[Follow Along] Ninja Hedgehog's Plod To Profit! [mobile app installs] (9)
[Follow Along] Ninja Hedgehog's Plod To Profit! [mobile app installs]
Things got a bit confused on my previous follow along so I've decided to start a fresh one. I'm going to try to keep info and questions clearer in this one.
My aim is to find my first sustained profitable campaign. Whether that's a campaign not yet launched or one currently running and just in need of the right tweaks, we'll see.
I'll give key stats for each offer and campaigns relating to it. If I miss anything useful, point it out and I'll add the info.
Along the way, all tips, thoughts, and advice are welcome, whether or not I've asked about something 
Current state of play:
These are all app installs.
All variables with enough spend etc get run through statistical significance calculators and spreadsheeted every few days.
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Offer 1: Antivirus offer SQUIRREL
Targeted Geo: Brazil
Traffic source: Decisive
OS: Android only
Payout: $0.49
Language: Portuguese own creatives + LPs (OHT)
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Antivirus offer SQUIRREL campaign 1:
Anti virus angle. Mobile/site. Bid: currently $0.31 manual CPM. Daily spend: $10. Running nearly 3 weeks. Total spend: $72.
Overall stats - Revenue $36.76. ROI -57% - moving average -20%. CTR 1.3%. 2% CVR. 350k impressions.
Drilling down - 5 creatives atm (down from 8), with a range of 1.3-1.8% CTR and approx. 2.43-1.57% CVR (current yesterday). Bunch of sites blacklisted for under-performing. 1 of the 2 biggest carriers blacklisted for under-performing.
Plan - last round of optimisation was done yesterday so leaving it to gather data for 2-3 days. But I think this one needs some new creatives + maybe some completely new LPs. Also a fresh round of optimisation on all live variables (creatives, sites, handsets, etc).
Antivirus offer SQUIRREL campaign 2:
Antivirus offer SQUIRREL CLONE. WiFi/app. Bid: $0.16 manual CPM. Daily spend: $5. Running 1 week. Total spend: $38. Using same original creatives as SQUIRREL campaign 1.
Overall stats - Revenue $3.92. ROI -89% - moving average [not yet known]. CTR 0.55%. 0.72% CVR. 233k impressions.
Drilling down - 8 creatives atm, with a range of 0.03-0.04 CPC, 0.5-0.6% CTR, and approx. 0-4.2% CVR (current today). Most of the conversions are on one banner, which is the one with 4.2%. A few apps blacklisted so far.
Plan - My CPCs are higher on this than any other. Have put CPM down from 0.26 to 0.16 to see if that helps bring CPCs down and then work from there, starting with culling creatives. Not sure if this campaign is worth continuing though?
Antivirus offer SQUIRREL campaign 3:
Antivirus offer SQUIRREL CLONE. WiFi/site. Bid: $0.16 manual CPM. Daily spend: $5. Running 1 week. Total spend: $26. Using same original creatives as SQUIRREL campaign 1. Split testing direct linking + 2 LPs.
Overall stats - Revenue $5.88. ROI -77% - moving average [not yet known]. CTR 0.9%. 0.9% CVR. 180k impressions.
Drilling down - 6 creatives atm (down from 8), with a range of 0.02-0.03 CPC, 0.9-1.1% CTR, and approx. 0.7-2.2% CVR (current yesterday). Only 2 sites blacklisted so far. LPs both performing a lot worse than direct link: LP1 has a CTR of 16% and a CVR of 0.5%, LP2 has a CTR of 19% and a CVR of 0.7%.
Plan - Have just put the spend down today to see if that gets me more traffic. Will do some more optimisation on sites/handsets etc later in the week. LPs also a problem. Again, not sure how promising this one looks.
Antivirus offer SQUIRREL campaign 4:
Anti theft angle. mobile/site. Bid: $0.26 manual CPM. Daily spend: $10. Running 3 weeks. Total spend: $57. Split tested direct linking + 3 LPs so far.
Overall stats - Revenue $22. ROI -26% - moving average 48.5%. CTR 1.3%. 1.4% CVR. 350k impressions.
