Is your campaign down 80% - 90%? It’s probably not over!!!! (13)
Is your campaign down 80% - 90%? It’s probably not over!!!!
My grammar is not the best and brevity is not my strong suit, my apologies in advance!
I see a lot of follow along threads where people are deep in the red for a particular campaign and then decide to kill it and move onto something else because they conclude that it’s “unsuccessful.” Well, here’s an example of why a campaign might not be a dud even though a cursory examination of the stats might suggest otherwise.
So to start, I’m relatively new to mobile (but not affiliate marketing) and am still figuring things out like most of you guys. I should also note that this is the first time I ever ran this offer, and it was also the first time I used this ad network and ad format. The offer for this campaign only pays out $.40, is in a geo with high CPCs, and is being run in an ad network with a lot of competition. What a great way to start!
Traffic started coming in on 7/21. After the first $100 in spend, which only took about 1 hour, the loss was around 95%. I had something like 10-15 conversions. I cut out wifi traffic, which ate up about 35% of the ad spend and returned no conversions. After that I popped in every few hours and cut apps and placements that were returning no conversions. I also reduced the bid prices on targets that had a CPA more than 3X the offer payout. I spent around $1k the first day. At the end of the day my average CPA was $2.46, which brings me to an overall loss of about 85%.
Most of you would have walked away but I stayed in. Why you may ask? Well, even though you could say that the first day was a bloodbath I knew by looking at the numbers that everything was actually okay. Here are my observations:
Even after the first $100 in spend I had something like 20 pages of apps and sites sending traffic. Even though I cut non-converting targets at around $2 - $3 ad spend you can see how blowing through $100 doesn’t take much effort. I definitely had 10-20 dud sites/apps that needed to be cut. Also wifi was junk as stated earlier. Those two right there were the first $100 going poof….. The rest of the 20 or so pages of app and pub IDs only had a few clicks each, which is hardly enough data to make any statistically significant decisions about the campaign as a whole. What i looked at instead was where the conversions were coming from and what the conversion rates were. After the first $100 I saw that most of my conversions came from targets that had 1 click and 1 conversion - a 100% conversion rate! If the campaign or offer was a dud then this wouldn’t be happening…. At this point I realized that I just needed to keep the traffic flowing and cut the losing placements as I went along.
At the end of the day I had about 50 pages of sites and apps (in my ad network’s optimizer) that started to send traffic. There were probably more pages but I got tired of clicking the button to find out. The point is, do the math and think about what this means. I think each page had 20-30 sites/apps; so I had traffic from thousands of placements; most with only a few clicks. If I scroll back 8 pages in
Btw, ignore the red in
Every page single page in Voluum was like this. From the pages all the way in back where each target had only one click, to the first page where each target had hundreds and/or thousands of clicks. I had some targets that were very profitable, some at break-even, some slightly below break-even, and most with zero conversions. I saw this going on from the get go and that’s why I kept it running.
Now let’s look at 2 weeks of campaign data; from start til now:
On the 2nd day (7/22) all I did was optimize bid prices and cut complete losers. Just by doing that I was down to around -65% roi.
On the 3rd day (7/23) I decided to stop being a lazy fuck and added in one QUALITY landing page. Quality meaning that it didn’t look like a 3rd grader designed it. The ad copy had no angle per se, but simply gave more information about the benefits of the offer. All in all I put very little thought into this step. I spent less than an hour setting it up and performing the translations. Had I done this from the beginning I would have saved about $3k during the last 2 weeks. Never again…..
After that I kind of just let things run for another week and a half; optimizing bid prices and cutting losers, but nothing else. During this time I was at about -35% roi and I could have easily adjusted the bids so that I was in the green, but I intentionally bid higher so that I could get more data. I wanted to identify the placements that would send a lot of conversions on a consistent basis!
Somewhere along the way there was a network-wide pay cut, but that didn’t really hurt my numbers as you could see. Also you can see that there were about 10 days in the middle where my CPA flatlined. This had nothing to do with the campaign itself. I was supposed to start testing new landing pages and ad copy by day 5 or 6 but at the request of a few hot chicas I decided to go party in Vancouver. After 4 epic days and nights of debauchery, and an additional 4-5 days of recovery, I’m finally in a place mentally and physically where I’m ready to turn this campaign (and my other ones) into the green. I really need to learn how to start saying no to people lol. By not bringing my laptop I allowed runaway apps and sites to murder my CPA for 4 days. I should have known better, never again….
If you jump to today I’m at around -25% roi, but I haven’t performed any optimization on the front end (ad copy), nor have I tested any other landing pages and landing page elements (images, ad copy, dynamic variable insertion, etc.). I’m still using the ad copy that I translated myself using Google translate, and no I’m not a native speaker of language in question. The main point is that I’ve got a LOT of room for profit on this one! It’s money in the bank as far as I’m concerned…..
What did I learn from this campaign so far?
