Home > Mobile > Follow-along Campaigns

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[MOBILE] Breaking (B)ad(s): Cooking up my first blue, eeeh green, crystals! (58)

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.... or green stacks? Anyway...

Hi guys,

alright, I initially wanted to get started in July when I have a bit more time, but as there was long weekend over here in Switzerland - hell, why not get started NOW.
Also, even if I just get to do this an hour a day, it will be WAY better than doing NOTHING every day until "the time is right".

So - mobile it is.

As this is my first mobile campaign (heck, my first real AM campaign!), I'll do a cook-along to caurmen's method, mostly.

After my introduction, one of the members here who's already doing pretty darn well offered to take my hand and help me getting started (thank's so much maximallimit!) .

Talk about great spirit in this forum!

He'll give me tips and let me know if he thinks I'm getting off track, parallel to me he's also running the same offer (in another country), and we'll share our experiences.
Of course, I'll share my part of the journey here, and I'm excited to hear your feedback!


So, here's what I'm starting with

Set-Up
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Server: Beyond Hosting VPS, CDN
Tracking: CPVLab
Tools: PS, BannerSnack, Muse
Research: WRW Mobile
Budget: 1k to blow a month.


Angle
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As I'm new to all this, recommendation was - go with a proven offer.
So I decided on App Installs - I'll start with an AV offer.


Traffic
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Decisive only. Want to focus on one thing only.



Baby Step Goal:
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Get this campaign positive within 30 days.



So, let's get it started - I'm already 2 days in, but I'll split into daily Posts

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Looks good! Looking forward to your first updates.

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Day 0

So, let's start from "day 0".

Eh, the hassle of small things.

I had CPVlab for ages, running on a VPS I use for godknowswhat.

Problem 1: CPVlab license expired, and for mobile I needed to update. So purchased the update, installed the update.
Problem 2: Location of the VPS. I checked times for simple landers from across the ocean (i.e. USA) to where my Server is (i.e. UK), compared to the Beyond VPS, and wasn't happy. So, decided to not only have the landers at beyondhosting (US-based), but also the tracking (doesn't make much sense anyway to send traffic twice across the ocean because users / landers are on the American continent and tracking server is in Europe). So, purchased additional license, installed on separate tracking domain on the Beyond VPS.


Next Thing: Banners & Stuff. I absolutely, absolutely detest any kind of design work. Just not my thing. Will definitely outsource everything as soon as I get going, however for the sake of actually knowing what I'm doing and speed of implementation, I'll do the first banners myself until I can generate profits on a regular Basis. So, looked around & Bannersnack seems great. I have PS, but Bannersnack seems to do the job much faster. Done.


Final hurdle: Getting an offer! I didn't realize I'm out-of-sync in terms of timezone with pretty much every AM of the networks I'm on and that I chose to work with, so.... idle time to wait for replies.


Questions that I have:
Do you guys have multiple AM's per network? Or do you just sit and wait if you have questions?


Finally, the first to reply was Jaimmie from F5 (a small network run by some obscure figures, I assume).

EDIT: This obviously was a joke, however seems like not everyone got it that way. I'm well aware about F5 and who the owners are Guess it wasn't my best joke to this day.

I initially asked for proven, German-speaking mobile app install offers, but seems like there's not much around in the price range I was looking for (around 1 USD payout) (also wasn't lucky with the other networks I asked, btw).

J eventually suggested the following proven offers:

[WAP] Armor for Android - AU Mobile - App Installs $2.4
[WAP] Armor for Android - CA Mobile - App Installs $1.2
[WAP] Armor for Android - NZ Mobile - App Installs $1.4
[WAP] NQ Mobile Security - Android - AU, GU, RU, SG, ZA, UA Mobile - Security $0.29

talking to my newfound "mentor", decision was made to go with CA.

I also checked with another network (CD), they have the same offer at a slightly different pricepoint, so 2 networks to test - perfect!

Ready to go.....

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Day 1

Them pesky trackers! Lots of information to fill in for Decisive.



Also, made a deposit on Decisive. Ready to go I guess.... Next, Banners.



I decided that before I even start coming up with new angles, I'd go for something that people already run.

