THE CASE STUDIES - Tim Tetra - One Simple App, 45 days, 300k Profit on Facebook (27)
THE CASE STUDIES - Tim Tetra - One Simple App, 45 days, 300k Profit on Facebook
Welcome to the first of the "STM Thought Leader Case Studies" series!
Since the "STM Thought Leader" series was such a big hit, we've decided to ask our thought leaders to reveal some of their successful past campaigns. I asked each thought leader to start spilling the inner workings of a campaign of their choice, I interrogated them with questions, demanded details, and have distilled that all into what you read here today
Due to the fast-changing nature of the affiliate marketing space, some of the success in these case studies can’t be replicated today. There’s always reasons why a campaign was ended. So the idea isn’t so that you can copy these campaigns – the focus should be to learn the thought processes and marketing strategies from the best in the industry, and apply them to the current landscape.
The first case study is from Tim Tetra who did around 300k in profits over 45 days promoting the Du Battery Saver app on Facebook at the end of 2013 / start of 2014. Not only did he reveal the reasons for the campaign’s success, but also shared his experiences and insights on different aspects of AM. Without further ado – here’s Tim’s case study!
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Basic Info:
Offer: Du Battery Saver App
Traffic Source: Facebook
Time Period: December 2013 - January 2014 (approx. 45 days)
Ad Spend (approx.): 500k USD
ROI (approx.): 50-70%
Profits (approx): 300k USD
Offer and Traffic Source Selection
Tim: I picked Du Battery because it was one of the earliest mobile app install offers with an advertiser that I knew had a huge budget (~70-100billion dollar company), and I also knew that what the app claims to do was viscerally appealing to pretty much everyone with an Android phone.
Based on my previous experience doing AM, I knew I had to hit the market before anyone else did. And because FB had just opened up mobile newsfeed for the first time in late October of 2013, the two were a perfect match.
Since payouts were so low, I knew from stuff in the past like Groupon zip submits etc. that what I couldn’t make up for in payout with like trials and CPS, I had to make up in extremely high conversion rate.
Broad-Appeal Offers and Customer Demographic
Tim: Even though diet and muscle might be “evergreen” and “universal” niches, if you went up to 100 random people and asked them how many would be interested in a product that helped them lose weight, you’d find a shockingly low amount of people.
Even in the USA where so many people are overweight, you will have people at a stage of sophistication where they know they’re overweight but are living in denial. There are people who are lazy. There are people who just don’t care. You’d be lucky to have even 5 out of 100 people care about what you’re offering.
But if you were to go up to 100 people who had an android phone in 2013, and asked them if they’d be interested in a product that could make their battery last longer, I think you’d have 75/100 or more.
Generally the common misconception is that diet and muscle and skin are “broad appeal” offers.
They’re not.
The payouts you get from these types of offers will allow you to advertise in broad media sources, and possibly make it back out for you with step 1 step 2, etc. So while you may salivate and think that there are 90 million women on FB to sling your nutra to, a more realistic audience is maybe 1/60th of that - which I suppose is still a huge amount of people.
But if I’m promoting an app that increases battery life - and the #1 thing people care about most is that their phones run out of battery too quickly - instead of having a group of only 1.5-3 million “ready-to-buy” women in a certain age range as my target demographic, I have a group of easily over 140 million people in the USA alone who want my product right now.
Not just “possible” audience, but a group that actually wants my product.
Before you even go into the campaign you know what kind of metrics you need to get before you start in order for it to be profitable. You have your immutable significant factors like payout, which although you can get bumps for, is not going to cause an exponential shift towards success. Basically, for a low payout offer like Du Battery to work, you have to have something that so many people you target will be interested in that you will have double-digit conversion rate.
And if i were promoting some casino game at 20 cents, I know there’s no way it’d be worth my time, because there's only so much an affiliate can do. You can't turn garbage into gold, because you don't control the entire funnel (i.e. you don't own the product).
Audience Targeting
Tim: I targeted quite literally as broad as you could target, every age range, every gender, everyone who had an android phone, version 2.1+, for every single geo the offer supported.
Eventually I cut out the females when my margins went down, but only for some countries.
Angles and Ads
Amy: What were some of the angles you used? And did you customize them for different demographics to boost the conversion rate?
Tim: For this campaign, I didn't have to target different demographics. There was only one demographic: Everyone who had an android phone.
And I only needed one angle for this broad demographic. But I didn’t have to come up with any crazy angle. I simply showed people that this app did what it said it did.
The angle was basically this:
“If you have an Android phone, and you have ever wanted your battery to last longer, you need to download this app that can help your battery life significantly!”
The actual ad copy I used was a bit more visceral than that, and eventually promised a little more specific results than something vague like that. But if you have the perfect offer + untapped traffic source + unsaturated sophistication, you don’t need to do any more than that.