1. When you start testing an offer and set up a campaign for the first time put in 110% effort up front. That means use quality creatives and angles; and no running direct being lazy bullshit. I’ll never run an initial test without a landing page ever again. Had I used a landing page from the beginning I would have been at -50% roi right off the bat - that elusive number I see everyone looking for. Guys correct me if I’m wrong on this, but now I understand why Stackman and the other pro’s on this forum drop a campaign if it doesn’t initially do around -50% roi or better; because they’re coming in hard and actually putting effort into the campaign; something that I’ve been strangely avoiding for the longest time. Working hard and putting pride and effort into what you do; fuck, what a novel concept! I was able to turn this one around due to experience, a big budget, and confidence in my myself and my actions; but I see a lot of others running the same offer and then complaining that it doesn’t work after they spend only $20 - $30 running it “direct.” Here’s another vote for “that shit’s not gonna fly.”
2. In another thread someone asked how soon they should start to optimize mobile campaigns, or something like that. For this campaign had I tested with an LP or two from the beginning I would have had it in the green by day 3-4, and maybe even day 1-2.
3. If you have a testing budget smaller than $5k per campaign I just don’t see how it’s possible to run offers in countries that have over 100 million people. Now I know that this will vary by ad network, ad format, targeting, offer, etc., but I’m speaking in general terms for RON campaigns. I ran this offer in what most people would consider a “2nd tier” geo, using an ad format with the lowest amount of volume for that particular network, and was still able to spend at least $1k/day. If you’re just starting out I hope you will read this paragraph again and really think about how much you’re willing and able to spend on a campaign until it’s in the green. If you don’t have much money then instead of testing campaigns in Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, etc., maybe try smaller countries like Israel, Peru, Ecuador, etc.
So in the end I wasted about $4k on this campaign because I didn’t have my shit together and work hard from the beginning. Looking back now I’d say that this was the best money I ever spent. Like I said earlier, this example is based on one offer, in one geo, one ad network, using one ad format. As I’m starting to test this offer in other countries I’m now seeing -50% or better right off the bat. What's even better though is seeing years of experience and knowledge amplified by an amount that I didn't even know was possible, simply by putting in a teeny tiny bit more effort. It's a great feeling to be 100% calm and collected when there's so much red on the screen. This sums up how I feel:
This is ninja 101!! And I've just learn a lot from a fucking ninja!
Thanks for sharing!
Maybe it's me, but I think your attitude was lame from the beginning 
Why didn't you create landingpages and split tested them?
It almost seems that you didn't want to be profitable.
Maybe you thought (as almost anyone in the beginning) that you were the one who was going to make it work without the hard work?
Affiliate marketing is no science.
Many things have been tested and shared.
The only thing you have to do is read them, understand them and APPLY them.
Just my 0.02
Originally Posted by zeroonedigital
Originally Posted by dennis
Originally Posted by dennis
Originally Posted by dennis
Originally Posted by dennis
Originally Posted by lavamyz
Also I’m intentionally looking for big volume. Not that $1k/day ad spend is considered “big” in any way; but my ultimate goal is to have many of these campaigns running in multiple countries, using multiple ad networks, running in multiple ad formats.
In the end I don’t think my $5k figure is too out of line. If anything it’s probably not enough for most larger countries. Let’s say you’re spending a moderate figure of $500/day in country X. Give it perhaps a few days to collect data, then a few more days to split test and bring it into the green. Let’s say 10 days. There’s $5k right there….. I think one of the problems that a lot of newbies have is that they’re stepping into countries that have a shitload of traffic (like Brazil) and launching RON campaigns without having any clue of what metrics they need come up with in order to make the campaign work.
When I first started testing in mobile I had a few banner campaigns that blew through $100 in traffic in less than a few minutes. Ok great, now I had $100 in traffic with zero conversions, coming from 2,000 different sites and apps. Wtf are you going do with that if you’re just starting out? From what I’m reading on here and from people I chat with on a daily basis I see a lot of people making those mistakes and then accusing the ad network of sending junk traffic or blaming the offer for not working when in reality $100 in most larger countries will barely tell you if the campaign has a pulse. At least from what I’m seeing - correct me if I’m wrong.
Wow, great read! Did you manage to turn it to high profitability?
I had a similar experience lately, having 1000+ sources having 1 click + 1 conversion each. Although I hit the block often when I already optimized all pubs which do at least break-even for me, but then nothing else actually helps. Say if you are running on wifi traffic and conversions are coming from all sorts of devices, then its just up to an angle / banner CTR.
Congrats on being a ninja!
Originally Posted by tapguru
Originally Posted by tapguru
We all have finite time. If a campaign is -90% ROI you can waste time to cherry pick the best placements and fishing for peanuts - or you can move on, find better angles, and/or better traffic sources for the offer.
You're absolutely right: if you're aiming for -50% ROI to optimise from (which I would still recommend) you can't half-arse things.
(Usually. Sometimes you can and it'll work. But not half-arsing things will give you a much higher rate of return.)
Test a lander (if you're not doing the Appetiser). Make it fast. Make it look good. Make it responsive.
Test banners that are GENUINELY different.
Make sure your tests are testing genuinely solid hypotheses.
Test your links. Test your tracking. Test your server against volume.
Split-test offers, too.
If you tick all the boxes you massively increase the chances that your campaign will perform off the bat.