I checked WhatRunsWhere what angles people use for the offer, and pretty much there are two:

- "You (might) have a Virus! Scan/Remove/.... Now!"
- "Android slow? Scan/remove/.... now!"

I'm not a fan of swiping stuff, but given the fact that I have no idea what hurdles are next, I decided to just pick 3 banners that are already running for this offer, blatantly steal them and
just get going... I can always replace once I understand how things work from a technical / organizational POV.

So, this was added to Decisive:



... and according to caurmen's Appetizer, I created two sets (one set for each of the 2 networks I'll test) of 4 "ads" in Decisive, each with those 3 banners: Mobil / App; Mobile / Site; Wifi / App; WIfi / Site. The only really "targeting" is the obvious "Device = Android".

According to the recommendation, I chose Smart CPM, unlimited budget, 8 bucks daily budget (per ad) and 1.8 USD as the CPA goal (= 1.5 times the 1.20 payout).

TEH EXCITEMENT !!

8 ads ready to go... waiting for approval.

Then, suddenly. Clicks. LOTS OF CLICKS.

JEESUS! THE CLICKS!

Within 2 minutes or so, I burned through half of the daily budget of 8x8 USD.

Lesson learned: Decisive does NOT spread out the ads over the day, as expected.


As there were no conversions, and I didn't even know what time it was in CA, I stopped the campaign, to this result:



After a quick chat, I was given the following input:

- the CPM is WAY too high, especially with an offer like this that has 0.02 or something network EPC.
- Another way to see this is that I'm "winning" way too often (I think I had up to 80% winning rate at some point)
- Smart CPM might not be a good idea here. Switch over to manual CPM.

Next big question: Manual CPM is fine, but what CPM? How do I set this?

Given the fact that the CA average CPM on Decisive is 0.09, the suggestion was to start with .20 or .30 and see how many clicks I get from that.


I went with .20 and restarted the campaigns.

Result: Clicks were coming in slow. SLOOOOW. So slow that there was no way I would get to the 8 bucks daily spent.
However, "win rate" went down, and so went CPM:



- those were the stats before I decided to up the CPM to .25, which is where it is right now.

As I was technically in between day 1 and 2 here, I'll stop it here and continue in another post

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EDIT: Can anyone help tell me how I can upload the pics so that they are actually VISIBLE?
EDIT2: Pics showing now. Thanks, Trappedinabrowser!

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Day 2 - now!

Okay, so I've followed up describing what happened until now.

This is where I'm standing:



Between 50 and 100 clicks on each ad, not a single conversion to be seen.
CPM and CPC still way too high.

Question 1: How Long should I let those ads run? I've seen These Kind of ads all over the place, so I guess it's not just that the angle doesn't work?
Questoin 2: Would you already start with my "own" angles, or first play around with this "control Group" as I called it to get some practise on how things work?

Later more....

Thanks for any Feedback!

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Upload to imgur.com and use the bbcode option when the upload is done.

1) I'm following the 2-3x payout rule per ad before taking any action with them.
2) I just went with my own angles but given the failure, I do want to test my own angles vs proven angles with AV offers in the future.

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Firstly, if you are split testing a similar offer between networks - do it on the backend, not at the campaign level. In other words, you should have CPVLab rotating between two offer links, rather than having separate ads for CD and F5.

I would try some other angles and get inventive - the "Is your device slow" angle has been smashed... thoroughly. Not to say it wont still work, but you'll need much higher ad CTRs to be competitive - and the lack of conversions shows that the angle is not working, or perhaps the offer.

In any case, I would focus first on testing multiple angles to see if anything sticks better. E.g. Extend battery life by 13% > find out more. Browse FB faster. Find sites/apps that are slow and appeal to users of these.

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Hmm - have you checked to see if there are any conversions listed in your affiliate networks' setups? Also, definitely worth checking to see if you can click through to the offer from your offer link OK.

As far as your ads go - I'd definitely recommend doing what Zeno says and pushing out some newer angles. Now that you've seen the baseline performance of well-tested ads, see if you can beat 'em!

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Day 2 - ctnd'

Alright guys, some interesting learnings for me and some questions.

First - I let the swiped Banners roll for a bit more until I had like 70 USD or so spent on them with no conversions, then I stopped them to start with my own angles.

Oh, the misery!