I would say that nowadays, 99% of the angles I see are utter trash. People don’t respond to the angle, or so few people would that it’s nearly worthless. For every person who cares about that angle, there’s another who looks at it and laughs.
I approach marketing from the perspective of wanting to cause a visceral reaction in the majority of people who will see my message.
Amy: Could you show us an example of an ad that worked well?
Tim: Image-wise, I showed the image that I had created for this campaign during my speech at AWA.
The biggest surprise I had: When I Gaussian-blurred out the system message because I wanted to rapidly test - since translating the image into 70+ languages would’ve taken longer - the blurred-out image actually did better than the ones with the actual translated words. I created this image because I knew that once again, I wanted to take advantage of my Tetra Trifecta - The barometer/measure of how effective an image is - that I talked about during my speech at AWA.
Amy: And were you direct-linking or using a landing page?
Tim: Direct linking. You don’t need LP’s for FB. Their native ad unit is like an LP. That’s why their impressions are worth so much more than those onDSP’s.
How the High CR was Achieved
Amy: What did you do to achieve the "extremely high conversion rate" to make up for the low payout?
Tim: I myself cannot “get extremely high conversion rates”, I can only spend lots of time to know what people truly want, and then harness it.
As the Godfather of copywriting Eugene Schwartz says, our job as marketer isn’t to try to change trends or convince people of something. Our job is to harness peoples’ desires, their unspoken thoughts and wants, and to redirect and channel them onto a product.
For something utterly pitiful like 20 cents per conversion, in order to make real money, you’d need both a crazy large demographic + crazy high CTR and CR. The offer was the holy grail of all marketing, and you have an angle that 75%+ of the audience you target responds to, which will give you the crazy high CTR and CR. And by self-selection of the market for smartphones in 2013, every person would be interested, so there's your crazy large demographic.
Bidding
Tim: It’s really nothing spectacular if you know about FB traffic in general. Just basic general best-practice stuff: Starting tests at 12 AM, changing budgets at 12 AM if it was going to be drastic, etc.
We did oCPM, but oCPM + ridiculously high budget means it can go buckwild on you. One time I think we did 15k budget and it spent 5k in 1 hour - and the worst part was it didn’t even give me that many impressions. It just gave me all the impressions available, at 100x the usual cost.
So in the end, we did stuff like start budgets at $150 or $200, only for the ones that we already knew were winners. And then once FB’s initial “initial optimization run” hit - where they’d basically bid as high as possible because you’re on oCPM to get the best “gauge” of how good your ad was, then it would apply the other modifiers to calculate your cost for your ads - once we saw that hit, we would raise it to our actual true budgets. And that would usually lessen the amount of times it would stupidly spend $5k on $15 worth of traffic in one burst in a few seconds.
ROI & Profits
Tim: The campaign did around 50-70% ROI, with around 500k in spend, over approximately 45 days. Actually at the end we were making way more than 70% but that was from doing some redirections on the backends.
Extending Life of Campaign and How It Ended
Tim: The campaign was run from the last week of December until Chinese New Year in 2014. Even though we bribed Baidu to leave the campaign on over Chinese New Year, it very quickly became less profitable, and pretty much died by the time it started.
Amy: Was the downfall due to increased levels of competition?
Tim: Not sure, could just be oversaturation. Costs went up, CR’s went down. Then we redirected certain carriers in certain regions to 1-click antivirus pin submits that we knew converted well, and that helped sustain the campaign overall for a bit, whlie Du Battery Saver was just breaking even on the front-end.
Basically on FB you can’t just target carrier traffic, it’s either wifi-only or all traffic. But we’d get higher EPCs from specific carriers like Clario in MX. So we’d set up carrier-based redirections on what was essentially RON traffic, to maximize our profits. Because we were able to get like 20% CR’s on certain 1-click submit offers, 20 cents at 20% CR vs. $1.75 at 20% CR - so it was a no-brainer.
Although technically, if you want to be precise in definitions… I guess that would be a minor version of “cloaking” — so if you are risk-adverse, don’t do this.
Main Reason for Success
Tim: I would say the biggest reason for this campaign's success is knowing that it was the right time, right offer, right place, combined with a deeply embedded knowledge of what kind of images cause visceral reactions in people, that I can then transmute into an action.
Amy: Do you think the same success could be replicated if an equally good app install offer were to come out now?
Tim: If an equally good app install came out that was totally new, and could naturally harness market forces without having to come out with an angle, with no cap + the advertiser had tons of money, then yes.
What Set This Camp Apart
Amy: What set this campaign apart from the others you’ve run?
Tim: It was the campaign that validated my theory that app installs had arrived, and were a wildly lucrative market.
I think I had also never encountered any other offer in my AM history that had this sheer amount of mass appeal. We were pushing 40% CR in some countries, reaching millions of people a day. I didn’t have my Tetra Trifeca fully fleshed-out/formulated back then, but this was one of the case studies that really helped me solidify the end theory.
