 will perform better than other group.
Was thinking of targeting multilayer game lovers, but bids a way higher there..
At the moment I have one ad giving positive ROI for second day, but it is not scalable(demo is < 20k) and generates only 0.5$ profit a day. Which is very small looking that I spent nearly 100$ testing campaign.
Really appreciate your view from gamers position about "few places left" and beta release. It opened my mind!
One of the biggest mistake was that I jump straight away without doing any proper research. I created few text copies, headlines, few images, and tested over 40 groups at the time. It let to few things:
1. Budget was eaten fast
2. I was competing against my self - such an amateur mistake
My next actions is to check if that campaign can be positive for a longer term + looking for new offer
What would be a good audience to look at? 60-100k? I found that many doesn't even look if there isn't over 250k
Re:Caurmen - just my thoughts really. I know the gamer demographic pretty well and most people who love playing e.g. Battlefield series are not WWII enthusiasts who like the design of Panzer or Sherman tanks. Many of the tank-related game interests you can target are strategy type games or RTS-style as well, so I think it is a bit mismatched to what WoT is like. In saying that I'm sure you can target this demographic and convert them on games, it's just not what I would start out with.
Re: Harke - The 13-17 age group is almost always going to give you cheaper clicks but be aware these are often the lowest quality leads for the advertisers when it comes to these types of games. Young kids at home are quick to jump on something shiny, play for 5 minutes and then never play it again. From a gamer perspective they will often be noobs and get rolled by adults and sent packing T_T - OK maybe not all the time but importantly they aren't likely to whip out credit cards and satisfy the microtransaction model the game usually utilises.
With targeting and bids, don't worry about the suggested bid. The real CPCs you end up paying are what matter. So don't shy away from some keywords just because you see the suggested bid range double. When you say you are testing over 40 groups at a time what do you mean? They should all be in their own campaigns so that's a lot of stuff going on and a lot of money spread out. Focus on one angle + multiple ages/gender at a time or one age/gender group and multiple angles. Don't scattershot or get carried away with Qwaya, you need to have a plan that actually gets you some reliable data.
Got distracted today. Starting to get a casual problem which sucks.
Got distracted by new idea. Facebook email segmentation. Found a guy with adult emails(20k). Did some segmenting and now doing Dating offer on 3.8k
Feel free to copy or comment about creative
Originally Posted by harke
Got distracted by new idea. Facebook email segmentation. Found a guy with adult emails(20k). Did some segmenting and now doing Dating offer on 3.8k
Feel free to copy or comment about creative
@Zeno - Ah, that makes sense. And yes, I can definitely see the logic behind targeting older players with strategy-type stuff.
FWIW, interestingly, my experience is that WoT seems to appeal to an older demographic than most games of its type. One of my other businesses is a large MMO site which tracks the general MMO zeitgeist: I've noticed on there that quite a few 30+/40+ male gamers play and enjoy WoT. One comment I've heard again and again (which may actually be worth using in an ad) is that it's quite a bit slower-paced than it appears - it's almost a first-person strategy game, according to some people - which allows older games whose reflexes are starting to slow down to still compete.
Overall, though, I'd tend to agree with you - it's easiest to sell gamers on gaming!
Originally Posted by zeno
I am using Peerfly with backup redirect + I run traffic via prosper. I assume this offer is arbitraged because normally it gets right URL. My ad just got approved, waiting for results
Looked at many campaigns and decided to go with dating, because it has biggest payments.
Going to promote dating for EU country. Payout over 5$. Have 13 images to test. Waiting to get translated 3 bodies. Targeted audience: 18-28, male, single
My profitable WoT campaign died..
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