Drilling down - 3 creatives atm (down from 6), with 0.02 CPC. 1.6-1.7% CTR, and approx. 1.4-2.4% CVR (current yesterday). Several sites blacklisted so far. 1 of the 2 biggest carriers blacklisted for under-performing. LPs are all currently paused due to direct linking way outperforming them all.
Plan - Banner blindness is going to be a problem so tomorrow's #1 job is making some new creatives, combining elements from best CTRs + best CVRs of live and blacklisted creatives on this campaign (+ some new stuff).
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Offer 2: Mobogenie
Targeted Geo: India
Traffic source: Decisive
OS: Android only
Payout: $0.38
Language: Hindi own creatives (OHT) + a couple of WRW creatives in English
Mobogenie campaign 1:
Mobile/site. Bid: $0.26 manual CPM. Daily spend: $10. Running 1 week. Total spend: $35. Only running direct linking: no LPs yet.
Overall stats - Revenue $5.70. ROI -77% - moving average [not yet known]. CTR 1.3%. 1% CVR. 253k impressions.
Drilling down - 5 creatives atm (down from 7), with 0.02-0.03 CPC. 0.6-0.85% CTR, and approx. 0.5-1.9% CVR (current yesterday). 1 site and 1 carrier blacklisted.
Plan - Add 2 LPs in Hindi. Going to really try to work on these ones to make them different to what I have made so far on other campaigns, and different to each other.
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Offer 3: Antivirus offer OWL
Target Geo: Malaysia
Traffic source: Decisive
OS: Android only
Payout: $0.4
Language: English, Malay, and Manglish own creatives. (Malay translations from OHT.)
Antivirus offer OWL campaign 1:
Angle: test country's main languages. Mobile/site. Bid: $0.11 manual CPM. Daily spend: $5. Running <1 day so no stats or anything yet.
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Okay so this is a long first post but hear me out - I wanted to give a picture of where my campaigns are at.
Future updates from me should be shorter as I just update briefly on stat changes for campaigns, and ask any questions.
Thanks for reading! If you've got any thoughts or advice on these campaigns as they stand now, please drop me a line!
For your antivirus campaign I think you should focus on the mobile/site campaigns and making them work. Focus your efforts where the most promise is being shown. You will learn all the same but lose less from your pocket.
What is your angle for Mobogenie? It is a solid offer but has seen a lot of traffic so you will need to be creative. Given your CTRs you will need 10%+ conversion rate direct linked to be profitable and that's simply not going to happen without a good angle or killer banners. I would vary your creatives with that in mind - completely different banners that approach/angle things very differently.
It could be as outlandish as a picture of Ganesha and something along the lines of "Ganesha reveals the secrets of Android" > LP with Ganesha photoshopped holding smartphones in each hand. Think outside the box!
Good shit man, keep the updates flowing :-)
Originally Posted by zeno
Do you have any tips on angle creation? I still find angles very difficult, but I think you're right - I gotta be even more creative for Mobogenie so time to step up my angles game!
Don't worry, angle creation is one of the things that most people find difficult.
My usual approach to angle creation is to start mindmapping - just sit, let your mind wander, and write down ANY idea, no matter how bad it seems, on a mindmap. Often a terrible idea will inspire a great one later.
As you mention, research is also very important. Check expat forums for the country you're targeting - that's a simple way to pick up on key cultural differences you can exploit.
Here are a few other good posts on angles - seems like we might need an angle index!
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...gnoring-angles!
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...azy-New-Angles
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...-unique-angles
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...-7-Deadly-Sins
Realised it's been a while so thought I'd better update! I've been lost in the depths of learning Photoshop and stats...
CAMPAIGNS UPDATE
Offer 1: antivirus SQUIRREL
Targeted Geo: Brazil
Traffic source: Decisive
OS: Android only
Payout: $0.49
Language: Portuguese own creatives + LPs (OHT)
Campaign 1 STILL RUNNING:
Anti virus angle. Mobile/site. Bid: currently $0.31 manual CPM. Daily spend: $10. Running nearly 3 weeks. Total spend: $72.
