Trying LEADBOLT as a traffic source for MOBILE. (28)

Hi all,

I have done some follow alongs here in the past. All of them where with Decisive and am at a point i believe i can try another source. No greens so far! No worries there!

So, i am going to give a try with LeadBolt and here is what i am doing to test it out.

I added 100$ to my account and started 2 campaigns i already run in the past (2-3 weeks ago) with Decisive.

So far so good. I have them set up and keep watching them.

What i do not like about LeadBolt at the moment is that its only CPC, and the minimum CPC you can get is 0.05$ which is quite expensive.

So, i think that higher payout offers may work here.

I have setup as i said 2 offers.

First offer is a 0.44$ (payout) CPI - 2 campaigns here wifi and mobile
10$ daily budget for each.
CPC 0.05$ (the minimum)


Second offer is a 2.25$ Voucher SOI offer - 1 campaign here target only country.
20$ daily budget.
CPC 0.06$ (the minimum)


Stats till now.
With offer 1 i had 42 clicks and 1 conversion (promising and makes more sense to me that the 1500 clicks and no conversions on DS).
Offer 2 just started (so i wait).

Some questions for the more experienced!
1. Is my approach ok in your eyes ?
2. One thing i notice is that not all my banners get impressions. More than half get 0 impressions. Is that a daily budget issue?
3. Anything more to add?

Good luck with your testing on Leadbolt and have subscribed and will be following your progress.

I think you'll have a very difficult time making offer 1 profitable given your CPC and offer payout. Think about it, you'll need 1 conversion for every 9.5 clicks.

If this is purely for testing and getting familiar with the new traffic source, go for it.

Originally Posted by milobanski

I think you'll have a very difficult time making offer 1 profitable given your CPC and offer payout. Think about it, you'll need 1 conversion for every 9.5 clicks.

If this is purely for testing and getting familiar with the new traffic source, go for it.

So a short update,

Todays results.

First offer (low payout)
200 clicks
2 conversions total

Second offer (higher payout)
145 clicks
1 conversion

Problem
Tracking is not working in LeadBolt. I Get the conversions in Voluum and F5 but not in LeadBolt.
My postback url is : http://ad.leadbolt.net/conv?track_id={ref_id}&clk_id={externalid}

Any idea whats wrong?


Strategy
What i did see is that with LeadBolt you need high daily budget in order to get impressions to all your banners (i have like 7-8 in each campaign).
So, what i did today is pause any banners that had big share of views yesterday and drive traffic to the rest.

CPM
What i did is, i contacted the LeadBolt AM and ask her if there is CPM available.
Now CPM is activated in my account BUT the minimum big is 1.5$ (which i belive is even worse than the 0.05$ CPC).

What do you think about that?

Originally Posted by adivity

You'll need to manually change {ref_id} to your campaign ID. Do this in Voluum, override the campaign postback for BOTH campaigns at the campaign level (not the traffic source level). For some reason, dynamically posting back the campaign ID does not work.



Are you using Banner Ads or Text Ads? Text ads get much higher CTR, so a $1.5 CPM might be viable.

Otherwise, I wouldn't recommend running a $0.44 payout on leadbolt, their min bid is too high.

Yeah, have a few auto-pilot campaigns there... low volume, high margin types.

LBs text Ads sometimes have lower quality, but much higher volume.

Originally Posted by adivity

Yeah, have a few auto-pilot campaigns there... low volume, high margin types.

LBs text Ads sometimes have lower quality, but much higher volume.

I went CPC, because it was cheaper than the CPM

Originally Posted by adivity

You'll need to manually change {ref_id} to your campaign ID. Do this in Voluum, override the campaign postback for BOTH campaigns at the campaign level (not the traffic source level). For some reason, dynamically posting back the campaign ID does not work.

Yeah, you need to click the Advanced Tab.

Go the campaign overview menu -> Edit Campaign -> Advanced -> Override

See: http://i.imgur.com/ptZ7z7F.gif?1

Originally Posted by adivity

Yeah, you need to click the Advanced Tab.

Go the campaign overview menu -> Edit Campaign -> Advanced -> Override

See: http://i.imgur.com/ptZ7z7F.gif?1

Update

So today i had some good news waiting for me. Not huge, but good.

So far.

First offer (low payout) - Paused
No use to have this burning cash. So i thought im going to focus on the second offer.

Second offer - (higher payout)
133 clicks
2 conversions

The interesting part
So, Yesterday, before i go to sleep i did create one text add, using the angle that was doing best in banners.
That single add, got 64 clicks and 2 convertions.

At the time of speaking this ad is Green. Well with 0.06 cpc is making 10 cents, but you get the idea.


Whats next
Im will be adding some more text ads and pausing some of the banners that do not do so well to get the traffic.


