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Third time lucky!! Looking for advice to keep the wheel rolling... (39)

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Hi Everyone!

First of all, just so you are all aware I'm "CostPerCarl". I've changed my username to "Nobelium". No particular reason, I just decided to pick something less whitty.

So....

What have I been doing for the last 2 months?? Getting my $*¡t together!
I've been studying, learning,improving my skills (web design, banner designs, technical knowledge) and allowed my budgets to grow.

Once I felt confident enough to start again I signed up to different DSP's and I went back to the first GEOs I tried to crack when starting in AM... India, South Africa, Mexico, Kenya - with a set budget for each and knowing what type of results I was looking for.

This forum offers a lot of great information but there are certain things that need to come from yourself.
Be organised, keep yourself informed and know what you are trying to achieve. Set yourself limits on each campaign and never ever dwell on just one offer.

I'm running different campaigns, from pop ups to display. Just as I read here, once you understand your audience/offer/traffic source well, you can launch campaigns with more confidence as you know more or less what you are looking for. (CTR, CR, bids, etc). Of course, I still have to do a lot of A/B testing and have campaigns that flop but I can avoid burning through budgets like I did before.

Here are some of my stats for the last 7 days on one of my DSP's.


I'm currently looking to keep scaling and improve my results. I have a couple of questions and hopefully someone can share some beautiful ideas with me.

1. My account managers always recommend me to duplicate campaigns when making targeting changes whilst keeping the other campaigns running. Can anyone else recommend this as a good practice?

2. I'm always asking for tips on how to get more traffic and apart from adding more banners and duplicating campaigns, I don't receive much more feedback, is there any other suggestions I can take into consideration to increase my traffic ?

3. My win rate is low, but when I increase the bid my CPA increases too. At this point, am I looking to improve CR and CTR?

Thank you all and please, if any one has a mastermind group they may find suitable for me, let me know!

I will also be attending AWE in Berlin, looking forward to meeting you all!!

Thank you for reading!

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1) Sounds a bit odd to me. What's the intended result of keeping the duplicate campaign?

TBH, if you're making significant targeting changes you should start a new campaign, but if you're just cutting loser placements, keeping another campaign around with those placements still on seems a bit odd.

2) Raise your bids That's pretty much the simplest way to get more traffic. Adding more banners is unlikely to increase the amount of traffic you get (although it might if the DSP's bidding system is particularly strange, but normally it shouldn't). Also, don't cut too early, and choose a large enough demographic to target to begin with. Once you're successful you can also scale out to other DSPs, but that's not something you should do at the start.

3) Yes, absolutely. Remember, you're looking for a campaign that's profitable at a reasonable amount of spend, not just one that's profitable to the tune of a dollar or two a day. You don't need to hunt $x,xxx campaigns right off the bat, but do avoid campaigns that can't make more than $x a day

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Hello Caurmen!!

Thanks so much for getting back to me!

Your feedback is appreciated, specially with the whole duplication of campaigns.

Last week I found myself with 10+ campaigns on one of my DSPs. Having to analyse all of them was just impossible. At least not day after day. I thought it was quite odd as well but since this is the main suggestion I get from my AM (Whom i just got off skype with) I went ahead and did it. I don't think for one person it's the best choice as I simply don't have the time to look at more than 10 campaigns to see what to trim from it....

I've paused most of my campaigns this week and kept the 4 main ones running. So I'm back to the start.

India has 105 conversions today and I've excluded UCBrowser after seeing it had an awful CR and my CPA was through the roof, I think this will make a huge impact on my performance as it was eating up a serious % of my budget.

I have duplicated the Kenya campaign to target a specific browser that had a 4% CR when looking at it alone for the last 7 days. I will test how well the campaign can run only targeting that browser.

How many campaigns are "too many" ? I guess it's a very generic question and depends on time, experience and manpower but by general norm, I've heard anything between 10-20 is more than enough.

Thank you once again!