Yesterday's stats: $5.09 spend, $3.92 revenue, -23% ROI, -39% moving average
Thoughts: day-to-day ROI/moving average are picking up again after 1 day really kicked the shit out of them a few days ago. Wondering about putting the CPM down to $0.26 to mirror the anti theft campaign: wondering if it will either get more bang for my spend on this campaign, or if it will mean less conversions (**thoughts on this welcome!**).
Campaign 2 NOT RUNNING ANYMORE:
Was a clone of campaign 1, targeting Wifi/app. Retired this campaign last week.
Campaign 2 NOT RUNNING ANYMORE:
Was a clone of campaign 1, targeting Wifi/site. Retired this campaign last week.
Campaign 1 STILL RUNNING:
Anti theft angle. mobile/site. Bid: $0.26 manual CPM. Daily spend: $10. Running 1 month. Total spend: $57. Split tested direct linking + 3 LPs so far.
Yesterday's stats: $4.99 spend, $4.41 revenue, -11.6% ROI, -45% moving average
Thoughts: put some new LPs on this on Friday and they are really not performing. This makes a total of 6 LPs tried and none of them working. Not sure what - if anything - that means. Also wondering about putting the CPM up to $0.31 to mirror the anti virus campaign: wondering if it will help this campaign get more conversions, or if it will just spend more than it is now for the same amount of conversions (**thoughts on this welcome!**).
Offer 2:
Mobogenie - 1 campaign - added 3 LPs to it and left them for a few days. Underperformed and overspent, so I stopped running this one and looked to move on.
Offer 3:
Antivirus OWL - 1 campaign, barely any conversions at all - again, stopped running and looked to move on.
Summary and next moves
So in total I have 2 campaigns still running. Feedback on what you think of those live ones = very welcome, especially on the CPM thoughts above.
I have spent the past couple of days making new banners and LPs for both campaigns. I am nearly done with that, and then I will look to getting some new offers up while the new banners/LPs gather data.
I'm feeling keenly that I'm not getting enough new offers/campaigns up. But I also see that I have been slowed down by learning a lot of new stuff - Photoshop, new types of LPs (question LPs, rule LPs, making up some new ones) and the code for those, and also some stats stuff. Plus of course the reading required to learn all this (I'm not a fast reader).
I'm getting faster with all these new things already, so I think this slowdown is temporary. I think the more I practice the faster I will get with everything.
Meanwhile I have a specific topic I'd like advice on, so I'm going to follow up post on that, probably tomorrow. Stay tuned!
(P.S. I've realised I posted this in mobile rather than in follow alongs. Would one of you lovely mods please please move this thread to follow alongs? I don't want to be the speshul flower insisting on running a follow along in a different sub forum to everyone else. Thanks.)
Looks like your testing offers/angles that are failing and being thrown in the bin - excellent! Failed campaigns pave the way to success.
Your current ROIs are looking promising so that's definitely something to be happy about.
Regarding the first campaigns CPM bid, what percentage of the impressions are you winning? Are you running smart CPM? If you're winning a high % then you can try dropping the bid although be aware you're actual CPMs may be much lower than $0.31 thus dropping the bid might not change these much.
At -23% ROI you can be almost certain that the campaign will move into profit zone with testing of more banners and optimisation of the placements. Invest more money in that campaign to get more data and refine them placements, device models and carriers, etc!
The same goes for your other working campaign... invest more data. -12% ROI on $5 spend is a great place to start from. More banners! More data!
Originally Posted by zeno
These campaigns are both winning approximately 30% of impressions bid on. I'm not running smart CPM - what does it do? Also, does putting the bid up/down tend to mean conversions go up/down or is that just something to test as well?
I gotta say, both these campaigns have spent more than $5 so far - approx. $115 and $90 respectively.
I've also already done some placement etc optimisation a couple of weeks ago. Having done some reading since then I'm taking a new approach and aiming to test a lot more banners/LPs before I optimise other variables, so have been focusing on adding LPs/banners to these 2 campaigns. LPs seem to be sucking so far.
That said, I hope these still sound promising - not sure how to tell! I am making banners for campaign #1 today, then I'll look into launching some shiny new campaigns.
P.S. Thanks to whoever moved the thread!
Yep, looking good!
Smart CPM optimises your bidding based on conversions. For low-payout offers, it's definitely worth testing.
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