Home > Paid Traffic Sources > Mobile

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how to spy on competition's ads/landers in mobile? (43)

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hi! So I'm starting at mobile, launched my first campaign yesterday, so far conversions are a very round number haha.

I want to spy on the competition. See what banners/ads and landers they are using.

What are your recommandations for that? Iamatilla recommends whatrunswhere but it's expensive starting at 150$/month.

please let me know what you use

Dvir

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Go to Decisive planner, see the sites they are using. Download Hide My Ass app, and start spying on your target country in the sites with the most volume or conversions.
Good luck

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pasted from my blog:

Let’s face it, some of us are on a BUDGET and can’t afford premier spy tool services like WhatRunsWhere for $150++ per month. NOT TO WORRY! There’s a wayyy cheaper way to spy on your competitors that actually in my opinion can be BETTER than using WRW.

Let me introduce you to HideMyAss Pro. HMA Pro can be as low as 4.99 per month and give you VPN access to a ton of countries in the world. That’s cool and all but how the heck do you spy using HMA Pro?

It isn’t as hard as you think!

Here’s what you need to Spy!

-A phone running android (preferably android 4.1 or later) – I use Galaxy Note3 for my spying!
-HMA Pro — get it here
-The top free apps/games in each category

How to Spy on a Budget – Attila’s step by step guide!

1. Get the HMA Pro app installed on your phone, fill in your login credentials (user/pass)
2. Pick the GEO you want to spy on (ie Malaysia) and connect via the HMA Pro app to get a malaysian IP address.
3. Fire up Google Play, and look at the top free apps – download a bunch of apps & games preferably from each category
4. Open each app, and WAIT – it takes a few seconds for a banner to show. Click it, see what happens! Take a screenshot to document the creative.

TIP: The easiest way to take a screenshot on Android 4.0 and above is to simply press and hold your phone’s power and volume down button at the same time for 1-2 seconds.

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damn it, I used HMA, but for some reason the google play is still in my country (israel), no idea how to change it. Ideas? I'm connected with another country ip but still, nothing

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You need to change your DNS servers also in some cases.

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Thanks for the answer ims2014, how do I do that? can you be a bit more specific?

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I signed up using your refferal link from your blog to give some love.

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Well, ultimately you're going to have to decide how you want to spend your time and money. For $150 you can study the ads on WRW, see what banners people are using, find and rip 20-30 of the most popular landing pages if you study things hard enough, and then have them at your immediate disposal. Or you can poke around for a while, maybe find one or two landing pages from manual spying, and hope those ones will work...... Just one caveat, although I haven't done any manual spying myself, from looking at individual publisher data on WRW I can tell you that most of the ads you're going to run across will not reveal any landing pages as most of them are running direct to the offer page. Using a good landing page will "usually" increase your conversion rate by at least 50% - 100% (check my case study in the mobile forum to see this in action), and much much higher once you have more experience and know how to tweak things. By starting off with the pages that are working for others you're going to be saving a lot of money on traffic that otherwise would have been wasted on a lower roi page, or from running direct to the offer. Based on your situation you're probably better off if you have these pages now. Just a thought....

If you're really on a budget here are some options in addition to what others have suggested:

- Learn jQuery Mobile. Seriously, most mobile landing pages are made using jQuery. If you spend the day reading through the following tutorials you'll be able to make your own landing pages.

http://demos.jquerymobile.com/1.4.3/

http://www.w3schools.com/jquerymobile/


- Hire a designer to make you one "general" landing page that has a clean and professional design. You can use this one as a "template" and change the text, colors, and images based on your specific campaign. If you check the "for sale" section on this forum there are a a few services that come highly recommended by others and design landers specifically for mobile affiliate marketers. The prices I've seen are very reasonable and they're pretty quick on delivery times, so that might be a good place to start.....