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Let me comment too :

1. I think your AM didnt explain this to you fully or you forgot to mention a thing or two Im pretty sure the AM wanted to tell you to duplicate the campaign when you are about to target a very different segment. So lets say you target wifi first, then for some specific carrier you should create another campaign. So a new campaign for different targeting - BUT the targeting must be different so much that it will change the way you are bidding and/or it will require the change of some part of the funnel. If its just a small change, then its nonsense to create a new campaign for it - exactly as Caurmen pointed out above me.

Wifi VS carrier is really a good example for this - you start on wifi, once you have it profitable, you create a new campaign and target some carrier. Carrier traffic is usually more expensive, so you need to bid on a different level. Also the CTR will be different and the LP should be smaller (kb). So, yes, in this case it makes sense to make a new campaign.

2. Adding more banners and winning more traffic thanks to it - again like Caurmen said, it requires specific features of the algo - if they rotate the banners evenly, it makes sense to loose the CAP a bit and add more banners. Some algos allocate certain amount of "testing" impressions per banners, so more banners will mean more initial impressions due to the testing. Play with the CAP for sure, it can mean more traffic.

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Hello Matuloo,

It's been a while, I remember you helped me on my previous follow alongs. Thanks for reaching out again.

1) My AM has insisted that I run a campaign with no/less targeting, then start duplicating it and target say Feature phones vs Smartphones but to keep the other one running... I'll speak to her again tomorrow and verify this but as you say, once it's split why keep the other one running.

2) At the start, I added like 10 banners, but just as you said, I was quickly suggested to keep it below 5 at the start(To allow the algo to work better).
At the moment I'm only running my campaigns with 2-3 banners. I'll slowly add 1 at a time when I want to test them, as well as asking my AM about the rotation. The "testing" impressions sounds interesting, I'll find out more about this.

Thanks for your feedback, I think I could have misinterpreted my AM. The way you are telling me is exactly what I always imagined I had to do... and in fact what I'm doing right now!

I apologize if I'm not very clear sometimes, my best grades were not in English grammar and I'm not native English either.

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Your english is more than fine, Im also not a native speaker so Im no grammar-nazi either

When you target feature phones VS smartphones, its another good example of having two campaigns running at the same time. Basically, try to avoid running two or more campaigns that would compete against each other.

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Gotcha! Thanks Matuloo, Resuming campaigns right now.

I will try to recap a bit the finances and update everyone with what's going on soon!

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Ok, time to break down some numbers, here are 2 of my campaigns:

Campaign #1 I ran this campaign from the 10th March 2016 with a daily cap and time targeting.

Geo: IN
Source: DSP (AdIquity, Smaato, Mopub, Millenialmedia, etc)
Offer: Videos / Bollywood
Conversions: 1103 / Payout: 0.53$
Revenue: 584,59$
Spent: 457.8$
Profit: 126,79$

Campaign #2 - Not getting that much traffic as in India but results coming are good. This campaign ran from 11th of March 2016 with a daily cap and time targeting.

Geo: KE
Source: DSP (AdIquity, Smaato, Mopub, Millenialmedia, etc)
Offer: Backgrounds
Conversions: 576 / Payout: 0.80$
Revenue: 460.80$
Spent: 330$
Profit: 130.8$
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I'm using several banners for each campaign except for India which I've narrowed it down to just one banner. This soldier has been delivering decent results, but at this point I think it's time to start testing banners again. I don't want to rely on just ONE creative. The problem is, the other banners I tried receive less traffic initially, and the small data I obtain doesn't look very positive.

I've researched Adplexity and try to simulate banners there, or "borrow" some and modified them, but none beat my current banner (1.3% CTR in India) can someone tell me if this is an ok CTR ?

I believe my major area to improve here is my CTR, which will hopefully push my CR higher if more people land on the offer...

Thank you as usual guys!

P.S: also note I had to pause my campaigns some days during this month because of maintenance.

