Home > Mobile > Follow-along Campaigns

---

Pin Submits on Pops (52)

---

Decided to start a follow along. Several people I respect in A.M. have said this was a turning point in getting results and it's a good way to keep myself on track.

Some background:
For the most part, my results have been unstable. I was running nutra for a while, sometimes I was green, often I wasn't. Couple of things have come up so I don't really have the budget to get any meaningful data anymore, so I have paused campaigns there.

I'll come back to muscle later though as the audience aligns with a product I'd like to create in the next 18-24 months.

Moving Forward:
I'm focusing on running pin submits in tier 2/3 geos on pop traffic sources.

I'm working with MundoMedia, Clickdealer, Adsimilis, Affiliaxe and Aragon Advertising. So there are no shortage of offers to test, although I doubt I'd run on all networks to start with for obvious reasons.

I grabbed a copy of Finch's guide to affiliate marketing and I'm using that to get my processes dialled in. I was reluctant to spend however much I spent on it (i forget) but whatever it was, its seriously underpriced. Get your hands on it before Finch realises its worth a fuckton more.

My approach:
- Spoke to a few people experienced with pin submits and they've recommended AV pin submits
- Read through some of the better pin submit follow alongs and made notes on those (won’t follow these blindly as I need my own data, but some of the comments could prove useful)
- Spoke to my main A.M. for suggestions
- Decided to run A.V. in MY to get started
- Did some spying, ripped 5 very different landers and modified them to suit my offer + added some scripts + got the copy translated on onehourtranslations

On another note. I've written processes for everything I've done so far (setting up servers/Voluum/landing pages/spying/signing up to ad networks/aff networks...etc. everything!). This is more so I don't waste time when I need to do something, I like to have a process to follow and its way easier to hire a team with these in place.

Next Steps:
- Get landers checked by A.M.
- Launch on Popads

Questions
1. What is the recommended frequency cap for pops? (perhaps thats too general. I know I should test, but hoping some of the more experienced members can advise so I have something to start with)

tl;dr
- Running Mobile pub submits in tier2/3 geos
- Starting with A.V. in MY
- Ripped and updated 5 landers

---

From my experience pin submit offers don't work well on pop traffic. They work better on FB (blackhat), email or exit traffic in sweeps.

Also if the advertiser has a good anti-fraud system incent traffic can be recommended as well.

If you can make it work, hats off, would love to see some stats on it!

---

Interesting you're the first person I've come across to say this.

In any case, I'll push forward and let the data decide.

---

Good luck, I'm looking to test similar (iPhone pin submit, UK)

---

Totally agree with this. pop traffic is pretty bad quality. To make it work you almost always have to go against advertiser guidelines and cloak. And you'll need many tricks in your sleeve to increase ROI. Think back button scripts, email capture, sharing .... etc.

Pin submits are even harder on pop since most people know that entering a pin means monthly charges are incoming. SOI might be better for the uninitiated.

---

29/10/2015
Cost
$4.12

Revenue
$0

ROI
0%

Landing Page CTR



(0% seemed unlikely; I investigated and the lander wasn't appearing correctly so it's impossible to click through. Removed this from the campaign, but I'll have my developer fix it up so it renders properly and it again later)

CR
0%

I'm testing several A.V offers in MY on Popads (i've used the STM Blacklist).

My landers are generally quite aggressive; Entry pop/exit pop/backbutton script/beeps/vibrates.

I set a daily budget of $50. It doesn't look like I'll spend anywhere close to that today, so I'm going to increase my bid. Usually I'd wait for the day to run through before updating the campaign, but I'd rather get the spend and data quickly.

Questions
Are there any others scripts I shoudl be using?


----

---

30/10/2015
Cost
$5.96

Revenue
$3.00

ROI
-49.66%

Landing Page CTR


CR
1.19%

Optimizing Offers

My Optimising strategy is:

1. Remove any offers what have clicks worth 4x the payout and 0 conversions
2. Using a split test calculator and remove any offers with less than 10% probability.

With the goal of finding an offer with more than 90% probability of being the best.

Offer Data (from the past 3 days)

(Ignore the costs, they aren’t tracking correctly)

I’ve run the split test calculator and approx probabilities of being best are as follows:

Offer A = 20%
Offer B = 15%
Offer C = 5%
Offer D = 60%

Based on my strategy, I should pause Offer C, but not sure if there is enough data to make that decision.