Issues to solve
How can i pass costs to Voluum from LeadBolt so i get a better piture of how i'm doing? Will look into that!

Suggestions? Comments?

text ads also worked way better for me than banner ads on leadbolt.

Update

Today i woke up to find another 2 convertions. All with text ads.

I paused all banner ads. I know its probably a bit early, but it just feels right atm.

So, i created some more text ads to test.

The problem with Leadbolt is volume. Its so hard to spend money.

I have raised my daily badget to $30 trying to up the volume.

Let's see.

So far the text ad campaign is about -50% ROI

Spent: $26.86
Earning: $13.44

I feel that even if i turn this campaign to green, it would be very difficult to scale.

Next step would be to add some landers in the mix!

Any tips on that?

Is this a campaign you can scale to multiple countries?
If the country you're targeting is small and has low volume on LB, then you could either try moving to other countries or simply learn about this and move to a new offer.

How many placements have you had blocked?

Update

Yesterday i had my top day conversion-wise.

Accounrding to Voluum i had 5 conversions yesterday and 2 today so far. Which is an improvment.

I do have some green and almost green placements, so i will work in those angles.

I have not put any landers in the mix so far. (do you believe this would make a big difference?)

Yesterdays stats

Spent: $20.44
Earning: $11.20

ROI = -45.3% ROI (a little better)

Leadbolt traffic
What i did to get more traffic to my campaigns and looks like its working up to now is raising not only my daily budget, but my campaigns overall budget as well.

Opinions, tips, suggestions ? Please ..

UPDATE

Good news.

Yesterday was my first Green day ever

So.

Spent: $16.24
Earning: $20.16

ROI = 24.14% (finally a little green)

I did some optimising. Not too much though.
I still haven't tried any landers in the mix.

I do have a creative that does most of the convertions (7 out of 9 yesterday).

What i'm thinking
I will let today run without changing anything. I will then maybe try some more creatives within the same angle on the winning one.
Maybe a lander in the mix?

Scaling
This campaign is only for one country. So Geo scaling is not an option.
I may have to try some different traffic sources or increase the daily amount or my cpc bid.

To all experienced affiliates out there.
What do you suggest doing??

Yeooooww!!! Nice work mate. Savor that green taste haha.

A lander is definitely a good next step in your testing procedure.

UPDATE

So, i had some green days lately. Almost all days except the weekends are green now.

So

1. im thinking to exclude the weekends as i see -70 - 80% ROI on these 2 (sat- sun) days only.
Is that common? What do you think ?

2. Im about to add a lander in the mix. Should i add it to my existed campaign or create a new one based on my first and add the lander there. Wouldnt i be competing my self that way though ? What do you all think ?

Thank you,
G

1. How many weekends of data do you have?

2. You should absolutely add it to the current campaigns and not a new one. Rolling out a new campaign to test that lander on it's own is very bad split-testing (unless you duped the campaign and ran direct-linking and the LP on it, which would be kind of pointless unless there was an advantage to having 'new' ads).

Originally Posted by zeno

1. How many weekends of data do you have?

2. You should absolutely add it to the current campaigns and not a new one. Rolling out a new campaign to test that lander on it's own is very bad split-testing (unless you duped the campaign and ran direct-linking and the LP on it, which would be kind of pointless unless there was an advantage to having 'new' ads).

1. By bad do you mean unreliable, or conversion rate is terrible? If it's that bad then yeah, pause on the weekends.

Your strategy makes sense though I don't think 4 needs to be stated - #1, testing ads, is where you would try to find ads that give the highest EPC i.e. profit. Getting higher CTRs is not a goal, it's just a metric that might result in a higher profit due to lower click costs (remember, CTR doesn't make you money).

I would also add landers earlier after you have found good angles. Landers let you strengthen those angles and may make placements profitable that were not so when direct linking.

Great thread here guys!

Just a question on targeting on leadbolt. Do you go wide and test all categories first or did you just pick a few categories to target?

Also, how did you deal with making sure all your ads in your adgroup got equal impression share? I ran a small campaign on LB recently and I noticed after gathering impressions that some ads were getting the majority of impression share then others. I know they have their own system of showing more of the same ads that are getting the clicks. But I'd like to see my ads getting equal impression share first. Or should I be concerned about that?

Congrats Globy on the green! I'm testing Leadbolt for the first time today and hope to follow in your footsteps.

Hi everyone,

From leadbolt, my conversion tracking code as follows

http://ad.leadbolt.net/conv?track_id=xxxx&clk_id=

http://ad.leadbolt.net/conv?track_id=REPLACE&clk_id={externalid}

http://ad.leadbolt.net/conv?track_id=xxxx&clk_id={externalid}