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1.3% is a very healthy CTR, thou its true in countries like India the CTRs are generally higher. Its definitely possible to go higher with the right banner. Its also never a good idea to rely on just one banner, thats true - it will burnout faster and once that happens you dont have anything to replace it with. I had a similar situation in one geo, one banner was killing it and I simply coudnt come up with anything that would compare to it ... eventually it died and I had to stop the campaign. Things like this simply happen from time to time. There really isnt anything else to do here, just to test more and more banners on a % of the traffic and come up with new variations until you find something. One suggestion : the one banner that I mentioned was actually a variation of a banner I found, all I did was adding one word to it and changing the color ... so try small changes like this with the banner that is currently working for you.

Im glad to see you are in green numbers man, now keep going and scale it

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Good morning!

Thank you Matuloo for sharing your similar experience. Just as you said, I'm very against just having one banner so I'm going to focus on finding another banner that has the same or better results.

So my next steps are going to be:

- Cut placements/variables that are eating up my budget (Browsers initially, to avoid decreasing my traffic)
- Design 2-3 variations of my banner and change the colour of the logo in the middle - It's currently a red play symbol. OR Change the call to action button on my banner.
- Find another banner with a high CTR.

At the moment the campaigns have been paused since yesterday afternoon.

I will resume them as soon as I get my new banners ready.

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This weekend I was a bit busy and I couldn't be on my computer for long so I set up tiny budgets to keep the campaign alive.

Let's have a look at results from Friday to Sunday. Both campaigns had a budget cap.

Campaign #1

I added new banners that did NOT work very well at all. So I'm still running one banner in India...

Geo: IN
Source: DSP (AdIquity, Smaato, Mopub, Millenialmedia, etc)
Offer: Videos / Bollywood
Conversions: 97 / Payout: 0.70$ (Payout upgraded by advertiser! Let's go!)
Revenue: 67.9$
Spent: 35$
Profit: 32.9$

Campaign #2

4 Banners running here.

Geo: KE
Source: DSP (AdIquity, Smaato, Mopub, Millenialmedia, etc)
Offer: Backgrounds
Conversions: 53 / Payout: 0.80$
Revenue: 42.4$
Spent: 17.53$
Profit: 24.87$

Today back to optimizing. What I'm going to do:

- Test a few more banners. I'm struggling to scale the campaign and I think the only way I can keep pushing it higher is by finding/making new awesome banners.
- I noticed my CTR is falling, it could be because of the weekend traffic or my banners starting to fade. I'll keep an eye out today.
- Think of my next campaign since these are starting to be stable. I'm aware these aren't making xxx$ a day but at this point I'm happy with the results!

Lastly, I wanted to ask if anyone has any suggestions regarding Prelanders. Would the use of these help when using Display traffic?

Thank you for reading

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Prelanders - depends on what you mean by this. If you mean adding a lander between ad and offer, then yes, that's a really good idea.

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Hi Caurmen,

By prelanders I mean exactly that. To add a break page between the banner ad and my offer page. I'll have a look at a few good ones, I always imagined prelanders were more for Pops traffic.

Thank you!!!

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Glad to see you're still in green Dont worry about the lower $ yet, its always XX first, then XXX ...

With the setup you have now, there really isnt another option to go higher than coming up with new good banners. The CTRs on the one you have now will decrease over time, thats absolutely inevitable. You should be able to keep it alive for a longer time with small changes as I suggested. But at some point, it will die anyways. Not sure how much you played with bids yet, its also something to consider, try moving them up a bit.

As for the pre-landers - they are good to use on whatever type of traffic, not just pops. In some verticals its not possible to become profitable without landing pages at all. However, in case of PIN submits, which is what you are running, LPs sometimes actually decrease the performance. Im running PINs quite a lot and its always something to test, in some GEOs LPs work, in some I have to run without. In some GEOs its forbidden to use them altogether for example.

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Hello Matuloo, many thanks for staying tuned.