Questions
1. How many clicks should the offer have before running the split test calculator?

2. When calculating the click cost for each offer, is this the right way to do it?
- Get Total traffic source costs
- Get Total “Clicks” from Voluum
- Calculate cost per click to offers (Total cost/clicks to the offer page)
- Multiply this by number of clicks for each offer

3. Has anyone experienced trouble with CPM tracking costs correctly in Voluum (What could be the issue here?)

4. My traffic source reports 7187 impressions, whilst Voluum only has 4900, I know click loss is normal, but is roughly 37% click loss acceptable?

5. I suspect I don't have enough impressions, what should I be aiming for here?

---

1) No set amount of clicks, enough data until you have 95% confidence.
2) Voluum has a manual cost update feature which is straightforward to use
3) No - answer to question 2.
4) Somewhere around 10% in my experience, I would recommend a VPS at minimum if you don't have that already.
5) I would run 3x offer payout per landing page, would also cut my testing to the 2 most promising offers, you can add other offers in at a later date.

---

31/10/2015
Cost
$23.44

Revenue
$3.00

ROI
-87.2%

CR
0.28%

1/11/2015
Cost
$16.99

Revenue
$0

ROI
-100%

CR
0%

- Fixed cost tracking issue.
- I've been using Digital Ocean, so I doubt the server is causing issues for clickloss. Perhaps its the double meta refresh.
- Cut testing to two best offers
- Launched a new campaign in VN (blew threw my budget in about 2 hours and no conversions: but thats a story for tomorrow)

Questions
Would it be better to focus on one geo (MY or VN) or one offer type (AV)?

---

You can get pin submits to work on pop. I'm just saying you need to make sure your sale funnel is capturing as many people as possible. Just keep testing and incrementally improving your landers and you'll get there.

---

2/11/2015
Cost
$43.22

Revenue
$3.88

ROI
-91.02%

CR
0.29%

So yesterday I launched an AV campaign in VN on PopAds, burned through my budget in less than 2 hours, and most of it was wifi traffic (or unknown). (Total cost was $32.31, which is at least 70x the payouts)

This is the data for mobile carrier:


I think that for such a low payout offer and so many clicks, I should have WAY more conversions than just 2.

Questions
1. Still not sure whether to focus on a Geo or a vertical for these low payouts.
2. What would you do about the AV Offer in VN? (WiFi definitely doesn't seem to work and it consumes most of the budget and impressions)
3. HAs anyone had issues with Popads sending WiFi traffic when you only selected Carrier? What carreir targeting options do you use for Popads?

---

1. there is no best answer. If you have some advantage in a geo, (such as you speak the language) then it could make sense to focus on a geo. Most people focus on vertical though.
2. I'm not sure how many landers you're split testing. Have you seen better results with different landers? Have you seen better results with different angles? Have you confirmed with your AM's if the offer is any good? You could try it on another traffic source since you can't get the traffic you want from popads.
3. I've never had this issue. But I have had quality issues with popads, and noticing how fast profitable placements disappear. I personally wouldn't recommend popads anymore.

---

Cheers for the response mate!

1. I don't have a language advantage, my preference would be VN since its cheaper for traffic.

2.
I was split testing 2 of my best landers for AV, both got 1 conversion:


The angle was similar (how many angles could there be for Anti-virus....it all look aggressive "enter your number now or the world will end" type .

These are offers recommended by my A.M, but I'll reach out to confirm.

3. I see, I've signed up to a few different networks. I guess I'll start testing there.

---

There's loads! I did an AV one earlier in the year and had plenty of angles within a few minutes.

Check this out for inspiration from caurmen

---

3/11/2015
Cost
$61.16

Revenue
$6.88

ROI
-88.75%

CR
0.39%

AV in VN didn't work out great, it was also running on PopCash, not great results so I've paused that for now.

The MY campaign was at a -77.49% ROI. Average daily spend is only in the region of $12-14 for the MY campaign.

I'm going to run different angles and see if that can push the ROI into the Green.

---

good idea, I think it's always good practice to stick with an offer and experiment to determine what activities bring a boost in ROI. This will set a good framework for how you optimize and establish campaigns in the future. Don't be discouraged if you fail to bring it into the green. Be proud of any action that improves your metrics.