I learned a very simple but important lesson here.

Basically, here's how it went:

First, I created some Banners with my own angles.
Uploaded to decisive.

REJECTED.

okay, some different angles.
Uploaded. Waited.

REJECTED.

Oh come on guys, I'm not a bad guy!
New angle.
Uploaded. Waited.

REJECTED.

some angle that is about as aggressive as "watch fluffy kittens here".

REJECTED.

Seriously?


So, I finally had a look at all the emails from Decisive.

And lo and behold:

I'M AN IDIOT.


Everything was rejected for basically two reasons:

a) I read the Guidelines for animated Banners, but I didn't understand that 3 slides means 3 slides, TOTAL, not 3 slides, REPEATING ALL THE TIME. So most of the Banners ("blink on - blink off - blink on - blink off") got rejected because of this. Well, beginners mistake I guess.

b) the nice, fluffy Banners that were okay graphic-wise all got rejected not because of the Banners, but because the ClickDealer offer is a direct-download offer, which is not allowed with Decisive, and I used the ClickDealer Ads to copy/paste my Trial-and-error attempts, so they ALL got rejected.

Well, lesson learned.

I actually was so frustrated at this Point that I just quickly changed and uploaded the following two Banners:



Really not the most creative ones, but something different, and I couldn't get myself to re-do all the other ones for the Moment.

So - uploaded using the F5 offer link, HOORAY, accepted 2 minutes later.

Stats are running now, I recuded CPM even more to get to a really low CPC, and I am actually geting some reasonable CPCs now:




Now here comes the big "but" where I need your help

I was wondering that I sent around 1000 clicks from decisive, without any conversion so far. I guess an offer like that should have SOME conversions even on the shittiest traffic.

I checked stats, and saw this:

Decisive clicks sent - pretty much exactly 1000 (altogether)
CPVLab clicks recorded: 810
Clicks in both Networks combined: 410.


I found this strange and asked my mentor - he suspected deduped IP clicks.

So I talked to Jaimmie from F5, where I had 216 recorded clicks on the F5 side and 427 clicks in my CPVlab.
She also found it strange that I didn't get a single conversion, and checked the deduped clicks: only around 15.

So basically, of 430 clicks recorded in CPVlab, only 230 arrived at F5.


How can that be?

I'm running on Beyondhosting, the only thing on that Server is CPVlab, there's no other traffic to it, and I'm the offer targets CA, so not that it's going around the world.
Campaign type is "direct link" in CPVlab.

When I check the link, I get to the offer without Problems.

I'm running the Starter plan with Beyond, but I guess for this small amount of clicks it should be more than sufficient.

Any ideas?



Lessons learned for me today:

- Read Guidelines + rejection emails
- At least I was able to turn (non-converting) EXPENSIVE traffic into (non-converting) CHEAP traffic!

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Seems funny you have not gotten even a single conversion. Does this convert on a free install from the Play store?

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This is the actual page:

http://www.saferphones.org/v3e/index.html

(this is NOT my tracking link, obviously )

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DO NOT CLICK ON THAT LINK


When I click on that link, my Avast antivirus shouts, "Threat Has Been Detected"

URL
hxxp://www.saferphones.org/v3e/index.html
InfectionJS:FakeAV-KB [Trj]

Relax, your avast! just saved you from a virus.

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I have that on one PC as well - I guess this is just the Antivirus running wild, I am getting an "unwanted automatic install" message of some sort... As this is the "official" offer link, I don't think that's the case. Remember, this is meant to be a mobile install, not something you'd browse to on your pc.

Even if it would: Still does not explain why F5 is NOT getting my clicks

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This is what I get

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I see this:



and when you click:



seems legit?

I guess this is a direct download, not a Play Store thingy.

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Just ran this through browserstack again - this is really just AV Software going wild about something strange such as mobile Downloads they don't know, IMHO.




So to push that back to the original question - anyone with ideas on the clickloss?

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Can you try going through the entire process (click on offer link, go to lander, install software) on a real Android device and report back?

Click loss is probably a smaller issue than conversion loss. You need to find out why you have not gotten ANY conversions first.

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hmm... 5 iphones, 3 ipads, but no Android device available in this house Guess I gotta get one...

