Follow Along - Going Mobile! (35)
Wow, it's been over 2 months since I joined and still no follow-along. Until today!
So WTF have I been doing? (skip this and jump to the bottom, if not interested).
Well, since joining I managed to hit my first $5k month just from applying one little tip I learned from this forum!
I was doing mostly PPC at the time and things were starting to look good and I got caught up building more PPC campaigns instead of focusing on safer affiliate traffic sources. A month later I had 2 accounts suspended by Bing. Fortunately, I still have one left which is pulling in some cash.
To be honest when I joined STM, I planned on starting a PPV follow-along straightaway. However, since joining I realised it wasn't the best route to take. The general consensus on the forum seems to be avoid it if you're a newbie. My 40+ failed campaigns have pretty much proved this point.
On a positive note, I do have one PPV campaign that I revived and stuck with, and 35 LPs later, it's starting to profit! So it's not all doom and gloom.
I also had some small successes with a few adult web campaigns which didn't last. And more recently, I've been trying mobile campaigns with little success.
So it seems that I'm a little stretched, messing about with too many traffic sources and I agree, it's got to stop. This is why I'm doing this follow along. I've decided not to touch PPC apart from maintaining my campaigns until they wither away and die. I'm also going to forget building anymore PPV campaigns and just keep the one I have left going and continue to optimise etc.
So that leaves me with adult web and mobile. Since they are quite similar, I don't see the harm in doing both, but my main focus will be mobile. And after that long post (apologies) I've got some results from a campaign I setup yesterday!
My Setup:
Tracker:
STMs mobile tracker
Traffic source:
Exoclick
Campaign setup:
Testing 10 300x100 ads
3 LPs - 2 long and 1 short.
3 Offers
Bids/Targeting:
Bidding Smart CPM between the minimum bid and top bid.
All popular devices -Android, IOS, Windows etc.
All carriers (don't have the option to choose)
Frequency cap set to 1
Sites Targeting:
All available (mobile) sites. However, only targeting one ad position for each site.
I'm also testing 300x250 ads in another campaign. Similar setup, although the site targeting is a little different. Depending on which one has the most potential over the next few days, I may cut one.
Stats so far:
300x100 campiagn:
52 clicks | 0.16% CTR | $0.10 avg CPC | $5.24 spend | 0 conversions
P/L= -$5.24
300x250 campaign:
110 clicks | 0.37% CTR | $0.08 avg CPC | $8.88 spend | 1 conversion | $3.15 revenue
PL= -$5.73
LP CTR is between 22% and 39%.
So the first thing I've done is cut any ad that has 2k impressions and less than 0.10% CTR. That's actually half of them for the 300x100 campaign and none for the 300x250 campaign. Right now I'm mainly just ripping banner ads and seeing what works. From there I can modify and start being a little more creative with angles.
What has surprised me is that 300x250 banners are doing a lot better. I thought it would be the opposite. Strange.
Ok, nothing more to report. I'm going to throw in more banners for the 300x100 campaign and possibly increase bids.
Thanks in advance for any advice you care to share! 
Cheers!
Kai
Good start;
Test more banners, banner sizes, and offers. I'm not sure which offers you're running but make sure it's a proven converter.
As you can see from your PPV campaign, this does work with persistence/testing!
Hey Stackman, thanks for dropping in!
Ok, will test more banner and sizes. Any recommendation on what sizes to test?
Can't test anymore offers, because that seems to be it, but I will test them from other affiliate networks if I can find them and also more offer lps.
Actually, I had an inkling that one offer would do better and now it has 2 conversions. So I may drop the other two offers in a day or so depending on results and just split test the different lps for the winning offer.
Yes, you're absolutely right. I need to stick with this until I either conquer it or it kills me. Preferably the first.
I was really close to giving up the PPV campaign on so many occasions but I'm glad I didn't. So many times I've given up too early and told myself it wouldn't work. Have to give campaigns a proper chance and not be afraid to spend.
I think that's the biggest issue with me - being afraid to spend. And that's probably been my biggest downfall. Gonna change that!
-One thing I just noticed. When adding/changing banners the campaign goes into 'Pending Approval' - Is this just for the new ads? Surely it's not for the whole campaign!
Made a mistake.
When I initially setup the campaign I was going to test both ad sizes (300x100 and 300x250) in one campaign. But I soon realised that Exo doesn't allow you to do that. Not only that, the placements are different too.