---

4/11/2015
Cost
$13.91

Revenue
$3

ROI
-78.44%

CR
1.35%

5/11/2015
Cost
$46.07

Revenue
$50.08

ROI
8.71%

CR
2.07%

6/11/2015
Cost
$34.21

Revenue
$41.08

ROI
20.07%

CR
2.36%

Notes:
- The AV offer in MY got paused before I could try different angles. Onwards!
- I launched a CPI offer in a different geo with some ripped landers and it was instantly profitable, so far no other lander has been able to beat the ripped lander. But I'll try different angles tomorrow. Getting a 30%+ CTR on the landers though so that's sweet
- I've blacklisted the worst offenders for placements and targets
- I tested Popunder and Popup on PopAds, Popunders outperformed (popups were about breakeven)
- Launched on PopCash - thats not as successful, but I haven't blacklisted anything yet.
- Asked for a quality review and that looks fine
- Overall the ROI isn't anything to get excited about at the moment, but its great to be able to practice the process for testing and optimising with a profitable campaign from the start.

Biggest lesson has been to let the data decide. I didn't actually want to launch this campaign because I just didn't think it could work based off of what others have told me.

Questions
Is a 30%+ CTR on landers typical for pops?

---

Great work on hitting profit on them, good to see! Do you know what the difference is between the campaigns that went green and those that didn't?

---

7/11/2015
Cost
$107.45

Revenue
$106.08

ROI
-1.27%

CR
1.96%

8/11/2015
Cost
$18.73

Revenue
$13.00

ROI
-30.60%

CR
1.36%

Comments
- Launched on PopCash on the 7th, which had a negative ROI - as expected. However, I had a 20% ROI on PopAds which offset this somewhat.
- Tried reducing my bid as I was hoping to increase the ROI, instead that decreased impressions and ROI. I'll up the bid again.
-


Next Steps
- Blacklist on PopCash to see how that affects the campaign.
- Increase bid on PopAds
- Speak to AM for new offers to test

Cheers Tim - Do you have a Follow Along?

I don't to be honest. I guess I just got lucky with the offer. But as you can see it's not much and nothing I've done so far has had much of an impact on the ROI.

---

9/11/2015
Cost
$78.44

Revenue
$79.56

ROI
1.43%

CR
2.26%

Comments
- I created a whitelist only PROFIT campaign for PopCash
- I created 6 landers based off of the most successful one and customised the headline to appeal to a specific category and have setup Voluum rules so users see the lander which is most relevant to them. Had some issues getting the Voluum rules correct, but got it sorted in the end, 10/11/2015 should be the first day of clean data so interested to see how this goes.
- Refined my process for optimizing so now I only have to export placement IDs from Voluum, copy to a spreadsheet and it spits out all the placements to blacklist based on:
1x CPA and 0 Clicks
2 x CPA and 0 Conversions
4 x CPA and unprofitable

Eventually, I'll create a web app that connects to Voluum's reporting API for this, but for now I'll check periodically and update from there.

Next Steps
- Create a whitelist only PROFIT campaign for PopAds
- Launch two new offers to test (I've committed to launching an additional 7 campaigns before Sunday)

Questions
Should I whitelist profitable placements only and leave category targeting open?
OR
Whitelist profitable placements AND category targets?

---

10/11/2015
Cost
$34.84

Revenue
$41.60

ROI
19.40%

Comments
- Popcash's Whitelist only campaign had an ROI of 25%. I don't know why, but i'm surprised to see how well that worked! Some of this is due to the different headlines for different categories.
- I've got the process down for separating campaigns now as well. I'm going to separate the campaign after 2000 impressions and update on a daily basis.
- I setup a RUM test with statuscake to see actual page loading times....4+ seconds, thats a joke. I'm confident once this is down to sub 1s, the ROI will increase.
- Paused campaigns whilst I'm working on improving the landing page speed.
- Signed up with Kimia so I'll be testing some offers with them as well.

Next Steps
- I'm going to try setting up cloudflare with my DO server to see if that increase page load times. Otherwise I'll upgrade the server. The pages themselves are quite lean - I've been through carumens thread. I'm not sure how much more I can strip out, but I'll also find a front-end developer to take a look.

