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Campaign stolen by traffic source. (7)

02-02-2016 07:31 PM #1 bekayli (Member)
Campaign stolen by traffic source.

Hey guys, just curious if anyone ever got their campaign stolen by a traffic source? I am having suspicion that mine did..

What happened was I had a chat with my account manager from to set up a managed account. So of course he gave me a postback url for s2s to happen. Meaning that he will be able to see everything that I am running including landers, offers, and zones. Correct?

Anyway, after setting up the postback, I've decided that I no longer wanted to do managed account for now and have asked if we can put it on hold. He said sure. Literally the next day after, I see a decrease in my conversion rate by half! This of course turned my profitable campaign into negative... The traffic was still there, and the CTR was still the same. The only problem was that the conversion rate has dropped by more then half!

I'm assuming that they have taken my campaign, that includes lander, offer, and placements. By doing this, they are able to bid higher and get the first impression before me which means that they will convert first. Why do I think this? Because the traffic are still there, the CTR are still the same, but I am now only getting half of the conversions that I would usually get, maybe even less..

What do you guys think about this? Is it suspicious at all? Is there anything I can do? Did I make the mistake of trusting them with my campaigns? Let me know your thoughts on this.

02-02-2016 08:18 PM #2 mike35 (Member)

I don't think they stole your campaign. Here's what might of happened. Someone might of outbid you and now you are getting the poor quality traffic that doesn't convert well whereas before you were probably getting the good quality traffic. The advertisers who bid the highest get the best quality traffic and the advertisers who bid the lowest get the poor quality traffic. That's what I believe might of happened. Try bidding a little higher and see if your conversion goes up.

02-02-2016 08:55 PM #3 bekayli (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by mike35 View Post
I don't think they stole your campaign. Here's what might of happened. Someone might of outbid you and now you are getting the poor quality traffic that doesn't convert well whereas before you were probably getting the good quality traffic. The advertisers who bid the highest get the best quality traffic and the advertisers who bid the lowest get the poor quality traffic. That's what I believe might of happened. Try bidding a little higher and see if your conversion goes up.
Yah that's what I think too. I guess the reason why I though that the account manager may have something to do with it because it happened after I finished talking to him about setting up managed account. During that process, he was able to see my data because of postback url.

Could be a coincident that someone decided to increase their bid causing me to make the assumption that the AM was the one that did. I'll try and increase the bid, see what happens...

Thanks for the reply!

02-02-2016 11:06 PM #4 infotainer (Member)

This could have happened due to a number of factors. There are so many other factors that could affect your conversions. Sometimes offers just stop converting as well. Sometimes there are load time issues on both prelanders and advertisers landing pages. I have had great placements convert one month and the next they perform at half.

Some traffic sources, may place you deeper in Frequency setting based on your bid. So as an example someone was running profitable, you came in for a day and their numbers dropped, they very likely upped their bids, pushing you down the priority.

Just keep analyzing and testing things. Ex was android converting so they upped the bid for android devices where it would be hard for you to notice where your traffic dropped? Its imperative you drill down and compare the 2 days. it would be interesting for you to post what you find if anything.

02-03-2016 02:50 PM #5 cbrughmans (Member)

There might be a variety of factors that made your CR go down but a drop of 50% in a day is indeed very suspicious.
Have you used spy tools to see that your lander is being used at the moment?

A very important tip for affiliates that I think is very important is to always work with affiliate networks that don't do ANY traffic buying themselves.
If a network has an internal media buying team they have a very strong conflict of interest whereby these situations might occur. The best thing to do is to work with a network that only works with external affiliates and doesn't do any internal mediabuying. That way the interests of both parties (network & affiliate) are aligned.

02-03-2016 10:55 PM #6 bekayli (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by cbrughmans View Post
There might be a variety of factors that made your CR go down but a drop of 50% in a day is indeed very suspicious.
Have you used spy tools to see that your lander is being used at the moment?

A very important tip for affiliates that I think is very important is to always work with affiliate networks that don't do ANY traffic buying themselves.
If a network has an internal media buying team they have a very strong conflict of interest whereby these situations might occur. The best thing to do is to work with a network that only works with external affiliates and doesn't do any internal mediabuying. That way the interests of both parties (network & affiliate) are aligned.
I was actually referring to the traffic source taking my campaign.

02-04-2016 10:58 AM #7 matuloo (Legendary Moderator)

Anything can happen, including having a campaign stolen by the traffic source. Or let me put it like this : there are regular people working for the traffic networks and as such they can become tempted to steal your campaign and make some extra money. Did this happen in your case? Maybe yes, maybe not.

Try to answer a few quetions - was your campaign unique somehow or was it just another clone that you ripped yourself? How big was your campaign, was it $100s a day or are we talking about something small here that gave you some lucky conversions over a few days???

I know its tempting to blame the campaign failure on a rogue trafficnetwork that stole your stuff, but we have to keep a touch with reality here. If they are gonna steal some campaign, they certainly wont risk their reputation by taking someones $10 per day campaign, know what I mean? Even an employee wont risk his job for a small campaign.

My bet is, that this was a small campaign, that worked for a while but then stopped from one reason or another. I'd be surprised if we are talking about a long running campaign that suddenly tanked. Am I right?

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