Amazing work man. Data is the key to success with paid traffic in my experience, and data will generally speaking come from high volume.
After doing some more post-game analysis I have some clarifying points that I'd like to follow up with. In my initial post I think I may have given the wrong impression - namely that I kind of just dove into this campaign “half assed” and put no effort, research, or analysis into it. Also in an effort to learn from all of my mistakes I have a few more questions at the end.
Originally Posted by caurmen
- Lander: not including one from the beginning was my mistake. Aside from my own laziness why did I run the offer direct? According to my research from spying it looked like everyone else was running it direct, for the most part. And no, I’m not just using a basic WRW account; more like a few of the top enterprise level subscriptions that super affiliates and CPA network are using. I can see EVERYTHING…… An important fact that I glossed over was that although there was tons of direct volume being run to the offer page, much of it came from organic mobile search traffic and not direct affiliate traffic.
- Banners: I actually used text ads, but I did test around 10 different variations/translations of my angle. The only difference between each variation was the wording and sentence structure, but they all communicated the same message. By the end of day my best performing variation converted 400% higher than my worst performing one. The conversion rates for my ad copy variations followed a bell shaped distribution btw. It was also for this reason that my testing budget on day one was a bit higher, as I tested targets (sites and apps) for a bit more than I would have if I was only using one variation (of ad copy) per campaign.
- Server and links: I'm using
- Offers: I split tested the same offer between 3 networks. The best network's EPC performed 35% better than the worst network, and about 10% better than the middle one.
For those who would have cut the campaign after the first $100 - just by optimizing these 3 variables at the end of the first day I was able to go from -95% to around -60%. How would I have known this if I stopped at the first $100 spend?
- "Make sure your tests are testing genuinely solid hypotheses" - I really need to go over some of you more technical posts. It's something that I've been avoiding for the longest time but I'm starting to see the benefits of having this stuff sorted out from the beginning.
Originally Posted by iAmAttila
First, in general I think understand and agree with what you're saying, but coming from a background in PPV and pop traffic part of this doesn't make sense to me. If I was running this same campaign in Trafficvance, Leadimpact, or another pop network I'd use the exact same process that I'm using here. Run some traffic and see if there are any conversions. If there are then continue to run the campaign while weeding out the bad targets, let the profitable ones run, make optimizations as I go along, and then turn the campaign around if I can. If there were zero profitable targets and the campaign wasn’t moving in the right direction then I would obviously kill it. Not so in this case…..
The -95% figure was only after the first $100 in spend. Let’s take a look at the breakdown of the numbers:
- $35 was from wifi traffic that returned $0.00 in conversions
- $50 came from around 20 apps/sites that came in hard and ate up their individual testing budgets. Each one ate up about $2 -$3 each and needed to be cut. I maybe got 1-2 conversions out of this group.
- the rest of placements had too few clicks to make any judgment on the campaign as a whole. Would you agree with this?
- I should also note that I set my initial bid at 300% higher than the minimum required bid, meaning that the -95% figure is highly exaggerated once you factor in future bid optimizations.
Even if I go to another traffic source I’m going to have the same thing in the beginning - junk placements that eat up a chunk of money in the first round or two of traffic. How is a different angle or moving to another traffic source going to overcome this?
The -90% was actually closer to -50% once I added in the landing page, and then -25% once once I sent the traffic to the best converting offer, fastest loading landing page, and and highest converting ad copy variation. Is this not a good place to start from? When I looked deeper at the numbers I knew the campaign was working, why drop it? I knew from my experience with high volume PPV and pop campaigns that it usually takes at least a few grand to turn things into the green, hence my reason for not flinching under the pressure.
How do you run a RON campaign without wasting “time to cherry pick the best placements?” I’m new to mobile but definitely not new to running RON campaigns. With PPV and pop traffic I always dropped at least $500 - $1000 for an initial test. Why would it be different in mobile? If anything the budget should be larger…… How can you collect data on thousands of placements without allocating a proper testing budget for each one? A lot of those placements that you said not to “waste time and cherry pick” have helped me make back the money I lost during testing and are now running at pure profit.
“move on, find better angles, and/or better traffic sources for the offer”
Isn’t this what people should avoid doing until they go through their checklist (like the one Caurman posted) and determine that there is nothing else they can do to turn the offer/campaign around? My angle was fine, I had confidence in it, and certain placements were showing super high conversion rates. Why move to another traffic source or angle before properly testing each placement? I see a lot of newbs running the same offer, spending $20-$30 running it direct, and then they drop the campaign, offer, and even traffic source for no good reason.
I’m not raising these points as a direct rebuttal to what you said, but more because I’m admitting that “I don’t know what I don’t know,” and while I’m not 100% sure who is right here, I’d like to learn more before I make any further conclusions.
Wow this was certainly an eye opener for me and probably other noobs out there. Great insights into the PROCESS!!!
All good points, and some really interesting insights!
Mobile optimisation can certainly get more complex than just "-50% or lower? Kill it!". If you can see a clear subset of what you're testing that has an ROI above -50%, be that with a single banner, a single carrier, or some high-volume placements (make sure they're high enough volume to be worth the time), then definitely, test that more.
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