Despite that, I decided to cut corners and combine the campaign into one. Bad idea. I'm not that great using prosper, (so use to using CPV lab) and noticed you can't use the same LP for multiple campaigns (because of the tracking links). Or am I wrong???
So I'm going to split the campaigns and duplicate the LPs for each campaign, otherwise it's going to be really difficult to analyze stats later.
A few more conversions yesterday and today. One offer is clearly a winner and I'm running it exclusively now. Have PMed AM for more info, but it's the weekend. Will test the different LPs for that offer.
I'm rotating 3 LPs. Long LPs are doing much better than the short. Not cutting now, just going to change the weight and run it test it more.
Some site placements have high volume, zero conversions and really poor CTR. So I may pause when they hit 5x payout and perhaps introduce them later when the campaign has been better optimised.
For now, I'm going to split my campaigns and come back with more accurate stats tomorrow.
Good follow-along man!
Keep split testing offers because that's one of the most important factors for adult mobile.
Also 300x250 banners tend to have both better conversion rate and also better lead quality.
Keep us updated on progress.
Cheers bbrock32!
Just had a quick look and EPC is at $0.52, so it's looking good so far. It can only improve!
I'm pretty sure I'm running the best offer and there aren't that many offers for this country. I initially ran 3 but it looks like there is a clear winner, so I'm just testing the different lps for that particular offer.
I totally wouldn't have known that 300x250 banners do better. I have noticed they get better CTRs but I assumed that 300x100 would do better since they appear to have better placements. I will continue to test both and see how it pans out.
I see a lot of banners out there pushing the 'FREE' angle, I'm guessing this helps with CTR but won't it hurt my lead quality in the long-run?
Also, what other banner sizes are worth testing? Or should I really test them all?
Getting an error when I try and view a campaign in STMs tracker. When I go to 'Analyze' and 'Landing Pages' - only doing it for one campaign though. Any ideas what this means?
Out of resources when opening file './STMTracker/202_clicks#P#p79.MYD' (Errcode: 24)
SELECT COUNT(*) AS clicks, AVG(2c.click_cpc) AS avg_cpc, SUM(2c.click_lead) AS leads, SUM(2cr.click_out) AS click_throughs, SUM(2c.click_payout*2c.click_lead) AS income FROM 202_clicks AS 2c LEFT OUTER JOIN 202_clicks_advance AS 2ca ON (2ca.click_id = 2c.click_id) LEFT OUTER JOIN 202_clicks_record AS 2cr ON (2cr.click_id = 2c.click_id) LEFT JOIN 202_ppc_accounts AS 2pa ON (2c.ppc_account_id = 2pa.ppc_account_id) LEFT JOIN 202_ppc_networks AS 2pn ON (2pa.ppc_network_id = 2pn.ppc_network_id) WHERE 2c.user_id='1' AND 2pn.ppc_network_id='1' AND 2c.aff_campaign_id='4' AND click_time > 1377921600 AND click_time < 1378007999 AND 2c.landing_page_id='6' GROUP BY 2c.landing_page_id
I've notified the tech guys!
Will have a response soon.
<3
Looks like a DB problem.
First check if you have enough free disk space , if that's ok run a mysql repair.
This should do it.
^^ Thanks for looking into it guys. Was happening again earlier today, but when I just checked it worked fine. Hopefully it was just a temporary glitch. I installed this tracker on a new VPS, so I think disk space is fine.
Ok, so some updates after I split my campaigns up:
I've been testing more banners, cutting all the low CTR banners after 2k impressions with statistical difference. Some banners that start out strong diminish quickly which is odd since I've set the frequency cap at 1 and have only been running these campaigns for a few days now.
Yesterdays stats for the 300x250 campaign:
123 clicks | 0.29% banner CTR | $13.35 spend | 26.70% Avg LP CTR | 9 Leads | $28.35 Rev | 112% ROI | $15 P/L
So far looking good for this campaign but it's too early to say since it is the weekend. There's huge click discrepency between Exo and my tracker stats. But I'm not bothered so long as Exo isn't showing more clicks than my tracker. I've set my tracker to EST so that it matches up with Exo, so maybe they're bots or whatever.
Long LPs are doing much better than short LP despite the short LP having a higher CTR. So I dropped the short LP and I'm going to test a bit more before making LP variations.
