Home > Mobile > Follow-along Campaigns

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First campaign: The beginning (24)

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About me (Skip this if you bore easily):

Im Tom, im 28 and live in Yorkshire in England, I'm here to change the way I view money (and hopefully how it veiws me). A couple of things that have happened this last 2 years have made me finally get here. Let me explain:

Last july I had a business of my own. I was a plumber with 2 employees, a decent wage (as far as plumbing is concerned) and above all else, I was a genuinely happy guy.

Then August hit...

In August I did some work for a repeat customer, nice old dear who I had previously fitted a boiler for, no problems. I then fit the most beautiful bathroom you can think off, it had a waterfall bodyjet shower, jet bath, wall mounted IP TV, handmade curved bath panel and the most amazing polished granite tiles. I honestly wish you could have seen it. Problem was, old dear had no intention of paying for any of it, the invoice went out, and when I went to the house she was gone. I did what I could to try get paid but she had moved abroad and was untouchable.

She took me for enough money that I couldn't pay my great little team and the merchant just 2 painful months later I was closing my business account and looking for a "real job", I found one.
Its grim, I work as a caretaker in a secondary school, the pays shit and the works degrading, I do what I do for my family, I want to upgrade their experiance of money and my means of doing this is AM, needsless to say im driven to achieve here.

I have a wife and 2 beautiful kids that will support me through this journey and I have created a follow-along to get the weight of the outstanding STM community behind me, hopefully for support and the pressure of others seeing you fail is motivation in itself.

Why AM?
If the above tale and money aren't ebough I would say its becsue I have sat on the outskirts of AM for years not quite understanding what it is. I have a friend who has had and is still having huge success in the Neutra vertical and, when we go for a drink or 10, takes great pleasure in telling me to crack the fuck on, buy in to STM and start my own journey, so I fianlly have.

Budget:
I have a modest budget of £1000 ($1520) a month for 2 months, I know its small but its all I can afford without getting emotional or panicking, this money exists with the sole purpose of being spent, and thats important to me.

Goal:
Seems appropriate that this is to achieve my first conversion.

Traffic: Decisive
Vertical: Mobile game installs
Geo: Brazil
Budget: $8 per day, per campaign
Bid: $0.81

Angle:
Ill be going down a heaven and hell fight angle first see if I can make it convert (heavy Catholicism abuse but you know...what would jesus do?), couple of weaker ones thrown in but with imagery l thoght would be eye catching.

Layout:
Following apatiser with some changes (number of banners and won't be running mobile data traffic to start with) ill inform as I switch it up.

Where im at now:
Waiting for decisive approval.

Questiones:
I have heard a couple of times that decisive and mobile game installs are a bad match, can anyone elaborate?

All input greatly appreciated!

Note: This was typed up on my phone while at work, apologies if there is bad format, thumb slips, auto corrects and grammar farts.

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Well Decisive have rejected my ads on the grounds that they loop more than 3 times. I find this odd as i don't think i have ever seen an ad gif stop rolling.
Back to Photoshop to adjust and re-send!

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Creatives all approved, campaign changed last minuet before activation:

Traffic: Decisive
Vertical: Mobile game installs
Geo: Brazil
Budget: $30 per day for just 1 campaign.
Tracking: Voluum

Campaign will be targeting:
Wifi
App ads
Brazil

I just wanted to get a better picture on one campaign to start with, i'm sure ill be switching this up soon.

Deals just gone live will post results tomorrow.

Wish me luck!

Exciting times...

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Good luck. Chase the wolf, man.

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Ok so i'm live and i have a couple of ...Issues(?)

All's going well apart from my tracking does not seem to be logging clicks, visits is just fine but clicks, no data at all, very odd ill look in to that this morning.

My other issue is that 90% of my impressions are on Grindr the gay chat app, nothing wrong with grindr or the gays just not sure i want so much of my traffic going there and its too early to blacklist.

Like i said, no full day data yet just a couple of strange occurrences worth reporting for possible input.

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Before running a live campaign, you should check that clicks are being logged in your tracking system.
There's a video guide here on tracking using Voluum and Decisive:
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...ll-Video-Guide

Note: if you're direct linking, "Clicks" in Decisive will be logged as "Visits" in Voluum.


There's a Decisive blacklist here:
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...sive-Blacklist

Grindr's mentioned several times in the top 100 apps.
May still be too early to blacklist, but something to keep in mind.