---

Man your doing great. Keep going and you'll go big. I would try to learn more from the one ripped LP that made you instantly profit, try to figure out why exactly that happened.

---

11/11/2015
Cost
$43.78

Revenue
$41.54

ROI
-5.12%

Comments
- I could only run for about 3 hours of yesterday...spent a lot of time getting the server sorted out and messing around wiht lander wasn't sure about some things with the aff network.
- Launched in a new geo, -9% ROI without optimizing, I'll work on that today.
- PROFIT only campaigns seem to be performing quite well.
- CTR dropped, but I was testing Double Meta Refresh. Will change this back to 302 today.

Next Steps
- Find a new offer to test. I'm not testing anywhere near the amount I should be.

Cheers mate. How would you approach this kind of analysis?

---

12/11/2015
Cost
$113.11

Revenue
$93.00

ROI
-17.78%

Comments
- CPI Campaign 1 Profit on PopCash is still doing great - almost 50% ROI
- CPI Campaign 1 Profit on PopAds is at -18% ROI...I'll investigate this.
- CPI Campaign 2 on Popads is at -11% ROI. This hasn't been optimized yet as there wasn't enough data, so this is looking promising
- Launched a $20 Pin Submit test (Campaign 5) on PopAds; Around 5000 Impressions, 700 Clicks and 0 Conversions. I'll check the links and tracking later, but this offer looks like a dud. Onwards!
- I'm still not satisfied by the ROI, but at least I'm working the process.

Next Steps
- Finally got some more offer recommendations from my A.M. and I have about 2 other campaigns prepared, so I'll launch a test for these. In total I have about 5 offers to test.
- I'm going to work on a process for manual spying. I think I was relying heavily on adplexity.

---

13/11/2015
Cost
$165.94

Revenue
$136.32

ROI
-17.85%

Comments
- CPI Campaign 1 Profit on PopCash - ROI dropped to around 10%
- CPI Campaign 1 Profit on PopAds - ROI jumped to 27%
- CPI Campaign 2 Test on Popads is at -22% ROI
- Launched CPI Campaign 2 Test on PopCash, will optimize this today
- It seems PopCash is performing better for CPI Campaign 1, I'll check the stats and might end up stopping PopAds if my ROI on PopCash is better. I still have some $$ with AdCash, could be worth testing there.
- Created 2 new CPI campaigns to test

Next Steps
- Add new lander to rotation for CPI Campaign 1 and 2
- Launch the 2 new CPI campaigns

---

14/11/2015
Cost
$112.81

Revenue
$122.20

ROI
8.32%

Comments
- Paused Popads, ROI on PopCash is significantly higher

Next Steps
- Launch on AdCash to see how that goes

---

15/11/2015
Cost
$39.33

Revenue
$43.16

ROI
9.74%

Comments
- Didn't do anything yesterday as I usually take sundays away from the laptop

---

16/11/2015
Cost
$81.78

Revenue
$89.34

ROI
9.24%

Comments
- Launched another CPI offer on PopAds, it's at -95% ROI, will test some more to see if this has any potential.
- AdCash campaign was rejected for compliance reasons (again)...I'll fix that and resubmit again.
- CPI Campaign 1 on PopCash is at around 40% ROI - still only makes around $10 profit. I'll launch this on more traffic sources.
- Spent most of yesterday frustrated and confused about what to do. Decided to double down on what's working.

---

17/11/2015
Cost
$123.73

Revenue
$126.18

ROI
-1.94%

Comments
- CPI Campaign is at +51% Profit, which is great. The $ amount isn't anything to get excited about though.
- Most of the budget is spent on the test campaign and this wiped out most of the profit. I wonder if I've reached a limit with the test campaign.
- It turns out the second CPI campaign, the reason it converted poorly was because I was approved for the offer after it had been paused and it was redirecting to a global revshare offer.


Next Action
- I'm going to allocate a bigger budget on the profit campaign and see if I can get more traffic with a slightly higher bid.
- Launching a Sweeps campaign today.

Questions
- I'm not too concerned about the $ spent on the CPI campaign. I've just added a step to check the offer links are working before submitting (which I should have done anyways). However, my concern is this may happen again. Is there anything I can do about this with regards to the aff network?