I'm only testing one offer now. Rotating 3 LP variations for that offer and one is standing out. There's a close second but the third is not doing well. Will test more but I think I might have to make a cut soon.
I didn't raise my bids as I planned, mainly because I thought I was getting enough volume to optimise. Will ramp up bids later.
Ok, for my 300x100 campaign figures are low across the board.
Have been cutting and adding banners and CTR has improved a little. Here are the stats:
118 clicks | 0.21% banner CTR | $14.64 spend | 19.47% Avg LP CTR | 1 Lead | $3.15 | -78% ROI | -$11.49 P/L
So everything looks a little dismal in comparison to the 300x250 campaign. And with lower banner CTRs my CPC is going to be higher. The only positive I see with running 300x100 banners is that there is more volume. However, that doesn't mean anything if I can't get banner CTRs up.
I have a feeling I'm going to drop my 300x100 campaign soon because the stats are against me. If it was just one thing that needed work on I'd probably work on optimising, but it seems pointless with this campaign. Also, I'll be able to focus on the 300x250 campaign more, get it optimised and start scaling.
I looked into other banner sizes but many of them don't have mobile placements, some just a few. I may test this at a later stage. For now, I don't see that it's worth the effort. Going to start another campaign in a different country while I wait for more stats.
300x250 performs really nice! I don't know what is good CTR for the country and offers you're targeting, but my CTR was that low when I was using very generic images provided by the advertiser. My own good banners have CTR of up to 1% (and on average I have about 0.4-0.5% CTR for all banners). So maybe (I'm not an expert) testing some different banners (like re-twists of most popular banners from STM Spy Tool) would help you get a much better CTR and make a profit with this ad size as well.
^^ Thanks Martin, will test more.
Quick stats for yesterday:
300x250 Campaign
127 clicks | 0.40% CTR | $9.78 Spend | 30.06% LP CTR | 6 Leads | $18.90 Rev | 93% ROI | $9.12 P/L
So in the green again with this campaign. Have just increased bids up by 25% so lets see how much more volume we can get. Still far from the top bidder though.
300x100 Campaign
162 clicks | 0.21% CTR | $20.30 Spend | 14.62% LP CTR | 7 Leads | $22.05 Rev | 8.6% ROI | $1.75 P/L
Still pretty shabby with this campaign but at least it broke even. This campaign had twice the amount of impressions as the 300x250 campaign. Going to let it run longer at the same bid to see if we can improve it.
imo.. Bin the 300x100 and do many more 300x250s..
duplicate the one you have.. and also try some new angles to same offer in new campaigns.. milk it.
Kai1 nice!
What the heck did you change to go from loss to profit so fast?
Originally Posted by dynamicsoul
I think I might just keep it going just for a few more days. If it continues to break even or make some profit it might be worth seeing if I can improve it. But if it doesn't, yeah I think will bin it.
Edit:
Hey, man I just re-read your post and didn't even think to create new campaigns with new angles rather than just replacing banners in the existing campaign. This is awesome! Thank you!
That way I can keep an already successful campaign and continue testing. Sweet!
Originally Posted by Mr Green
I dropped the short LP and kept the best performing offer. Also, I've been replacing all of the banners with low CTR. I know high CTR on banners doesn't always mean better conversions though, so I'll need to keep an eye on this.
I did have a LP over 25% ctr...
can u plz tell me which type LP you are using?
^^ They are all typical 'rule' landers. I created a one page lp to split test. The other 2 are long versions.
Ok, so stats for yesterday:
300x250 Campaign
102 clicks | 0.49% banner CTR | $7.39 | 21% LP CTR | 7 Leads | $22.05 Rev | 198% ROI | $14.66 P/L
So despite raising bids, I didn't get more volume. I'm going to keep raise bids incremently and see if we can improve this.
Still in the green, so all good so far.
Looking at all time stats, both long lp ctrs are performing roughly the same including leads. I'm going to create two more variations to test.
Standard offer lp is performing best, so I will adjust weight and test a little more.
300x100 Campaign
293 clicks | 0.29% banner ctr | $31.96 spend | 20% LP CTR | 14 Leads | $44.10 Rev | 38% ROI | $12.14 P/L
Ok, so I was going to bin this campaign if I didn't see any improvement, but I did! Also it had 5 times the amount of impressions.