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I followed that full video up till testing. The campaign is running is Android app, Brazil and mobile only and i use iphone and cannot seem to follow the link through on a VPN. Testing seemed hard, i ran a test on a VPN on my desktop and it shows as a visit rather than a click, maybe i'm just reading the data wrong?

Thanks for your quick reply.

PS. Ended up blacklisting grinder on 3000 impressions with no clicks. It was worrying me, might reactivate to test when i have better data from other sources.

Tom

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Good Luck Tom, I'm also from England, looking forward to see your progress.

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OK, so far:

Spent $4.86
Revenue $0.00
Clicks 672

I'm finding it hard to believe that i have had almost 700 clicks and not one person has downloaded a free app (i see people say this all the time on follow-alongs but hey, if you cant beat 'em) I'm not pausing it, i'm letting it run to $20 for the day and blacklisting all my options that are spending 2 x my payout, without conversions.

I have not test fired the conversion no, but its a problem i have been having with the VPN i'm running and it wont let me do the T&C to fire the conversion. I do know however that its converting well for other guys so i'm confident its not a problem with the flow.

My banners could be wank, but i have shown them to a couple of guys who said they're nothing amazing but they will convert to start with.

Its only just hit 8.45 AM but i'm so new to this i don't know if a early morning conversion is rare.

If you want to network then add me on skype: live:thomasive_1

Cheers guys!

Tom

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Your first screenshot seems to shows clicks coming through in Decisive.

But, you say that they are not shown in Voluum. As mentioned above, "if you're direct linking, "Clicks" in Decisive will be logged as "Visits" in Voluum."

At around 16.00 mins into the video (after Zeno has tested the campaign URL is correctly rotating offers - so we're expecting 'Clicks'), there are 0 clicks for each offer, but there are 'Visits' in Voluum.

Why? At this stage of the tracking setup, there are no landing pages (direct linking setup), so clicks will be logged as "Visits" in Voluum.

Ok, so you pasted the campaign URL into a browser, and tested the values of variables being passed by using a browser console (around 9.00 mins into video).
For example, it's a good idea to check that custom variables (like clickid) are being passed correctly. If you're not sure, watch the video above (in full) again to do this.

After clicks are being logged (as Visits) in Voluum correctly, also check your conversion tracking. One way to do this is to ask your AM to fire a test conversion for you. Then see if it's being logged in Decisive and Voluum.

Best to just let it run (without day parting) if starting a new campaign.

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All my tracking is now sorted thanks to a good Samaritan, just waiting on AM firing a test conversion (Thanks alot for the tip), still running in the meantime as i'm sure its just my banners and placements.

Thanks a lot for your response!

just passed 1000 clicks with no conversions going to pause for a hour and sort a couple of things out.

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Alright so its time, the end of my first day (not including sleep hours):

Goal hit! Not only 1 Conversion but 2!

Spend: $19.90
Revenue: $1.08
ROI: Something low and horrible
Clicks: ........2924 (don't judge me lol I have 10 hours left before its run for 24 hours and i'm letting it fly)

First impressions were to pause it and mess about with the campaign, but my decision it to let it run to 10 conversions and use that data to fine-tune it so that's what i'm doing with a mass of data.

New goal: 10 conversions

Will report tomorrow

Any critiques or general nay-sayers welcome, that's what this is all about.

Tom

[Edit] In the last 2 hours my numbers have slowed to almost 1/5 of what they were coming in at and its just turned 6pm in my target geo, i assumed the traffic would become more hurried, is there a general rule to this or just a bit odd, or maybe even decisive Smart CPA kicking in?

Ta

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Ok so the slow traffic was due to peak time in BR that resulted in same ammount of bids but many, many less wins.

Good news this morning:

Spend: $23.10
Revenue: $2.70
Conversiones: 5

Makes me feel a little better about my decidion to push to 10 conversiones, Plus all my over night converts were from 1 app so thats handy.

Sticking with the plan, pushing to 10.

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Ok so my progress has been slow and varied:

Spend: $38.12
Revenue: $3.78
Conversions: 7

So it was moving very slow and after looking at it long and hard, I realised my banners needed drowning. I cut 4 banners and kept my 2 best converters just to test them against the new recruits, created 3 more(giving me atotal of 5, thats 1 less than I started with) and changed from CPA to CPM, bidding just $0.10 CPM from my previous $0.81 target CPA, this is in an attempt to spend faster (I may up the CPM for better placements later today, ill let tou know).

