Mobile Pops, do they convert? (28)
I have been pushing traffic on a mobile pop network for a few weeks now and I have a single conversions after thousands of impressions.
Is pop traffic effective?
How can I make my campaigns more effective?
Probably the offer is not a good one
How many impressions are we talking?
How many landers have you tested? Did you rip them?
How many offers have you tested? Which networks?
What kind of offer is it? What vertical?
We need more answers here. You've been a member here for so long it should come as no surprise that if you just search you will find many people here are having success with pops. So yes, pops are effective, but it takes time just like anything else and requires the right combinations of offers, landers, traffic sources, etc... I have spent just over 100k on pops starting in February and I am just now about to be 100% break even. Read some threads and trust the process.
How many impressions are we talking?
A few thousand impressions about $15 in two teir3 countries
How many landers have you tested? Did you rip them?
8 or different landers, some rips, some fresh
How many offers have you tested? Which networks?
about 7 offers across two different countries.
What kind of offer is it?
These are download offers since I am using pop traffic. gaming, and apps, the usual suspects.
If you could post your entire campaign breakdown as transparent as possible we can probably try and help a little more.
But for starters, 3k impressions isn't really a lot, especially for tier 3 countries. Seems like you are paying a bit more than you should be, but the amount of traffic you should be getting should probably be a lot higher. Not sure what's going on there. Next thing is that you mentioned targeting 2 countries. You should only target 1 country per campaign as data can vary a lot between them. And finally 7 offers across 3k pops is nothing. You'll need a heck of a lot more data than that.
You should probably start by testing multiple bids with separate campaigns running at the same time, and expect to spend something like the (offer payout * 8) for each offer you test. Keep in mind you can pause all but the best bid campaign before this happens.
Anyway, if you want to give us the traffic source, geos and vertical we can probably help a lot more.
Cheers,
Brad
Mobile pops definitely convert.
The thing with mobile pops is volume, especially in tier3 countries.
As others have said, 3K impressions isnt a lot when talking about pops. 3K across 7 offers? I think you should have something like 3K impressions per offer for better judgement.
Yes they definitely convert. I was in the same situation 6 months back.
I would suggest to try more offers and yes, a thousand impressions is close to nothing. You might feel like you are losing money in the start, but trust me, once you start seeing 100s of conversions, then you would be able to optimize it and based on the data make it profitable.
**Adding to that**
Try with different POP traffic sources as well. Based on the offer you're running, a particular traffic source might work and another one might not. Experiment with different offers combined with different traffic sources, till you find the right combo.
Getting profitable isn't tough. Scaling it is. 
Feel free to ping me if you need more help.
Yup mobile pops definitely do convert and very well with the right funnel and targeting!
Like Brad suggested - read some of the recent follow-alongs and you'll see that people are still finding success (start with Brad's follow-along!)
For a really simple methodology, try this:
1)Identify a vertical+geo that seems to be doing well. (Browse aff network top offers lists, go to spy tools to see which offers are doing volume, browse forum posts/follow-alongs to see what people are having success with, etc.)
2)From adplexity, rip all the different landers you see for that vertical+geo (markedly different - not just in minor ways - for example different themes).
3)Ask AMs on different networks to recommend the best offers for that vertical+geo. 2-3 will do. Purpose here is not to identify the best-converting offer, but to have at least one offer that will convert well enough to help you identify the best lander of the bunch you ripped. So ask your AMs for offers that other affs are making conversions for.
4)Run landers and offers - identify the best lander. You can test staggered bids right off the bat, or just bid above-average to avoid getting a lot of junk traffic. Popads, zeropark, propellerads are just some of my favorite "go-to" sources for initial testing. (Disclaimer: STM does not endorse any traffic networks - please work with them at your own discretion.)
5)Use the best lander to test every offer you can find for that vertical+geo, from all the aff networks you're a member of.
Step 5 is usually where the magic happens, although if you're lucky you may see profits during the initial testing stage.
If you keep doing this, you WILL find good offers. There's no way you won't. Of course, as you become more experienced, you'll find them faster.
And yes - consider starting a follow-along to get some feedback from the community.
Good luck my friend!
Amy
Couple of things to watch out for when doing any campaign
1. make sure you target the right carrier
2. understand the conversion and target what is easiest to convert (by connection type, carrier, operating system etc)
3. Pass Macros to use within your own reports and center on where conversions occur, I understand so far only one conversion so I would suggest doing a sort of over-haul on the campiang and starting from scratch. or select a brand new that the account manager on the platform recommend as highly convertible.
