ok too much info, i deleted it
It's very hard to master a traffic source and trying to get a good ROI at the same time.
I suggest to choose 1 good-volume placement, build some creatives for it, and see if you can get some conversions no matter how much you're paying your clicks.
Once you get some conversions you know that:
- the placement you choose has some good traffic
- the creatives you made are not totally bad
At this point you can start focusing on the CTR, CVR, CPM etc..
Interesting problem!
If you're having these issues, I'd suggest starting your tests using flat CPM rather than smart CPM. You can adjust your bids later - just keep an eye on your bids/wins ratio on high-volume placements, and if necessary split into a couple of different campaigns. Thanks to how Decisive works, particularly if you're running clean campaigns, different bid levels are almost different traffic sources anyway.
That won't get you to profit immediately, but it'll keep the volume running so that your campaigns don't choke off and you can start gathering data. You'll probably want to loosen up the -50% ROI rule a little, and consider whether it's trivial to drop your bids in order to boost ROI before you kill a campaign.
FYI, one of the things I'm going to be doing when I edit the Cookbook for 2015 (in a month or so) is to re-evaluate our recommended bidding strategies. With how Decisive has grown and changed, I'm a bit less convinced by Smart CPM than I used to be.
@ Dario.
Yeah that is definately one side of solving the problem. Still, it would be great if someone can give me a little bit of extra guidance in the issues i stated above.