- Some on this forum are going to hate me for this next tip, but whatever, it's all part of the game yo. Take iAmAttila's advice on using the VPN and go over to the STM Adult Ad Spy. Make sure you select to view mobile ads only, and do one country at a time. Also make sure your VPN is connected to the same country. Additionally, if you're using Google Chrome on a destktop then install the "user agent switcher" plugin. This will allow you spoof the user agent and make it look like you're on an android device. Or better yet, just view the ads from an android phone or tablet. Start clicking on the banners and in most cases you'll be directed to some SICK landing pages. I spend a few grand a month on subscriptions to various spy/data analysis tools and after seeing everything I can tell you that the stuff you'll find in mobile adult is some of the most well designed and innovative landing pages you'll ever find. Period. Even though you might not be running adult mobile offers you can still use the pages as "templates" and switch up the images and ad copy. Just watch out for the sneaky javascript

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@zeroonedigital -Any suggestions on how to find Landing Pages with WRW? All the banners seem to be direct linked to the offer and I need to figure out how to see the LP's...

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thanks man with the badass monitor setup

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this is a really good question , very true 99% of the ads are direct linking and I can't find landing pages there

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that's a lot of great advice, thank you for writing it. It'll take we a while to digest all this. Right now I'm keeping things simple, WRW trial and direct linking.
I'll reconsider that 150$/month thingy

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Look for offers that need landers. If you don't know what offers use landers usually ask your AM. These kind of tools are really only effective if you know what your looking for, and not clicking around blindly.

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A lot of ads are from advertisers running direct and they generally don't user landers.

Tip : If you have a subscription to WRW search for affiliate networks tracking links

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Hi, what do you mean by STM adult ads spy?

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^ Look on the red menu bar at the top, free Adult ads scraper (NSFW)

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Brock how do you do that in WRW? I mean where do I place the affiliate network tracking link? in search by advertiser?

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Is there not a search by link/domain/etc. option somewhere?

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Yep, stick the domain into the search by advertiser tab.

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In response to:

and

You are both correct. Most of the ads are direct linked, and the more I think about it the more I agree with Mr. Green's point that you won't be able to use tools like WRW effectively unless you know exactly what you're looking for. How do you get to this point? Hard work, time, and experience is the only way.....

You guys might not want to hear this but I'll be completely honest; a little bit of tough love if you want to call it that. Asking someone for specific spying techniques is akin to asking them for an example of one of their winning landing pages. Nobody wants to give away their secrets because doing so would not only expose them to more competition but would also be doing you a disservice because you wouldn't be learning anything. Spying and being able to sort through the data is an art form in and of itself and takes many months and/or years of experience to master. Even if I gave you a step by step guide on how to spy on WRW (something I was considering posting btw) you still probably wouldn't find what you're looking for.

The main thing you should take away from all of this is the point that experienced affiliates go in with a purpose; and like what Mr. Green said, they don't go clicking around blindly. If you're doing that then step back for a second and think about what it is that you're exactly looking for. My first suggestion would be to go through ALL of the video tutorials on WRW and really make an effort to understand how their interface is organized, what type of data they collect, how they sort the data, why the data is relevant, and how the data applies to the specifics of your campaign. Once you understand all of this you can find what you're looking for very quickly; but in order to get to this point you need to put in the hard work and familiarize yourself with the interface and its functions.

I would also re-read this thread and take note of the advice given by each individual. Hint hint - there were some absolute BOMBS dropped in here and you're glossing over them....

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Another way is to use Opera Emulator http://www.opera.com/developer/mobile-emulator along with HideMyAss


Have fun

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I entered my networks tracking URL within the Advertiser area of WRW but it does not bring back any results.

Should I enter the full URL or the offer URL?:

1. http://f5mtrack.com/?a=121951&c=58447&s1=

2. http://f5mtrack.com ?

Either way it brings back no data. This offer is apprently doing good volume...so I was expect to see data being pulled?

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^^ This is only applicable if people are direct linking without their own tracking links.

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Ok, so most will be using there own tracking links right?

Of which case, we will have no idea what the URL will be.

So is WRW even worth it?

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Try typing those network domains in similarweb, they will spit out results for incoming traffic, then go back to WRW and use that data.

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I've searched similar web but wasn't able to find anything in regards to incoming traffic.

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Come on guys a little help. We didn't ask anyone for his campaign/traffic source/lander or offer.
We are on this forum to learn and learning to spy is basic.
So please give us some tender love

Cheers.

