Promoting cpa trial offer using flogs. Wondering how to get targeted volume traffic without spending fortune. I tried one method of targeting placements after reviewing a competitor on WRW. Exported their placements and targeted those. This was just a blind test to see what happens. Obviously it didn't work out. $.50 cent clicks and terrible ctr to offer from lander. Mix of all gender and ages after I reviewed the traffic.
Next I figured to use re marketing. Testing out inmarket. 0.70 cpc so far.
I notice the competitor is getting millions of hit a month on their lander in adwords from top placement in the geo. Getting high volume isn't the issue. Issue is high volume that converts. However, targeting those placement s directly doesn't yield good result. Wondering what targeting option they might be doing? Custom affinity audience?
Are you talking about Adwords?
I have done a similar exercise on GDN looking at a competitor. exported placements and used a proven lander which I was using in Bing and an offer that was working. got very little traffic though I was breaking even straight away. It wasn't an exact replica of the campaign though, the competitor was running banners and I was doing text ads which are easier to get approved.
Personally I found you will get way more volume if you do a keyword targeted campaign (maybe with a second layer of targeting of topics or interests). If you enable conservative targeting Google will test just a few keywords at a time and then go crazy on the placements when you start getting conversions. I got to break even very quickly with this.
I would not start from managed placements (but I am fairly new on GDN, done only 20k last month).
in any case I would target the main demographic straight away (i.e. say skin women 45+, diet maybe women 30-55, muscle men 20-40, why waste money when you pretty much know the main demographic upfront?