---

Great update everyday.

I am new for mobile offers. After reading your full statement I got huge inspirations.

---

Great start, and congrats on the initial profit!

A couple of quick comments:

1) Cloudflare's not an ideal solution for AM. I'd recommend Cloudfront for smaller volumes like this.
2) Double Meta Refresh will usually cause a drop in ROI - it significantly increases redirect times amongst other things.
3) How many landers have you tested with your working campaign? Exploring the problem space is really important - that's where you'll find the big bucks.

---

18/11/2015
Cost
$71.41

Revenue
$62.00

ROI
-13.18%

Comments
- CPI Campaign 1 with a higher bid was at a -5% ROI. This is the second time I tried to bid more and it dropped the ROI. Reduced back to the original bid. I guess I hit the sweet spot first time round.

Next Action
- Add some more landers to sweeps rotation
- Follow up with AdCash

Good luck with your campaigns!

Thanks for your response.

1. Understood, I'll setup on Cloudfront today. Could you explain why Cloudflare isn't ideal for AM?
2. Absolutely. I read the thread about it before, just wanted to test it out.
3. I've tested 4 very different lander styles and then around 5 variations of the winner. These variations focus on a specific benefit based on the categories from PopCash. For example, Adult - Stream Videos Faster.

What do you mean by "exploring the problem space"?

---

Great thread, looking forward to your updates and good luck with your campaigns.

---

Have same question as thenjp, "Cloudflare's not an ideal solution for AM" what does that exactly means ??

By the way great going thenjp. Make sure you start cutting bad pubs before raising bids. Do the profit pooling first, make separate campaign and pull all profitable pubs and then analyse how much you can raise the bid and still be profitable. One more thing don't wait for asking for pay bump.

---

Cheers. So I already have two campaigns, one profit and one test campaign. Technically I should be able to bid higher due to my EPV, but every time I do the ROI drops. So perhaps my bidding position is optimum at a lower bid (I can't see with PopCash).

I have some low converting traffic that I can't block as popcash's platform is pretty basic so I will redirect to YTZ once I figure out how to do that.

Already went for the pay bump and they said they don't do it with this offer (MundoMedia).

---

Cloudflare: the free solution is more focused on security than speed ( at least, last time I looked at benchmarks ). It's not terrible, but when I last checked it was noticeably slower in most GEOS than the top-end CDNs.

---

Problem space - I shall write a separate post about that! In brief, if you imagine all possible solutions to a problem as a landscape, it's about thoroughly mapping that landscape as fast as possible.

---

19/11/2015
Cost
$28.93

Revenue
$27

ROI
-6.66%

Comments
- CPI Campaign 1: the ROI has disappeared. I tested the landers with exit pops, could be because of those. Otherwise it looks like its gone stale.
- Launched another campaign with mundomedia and its the second time I've been approved after the offer has been paused. Seriously?
- I dropped cloudflare from the equation. I can't use cloudfront though because I have some PHP scripts. Page speeds are around 1.5s with gtmetrix, test server is in Vancouver and DigitalOcean Server in Singapore. I've set up real user monitoring with status cake so will keep an eye on this for page speeds.

Next Action
- Launch sweeps campaign again
- Reach out to people taking action on sweeps to form a mastermind (already have a few people on this)

Looking forward to this!

---

@thenjp - look for it on Monday, probably!

---

Some tips on redirect non-converting traffic. 1. blocking pubs (one of best option ) 2. Check ISP/OS/DEVICE TYPE/HOURS OF THE DAY/DAYS OF WEEK and see if you can find any trend. My personal experience has been ISP & OS. Based on that Redirect non-converting to (adult vblog/resell traffic/YTZ & MobSuite). Goal will be getting campaign profitable first and then crunching more profit with that non-converting, non-blockable traffic.

---

20/11/2015
Cost
$13.38

Revenue
$9.05

ROI
-32.34%

Comments
- This is all from a new sweeps campaign I launched, haven't optimized yet but it looks promising
- Paused CPI Campaign 1. The ROI wasn't worth the time I was putting into it.
- Formed a mastermind with a few guys focusing on sweeps
- My focus is on angles and offers, I was messing around too much with scripts/redirects etc. jack45 reminded me (and everyone else in the group) that those small things are ROI maximisers not boosters.
- Read a few threads from earlier this year and last year about sweeps and that's given me a few ideas. Not sure if the information is dated though.