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You definitely should test your offers on real devices before you run them.

Just as an FYI, apps that don't go through the Play store usually don't do so for a reason. And this reason is usually not very good.

If the page DOES contain JS:FAKE AV-KB, that is a nasty Trojan.

http://www.precisesecurity.com/virus/roguejsfakeav
https://isc.sans.edu/diary/Why+is+Ro...essful%3F/7144

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Hey Guys, don't stress it's not a virus. I'm not claiming it's the most legitimate app in the world but remember that companies like mobogenie [that have google play versions] also promote by APK to avoid their ads being limited to the app store promotional restrictions. This particular advertiser makes money when a certain % of the users upgrade the app with a CC and they can measure this quality on the leads within 5 business days.

The offer, Armor for Android - is running on F5 and has been for almost a year now - we have multiple geographies available. AU, CA, NZ, NG, UK & US are currently active.

CA in the last 30 days has seen an overall average of 0.03 EPC with the top affiliate on the offer doing an average of 0.06 EPC

We do not manipulate our data at F5 [the only thing you will not see are duplicate clicks] - if the offer is redirecting because of the wrong geo [or potentially when sending Opera traffic as the browser is proxied - same with Kindle Browser and BlackBerry devices but that doesn't apply to this situation]. If there is a discrepancy in clicks from your tracker to our tracker, than there could be a mistake in the tracker set-up - meaning when the user is clicking your banners, they're never getting to the offer page. If there is a discrepancy from your media buy to your tracker as well, then that could be the break in the postback passing.

Bentho, you have my skype if you need me

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Also, you're having issues with mobile tracking, always remember mobile offers only track with postback pixels - cookie based pixels like iframe and img do not work on mobile.

Instead of placing a cookie with the user's browser, a postback uses a unique click ID to pass between links, in order to track the leads and correspond them with the correct initial click. Postbacks urls are also called s2s or server2server pixels [if you're googling a more in-depth explanation, that little tid bit will help you find more info].

The unique click is being passed below between subid and s2 [never use s1 to pass any dynamic variables like the unique click id - it can only take static variables]
For CPV Lab when paired with F5 [or any network using cake]:
Please append s2={subid} to the end of the F5 Unique Links, and place that complete link in your cpvlab. http://f5mtrack.com/?a=XXXXXX&c=XXXXX&s2={subid}
Please make sure you enable “append subid to offer” when setting up links in CPV. http://screencast.com/t/CHQKkjjake
Please append subid=#s2# to your postback pixel to enable the subid. http://yourtracker.com/adclick.php?subid=#s2#

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Thanks Jaimmie, this was very helpful fantastic AM service on your end, also on Skype! and indeed I got that wrong.

Now I only need to find out why my CPVlab is sending clicks to /dev/null....

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Yes, you definitely need to make sure tracking is 100% solid, otherwise you will be flying blind with useless data.

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You are getting that alert because certain trojans use the fake AV warnings to push installs. This is exactly why google banned this type of marketing because you are lying to the customer. Now I dont care how you market your installs but it will set AV alerts off.

Most of the AV alerts will popup on desktop only anyway so who cares.

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I would strongly suggesting vetting your tracking system completely before running more - test speeds of redirects, test some on mobile devices, make sure it always works, etc.

The Starter VPS should be fine for a CPV Lab install doing low volume but don't expect 99% click retention.

Affiliate network links tend to lose a decent % as well but this shouldn't be too bad in US/CA. Always check the click report > tick duplicate clicks > see how many there are.

That offer page is horrid btw, and with all the antivirus apps being pushed, who's to say legitimate AV apps aren't blocking these pages both to protect users - much like Avast is for cmdeal, and to stifle the competition?

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Hi Zeno

thanks for the reply.

I can't follow your click Report > duplicate clicks thingy in CPVlab - where exactly would I find that, I can't see that option?

As for testing the tracking system: How would I do that? Are there any tools to do this?

I see your Point with the offer, what really nags me is that it seems like other people are getting conversions - so me having 0 is just not acceptable for my ego at this Point.

What I'll do is I'll start "fresh" with a different tracker (I'll go with Voluum), some new banners (own angles) and a landing page in between that goes with the angle.

Let's see if that helps.

