What is a "campaign"? (3)
Everyone always talks about "launching 100s of campaigns" in order to find the 5-10 that works...
Thing is....
What constitutes a "campaign"?
Is it 1 offer, 1 traffic source, and all the geo's, creatives, landing pages, and targeting inside that one campaign?
Or does one campaign constitute an individual creative, landing page, etc.?
Only asking so I know how to track how many actual "campaigns" I launch per day...
That's a question I used to have as well. Then I found out that a "campaign" means something different for every individual.
Usually though, a campaign means when you set up a new "entry" at a traffic source. Usually it will be targetting a single geo (although some people do test multiple geos in a single campaign if they speak the same language). And usually the campaign will have multiple landing pages and/or banners being tested, and sometimes also multiple offers in testing.
The important thing here isn't what the definition of a campaign is, and how many you "should" be launching per day, it is things like:
1)Having a system where you're constantly testing to improve one or more of the factors that determine ROI, i.e. banners, landers, offer, traffic source (placements/bids), etc. If you keep testing banners, landers and offers to "beat your control", and cut placements/carriers/devices that are not converting, the overall ROI MUST go up. It HAS to!
And a combination of spying + your own innovation will allow you to come up with new stuff to test all the time, so that over time, your creatives become better and better.
2)Knowing what the GOAL of each campaign is in any point in time. For example, sometimes I like to set up a campaign using my best lander (the best one to date) to test new offers, a second campaign where I use my best offer (the best one of the ones I've tested so far) to test new landers, and a third campaign where I use my best offer and lander to test and cut placements. Optional: 4th "profit" campaign where I use my best offer + best lander + best banner(s) + best placements.
Or, you can just use a single campaign, and just optimize different things at different times. e.g. In the beginning you may want to rip a few landers, test 2-3 offers to find the best one, then use that to mass-test landers to find the best one(s), then use the best lander(s) to mass-test offers, etc.
Most importantly - don't try to set a fixed number of campaigns you "must" launch every day and just launch for the sake of launching. Do your research on your vertical and traffic sources, do your spying, come up with an overall plan/strategy, then go from there. When you're first starting out, it's important to give yourself time to learn the ropes. There are a lot of basics to learn in AM. If you hold yourself to a certain number of campaigns a day/week, you will probably lose more money than you need to while you're still learning and making mistakes. The best thing would be to learn as much as you can from your first 1-2 campaigns until you understand all the basics, then once you're comfortable, launch more.
Hope I've shed some light on the topic for you!
Amy
Amy, great insights! 
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