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What do you do with suspiciously high numbers? (9)

09-28-2015 08:48 AM #1 ajtothec (Member)
What do you do with suspiciously high numbers?

So I am currently running a larger RON test campaign with 300x250 desktop ads. I was testing banners before and picked those winners.
Geos are mostly 2nd and 3rd tier that worked in the first test.
My "problem" is that I have a couple of sites in my inventory that are showing suspiciously high numbers in terms of CTR. I'm working on a CPM basis so I do not care about that many clicks. But I just have a bad feeling seeing 2% CTRs on these banners as this is so much more compared to the average that is around 0.3%.
So far I cannot tell anything about performance. None of these clicks from those sites converted yet. So it may very well be complete fake or just a lucky placement you could make a direct deal later when performance is great.
What are you doing with these sites?

09-28-2015 09:13 AM #2 socceralien (Member)

i have experience before some of the placement having high ctr > 2% and always 0 conversion in the end. Ended up i blacklist those placement even they have a high ctr. What you want is to have a high CR eventually. And also if you also noticed, other placements under that same publisher usually will have high ctr as well and will ended up the same with 0 conversion and getting blacklisted by me. IMHO, usually these placement are game placements.

09-28-2015 09:37 AM #3 acepowermarketing (AMC Alumnus)

CTR is a intermediary metric, i think you can ignore it and simply rely on the conversions. CTR might be important if you are running on CPC basis, to ensure you are not getting too many clicks that will not convert.

some sites have higher CTR because they are more engaging, or fradulent traffic, or spammy banners. but thats all unimportant. whats important is how much of it makes money for you?

09-28-2015 05:47 PM #4 cptncrnch (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by acepowermarketing View Post
CTR is a intermediary metric, i think you can ignore it and simply rely on the conversions. CTR might be important if you are running on CPC basis, to ensure you are not getting too many clicks that will not convert.

some sites have higher CTR because they are more engaging, or fradulent traffic, or spammy banners. but thats all unimportant. whats important is how much of it makes money for you?
I had a gaming campaign back in the day with a 10% CTR on desktop. The conversion rates were terrible. It was super obvious that the site was overrun with bots. However, the traffic was super cheap and the real users who were mixed in with the bots loved what I was promoting. Ran the campaign at 300-1000% ROI for three months and the advertiser begged me for more because the leads were so high quality. Go figure.

That being said, 99 times out of 100 it's gonna be 100% fake traffic and needs to be blacklisted as socceralien said.

09-28-2015 07:45 PM #5 ajtothec (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by cptncrnch View Post
I had a gaming campaign back in the day with a 10% CTR on desktop. The conversion rates were terrible. It was super obvious that the site was overrun with bots. However, the traffic was super cheap and the real users who were mixed in with the bots loved what I was promoting. Ran the campaign at 300-1000% ROI for three months and the advertiser begged me for more because the leads were so high quality. Go figure.

That being said, 99 times out of 100 it's gonna be 100% fake traffic and needs to be blacklisted as socceralien said.
And how can you distinguish between 100% fake traffic and a high portion of bots but still with valuable rest? I really don't want to kick these sources early in the game when I pay less than a penny for clicks when I cannot confidently say that it's 100% fake traffic...

09-28-2015 08:47 PM #6 cmdeal (Veteran Member)

Quote Originally Posted by ajtothec View Post
And how can you distinguish between 100% fake traffic and a high portion of bots but still with valuable rest? I really don't want to kick these sources early in the game when I pay less than a penny for clicks when I cannot confidently say that it's 100% fake traffic...
In a way it doesn't really matter.

Don't worry about CTR if your are paying on CPM basis, worry instead about CVR.

I would much rather take high CVR with 50% bot traffic than low CVR with 0% bot traffic at the same price.

09-29-2015 12:53 AM #7 swiftclick (Senior Member)

As everyone else stated, I wouldn't worry too much about the CTR of placements if you're bidding CPM. Just look at the CPA of that placement instead. If its profitable, keep it, if its losing money, dump it. Simple as that IMO.

09-29-2015 01:33 PM #8 cbrughmans (Member)

Dont worry about the CTR. Look at the eCPM and overall margin (revenues minus costs) you are making PER SITE and optimize on that.
Also coordinate weekly (intermediary) and monthly (conclusive) quality checks with the advertiser so you can keep on optimizing & upscaling.

09-29-2015 02:14 PM #9 cptncrnch (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by ajtothec View Post
And how can you distinguish between 100% fake traffic and a high portion of bots but still with valuable rest? I really don't want to kick these sources early in the game when I pay less than a penny for clicks when I cannot confidently say that it's 100% fake traffic...
You just have to develop a certain amount of risk tolerance and let it run for awhile. Display can be a very volatile traffic source, especially when you are buying remnant traffic on a lot of sites. It's very common for a campaign to lose a shit ton of money in the beginning. You just need to spend the money testing and scale out the good placements. Quite often you will test dozens and dozens of sites and find one or two winners.

I read an article last week somewhere that said over 50% of all display impressions are fake. It's just something we all have to deal with. As everybody else has said, focus on the money and don't worry too much about individual metrics. If something converts at 1% on 1 cent clicks and 50% on 1 dollar clicks it's pretty obvious which site is performing better (as long as the advertiser likes the quality).

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