Oddly, the short LP is working the best. Hopefully this doesn't equal shit quality.
I cloned my 300x250 campaign and replaced with new banners, so I can test quicker.
I also created a campaign on TJ.
That's it for today.
Oh, one thing. How do I repair mysql? That error message has come back (only showing error for a few campaigns though):
Out of resources when opening file './STMTracker/202_clicks#P#p80.MYD' (Errcode: 24)
SELECT COUNT(*) AS clicks, AVG(2c.click_cpc) AS avg_cpc, SUM(2c.click_lead) AS leads, SUM(2cr.click_out) AS click_throughs, SUM(2c.click_payout*2c.click_lead) AS income FROM 202_clicks AS 2c LEFT OUTER JOIN 202_clicks_advance AS 2ca ON (2ca.click_id = 2c.click_id) LEFT OUTER JOIN 202_clicks_record AS 2cr ON (2cr.click_id = 2c.click_id) LEFT JOIN 202_ppc_accounts AS 2pa ON (2c.ppc_account_id = 2pa.ppc_account_id) LEFT JOIN 202_ppc_networks AS 2pn ON (2pa.ppc_network_id = 2pn.ppc_network_id) WHERE 2c.user_id='1' AND 2pn.ppc_network_id='1' AND 2c.aff_campaign_id='5' AND click_time > 1378094400 AND click_time < 1378180799 AND 2c.landing_page_id='12' GROUP BY 2c.landing_page_id
Connect via SSH to your server and run those :
mysqlcheck -r --all-databases
mysqlcheck -f --all-databases
mysqlcheck -o --all-databases
However make sure you have enough disk space and you aren't running out of inodes ( http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5...on-ubuntu-8-04 ) .
If you aren't very tech savvy just submit a ticket to your host and they will do it for you.
Kai1.. that 300-250 campain looks like a winner.. rather than up the bids try duplicating it EXACTLY the same twice over. So you have 3 of the exact same campaign running.. if you want increase the bid in each copy by tiny amounts.. and leave the original running.. be interesting to see if you get 3 times volume.. works for me on some networks
Then in addition test new angles on it too.. milk it!
long rule lp?
3 step?
I use it ,but only about 12% ctr...
@dynamicsoul - Cool, cheers dude. I will duplicate again and see what happens. The second one I've created hasn't receive much traffic but it's worth a shot.
Whereabouts you from in the UK?
@yxtears - Yeah, the usual 3 step.
Nice work on the ROI.
Good to talk to you yesterday.
Keep up the good work!
Newcastle mate.. up norf
Cheers, you too Phome.
@dynamicsoul - Newcastle aye? Never been. I'm down south in Bath.
Stats for yesterday looking a bit crap:
300x250 Campaign
165 Clicks | 0.41% Banner CTR | $20.37 Spend | 24.7% LP CTR | 8 Leads | $25.20 Rev | 23.7% ROI | $4.83 P/L
I did get more volume but ROI was rubbish considering banner and LP CTR.
There are so many variables to look at but not enough stats to start cutting placements (I don't think).
I'm going to leave the bid as it is and see what the results are tomorrow.
300x100 Campaign
471 Clicks | 0.37% Banner CTR | $40.64 Spend | 12.18% LP CTR | 12 Leads | $37.80 Rev | -7% ROI | -2.84 P/L
So not what I was hoping for even though it didn't make a huge loss. LP CTR dropped. I noticed that some banners have really high CTRs but low LP CTRs and negative ROI, so I will need to keep an eye on those.
That's it for today. Tomorrow will hopefully be a lot better.
Quick update on yesterdays stats. As I hoped for, my campaigns did better than the previous day 
300x250 Campaign
254 Clicks | 0.36 Banner CTR | $37.86 Spend | 29.53% LP CTR | 22 Leads | $69.30 Rev | 83% ROI | $31.44 P/L
Most profitable day so far! Banner CTR dropped a little but I'm still testing banners so this will fluctuate. I threw in another LP with a different headline, so back to testing 3 now. Seems to be doing ok.
I also cloned the campaign and created my own banners to test.
300x100 Campaign
103 Clicks | 0.19% Banner CTR | $14.89 Spend | 25.49% LP CTR | 4 Leads | $12.60 Rev | -15.38% ROI | -2.29 P/L
So again, this campaign isn't diong particularly well. Volume was really low yesterday for some reason. I may still run it a bit longer and see if I can find pockets of profitability. So long as it's close to breaking even, I think it's still worthwhile to run until I can get more data and tweak.