I've played around with the bids but all I managed to do when increasing the bid is decrease my CR... I don't really understand why, so I panic and move them down again to the default one I've been using. I guess I'm going to have to stick to a higher bid and leave it for a couple of hours before I make any decisions.

Prelanders: Cool, so I can give it a go but it's not exactly what I'm looking for right now... I will focus on finding new banners and follow the Cookbooks suggestions on angles once again to start really grabbing more peoples attention.

Thanks!

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Higher bids dont always help the CTR, but when they do, the effect should be pretty much immediate. In case you dont see the increase , you either need to raise it even more or the situation is more difficult. By more difficult I mean, that new placements probably opened for you with the higher bids and they dont have such high CTR - on the other hand, they might mean better converting traffic. To really find out, you need a significant data sample, so when doing this, say to yourself "Im gonna give it 15 bucks" and wait till they are spend Then analyze and act accordingly. $15 was just a sample number, you need to set it based on the actual volume.

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Hi !

Thank you Matuloo, that's something I was completely lost with. So CTR can drop but CR can turn out to be better.. very interesting. Thanks for that great info! As you said, since the campaigns are green, I can burn away certain part of the budget one day to see the new placements traffic.

At this point, I've designed a couple of new banners with completely new angles for IN, but I may fear this campaign will have to be paused for some time...
My AM has told me the advertiser has been forced to add another step to the flow of the offer... Therefore, I've noticed my CR decreasing and paused it until further notice.

My angles were:
1 new angle : Celebrity videos
2 new angle : The most seen video on the internet

If this is fixed soon, I will resume this campaign.

On the meantime on the Kenya campaign, everything is fine except I topped up my account and forgot to add it to the user wallet (yep, I'm required to do that each time and yep, I tend to forget!)

05/04/2016
Geo: KE
Source: DSP, multiple networks.
Offer: Backgrounds
Conversions: 39 / Payout: 0.80$
Revenue: 31.2$
Spent: 13.6$
Profit: 17.6$

- I've made a duplicate of this campaign only targeting a specific browser that showed 3% CR. It should help my Cost per acquisiton!
- I've cut it down to 2 banners from the 4 and the CR% has increased. What I'll try to do now is raise my bid by 10cents and try to get more volume.
- As I receive more volume I will start adding banners one by one and A/B testing them with my current ones.
- Still looking for some prelanders that aren't too agressive and will be approved by my DSP.


Thank you for reading!

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There are new regulations in India for some carriers, sometimes the CVR improves again after people get used to the new changes, so we will see whats gonna happen in a week or two. Not all carriers are affected tho, so dig in your data and check whether some still work for you.

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You got hit too ? hehe It's fine, we will work our way around it if not!

I've already started to look for new offers in India. I guess this is something that we need to keep doing, adapting to the new changes! For what I've read in this forum things have gotten harder but at the same time you can find yourself innovating and hitting a jackpot!

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This is a change on the carrier level, so anyone doing something in India is affected now. These changes happen all the time in all the GEOs, and PIN submit offers are getting more and more regulated.

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If you run PINs or one click flow offers, focus on LATAM or Russia. All the other markets are hard to get profitable because of competition and huge regulation (restrictions on what landers you can use, wording, etc). Unless of course you have a golden payout on an exclusive offer.

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Understood! Thanks for letting me know. I'll keep that in mind.

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Thanks cbrughmans! I'll start looking at new GEO's.. I have a pretty good set of banners I think can work well in LATAM if I change them to Spanish

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What's up guys!

I think I've managed to figure out India and Kenya finally.

My banner variations have worked quite well and I'll just keep making more of this type as they seem to be working. Thanks so much guys.