Tim’s Advice for FB Newbies
Amy: What advice would you give to affiliates that want to get started with FB? Are app installs still the best thing to run there? Or are there other verticals you would recommend?
Tim: If your goal is to run FB, you need to learn the system and learn how to do media buying in general, with all the nuances FB has etc.
In that regard, app installs will provide the fastest feedback loops at the lowest chance of getting your account locked.
Even if you run 100% whitehat, you will likely get banned at some point, because too many people will click X on your ad even if you’re promoting a charity. That will get your account locked because of negative user experience.
Your goal shouldn’t be to make money, because it’s highly unlikely that you’d be consistently and massively profitable by pushing app installs on FB these days. Instead, your goal as a newbie should be to learn the platform and learn how to media buy as quickly as possible.
Amy: In short - do app installs to speed up the learning process. But after that, what would you suggest that people run? Any particular verticals?
Tim: I would suggest trying legitimate lead-gen, especially B2B leadgen, basically as soon as you learn the skills of media buying.
Try to avoid being aggressive / scammy in your promotion. For example, stuff like auto insurance COULD be run on FB, but the way most affiliate promote it will never be OK. Injury claim, life insurance, annuals - bland, boring-as-hell stuff. These are examples of what you are allowed to run, but you will likely still get banned if you use aggressive angles.
I was running offers in these verticals using hard-hitting angles, and eventually my account got banned. People didn’t like that I was invoking emotions with my angles, and I learned that from reading the comments on the wall - you’d have people commenting who were angry that you made them feel badly about something they cared about.
Running App Installs on mDSPs vs. Facebook
Tim: It's almost not even worth running on mDSPs if you can do FB whitehat and well.
Amy: But DSP traffic is a lot cheaper than FB's, no?
Tim: Yes, but the higher conversion rates at FB will often more than make up for that. We have run the same offer on DSP’s and on FB, and FB would have many times the conversion rate as DSP’s.
DSP’s have too much gutter trash, click fraud, bots. If a million people see my ad on FB, it’s like getting a million real people who see my lander. And better yet — since it’s native, many don’t even realize it’s an ad. To achieve the same kind of numbers/scale on DSP’s, it would involve more inventory than is currently available.
I mean the game has wildly changed now. One thing you still have to deal with on FB, that you don’t on DSP’s is that you need to have skills in being able to maintain your FB account, or get new accounts.
With mDSPs, You might deal with rejections on banners, but they don’t ban you from the platform, and if they do, it’s super simple to get back on.
To give you an example of stats from a campaign: On a popular mDSP, we were direct-linking, and got 1.58% sustained CR.
But when we ran the same offer on FB, CR was around 20-23%.
It was still technically profitable on the mDSP, but the ROI couldn’t be compared to what we were achieving on FB.
Once you master all the nuances and aspects of FB, there simply is no better single-source traffic source for app installs.
Clarification: Affiliate Marketing vs. Media Buying
Amy: When you say media buy - what do you mean exactly?
Tim: I mean buying ads on FB or any other platform. You’re buying media for a specific purpose. The whole methodology to doing media buying arbitrage is what AM is.
So a newbie has multiple hurdles to clear: Firstly they have to learn the process of media buying in general, whether it’s on FB or any platform. Then they have to nuance that knowledge for each specific platform, then pair it up with an offer that actually can work.
I think you will find it exceedingly difficult to sustain a XXXX/day campaign through a CPA network in CPI these days between the quality requirements, low caps, and the ridiculously low payouts they give you, on top of the % that your CPA network takes from that to give you better payment terms.
If your goal is low XXX/day in stable profits, I would say it’s possible if you do a LOT of offer research. Everything really starts from there. Find the stuff that isn’t being heavily promoted, come up with some unique angles, get your targeting correct, and then learn the platform.
Amy: What’s the difference between AM and media buying? And why should media buying be our main focus?
Tim: AM in this instance stands for Affiliate Marketing. The most core definition of what an affiliate is, is that he is not the offer owner, he isn’t the boss. He’s the person who is hired to assist in some capacity, and in our industry our main value is in user acquisition. You are promoting on behalf of someone else, so you need to be even better than 99% of the people out there, because you have no backend that you can monetize.
Media buying is just the act of buying media. I don’t do much AM anymore, because I can own a lot of the things I promote now as a company, but I still primarily consider media buying our company’s strongest asset.
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A big thank-you goes to Tim for his generosity in taking precious time out of his busy schedule to do this case study, as well as the feedback he provided on my initial draft which resulted in improvements. We hope you've all enjoyed it, and please stay tuned for the next one. 
Reserved.