Would appreciate your Input on the CPVlab testing, tho!

Thanks a lot

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The first place to start would be to get yourself an android device, set your offer up in Switzerland so that you can see it, and see if you can click through the offer and install the software and see if all that gets tracked properly.

If not, you will know that something is wrong.

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The click reports I mention are in Cake, i.e. at the affiliate network. Under click report.

Testing your tracking system is best done by you, as a real user, on a desktop or mobile device as appropriate, with and without a VPN to test geo-redirection.

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Thanks for the Input - being an iPhone / iPad fanboy, I actually didn't even consider this...

Results are VERY interesting:

- My link and my tracking were working perfectly and I got redirected to the offer. I could also download the apk file. When trying to install, though, I got a message saying (don't remember the exact wording) - "Installation prohibited due to your security Settings. Only Downloads from the Play store can be installed".

Now I did not buy MULTIPLE android devices (though this will probably a good idea on the Long run...) - I assume many users will see this message and this is clearly a conversion killer, as you have to go into your settings, enable third-Party installs (or whatever it's called) and re-load... can't see anyone doing this who hasn't already enabled this functionality.

Anyway, I went on to install, which actually worked. I have to say the program itself sucks pretty bad - it does a (fake?) scan, gives me 16 Errors (on a pretty much clean android device), and when clicking the info link, it asks for my CC data for a 0.99 usd payment.

But let's get this out of the picture for a second - what worries me more is that the Network tracker did NOT track any conversion.

I already asked about this but don't expect an answer before monday - does any of you guys know if there's a delay before conversions show in cake?

Thanks for the (embarrasingly obvious) input cmdeal, I guess that was money well invested already.

I'll be back soon with updates on what else I did in the meanwhile.

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Just a couple of thoughts ....

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cmdeal, I agree with you on every one of the things you've stated and surely this was an important learning for myself.
(btw, offer description says "offer converts on app install").

I guess it's best to start from scratch - I'll stick with an AV install, though, as I've already created some new Banners, used iamattila's awesome new Service for some more Angles + Services.

So back to the aff managers and let's ask for recommendations...

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Hi Bentho,

I hate to see that the Android offer is not tracking/converting for you properly, I've literally had this issue with EVERY single low payout CPA offer I've ran. In the past it was always email or zip submits, but recently I've tried surveys and this particular offer too. (including the same offer on different networks).

We spend so much time tracking every little aspect and percentage, that means nothing when we can't rely on conversions. How is this acceptable? I just don't don't get it personally...

I'd be interested in hearing some veteran CPA offer peeps that might be able to get a little insight. I'm sick of running $100 to see 3-4 $1.20 payouts, then go manually test and see the conversion not come through.

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Well, for the less-than-honest offers I wouldn't trust that the advertiser has everything under control - a lot of the apps you see being peddled on affiliate networks have been made as a money grab and don't necessarily have a dedicated technical team.

You can avoid a lot of the hardship by:
1. Working with apps/mobile offers that aren't from shady fly-by-night advertisers
2. Always testing the conversion flow yourself before even considering a campaign.

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I am 80% sure that offer has problem as well...

I tested that offer too... I sent them around 20,000 clicks and only 1 conversion... lol

then I tried sending another offer with 20,000 clicks and I got 22 conversions...

my campaign got same angle... same traffic... same network... same everything EXCEPT for the offer...



so I took my loss and moved on to the next offer...

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Interesting. You had a lot more Stamina than I do, then

Would you mind sharing which offer you've switched to?

Cheers,
Rob

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Okay, short update on this. I didn't really have much time over the last days, but I always got "something" going.

1) After discussions here, I realized the offer might definitely be an issue. So I was looking for another AV offer - mainly because I already thought about some angles to try, some banners are on the way, etc. - so I wanted to scrap the offer, but not start from scratch. I looked for some AV offers on the networks I've been registered with - and realised that what I could chose from was pretty limited. (I found something on A4D, though, to get started with - but still, I need more networks...)

So 1st action taken: Signed up with a shitload of new (mostly mobile-focused) networks, using this great post as a starting point. Shitloads of Aff Manager discussions later, this problem has been solved and I picked a different offer.

