Question: Say you've run a bit of a test on a campaign, you can see it's getting conversions but you're running at -20% ROI. How long do you let an ad run before cutting it? And what factors into your decision?
I don't have enough testing data to know anything for sure, but it seems like ad CTR is much much much less correlated with the ROI of it than when I was working with POF. I have a 0.6% CTR ad losing, and a 0.17% CTR ad at 100% ROI.
I'm thinking I'll let each ad run to at least 2x payout before deciding whether to cut it or not, regardless of CTR (clearly I'd cut it if the CTR was like 0.05% or something ridiculous though). But I'm not sure if this is burning money or not when I'm running 15-20 ads per campaign with payouts of $6-12.
My latest post in the Step By Step Guide is about exactly this - choosing when to cut ads based on ROI. Give it a read: http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...ics-Calculator
There are certain traffic sources where I'm delighted to run at -20% ROI while I'm gathering data.
On RON and pop-under type sources, if you can get anywhere close to breaking even while accumulating enough data to start making sensible optimizations, that's a good result.
Elsewhere, on TJ for example, I would have to be confident that there are enough actions I can take to turn the ROI around. For example, if I know that my banner CTR sucks but I can do better, then I'd keep it. Or if I know that I've got a great offer but my landing page CTR is leaking the profit, then I'd continue too.
A lot of my optimisation decisions hinge on whether I'm confident I can find the extra performance. If I know what needs to be improved (and can be improved), then I'm much more likely to stick with it than a campaign where I'm losing money and don't have the figures/knowledge to benchmark against. That comes with experience in the market and picking a niche to stick with until the bitter end...
If you have an ad losing on 0.6% and one winning on 0.17%, my guess is that the highly clicked ad is bait and switching too hard (pattern is consistent with chat type creatives vs. 'Older Men Only' ads). Take the likely demographics of the winning ad and try to combine it with the visual aesthetic or CTA of the highly clicked ad.