Originally Posted by timtetra
Originally Posted by meathead
In all seriousness though, I can't know for sure, and really the act of taking anyone's opinion on "why" something happens in most matters of marketing is a waste of time. The only thing relevant to learn from that specific note is that gaussian vs non-gaussian over specific creative elements is something to test out. Don't give me or anyone else out there permission to convince you not test something out or to dogmatically do things a certain way just because it worked for us. Your hypothesis for why it did better is equally valid, and even though I ran the campaign, that point alone shouldn't automatically give my opinion any more authority than anyone else's.
In the end its all about testing the waters right? Coming from a game developers point of view we had to test and irradiate constantly for the best user experience I am finding out that building a good ad is similar to building a good game. Instead of having to keep users attention rate high in the first 30 seconds so they keep playing your game, you have to address the users attention before its moved to something else. People get distracted really fast ive found out and especially on Facebook.
Basically on FB you can’t just target carrier traffic, it’s either wifi-only or all traffic. But we’d get higher EPCs from specific carriers like Clario in MX. So we’d set up carrier-based redirections on what was essentially RON traffic, to maximize our profits. Because we were able to get like 20% CR’s on certain 1-click submit offers, 20 cents at 20% CR vs. $1.75 at 20% CR - so it was a no-brainer.
Although technically, if you want to be precise in definitions… I guess that would be a minor version of “cloaking” — so if you are risk-adverse, don’t do this.
I know I should had done this on so many offers. Thanks for just reminding me this again.
Even in the USA where so many people are overweight, you will have people at a stage of sophistication where they know they’re overweight but are living in denial. There are people who are lazy. There are people who just don’t care. You’d be lucky to have even 5 out of 100 people care about what you’re offering.
But if you were to go up to 100 people who had an android phone in 2013, and asked them if they’d be interested in a product that could make their battery last longer, I think you’d have 75/100 or more.
Generally the common misconception is that diet and muscle and skin are “broad appeal” offers.
They’re not.
Thanks for sharing Tim. The Gaussian-blur, a stroke of genius for taking things worldwide!
What are your thoughts on Instagram advertising? (given it's all mobile)
Originally Posted by bobliu
If you're in a vertical that falls in the natural line of what people do/act on Instagram, it'll be exponentially better than those that are not.
In general, with all traffic sources... I'd highly recommend anyone to dive in and really know the who/what/where/how of why people use the platform, their mindset, what they're looking for, and then leverage the strengths of that platform to properly advertise to people.
^^ Just to add to this, you're definitely dealing with a younger demographic than FB, over 90% are below 35 years old. Like Tim mentioned peoples mindsets are very different when browsing IG compared to FB. People use IG to view photos, that is it. Food, fashion, animals, quotes, travel, art, and people. There are massive opportunities when drilling down into each.
It terms of paid traffic quality, Google search and FB newsfeed are pretty hard to beat.
Wow, Tim dropping bombs!
Two noob questions:
1. Why start testing at 12 AM?
2. Changing budgets at 12 AM if it was going to be drastic << What do you mean by this?
Thanks!
Originally Posted by hangman
2. If you are raising your budget from $25 to $40, you can probably get away with changing it in the middle of the day and having the results be similar to when it was $25. If there's 6 hours left in the day, and your budget for the day was $40 and you already spent $30, and then you suddenly raised it to $5000 because you decided that your ad was doing well, Facebook would suddenly need to spent $4970 in 6 hours, and if it's the middle of the night or anything else, it'll burn through your budget super fast because it needs to spend that money before the day ends, even if the people online are worse than usual. You could expected your costs to go up 3-4X if you do this. Instead, if you change your budget to $5000 at 12 AM for your account time, it has less chance to do that since it knows it has 24 hours to use up the budget.
Basically don't create new ads or raise the budgets except at 12 AM account time.
Thanks Tim! You simply nailed it!
epic post thanks!
sorry for my ignorance but what are some of the examples of b2b lead-gen? we all generate leads for businesses, not consumers so i'm under the impression it's all b2b, not b2c. am I under the wrong impression?
@m0bile4ffili8 - My assumption here would be that Tim's talking about leads for B2B businesses. So commercial webhosting, office rental, SEO services, and similar things, rather than antivirus apps, games, or dating sites.
Great interview Amy, this case study is laced with golden nuggets. I've learned so much.
Absolutely brilliant!
Thanks Tim
Tim Tetra = Marketing Genius
holy schnikes! thanks to cmdeal for bumpin this one again. Now after reading it 2nd, 3rd, 4th time...it makes even more sense to me.
Amazing post thanks!
Great interview. I liked how you told diet isnt really as mass appeal as I thought.
Maybe stupid question but 12 am, do you mean midnight or noon?
12am is midnight. The idea behind is that FB can allocate your daily budget over the complete 24hours of a day.
Thx Tim
but I have not understand what means with
Media buying means buying traffic via ads ... as simple as that
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