Some questions for CPV Lab owners (15)
After struggling a bit with Prosper, I've been thinking about taking the plunge and buying CPV Lab.
I just have some questions for CPVLab users:
1) When was the script last updated? How are the updates? Do you get stuck with bugs for ages? What about feature requests?
2) Anyone using it for mobile campaigns? How is it working?
3) General performance, things that you don't like,etc.
I really love the STM Mobile tracker. I've even taken my limited PHP coding skills and modded it for some personal use cases , but I spend tons of time setting up campaigns , duplicating LPs, hacking around some limitations,etc. I wish I had the skills/money to mod it some more to fix the little things that annoy me.
It's easy to use and gives you pretty much every thing you need to optimize and make more money. I got the script almost one year ago and never heard of any updates 
That's the first bad.
If you're serious and want to grow up your business you'll need more and more clicks. CPVlab database adds up very fast and things start go slowly. You'll need to clean it from time to time or increase RAM of your server.
At the moment I wish two options to be added.
1. A shell/add-on to open backup databases on my hard drive in order to see historical data without touching the CPVlab server installation. This can be done right now by buying the second licence and installing CPVlab via phpMyAdmin or something like this.
2. An option to mark the paused/deleted banners/targets in statistics. By example I run a test campaign with 20 banners. CPVLab shows that after 5k clicks 7 banners in red and other 13 need more clicks. So after pausing those 7 banners on traffic source it would be useful to mark them in CPVlab as paused as well; and don't check them again.
P.S. I heard some guys here hired freelancers to create custom tracking solutions. If CPVlab guys don't plan to improve their script in the near future I think we can create a group of people who are interested in a more flexible tracker and just pay for its development together.
OP, what don't you like about Prosper? Maybe we can suggest workflow enhancements?
Peanut: the paused ad thing is quite a good idea - I can see it being used for LPs and offers/campaigns too.
Prosper is really not too hard to modify if you know a bit about PHP and databases... But giving it to an outsourced worker who's not a Prosper expert will cost a lot of money.
I've renamed interface elements in Prosper and am working at adding support for c5 to c11... This is the main disadvantage compared to CPVLab IMO (cpvlab has unlimited variable tracking). Prosper's Group Overview is nice and testing / setup is a breeze once you have a simple split-testing and geo script (caurmen has talked about these I believe).
Originally Posted by peanut
That's the first bad.[...]
P.S. I heard some guys here hired freelancers to create custom tracking solutions. If CPVlab guys don't plan to improve their script in the near future I think we can create a group of people who are interested in a more flexible tracker and just pay for its development together.
That's definitely an option. We already have the great STM Mobile tracker. Maybe we can pool some money together to get a developer to work off that base.
Originally Posted by redrummr
But right now I'm bumping in to issues like not being able to rotate landing pages with more than one offer link, having to duplicate LPs for each different campaign (my biggest issue). I'm not even sure CPVLab is gonna solve these issues for me, but I thought I might give it a try.
I'm gonna be sharing the small mods I've made here. Maybe we could make a STM Mobile tracker mods thread.
Brock, STM Mobile Tracker looks really good. I previously thought it was only made for mobile? Looks to be good for everything... I am going to check it out - thanks!
OP, to rotate landing pages with more than one offer link: I use a PHP file that uses an array for the LPs, picks one at random, and there's also another array for $offer, it picks one of those at random, passes $offer = 'ab1' (asian beauties) and the landing pages have all offer links as <?php $_GET["$offer"] ?>.php, so when you load the page, all offer links will be ab1.php...
You can also specify on the rotating PHP script, if $offer = 'ab1', then $offername = 'Asian Beauties' (so you can call out $offername throughout the page as well).
So I usually just generate all my offer PHP files, put them in the same folder, and each time the page loads it calls out a different offer and goes to the appropriate offer link.
Fairly simple and I'm sure it can easily be included the next STM Mobile tracker. Can't wait to try this beast out!!
This way you can test the same LP across multiple niches.
One 'workflow hack' I use for Prosper is that I will use the same LP but use one of the 'c' values as the ID of the LP... so with each iteration, I just putthe ID in the right 'c' value when I make my ad links.
If you are testing multiple angles, you can have PHP rotate through $angle and pick whatever... then on the LP, if $angle = 'balloons', then $opening paraghraph = 'welcome balloon enthusiast! Blah blah blah, you will find the best balloons' and so on. Have a paragraph for each angle, or replace background with <?php $_GET["$angle"] ?>.jpg so you will have balloons as the background.
Hope this all makes sense!!
That's great to hear bbrock! I'm gonna stick with the STM tracker.
I'm gonna post some small mods I've made that make life a little easier.
The STM tracker works great for web - indeed, some of its features make it a much better choice than Prosper for Web tracking (notably the GET-based flow and the geotracking stuff.).
Yes I've been using it for my mobile and web based campaign for a long time now. It works great and I recommend it. If you are already using regular Prosper, the STM tracker will make things much faster.
It adds couple milliseconds of latency to look up carrier etc , but for web connection speeds users won't even notice.
What about an enhancement for the next build where you can specify a web-only campaign, and it will skip any mobile-related lookups?
Originally Posted by brianb
Originally Posted by bbrock32
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