Stats for yesterday so you get an idea of the new milestones I'm achieving

Geo: IN
Source: DSP
Offer: Backgrounds
Conversions: 281 / Payout: 0.70$
Revenue: 196.7$
Spent: 97$
Profit: 99.7$




Geo: KE
Source: DSP
Offer: Backgrounds
Conversions: 243 / Payout: 0.80$
Revenue: 194.4$
Spent: 78.3$
Profit: 116.1$


For India:

- I'm going to increase the CPM as the win rate is still so low.... I've asked my account manager and she said I should be getting more. My CPM is not 0.23 by the way, it's higher than that but that's the avg I'm paying.

For Kenya:
- I like the way this campaign is working. So I will keep going as it is.

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Awesome stats! Congrats and keep scaling

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Awesome man, Im so glad it works for you, keep going !

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Congrats on making so fast What tracking are you using?

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Hello all! Thank you a million!

I owe a lot to this forum in terms of knowledge at least! - but trust me, It's not been very fast... I've been ´in and out` for the last half a year or more.

It took ages to understand certain aspects and I'm literally still learning, this is a bit of luck and hard work put together. Good account managers, good offers and well let's hope the traffic keeps treating me nice. I now know how every day something can change here and you have to stay on top of it all the time. Also, thanks to the feedback on the follow along I've been able to look back and see my mistakes. Thanks Caurmen and Matuloo

PS
The screenshot is not my tracker, it's actually the platform of the DSP, it's very very good as well! It's making me consider getting rid of my tracker... but I'm using other traffic sources too like PopAds which I need something like Voluum!

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Hey, I'm using Voluum but the screenshot was not the tracker but one of my traffic sources. Thanks by the way!

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I could not have done it without your feedback Matuloo, and there's still a long way to go...

This is barely anything solid! If these two campaigns flop, my other ones are still not fully profitable !!

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Thanks for the kind words

Campaigns come and go, the most important part is, you managed to resurrect the Indian campaign! This is the hardest part in AM in my opinion. Hitting a good campaign by luck is not so hard, but bringing it back to life once it dies ... thats the skill you need to master and once you have done it a few times, that's when you can say you made it.

Once you feel secure enough, please post a success story on the forum, new affiliates need to see those badly. I'm sure you had your doubts about this thing too, and stories like yours are what keeps people going on!

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No problem!

Yes, I insisted to my AM to speak to the advertiser to find a solution as we were getting good performance on their offer. I believe the Advertiser did a change on the flow for me. That felt very nice but at the same time I think it's not always going to happen!

I will make sure to write something up but I'm not great at writing and also it's all happening so fast I'm still trying to assume it myself haha

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Did you translate your creatives, or using an English one?

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Hey man, my creatives are all in English except for Latino countries. Let me show you an example of one



This banner worked well but after some regulation changes that changed the offers LP it dropped a bit, feel free to try it with Video or Download offers.

On this Follow-along I've only been showing my top 2. I have another campaign in South Africa and one in Mexico that isn't working too well, It's on and off.

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Hey mate, thanks a lot Compared to this my creatives look like shit I've translated my English to Hindu(cost me $5 on Fiverr, guy translated me on tree Indian languages) so I'll see hows that going.
I'm sure you'll push those campaigns into green! Keep up the good work

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Never underestimate the power of properly translated creatives, it can do wonders. India is a pretty specific example as english is one of their official languages so english banners are actually already translated to fit the market Hindu will obviously still work better in certain regions ... always split test

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Hey, no problem! this is a very simple banner to make. And you can just use my concept and change the picture on the left... if anything, It's lacking a CTA button but, I'm using the "Play" button instead. It's a bit cheeky. Somewhere on this forum there was a template on mobile banners it showed to make the banners:

1st a logo 2ndly the text and 3rd the call to action... this is a pretty standard way of creating banners but it works... Play around with my concept if you wish. I can tell you in India I'm working with English banners but in some cases, the less text the better

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Nice work! Looking forward to future updates on your progress.

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Thank you Caurmen, I'm amazed at how fast things evolve here.. It's crazy. I'm still struggling slightly to scale, feel a bit stuck. I will update later !

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