4. If none of the above doesn't work I would suggest vetting / checking the traffic you buy and make sure that what you target is what you pay for.
Pop is an aggressive ad unit that like any other ad unit will work best on quality traffic with a good enough converting offer. No big secrets there.
Originally Posted by oneano
Originally Posted by cbrughmans
The 3 main variables that need to be considered when trying to decide how much to spend on testing, are 1)offer payout, 2)traffic costs, and 3)how many candidates you're split-testing.
If you're testing a $0.10/lead TH sweeps offer, spending $100 will be overkill. But if you're testing a $50/lead biz op offer, $100 without a conversion wouldn't tell you anything.
If you're running on a traffic source where the geo+targeting costs an average of $0.50 CPM, $100 will get you 200k impressions; whereas if the average bid was $20 CPM, $100 would only get you 5k impressions.
Also, if you're testing a single offer with 3 landers, that will require less budget than if you were to test 20 offers and 10 landers (all else being equal).
Lastly - how confident you are in the offer will play a part. If one of your best buddies has shown you actual stats that an offer is killing it, you'd probably be willing to spend more money to try to make it work, than if you were just testing a random offer.
Amy
Originally Posted by cbrughmans
I got some really good info.. while on TES in prague.. from our billing aggregator.. which could be also usable for you.. basically it goes like this:
You are too compliant.
From a very noob point of view (which I represent very well ), I think that the misunderstanding here is due to the definition of "testing" which is usually not well understood by the beginners. There is a big difference between the budget needed for the initial test vs the budget needed to make the campaign profitable.
I understand that to discover the viability of a campaign from the very beginning, a good setup in a low cost geo may require 15-30$ or less. But this is the amount required to decide whether to discard the campaign completely or not. There is no implication nor guarantee of profitability after the initial test. The step by step guide from vortex is very clear: we are still on the step 4):
Bottom line:
for the newbie in a tier-3 geo, an initial test may require 15-30$ and its purpose is only to decide whether drop the camp or not. After that you need to optimize, and it takes much more than 15-30$ to become profitable, with no guarantee of success. Be profitable with 15-30$ is very rare for the newbie, and it involves a lot of luck.
Originally Posted by parsifino
), I think that the misunderstanding here is due to the definition of "testing" which is usually not well understood by the beginners. There is a big difference between the budget needed for the initial test vs the budget needed to make the campaign profitable.So let me re-quote again what cbrughmans posted :
Originally Posted by cbrughmans
Just throwing my recent experiences in here...
Working with offers less than $1 payout, I've been able to test most of my campaigns with an initial $20-30 and that would include atleast 3-5 offers and 2-3 landers per campaign.
And to expand on that.. after the initial test cost and determing which ones have potential, I've been able to bring 2 of those campaigns to hit $250+ profit per day within the next $750-$1,000 of spend and in under a week.
$100 per test would be overkill in most scenarios that a newb would enter into...I should know... I just graudated mobile pop newb high school.. now entering the early adulthood of mobile pops haha
If you have a budget less than $2k and considering the cost of STM, AdPlexity,
You should start with offers no more than $2 and preferably less!
Aim for $10-30 test budgets per campaign and launch atleast 10 per week.. by the end of week 2 you will see something with potential (not guaranteed but very likely).
Best of luck OP!
#mic_drop
Andrew
Hi and thank you for sharing your experience!
Originally Posted by mrpayne
So, after the initial test, you usually need to spend $750-$1,000 to make the camp profitable? I believe that during optimization however, you're not -100% ROI (but for example -50% ROI, which halves that amount). So you're not loosing your $750-$1,000 completely before you become profitable, but less. How much less, roughly, according to your experience?So, I believe that when the newbie finds a promising campaign, the low budget creates a cash-flow problem, much earlier than the loss problem. Am I wrong?
Originally Posted by mrpayne
And thank you for sharing your great experience with us
There is no set number of how much spend is required to get a campaign profitable or get it to $250/day.. every campaign/geo/offer will have different variables to consider. It could take more or less than the $750-1,000 I mentioned to get profit, that was just my experience on 2 campaigns.