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Manual spying via apps/vpn + whatrunswhere is probably the best mix.

Your just missing out on carrier specific campaigns at this point, which is a lot better than seeing nothing at all..

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First step is focusing on an affiliate traffic source.

If it's a network then find out what their biggest placements are.

In Decisive you can just view the ad planner that shows all placements.

Go to into WRW and see what ads show on those placements.

Click on of the ads, you will then see a link to the lander (if there is one) as well as other creatives they are using and traffic sources.

Once you start going down that worm hole you will soon have a good idea on the general landscape of a niche or traffic source.

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Pro tip here, if you wanna spy on apps install android on virtualbox and use a VPN

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Bluestacks - does anyone have any idea why the ads are now showing up for me for any of the apps installed on bluestacks using google play. I installed all kinds of apps from utilities to games to calculators. Should i just a get a simple android device instead of trying to play around with emulators? Is anyone having success with emulators for android?

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Does Bluestacks actually incorporate ad network slots?

I would think it doesn't - it's more for testing apps themselves.

If it did, this would give virtually useless impressions to advertisers.

Even if it did, chances are ad networks would block and not serve to the Bluestacks user agent/emulator.

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Install Genymotion (http://www.genymotion.com/) and follow this guide to implement Google Play. It will work like a real Android phone with ads and everything.

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Woah.. this thread is dirty if you combine all this together into 1 system with Atilla's new thread

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@hendrix - neat! How does it compare with running a real Android instance on a separate box or a virtual machine?

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@caurmen: Genymotion uses a real Android OS so the experience is authentic. It requires a VirtualBox to run so the smoothness will depend on the strength of your computer. But anything that is powered with at least an i3 processor and 4 GB RAM is OK.

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+1 for Genymotion. I have been using it for a few months and it works great.

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Niceeeee, that's a great share!

I've been using bluestacks so far but it's a bit of a pain to use.

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getting started with Genymotion + virtualbox (OSX and Win)

http://www.addictivetips.com/windows...windows-linux/



installing play store on Genymotion:


This guide is for getting back both ARM translation/support (this is what causes the "INSTALL_FAILED_CPU_ABI_INCOMPATIBLE" errors) and Google Play apps in your Genymotion VM.

1. Download the following ZIPs:
ARM Translation Installer v1.1 Hosted by FILETRIP(Mirrors)
If you have issues flashing ARM translation, try re-downloading from a mirror
Download the correct GApps for your Android version:
If you have issues flashing GApps, try re-downloading from a mirror
Google Apps for Android 4.4(Mirror)(Download from CM11 Links)(4.4 GApps might have bugs)
Google Apps for Android 4.3(Mirrors)
Google Apps for Android 4.2
Google Apps for Android 4.1

2. Next open your Genymotion VM and go to the home screen

3. Now drag&drop the Genymotion-ARM-Translation.zip onto the Genymotion VM window.

4. It should say "File transfer in progress". Once it asks you to flash it, click 'OK'.

5. Now reboot your VM using ADB (adb reboot) or an app like ROM Toolbox. If nescessary you can simply close the VM window, but I don't recommend it.

6. Once you're on the home screen again drag&drop the gapps-*-signed.zip (the name varies) onto your VM, and click 'OK' when asked.

7. Once it finishes, again reboot your VM and open the Google Play Store.

8. Sign in using your Google account (make a new gmail for spying purposes)

9. Once in the Store go to the 'My Apps' menu and let everything update (it fixes a lot of issues). Also try updating Google Play Services directly.

10. Now try searching for 'Netflix' and 'Google Drive'

11. If both apps show up in the results and you're able to Download/Install them, then congratulations: you now have ARM support and Google Play fully set up!

from: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1...enymotion-virt

Update:

After messing around with the emulator for a while i found the 4.3 android os versions to be much more stable than the 4.4 os versions.

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^ Thanks, this guide just keeps getting better.

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I got Genymotion to work with HMA on my desktop. I see a few ads but don't see my ads. My assumption is that it's only showing wi fi ads?

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That's 99.9% likely. Emulating carriers is not so easy.

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similarweb takes his data from toolbars -> no information on mobile

-> for desktop its much more accurate than alexa

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