2) Tracking seems to have been an issue, so to make sure it's not that what caused the initial failure, I decided to go with Voluum for the next round of tests instead of my potentially bad CPVlab/server combo. I set things up and got some traffic going - more about the results further down.

3) Adding some landers instead of direct-linking. Using this fantastic post, I set up a very simple landing page. As I mainly wanted to see if the tracking issue will be resolved and I can squeeze at least ONE conversion out of a new offer, I went with a very simple banner from the last test with the "iphone slow?" angle, and created a landing page that responds to the banner:



the black picture is actually an animated gif:




After testing that it works from phone and android, I started the campaign in Decisive.

It took a good 24 hours to get started (does it always take this long with you guys?), then I just left it cook on slow flame until today.

Again, the tracking confuses the heck out of me.

These are the results in Decisive -



and that's the tracking in Voluum:



So to summarize, to compare Decisive and Voluum:

Decisive / Volume
Mobile-Site: 202 vs. 117 - Voluum shows about 40% less clicks
Mobile-App: 137 vs. 139 - almost perfect! (this shows more as it was the first I set up and I clicked a few times manually)
Wifi-Site: 351 vs. 124 - Voluum shows about 65% less clicks
Wifi-App: 247 vs. 229 - Voluum shows about 7% less


This is strange, again. I didn't trust CPVlab on my server, but I trust Voluum to work correctly, so why the random deviations from Decisive?

Next thing,c omparing clicks tracked in Voluum vs. Clicks tracked on A4D: Voluum shows 46 clicks from the landing page to the offer (note to self: Landing page conversion SUCKS), A4D only shows 33.
Again, 30% click loss.

Am I making some fundamental mistakes here that I'm so much off? I don't get it....

Thanks for any input!

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Yup, this is a standard problem with direct APK installs. Definitely a good idea to run a lander telling them to enable third-party installs - although as you say, you'll still see a conversion drop from it.

As for the "no conversions" issue - I'd talk to your AM about that and see what they say. Conversions should show up in Cake pretty fast - 5 min or so max.

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This new offer actually has it's own lander that gives instructions on how to do that, so it's already a progress over the last offer.
I'll ask about the click loss from Voluum => A4D.

What still worries me is the click loss from Decisive to Voluum, any idea on that?

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Some update:

Click loss issue:

Alright, so I let this run for a bit more and checked stats again.
The Click loss from Voluum to the network tracker is now around 10%, 5 of which I can account for (non-CA traffic). So I consider this solved, but I will keep track for sure.

Still, I have the Decisive => Voluum loss, but let's see if that will even out somehow.


Campaign updates:

The landing page further up obviously sucked pretty badly - overall CTR to the offer was around 6%.

I pulled the plug and tried something way more aggressive, a pop-up lander:



As expected, CTR to the offer increased - almost 10-fold, to 60%.

I let this run for a while, however after 200 clicks I still did not have any conversions.


So back to start.

JEEZ, IS IT THAT HARD TO GET A SINGLE CONVERSION?

alright, So I created a new banner (not a set of angles / banners yet as I just want to see some conversions to see if it even works):



and went back to the "STM lander", this time with no image and little text:



I set up the campaigns in Decisive, now waiting for approval...

I'll keep you updated.

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The alert lander could work well, but (if you decide to test it again) you might want to run another short lander afterward, just explaining how to install the virus scanner. ("To scan and remove, click "Scan now!" then click "install" on the next page."). That should push the CVR up.

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Did you use decisive as your traffic source for this lander? If so, I thought they didn't allow this type of popup when someone landed on the page?

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That first conversion is going to be sweet

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Actually, this Comes "out-of-the-box" with the offer. There's a Little download bar:



and then there's this:



This is the actual offer page.

Would you add something MORE in between, even?

That would be:

banner => popup => Explanation => download bar => offer Explanation => download...

I have yet to learn how AM works, but in Email Marketing, that would be suicide even for high payout offers

Oh yeah.... I'm waiting so much for it to happen.... PLUS, I really want to know how much it'll cost me

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Alright, one more update - the "Is she spying on you" banner got approved and a Little traffic started running.

I'm tempted to say "needless to say, no conversions"....

