Help!. Should I quit?... this offer/campaign (8)
Hey Guys,
I've seen various topics on how to compare creatives (ads and landing pages) to see which one wins. I've optimized (placement, image comparisons, LP tweaks, etc). I think Im at some pretty good CTR for Ad -- > LP and LP --> Offer. I've also used 2 traffic sources/types -- native and PPV (RON). Go2Mobi and Zeropark respectively.
I need help to on if I should pull the plug because I'm not getting any conversions.
Background.
I started this campaign~ 7 days ago with the following results
Traffic Source: Go2Mobi
Network: Peerfly
Type of Display Ad: Native on
Flow: native ad --> LP --> offer ( has a long 50 promo video).
Results
Spend: 230
CPC: 0.087
Ad to LP) - 14%
LP to offer - 6%
Conversions - 0
ROI - -100%
I wanted to test another source to see how it would perform so I tried Zeropark. I've never done PPV so I went simple with RON.This is very preliminary with small spend. I got a helluva lot of traffic... way more than Native Ad resulting in 2,500 unique clicks on the offer
Spend: 25
LP to offer- 10%
Conversions - 0
ROI - -100%
At this point, Im not sure of what to do. Should I continue to tweak to get the LP to offer higher? Should I stop this campaign? Can I conclude this offer doesn't work or yield ROI. In Peerfly, I choose this offer because of the good EPC and CR.
The reason I ask is because if I optimize to get higher CTRs, at the end of the day, I don't have any conversions!!
Help please!
Cheers
CT
It's hard to say without knowing more information. For example:
-What's the payout?
-What's the vertical?
-How many different lander styles have you tested?
-How many different banner and lander angles have you tested?
However:
If my math is correct, around 160 people have clicked through to the offer from go2mobi, and 250 have clicked through from zeropark. Assuming your tracking/linking set up is working, this many views without a single conversion can't be a good sign.
And of course it matters a lot which angles you've been using. It's difficult to give more specific advice without knowing which vertical you're running. For example, if it's something like sweeps or antivirus, and you've tested a number of the most popular landers being used, then I would say ditch the offer.
If it's an app that's NOT in an evergreen niche like antivirus/sweeps (where you can rip and test a lot of landers), and you've done your best in coming up with a good number of angles and none of them are working, I would say just try another offer as well.
It's not a good idea to tweak banners and landers JUST to maximize CTR, because CR is what you're after - as you've pointed out, a high CTR is no good without conversions.
A better approach would be to split-test offers from the start. But depending on the type of offer, this isn't always possible.
If you'd like a more specific answer, please feel free to add more information. 
Amy
Hey Amy
What's the payout?
48.00
-What's the vertical?
health and Fitness - Probiotics
-How many different lander styles have you tested?
5 landers (including direct to offer's lander) , 1 angle
-How many different banner and lander angles have you tested?
4 banners 1 angle
My conundrum is exactly what you touched on .. "its not a good idea to tweak banners and landers just to maximize CR." I'm not sure of next steps if the offer is not converted with high ctrs from 2 different types of traffic sources. In regards to numbers.. here's some actual numbers
My PPV campaign resulted in 14K hits to one of my LPs which has links to the offer. According to Peerfly, that resulted in 1800 clicks to the offer.. 12%. All numbers seem correct. 
Your secondary spend with Zeropark is too small to conclude much, I'm afraid. There's just no way to know if you're approaching statistical significance there.
However, the primary spend with Go2Mobi is a different matter.
Key question - did you cut placements during your spend on the native ad? Or did you just let it run? One or two big, dodgy placements could really affect the value of the results here.
In either case, given the payout's quite high, my inclination is to say that you don't quite have enough data to drop it yet. Around 7x payout is my usual very rough "if it hasn't converted, kill it" rule on mobile. However, that's heavily affected by how experienced you are with the traffic source - is this your first native campaign?
As a side note, that LP to offer CTR looks low. Can you share your LPs here?
Thanks Caurmen..
A couple of questions regarding spend vs hits to the offer. I've read topics about X times payout. The range has been from 3-7x. My question is ..is that range of spend connected to # of quality clicks to the offer. I ask because, at a high level and via all placements/traffic sources, 2500 unique hits have been pushed to the offer (not including direct linking). So the customer knows they're going to an offer because of LPs. Once on the offer, if the offer is high value, a small percentage of customers will purchase.. is this the correct mindset? 2500 hits and not one conversion seems kind of odd or maybe I'm wrong In other words, is spend the golden rule or are there other metrics you can use to assess the "yea or nay"
Side note, I noticed this product/offer is also on Amazon
To answer your questions
"Your secondary spend with Zeropark is too small to conclude much, I'm afraid. There's just no way to know if you're approaching statistical significance there.As a side note, that LP to offer CTR looks low. Can you share your LPs here?"
Yeah I was wondering that but also wondering about the statistical relevance of the hits to the offer per above. Meaning, is the purpose of the spend to optimize campaign and get a certain amount of hits to the offer?