Next Steps
- Rip and clean more landers
- Find more sweeps offers to test, will be testing SOI against pin submits

---

21/11/2015
Cost
$13.32

Revenue
$3.42

ROI
-74.33%

Comments
- Have some more data to optimize this campaign with. I'll blacklist the biggest offenders and start working the angles/landers

---

For the paused campaign - have you tried getting a payout bump to get it back to green?

---

22/11/2015
Cost
$10.13

Revenue
$6.84

ROI
-32.45%

Comments
- Shared my stats with a sweeps mastermind and apparently my offer C.R. SUCKS! Time to look for a new offer, will have to switch geos as the offer selection is limited, so split testing is quite difficult.
- Added 4 new lander styles to the rotati
- Read and re read these threads/posts:
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...stakes-Secrets!
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...Angle-Revealed
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...l=1#post100865

Questions
- Aside from MundoMedia and Clickdealer, what other networks are good for sweeps offers?

I did and MundoMedia said they don't do it for this particular campaign.

---

23/11/2015
Cost
$0

Revenue
$0

ROI
0%

Comments
Didn't run traffic yesterday
- Created angles based on "problem space" and "seven sins"
- Ripped and updated about 4 different landers
- Searched for more offers
- Waiting on translations
- Waiting on lander approvals

---

There's f5media and yeahmobi. However both these networks require a certain amount of rev to be approved.

Regardless, they're still good networks.

---

24/11/2015
Cost
$0

Revenue
$0

ROI
0%

Comments
Didn't run traffic yesterday, still waiting on approvals for landers.
- Connected with a new A.M at clickdealer and got some offer recommendations
- Spent most of the day ripping and cleaning landers.
- I have about 5 different angles, 7 landers and about 6 offers in 1 geo (waiting on offer recommendations for more geos)


Next Steps
- Follow up with A.M.s with lander approvals
- Thinking forward, I'm interested in learning more about Google Display Network (not for sweeps), so if anyone could recommend courses/books/blogs. I'd appreciate that.
- I also had a few ideas for collecting emails on pops...would love to chat with anyone who has done this successfully before.

Thanks, I'll keep a note of these. I'll focus on the two networks I'm with at the moment and expand once I have some volume.

---

Didn''t run offers for a few days as I was waiting for approvals.

27/11/2015
Cost
$24.44

Revenue
$3.80


ROI
-84.45%

Comments
- Launching sweeps in NL
- Postback from clickdealer wasn't working. Its been setup up 3 times...still nothing...need to follow up with my A.M. on that
- Launched a campaign in SE, got very little volume even at high bids.

28/11/2015
Cost
$43.08

Revenue
$3.80

ROI
-91.18%

Comments
- Just created a checklist to go through before every campaign launch to ensure certain steps aren't missed and I'm not rushing

---

Hi @ssmarketers! can you tell me what you mean with "sharing"?

---

I imagine its, share with X people to unlock offer.

---

This is a great thread. Thanks for show all the results of the test.

---

I've paused my sweeps campaigns. I came to the conclusion without cloaking the advertiser, I'm at a disadvantage and its too much of risk at this stage for me (read Diary of two hustlers - pin submits)

Switched focus to clean dating on pops/mDSP in the UK:

02/12/2015
Cost
$6.57

Revenue
$0


ROI
-100%

Comments
- Signed up with DateProfits
- Signed up with Revolution Force
- Got two offers from Clickdealer
- Got one offers from MundoMedia
- PMed a bunch of people running dating to form a mastermind (if you're interested PM me)
- Ripped in excess of 50+ landers
- Cleaned up around 13 of these and launched 4 for 3 offers with 4 angles. I'll add the others to the rotation once I've found a winner from these four.
- Added Entry pops, and back button redirect to the offer page (I'm seeing CTRs upwards of 60%)
- Added a script to redirect users based on their age
- Pretty low volume yesterday as I only launched at around 6pm UK time and was targeting cellular traffic only on popads, I've opened it up today and will see what this brings.

Request for the mods to update title to "Dating on Mobile"

---

Home > Mobile > Follow-along Campaigns