Funny enough, this angle (that at least is stringent in itself) has the WORST CTR so far, both in Terms of banner as well as landing page:

Banner CTR is <0.30%, which is horrible...


and even worse: Landing page CTR is abysmal:


I would have expected it to be at least on par with my shitty "black gif" LP, as at least I follow the "storyline" of the banner.... but nah: it sucks, badly.
I'll still send some more traffic, though....

A Little silver line:

IAmAttila's Angelosaurus/BannersLanders Banners have arrived:







(NOTE: those are all animated Banners, but as per Decisive restrictions, they only have 3 slides and then stop, so if you want to see the full Animation you have to reload...)

I just set up 4 new "ads" of those in each in Decisive, waiting for approval.

I skipped th blue banner as I will have to redo (the "you HAVE a Virus" is not accepted at Decisive), plus I'll update the lander....

I'm not giving up guys, I'm not giving up!


... though I really have to say it's fucking depressing not to have a SINGLE conversion at this Point.

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How much have you spent so far?

Getting one conversion really should not this hard.

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Just talking about traffic (Banners not included) - 150 USD.

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And this is how many clicks?

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According to Decisive stats, around 2800 clicks (roughly 0.05 CPC).

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Yikes.

Remind me, you vetted the conversion flow but a conversion didn't show up at the network? Or was this the previous offer?

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If you've got those pages coming up on the offer, you're right - I'd probably not run an additional page beyond that.

And I'd definitely recommend testing more offers at this point - over 2k clicks and no conversions says pretty loudly that the offer's a lemon.

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I mentioned this in another follow along, but 2800 clicks with no conversion for a free App Store/Play store download is nuts.

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I'm curious to know how many clicks eventually are logged in cake? I'm not able to load your images for some reason.

A while ago, i started out at decisive and sent 2000 clicks to my lander. 1 of those went through to the aff network and converted.

After that, I sent 100 clicks straight to my tracker. It logged around 25 visits. 4 Were unique. (I have the exact numbers in another thread).

Many, many duplicates were logged within less than a second.

Utter crap in my book.


So, I posted the results in the Incrowd/Decisive thread, cleared myself from all the dog shit and moved on. Not much later, I got an email from a Decisive AM asking me why I stopped advertising. I replied with the data I gathered and haven't heard back.

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@h0mp - zoiks. That doesn't mesh with the results I've seen from Decisive, but I'll run another test and report back.

Which geo did you see the duplicate clicks in?

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Canada

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Alright guys, sorry I didn't reply to this thread in a while - I had to go on a biz trip for a week and had no chance to funnel some time into this.

However:

SWEET LITTLE VICTORY!

Actually, sunday a week ago (right before I left) I had my very first conversion!

I was actually pretty surprised - I set up the banners in Decisive and set them to active so that I don't lose time waiting for them to approved; the plan was to adapt the landing page accordingly, but I never got to it.

As ridiculous as it sounds, this is a huge motivation - that little 1-dollar conversion cost me quite a bit (actually, close to 200 bucks, including all the hassle with the previous offer), but I learned so much in the process that it's just AMAZING.

So, some quick stats :

For the new Banners:
Decisive: 860 clicks sent
Voluum: 861 clicks tracked

(woohooo - so seems like tracking is looking good now!)


Total clicks for the NEW offer tracked in Voluum: 294
Total clicks tracked in Cake: 255

so only 87% of the clicks were tracked in cake, HOWEVER: after checking the Voluum stats, I can see that 249 clicks were actually from Canada, the rest is from other countries (mostly US plus my own clicks), so actually cake tracked slightly more.

Also looking good now!


some more detailed stats on the "new Banners" part of the campaign:





Obviously banner CTR as well as LP ctr still suck.
The Banners itself, over all 4 Groups, are pretty Close to each other in Terms of wins/ctr.



Do you think it makes sense to Focus on the "click winning" banner Group (wifi - site) that also created the conversion?
And then chose a banner, try different angles, getting more traffic on that one and cutting losing Banners / devices /e tc.? Or shall I just leave it for a while and get more traffic?

The conversion, after all, is still nothing to be TOO happy about given the fact that it took 860 clicks...

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CONGRATULATIONS! It's a great feeling when you finally see the first conversion come in.

Is this a new campaign and a new offer? If so, let everything get to $15 spend before making any decisions.

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Any update on this one?

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