Oh man 83% ROI with $31.44 in profit after just several days of launching your campaign is great! I think that you can still greatly improve your CTR (unless you test like 10 ads at once) and then you'll probably easily reach 100%+ ROI.
^^Cheers dude!
Yesterday wasn't great. Here are the stats:
300x250 Campaign
306 clicks | 0.38% Banner CTR | $40.80 Spend | 18.86% LP CTR | 21 Leads | $66.15 Rev | 62% ROI | $25.35 P/L
I killed off some banners which were getting high CTR/neg ROI. No point having a banners that get tons of clicks but don't generate money. My new LP is leading at the moment. Still too early to say though.
Created some new banners and I think I have found a few winners, so will create more to test.
300x100 Campaign
Bad day yesterday!
78 clicks | 0.15% Banner CTR | $15.72 Spend | 18.38% LP CTR | 0 Leads! | -100 ROI | -$15.72 P/L
Not looking good overall. I did remove a few high CTR banners that weren't generating positve ROI, that in turn has lowered my CTR and led to fewer (or zero conversions).
I don't think I cut them to soon, I think yesterday was just a bad day. Also, this campaign has been struggling for a while. I decided to optimise further by looking at some of the placements. I cut 2 high volume placements which were generating around -50% ROI. These placements also have really poor CTR.
I may look at bidding CPC if the situation doesn't improve and if all else fails, I'll bin it.
I'll say it again.. your 300x250 is where you want to focus.. Rinse and repeat.. either on same offer, or similar in various geos..
^^ Cheers dynamicsoul. I have cloned the campaign a few times already with different banners and have also set a camp up on TJ. Going to look at other geos.
Edit: Yeah, fuck it I'm going to bin the 300x100 campaign. Maybe look at other offers in different geos.
Quick update for yesterday.
300x250 Campaign
471 clicks | 0.29% banner CTR | $102.68 spend | 24.56% LP CTR | 35 Leads | $110.25 Rev | 7.37% ROI | $7.57 P/L
A shabby day indeed. I did bump up my bids to see if I could get more volume, and I did. Problem was that banner CTR dropped and combined with a higher bid my avg CPC shot up to 0.22 cents!
I dropped my bids a little today because I'm getting close to the offer cap. Need to get this raised.
I cloned my campaign quite a few times already (and also ported to TJ), some with new angles. Not getting much volume on these, so I will report when I discover anything interesting.
I applied to a couple more offers to target other geos (I'm already targeting one other) but I think I'll hold back for now because this campaign is far from profitable.
I haven't updated for a few days because frankly the stats have been pretty much the same. Despite getting more volume over the weekend, my campaign(s) generated little ROI. I have been busy trying to remedy the low banner CTR. I figure I need to be getting over 0.40% consistently. I have tested a lot of banners (50+) so this has affected overall CTR, but I'm pretty sure I have found some winners which have high banner CTR and lead to solid ROI.
Have been busy creating these banners. So fingers crossed, hopefully I will come back with some better news in a day or so.
Excellent stuff! Keep us posted.
Sounds like you're going about things the right way - short term pain for long term gain
Just a quick update.
Here are my stats for the 300x250 campaign. I have cloned this a few times tesing new angles. Some are breaking even and some are profiting a little. One is losing money, so I'm binning that campaign/angle. I'd rather work on my existing angles since they are profiting.
196 clicks | 0.26% LP CTR | $37.28 spend | 34.03% LP CTR | 23 leads | $72.45 rev | 94.24% ROI | $35.17 P/L
So a good day overall. Banner CTR isn't great, however I'm still testing new banners daily so this will have an affect on overall CTR. Some of my banners have between 0.4-0.7% CTR which is what I'm aiming for on the whole.
My other cloned campaign (new angle) has an average of 0.43% banner CTR and made about $13 yesterday. I also have another that made around $13 yesterday, again new angle but banner CTR is low.
I'm going to carry on testing and creating more banners. I also lowered my bids slightly because this was increasing my CPC too much and raised some bids on the best placements since they were generating good ROI
Looking at my stats today, things don't look as positive with EPCs a lot lower. It may just break even.
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