After your initial test and finding a campaign with potential, each new test that you do on that campaign should help you find better performing combinations.. initial launch -70% but your best lander/offer combo may be at -60%, next round of testing overall may be -70% still but your best offer/lander may be at -40%, next round of testing.. etc. It's hard to say how much you will lose but i would estimate that between 40-60% of the budget you are testing with will be gone before you get it profitable.. especially if you're just starting out, your losses may be greater since I've already had time to learn from my mistakes... but once you get it profitable, you can recoup those losses within a week or so if you're doing decent profit.
My first two profitable campaigns didn't last very long because the offer got shut down but I've had a campaign profiting $30-40/day going for 10 days now and a campaign doing $175-250 profit per day going for a week so far. There's no way to answer this question with accuracy. You just have to get experience and then you will better understand what to expect and how to anticipate these types of situations, don't dwell on them now.
Those kinds of questions simple convey that you are not confident yet.. the only way to get confident and build a profitable campaign, is to plan, launch and spend money on campaigns.. accept the fact that you will lose money today but a month from now you may be in the green.
Cashflow is a huge bottleneck for most of us starting out. Take it one step at a time, don't spend your earnings, save and reinvest until its a huge pile to work with.
Not to promote my own thread, but if you read through my follow along (link in my signature) you will see my progress by day/week/month to get an idea of what it takes money wise and effort. I will have another monthly update coming this weekend.
read this today,
learnt something valuable .. bumping it so more people can get value out of this thread ..
bump
as I think deeper, I realized this is the biggest mistake I made in my 3 years of AM. FYI, overall, i didn't make money in AM. in fact, i got deeper into debt. and i'd been working on AM full time these 3 year
gonna share this out so others don't repeat the same mistake.
mrpayne made me realize there is a difference between 'initial phase' and 'testing phase'.
launch 20 campaigns (initial phase)
a) 10 campaigns -100%
b) 6 campaigns -50%
c) 2 campaign -20%
d) 1 campaign breakeven
e) 1 campaign green
testing phase
- campaign (c), (d) and (e)
20 initial > 4 testing > 1 (assume 1 green)
the mistake I made is I only have testing phase. every campaign I start, I'll try to optimise. by law of average, that is road to death. 19 campaigns gonna fail. (btw, law of average is different according to affiliate level. newbie maybe 1 of 20 success. super affiliate maybe 1 of 3 success)
if you have 'initial phase', your spending would be
a) initial phase: 20*$30 = $600
b) testing phase: 4*$1000 = $4000
c) total spending: $4600
d) assuming ROI -50% throughout initial and testing phase: $2300
e) green campaign: profit $5000
f) campaign profit: $2700
my mistake without 'initial phase'. on average, i spent $750 per campaign
a) testing phase: 20*$750 = $15000
c) total spending: $15000
d) assuming ROI -70% (i'm a newbie) throughout initial and testing phase: $10500
e) green campaign: profit $5000
f) campaign profit: -$5500
it's been 3 years i'd been doing AM. I launched a lot campaigns throughout these years. In fact, I did hit 2 campaign that made me net profit over $10000 per campaign. however, overall, 3 years, I'm only getting deeper into debt. I always wonder why. I finally found the answer!!!
I'm truly grateful I found it after 3 years. Never give up guys!
super affiliate always say "launch more & more campaigns". it is very true wisdom!!! better still if they expand a bit more and explain 'initial phase' and 'testing phase'. or else, another newbie like me will launch and test every single campaign.
have fun everyone!
Originally Posted by mrpayne
Thanks so much for your comment, I am a newbie also and am interested in getting into Mobile pops.
When you say that one should launch atleast 10 camps per week, I was wondering what are some ways that one could create a different variables per camp?
For instance, I know that one can create different camps by changing the GEO as the differentiating factor, but what if I wanted to only work within 1-2 GEOs from the start (since I am new)?
I know that you can focus on making campaigns different from one another by having each campaign focus on one specific carrier, but there is only so many carriers out there...
Any other suggestions for split-testing different variables within campaigns?
Thank you for the knowledge!
Originally Posted by icepick819
From what I've learned on my journey so far, sticking to just 1-2 geos in the beginning is not a good idea. Not that it can't work but I kept my focus on just a few select geos that I wanted at first and never made much progress.
My tipping point was testing several geos for one vertical, picking the one that had the best results and continued with it.
Recently, I have been sticking to 3-5 geos and working mostly between those ONLY because I've had success with them previously and understand how to make them work. But, I still test other geos regularly.
