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Spying mobile app install ads. (13)

03-01-2015 08:46 PM #1 authrom (Member)
Spying mobile app install ads.

Hello everyone,

I have been lurking for a little bit but I am still having a very hard time wrapping my head around how to find mobile ad banners.

I signed up for a free trial for a ad tracking website called whatadswork however it seems the only mobile devices I can target are iOS(My offer is Android only)

I have hidemyass VPN and I also have a Android Emulator on my machine but I am having trouble finding ads that appear on mobile websites rather than inside of the application.
.
Are there some common sites that serve these type of ads? My traffic network will be decisive and also leadbolt. I have read a few of the guides here regarding spying and while they all have great information none really go into great detail about where to look for the ads.

I suspected that maybe on the ad network I could find some clues, on Decisive I can see where the ad count is broken down for country and when I narrow down sites by country I just have a list of sites without any idea which vertical each site is for.

Maybe I am dense and I am missing something but I am a visual learner and I am sure if someone could take the time to explain to me I would pick it up quickly.

As of now I have the Android Emulator ready to go and I have the VPN service running, what would be the best way to find mobile ads on a website for utility/tool install applications?

Also here is my Skype rr.affiliate.90 I am pretty tech savvy as well, once someone can explain or even better show me one time I will be back to pick up from there.

Thanks STM!

03-01-2015 08:50 PM #2 aady83 (Member)

Hi,
there is a great guide written by iAmAttilia you can find here
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...ghlight=mobile

03-01-2015 09:48 PM #3 authrom (Member)

Thank you for the link, I have already taken a look at that guide.

Let me give a specific example of what I am looking for...

In the guide that was posted the author is using TrafficJunky as his ad network, I am using Decisive and Leadbolt. In the guide the author stated that through TrafficJunky he was able to see that there were cheap clicks available for Argentina and through the pornhub website. My question is how was the author able to identify that pornhub is a good site to spy? Of course since it is a very popular porn site that may be a easy question. I want to find a site that serves banner ads for mobile apps specifically in the utility and tools segment.

Hopefully this information can help someone answer my questions, there is something I am missing I am sure I just need to have it explained to me. How can I identify what sites the ad network such as Decisive or Leadbolt will serve my ads to? I think once I can figure that out I will learn what sites to spy on in a mobile browser.

03-01-2015 10:08 PM #4 InnerWinner (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by authrom View Post
Thank you for the link, I have already taken a look at that guide.

Let me give a specific example of what I am looking for...

In the guide that was posted the author is using TrafficJunky as his ad network, I am using Decisive and Leadbolt. In the guide the author stated that through TrafficJunky he was able to see that there were cheap clicks available for Argentina and through the pornhub website. My question is how was the author able to identify that pornhub is a good site to spy? Of course since it is a very popular porn site that may be a easy question. I want to find a site that serves banner ads for mobile apps specifically in the utility and tools segment.

Hopefully this information can help someone answer my questions, there is something I am missing I am sure I just need to have it explained to me. How can I identify what sites the ad network such as Decisive or Leadbolt will serve my ads to? I think once I can figure that out I will learn what sites to spy on in a mobile browser.
Thank you for posting this, I am also having the same questions.

03-01-2015 10:28 PM #5 authrom (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by khushbedi View Post
Thank you for posting this, I am also having the same questions.
Glad to hear that I am not the only one, I would imagine by getting the whatrunswhere tool it may give some of this information but I would like to try without it at first.

I suppose if I had to I could get a list of sites by spying that way, but I also know that everyone on this site is not using that tool.

I dont mind having to do more work to get results especially when the source locations are exactly the same.

03-01-2015 10:41 PM #6 randomdude (AMC Alumnus)

I'm surely not qualified to give a proper answer, but if common spy tools aren't enough and if there are no public lists of Decisive's and LeadBolt's placement URLs, then the only method would be to build your own crawler. You would have to identify your desired ad delivery domains from those networks (maybe like that: https://www.google.de/?gws_rd=ssl#q=...e:txt+leadbolt - have not verfied that!), then get the Alexa Top 1 Million and extract all domains with RSS feeds (those will most likely serve ads) , then crawl those entries multiple times with some Android User Agent and check if mobile ad sizes are served and if you find your desired ad server domains and then you would have to get some proxies (or VPN connection) in your desired countries and crawl the particular RSS feed over and over again to find enough ads. Easy peasy
Or you could use WhatRunsWhere. They have a decent overview of Android app install offers. But that's not really cool, self do, self have is much cooler

03-01-2015 11:31 PM #7 authrom (Member)

So I would have to assume that the OP in the guide knew the publisher url (pornhub.com in the case of the guide). I suppose using wrw will have to suffice until I can get some a few urls to work backwards from.

Thanks Randomdude for the post I think I will look more into building a crawler as well.

03-02-2015 04:17 AM #8 walt_white (Member)

I'm learning how to do this too and the simplest way I could think of was to run some ads on decisive and then when you have a little data you can look at the decisive reports by site/app and note a few of them and then fire up your VPN on your phone and visit the sites or download the apps and hit refresh a lot and note the ads you see.

Its time consuming, but it gives you an idea of whats happening on the Internet's.

03-02-2015 06:39 AM #9 franco12 (Member)

@authrom, sorry for not being successful with WhatAdsWork.

we'll add mobile WAP with an Android device asap.

03-02-2015 06:48 AM #10 aady83 (Member)

Yes as per walt_white.
In Decisive if you click planner and then click in the country that you want you will get a list of all the placements that are on offer. You then need to turn on your VPN, go to Opera mobile emulator (or another emulator) and start browsing.

Click image for larger version.  Name: 02-03-2015 09-44-56.png  Views: 81  Size: 130.8 KB  ID: 5788
(That is for sites) however you can also o it t his was through apps as you can see on the right

If you want it for apps, then as per iAmAttilias guide, you need to go to a service like Appannie, go to the category of app you are looking to promote, download the top 10/20 apps in that category and which VPN activated get browsing.

03-02-2015 11:56 AM #11 caurmen (Administrator)

@walt_white - yep, that's how I usually do things, on any traffic source. First identify placements by running a small test campaign or checking the planner, then go look at what ads are running.

Usually I'll combine this with a bot traffic test - so rather than just identifying big placements, I identify high-quality ones with real humans, then go have a nose around and see what's running.

03-02-2015 01:20 PM #12 badimo (AMC Alumnus)

Quote Originally Posted by aady83 View Post
Yes as per walt_white.
In Decisive if you click planner and then click in the country that you want you will get a list of all the placements that are on offer. You then need to turn on your VPN, go to Opera mobile emulator (or another emulator) and start browsing.

Click image for larger version.  Name: 02-03-2015 09-44-56.png  Views: 81  Size: 130.8 KB  ID: 5788
(That is for sites) however you can also o it t his was through apps as you can see on the right
Spying like that has been a very tedious experience to me. I have tried to do this before with my VPN and the Opera mobile emulator but in most of the sites I visited I couldn't find any ads. I had to check about 10 sites to find one that has ads. No idea why...

03-02-2015 01:33 PM #13 walt_white (Member)

@caurmen with the bot test, do you have a way that you expanded on the method from the bot detection thread when running RON to estimate bots at the site/app level?
I have some ideas I posted to that thread, but I haven't figured out how to implement it on decisive and still track conversions, since its not like exoclick where you can track multiple conversions.

I'm going to be launching my 3rd mobile campaign today and will finally have an LP to test bots and would much rather see the data at the placement level and not overall (since aggregate data is less actionable)

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