Home > Paid Traffic Sources > Mobile

---

Does Whitelist Campaigns Ever Work? (11)

---

Hey guys,

So I have been trying this since I started playing this game, when a campaign starts converting, I test by creating a whitelist campaign for it and use the base campaign or the original campaign as a testing ground to find new placements.

But the moment I create the whitelist campaign with the exact same parameters as the base campaign, the placements quit working. I have noticed this in Decisive, PopAds and PlugRush. Any similar experiences or any experiences where whitelist campaigns worked for you?

I know whitelist campaigns are not the way to go if you are trying to scale. But if you have an offer that's converting consistently and is doing late xx to mid xxx dollars a day, it would be nicer to have a whitelist campaign and just run it with minimum maintenance. Apparently that doesn't work, or is it just me?

- Arun Basil Lal

---

How much data are you getting before you move things to whitelist campaigns?

Usually this kind of dive comes as a result of your initial data having a very small sample size, in addition to higher frequency when you go and buy a much larger chunk of the traffic.

---

The number I usually go after for whitelists is 2500 clicks. The last time I did this, all the placements in the whitelist had 2500 to 5000+ impressions (PopAds) and that was data collected over 8 days. Too less?

How can the frequency be any different when I set the frequency cap at one for a day. It was doing the same in the original campaign as well. The frequency would be the same I believe, all I want is to avoid the bajillion placements that was giving 1-5 impressions per day with zero conversions. Of course, I should be working on my landers and other parts of the funnel to make them convert, but the question of why something that was working in the first place would stop working staggers me.

Thanks for the response.

---

Happens to me every single time. Did someone figure out why?

---

I've ran whitelist campaigns on many different traffic sources, and they always worked. Gives you more room for bidding high on the top pubs and having a campaign that's profitable even if your "collection" campaign goes negative.

My rule for putting pubs from the "collection" campaign to the whitelist campaign usually look something like this:
- If pub has more than 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 conversions , and ROI is 50% / 70% / 100% or better , add them to the whitelist campaign

The higher you go with your standards for the whitelist campaign, the more confident you can be that those placements will keep converting high. Putting pubs too early in it is a huge time waste. The whitelist campaign should be like the VIP pubs zone - once you get in you stay in. I very rarely have to throw a pub out of the whitelist campaign once it's in.

PS. Make sure to blacklist the pubs from the "collection" campaign when putting them into the whitelist campaign.

PPS. When having a highly profitable whitelist campaign, sometimes going broader with your targeting, including carriers or an OS you previously blacklisted for the collection campaign, can increase volume and even be very profitable because of the high quality pubs

---

I had my most successful campaign also with whitelist and I was able to run it for several months.

I do not say it's only thanks to whitelisting - there were also many other factors included (offer, angle, bidding strategy) - but this was kind of a campaign that I can top up my credit and basically forget about it.

But otherwise I always like to start with blacklisting approach and let my data tell me what to do next.

---

Thanks for all the feedback people.

I have come to the conclusion that its because of lack of statistically significant data. I mean, that's what our results says anyways.

As kepe95 said:

Next time lets try to have stricter standards, shall we?

---

And here's a spreadsheet that can tell you which placements are ready to be whitelisted:

http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...Banners-Part-2

To apply the stricter standards you guys are talking about, simple set high values for confidence level and min. ROI.


Amy

---

This is one thing I've been thinking about.

Assuming you have a campaign bidding for placement X at $10 CPM.
Whitelisted version of the campaign is bidding for the same placement at $15 CPM.

So definitely the $15 CPM campaign is going to be getting more traffic, but it wouldn't hurt to get some at $10 CPM as well, since it's the same placement, just cheaper, isn't it?

So what harm does it do to leave those placements in instead of taking them out?

Or do different traffic sources have different algorithms etc?

---

Different traffic sources work differently.

I know two traffic sources where its like this:

- Traffic source A:

Campaign 1 has bid of 2$ and a frequency cap.
Campaign 2 has bid of 1$ and a frequency cap and lets assume this is the second highest bid.

The result is that you will always be paying 1$ on the first campaign and the second will get VERY less traffic.

- Traffic source B:

Campaign 1 has bid of 2$ and a frequency cap.
Campaign 2 has bid of 1$ and a frequency cap and lets assume this is the second highest bid.

You will end up paying 1$ as the bid only when you to go into the bid pool together. The following scenario will explain this better:

Campaign 1 has bid of 2$ and NO frequency cap.
Campaign 2 has bid of 1$ and a frequency cap and lets assume this is the second highest bid.

When the user does not match the criteria for campaign 2, you will not be paying the 1$ bid for Campaign 1. In this case what you said will work, but of course at an added cost.

---

Your landing pages will burn out a lot faster. And the campaigns at the bottom will perform worse.
Otherwise you could just duplicate your campaign and set different bids for every one, to get X times profit ... tried it, does not work very well in the long run

---

Home > Paid Traffic Sources > Mobile