I will be running this for $20 today and post the results. I might even post all the banners I cut so you can:

1. See how bad I am at making banners.

2. Know what not to do by learning from my mistakes.

Cheers

Tom

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Hi Tom,

Good Stuff, keep up with it!

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Ok so i ran the above mentioned banners to $20 and it was all kinds of bad.

I know $20 is a low test but i was just looking for initial impressions of the banners to see if they were any better.

Spend: $20.00
Revenue: $1.08
Conversions: 2

Banner wise one of the original banners took a hit and a new banner got one, it was a notification banner.

My campaign is currently on pause and it makes me feel horrible inside not to be making movement on the spends but i really do want to start this up with 6 banners that i think are worthy of spending money on then let em fly for $100 and feed myself some data.

I'm making banners tonight and i'm not fully focusing on images like the guides suggest, ill looking at grey methods of getting my downloads with 3 of my banners and 3 sexy image banners.

Wish me luck ill post up when my banners go live.

Tom

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Still working towards the above goal, in the meantime i'm running a full text, rather questionable banner that's somehow been approved, i'm going to see if it has any better initial test results and my lovely clean banners.

This is more of a side project and learning project but thought it was worth a mention.

$20 spend per day, 2 days spend will post results, hopefully i will have posted RE my new banner testing before then bull ill keep you posted.

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Dodgey banner running simalar to my other ones, letting it run for $40 to get some decent app names from it and a couple more blacklists.

Spent: $10.80
Revenue: $1.08
Conversiones: 2

Ran for 24 hours at .10CPM $100 per day limit.

I have decided that Decisive needs testing as I feel im having traffic problems, ill be getting a new TS source to try each day for a couple of days over the next week see if I can get some different stats from new places.

Still waiting on my first new TS but I have been badgering then and the guy I need Is back from holiday tomorrow, so heres to hoping.

Tom

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Temporarily went bad

Ok, so after working on this for another week my offer got pulled and i was looking for something new for some time, luckily i setup with a new network who got my deal and with a nice paybump too, plus a very nice AM who took some time to help me deal with tracking properly and fired a couple of conversions to test everything was good to go.

The way i left it when my deal got canceled was, I had been taking 5 new angels and creating 5 banners that i, myself would click on (being a gamer and all) and running them on both Decisive and Go2mobi for $20 per day for 5 days so this is the continued plan. I have been told in my previous campaigns i sent way too much data before optimizing (I suppose i was worried about over optimizing, i didn't see how i could get good data off off $1.50 spend plus, i feel like i hardly spent anything!?) :





So yea, that happened....i'm new.

So this time i'm looking at Blacklisting:

• Placements at $2.10 spend with no conversions (3x my payout)
• Placements at 150 clicks with no conversions

I will be letting the 2 campaigns run along side each other until the full budget is spent not just 5 days and blacklisting as i go.

Let me know any advice you have RE my optimization plans and advice on my old data.

Thanks guys

Second times a charm!

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Good Stuff, keep going!

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Ok so a mishap with approval with the go2mobi campaign here:

http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...-tracking-rule

Decisive is now running and ill post results after 24 hours of them both running, hopefully my second add is all sorted now!

The life of a AM seems to have a lot of waiting about for stuff....

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Haha this is so true.

I remember when I launched my first campaigns; I had to wait on the traffic source and my AM for approval.

Good luck with your campaigns. I don't have much to offer than just to make sure you're testing as many angles as possible on offers.

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So got my ad finally sorted and approved on go2mobi only to have a translation request and rejection of all my banners, after they have already been approved 3 times now, i will update this with some stats soon....honest.

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Hey Whitefox!

So so relieved to have come across this follow-along.
I had the same issue too with tracking on Voluum, but then realising that clicks were registered as visits.

However, I'm also in a place where I've had 0 conversions after $51 spend on 2 campaigns i started the same time on the same offer. Was testing 2 different ad exchanges on go2mobi. You mentioned your tracking has been sorted, and you then experienced conversions! So i'm wondering if you had any advice/tips for me as I find myself in the same place as you were

Please feel free to PM me or reach me on my Skype ID: moonandcow.

Thanks so much in advance!

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