The LPs are: LP0 (direct LP of offer), LP1, LP2, LP3, LP4
Side question: what's a good CTR for LP to Offer?
Key question - did you cut placements during your spend on the native ad? Or did you just let it run? One or two big, dodgy placements could really affect the value of the results here.
Yeah, After the first day, I cut placements that had at least 1000 bid wins, half of offer spend, and less than 1% CTR. This may have been wrong.. I've seen a couple of opinions on when to cut. I also cut because I could see a group of sites that had a high number of bid wins, high CTR, and less than half spend. There was a group of placements at 12-14% CTR and another group at 1-4%, no mid group.. seemed like two distinct groups. I concluded.. why continue spending on the low performing group? ..Focus on the high performing group and once I get some conversions try the low performing group again. Newbie mistake?
Also note, I targeted the high performing group of placements with a new Go2Mobi campaign/per image. The ad copy and images remained same. In the starting campaign, images were rotating via go2mobi but I notice I couldn't attribute a conversion to an Ad+LP flow via
"In either case, given the payout's quite high, my inclination is to say that you don't quite have enough data to drop it yet. Around 7x payout is my usual very rough "if it hasn't converted, kill it" rule on mobile. However, that's heavily affected by how experienced you are with the traffic source - is this your first native campaign?"
Hmm ok. Yes, this is my first so excuse my naiveness . Just tell me to sit still if I'm doing to much pestering with the campaign and not letting it run lol .
When you say payout of 7x.. I've spent about 300, if I kept that low performing group, would have been about 7x. I'm not concerned about the spend but moreso about the statistical relevance, knowing when to walk away and learning .
Thanks for the help! I feel like I'm making progress and learning.
Number of hits vs lack of conversions is ... sort of relevant.
First thing you'd need to know is how many of those hits were humans. Have you done any bot testing?
Secondly, you need to know whether the hits had intention. Were they from people who would be interested in your offer? Were they high-purchase-intent or not?
Raw hits not converting doesn't necessarily mean the offer's bad. I can send 100,000 "visitors" from a bad or inappropriate traffic source to a good offer - particularly a CPS offer, which I'm guessing this is given the payout - and get zero conversions.
However, if you're reasonably sure they'd be interested in your offer, they were actual humans, and they deliberately clicked to view the offer, then that's a stronger signal that something's wrong with the offer.
The 4x or 7x rule (the latter usually for mobile as there are more confounding variables) is a rule of thumb, not a hard-and-fast certainty. It's based on the experience of many affiliates - if an offer doesn't convert within that window, something's probably wrong. It's usually best to move onto a new offer as the offer is the most likely issue there.
Given that you're new to the platform and the traffic source, that might not be true. It might well be your targeting, your ads, or something else. But still, moving to a fresh offer removes one potential weak spot, so I'd still probably recommend it at this point unless you're very sure the offer you're currently pushing is profitable for other affiliates on native.
As for CTR from LP to offer, Finch wrote the definitive guide to that some time ago: http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...y-Don-t-Matter . Definitely very worth a read.
Great info Caurmen.
First thing you'd need to know is how many of those hits were humans. Have you done any bot testing?
Im not well versed in bot testing but logically speaking I don't think there's a high percentage of bots. Are native ads known to have high bot activity? Im thinking not. Also the variations in performance of LPs and Ads seem to suggest actual humans.
Secondly, you need to know whether the hits had intention. Were they from people who would be interested in your offer? Were they high-purchase-intent or not?
Great point. This has me thinking about the traffic source Go2Mobi. Particularly the placements. One of the high performing placements is in a security app. Maybe there intent is not to actually purchase a health product. Maybe Go2Mobi is not the best source for Health/Fitness? Also, I've read various articles (not here) that state Desktop is still dominant for online purchases.
My next steps are too see what my AM says about this offer, continue to the 4-7x rule, investigate other offers, and discuss with the native MM group.
@corytis7 - It's very hard to guess what's bot traffic and what isn't. Bot runners are smart and placement owners like money. And variation between your ads and your landers is entirely consistent with bot traffic in my experience. The only real way to tell is to test, and you'll often be shocked by your results.
I've repeatedly been surprised by how much traffic was bot-related on decent traffic sources.
However, I was primarily referring to your pop traffic there (the 2500 hits). Pop traffic can definitely be bots, and you'll find that entire placements can be 95% or more bot traffic.
As for purchase intent, that's where placement cutting comes in. However, for a diet offer, you generally want quite tight targeting - it's a rather specific niche that just won't appeal to many people, and a $48 payout offer is unlikely to be an easy impulse purchase.
Can you find a large placement or placements on Go2Mobi with the appropriate demographics or interests? I'd recommend having a chat with the Go2Mobi guys and see what they suggest in terms of placements for diet.
Don't be too certain about mobile vs desktop on purchases - that's very fragmented right now. A surprising amount of people - surprising to me, anyway - are very comfortable with purchasing on mobile.
Hope that helps, and looking forward to your next update!
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