For the best chances of finding a good campaign, I recommend these options:
Option 1:
step 1) Pick 1 Vertical (like sweepstakes, antivirus, etc)
step 2) Pick 3-5 GEO's
step 3) Grab 2-3 of the most popular landers on AdPlexity
step 4) Gather and test EVERY OFFER you can find for that vertical in those geos.
step 5) That should give you atleast 5 campaigns to test broadly.
step 6) Review the stats in detail, if there are any combinations that look promising, then test it further with more landers and offers if possible. (promising combinations are a good performing OS or Carrier or a few high performing placements)
step 7) If none of these campaigns show potential, then repeat this whole process but choose 3-5 different GEO. Keep repeating until you find a winner or until you've test as many geos as you can.
Option 2:
step 1) Instead of picking 1 vertical, instead you can pick 2 GEO's and test every type of offer you can find for them.
step 2) Group and test the offers by Vertical etc. So gather all of the Sweepstakes offers and test them for those 2 GEOs, gather all of the Antivirus offers, gather all of the gaming offers, gather all of the app install offers, gather all of the pin submits, gather all of the 1 click billing offers, etc.
step 3) gather 2-3 landers for each offer type
step 4) test and repeat in as many geos as necessary until you find something that works for you. follow the steps outlined in the previous Option 1
Your first steps should not be to focus on testing just 1 carrier, 1 geo, 1 os, etc. Although that can work, you need to be sure of your approach.
The most important part of this entire process is finding an offer that converts. I start my testing very broad, setup two test campaigns for offers.. one for wifi traffic and one for carrier traffic. Run a bunch of traffic to the offer/landers, review the stats and decide how I want to proceed. Sometimes you change your targeting to just focus on your best segments that are converting (like OS and Carrier level).
So the Initial Phase is test everything you possibly can with the goal of finding offers that convert more than once. Expect to lose -75% or more of your testing budget (with occassional exceptions)
Next, the Testing Phase is to further test the offers that you found to be converting. This is where you actually determine if the campaign has potential or not. The Initial Phase just helps you identify what GEO / Offers / Landers / Vertical you should test more. The Testing Phase is where you isolate what segments are converting and spend more budget on traffic to see if any of them really have potential. Expect to be losing -50% or more of your budget, but your best offer/lander may be doing better.
Next, if something has potential then you further test those segments, offers/landers, etc. Test more offers, test more landers, test more geos for that offer if it accepts it, etc. Otherwise, go back to the Initial Phase and test other campaigns. At this phase you should be losing -25% to -50% overall but since you sholud be focusing on just your best offer and testing other landers, gathering data and finding what placements and targeting is not working at all. Your best offer/lander should be atleast -25% or better.
Finally, if a campaign takes you to this step you are now optimizing a campaign to make it profitable. You should already be breakeven or better.
Andrew
@mrpayne
good stuff!
Listen to @mrpayne ^^^^
hey guys, just wanna update everyone on our progress after implementing 'testing phase' vs 'testing phase'.
our current goal is to launch 20 campaigns per day.
over the past few days, we managed to launch around 20+ campaigns.
after launching over 20 campaigns, we managed to find 3 'testing phase' campaign.
we are gonna spend more money on the 3 'testing phase' to try to get it to green; while continue to launch 20 campaigns per day.
thanks again to MrPayne!!!
we really learn a lot and much faster launching tons of campaign.
you can see the result below.
overall all campaigns
lesson: launch 20 campaigns, sure got few will be 'testing phase'. cannot be lazy. launch 20 campaigns per day.
campaign1
lesson: offer split-testing. offers really produce different result.
campaign2
lesson: offer split-testing.
campaign3
lesson: offer split-testing. need to test tons of offers.
as you can see from the screenshots, offer split-testing alone can really be game changer but you will not know until you launch 20 campaigns.
biggest lesson! 'initial phase' vs 'testing phase'
action to take? launch 20 campaigns per day with 'initial phase'
Hey Andrew - that's one awesome post! Thanks very much and congratulations!
Would you consider putting it in a new thread to get more eyeballs?
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...l=1#post291194
More people need to see this!
Thanks again!
Amy
@Amy - You asked, I delivered!
I have created a new thread and expanded a little more on the information I shared so that it's more of a proper tutorial.
You can find it here' http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...able-Campaigns
Hope it helps others and we can continue the discussion there.
Cheers!
Andrew
Originally Posted by mrpayne
Amy
Home > Paid Traffic Sources > Mobile