Greetings all and welcome to our follow along.
After 10 years in the affiliate space running affiliate networks, email/sms/ppc campaigns this is our first foray into banner advertising. After reading the cookbooks and the many experiences of the fine people of STM I think its time to give it a go ourselves.
Current CPA Networks
YeahMobi
TapGerine
F5 Media
AboveAllOffers
Matomy
Click Dealer
Linking Mobile
Peerfly
Current Banner Networks
AppLift
AppFlood
nMedia
Offercastmobile
Decisive
Inmobi
Analytical System
VPN Software
HideMyAss - bit slow but it has most countries we need.
After speaking with the account managers at the CPA networks we have received several lists of top performing campaigns outside of the UK/US and with commissions under $4 to start with.
DAY 1
Yesterday was our experimentation day where we were getting to grips with the systems and practising setting up campaigns in
Day 2
Now that we know how everything works its time to stick to the cookbook and hopefully start getting some sales. After speaking with Jon from F5Media we now have 8 potential campaigns to run and we have decided to work with a simple PIN submit campaign for Supermarket Vouchers in AUS and NL (same company does x2 supermarket voucher sites in AUS and x1 in NL). Unfortunately we couldn't find the same campaigns on other networks we are currently active with so we will have to rely only on F5 for this test.
Campaign Names
711, BigW, Kmart Voucher - AU - $2.24
Supermarket Vouchers - AU - $2.24
Supermarket Vouchers - NL - $1.45
Potential Angles
Free grocieries for a month
Your IP address has been selected to win $100 from ###
### giving away $100 vouchers
Free food from ###
Supermarkets pay to hear your thoughts
Questions for Cash
Questions for Food
AUS Supermarkets giving profits back to customers
A thank you from ###
Eat for free this month
Better than food stamps
I didnt pay for my groceries this month
How your friends afford the finest food?
We chose the following three angles;
Eat for free this month
How your friends afford the finest food?
Dont Pay for your shopping
The banner sizes we created were as follows;
300x250
320x50
728x90
At this moment in time we have rotating gifs cycling all three angles in the same banner in addition to static banners showing only one angle but on a similar design. I have attached the rotating gifs to this post. All three campaigns have similar banners with similar angles, the only thing that changed was the supermarkets that made up the competition.
LANDERS
We were not intending to build landers for this initial test. Is this a terrible move or is the above OK for an initial test to see if its worth the effort to build a custom lander?
TODAYS CAMPAIGN
For each of the three campaigns we will setup the following on Decisive. I take it we do not need to set these up separately in Voluum?
Wifi/App - CAMPAIGN
Wifi/Site - CAMPAIGN
Mobile/App - CAMPAIGN
Mobile/Site - CAMPAIGN
Going to set these up now and put a $15 spend on each campaign and see how we look tomorrow by which time we should have some results for the x3 separate campaigns each with x4 subcampaigns to separate different traffic sources.
I think our angles could be better and next time we will certainly have vastly different banners instead of making them look the same during these initial testing phases.
Wish me luck
Hey man, looks like you have a great setup so far!
The offers you are testing are proven convertors so you are in the right direction.
The only thing I would change is using a lander and also trying to create a different banner "angle" .
Keep us updated once you have some data!
Thanks bbrock - What type of lander do you suggest with this sort of campaign. TBH its the only thing that confuses me somewhat...
Im thinking a lander which asks "Which is the best Supermarket" and giving them the option of the three then deeplinking to the supermarket of their choice inside the offer. Will something like that work?
DAY 3
After returning to my desk optimistically after setting up the new campaigns last night I come back to find 1 conversion after 1,500 clicks across x3 campaigns.
The campaign I got my conversion from was using the in house banners and spent $11 to make $1.40.
The two competition campaigns we ran for AUS / NL spent in total $35 for NL & $32 for the AUS campaign but did not generate a single conversion.
Neither campaign had a landing page but I was hoping for at least one transaction on both NL and AUS competition campaigns.
PIN submits almost always covert poorly direct-linked.
You'll need a lander to drive conversions.
DAY 3 Continued
After two days trying out different tactics we finally got our first conversions yesterday, two for the ZA WhatsApp wallpaper and two for a Brazilian version of the PIN submit campaigns we have been trying out for AUS/NL.
I spent the evening blacklisting certain websites and creative s based on conversions and click through rates but we dropped all together the AUS PIN submit campaign as we spent $20 with nothing to show for it. Taking the advice of Zeno and BBrock we will not try those types of campaigns again without a landing page.
Active Campaigns
Immortalis Andorid - DE
Win Grocery Voucher - BR
WhatsAppDirectory - ZA
Supermarket Vouchers - NL
San Guo Ming Jiang - TW / SI / MA / HK
Questions
What are peoples experience with promoting Android Games? Will I need a lander for these in order to make them work?
What is the best adnetworks for Asian traffic such as India / Pakistan? My wife speaks both languages which could give us an advantage over those territories with regards to creative/lander production.
You won't need a lander for most games.
For Asian traffic... not sure. I know BuzzCity has a decent amount but they kinda suck. Indian (Hindi) won't matter so much as the majority of the population speak English (many do not speak Hindi at all), but for Pakistan that's definitely a big advantage.
DAY 4
After switching off over the weekend we start the week anew with two potential profitable campaigns and around 10 failed tests.
Optimisation
For each campaign we have blacklisted certain sites/apps that were spending all the budget but were not creating any commission. We also optimised the banners we have uploaded by black listing the worst performing ads. The two campaigns that are 50% ROI are using generic banners found on the network, with one set being rejected by Decisive on 3 out of the 4 campaign uploads. Funny enough, the one that slipped through the net was that produced the best ROI which goes to show 'iffy' banners do work. Most of the time the gif ads that were rejected had more that three rotations of the gif which Decisive seems to frown upon.
A new focus
In order to try something different we have decided on concentrating on one particular niche that can be found in multiple geographical locations and across multiple networks. For this new focus we have concentrated our efforts on Horoscope campaigns ready for the new year. One campaign in particular was for Romania and was found across three different networks which we were keen to try all three. Initially using the default banners, we were able to quickly optimise the sites/apps that were spending too much money with a small CTR while we worked on our angles/banners.
After an initial flurry of 2319 clicks using default banners, we didn't get a single signup.
Question
With that amount of clicks and a spend of >x5 the CPA of the offer, would you drop this campaign or would you persevere to the next phase of angles/banners and landers? As it stands we already did the work for the angles/banners and I should expect new banners within the next few hours.
Angles
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We chose three distinct angles and created three or four different variations of the angles. By the end of the day we should have x2 banner sizes per variation ready to test this evening although we do have a >2% CTR with the standardised banners which judging by all my other test campaigns is pretty good. Its the Conversion rate that is the issue which I guess is down to the lander.
Google Translate
BTW we used google translate to translate the angles into English then used a native speaker to do the same. VERY VERY DIFFERENT so watch out using Google Translate!
While I wait for the banners to arrive I am thinking about building a landing page for this offer as the offer is obliviously not strong enough by itself.
If you were using network / advertiser - supplied banners and no lander, I'd test your own banners and lander before giving up on the offer. (To be honest, in future I'd recommend skipping the advertiser-supplied banners altogether.) However, be ruthless - if it doesn't work with your own angle, try another quickly. If that doesn't work, new offer time.