How do you decide on what placement to run? (16)
Is there a best practice I should follow when choosing a placement type to run my ads?
I see a lot of threads discussing about cutting placements but none about choosing placements.
Should I just chose any placement available and test it out?
or
Should I test out the same ads in multiple placements and see which works best?
Any advice you guys can give me I'd really appreciate it.
Hey Victor.
Most of us run RON (Run Of Network) which means we run on all placements available.
Then once we get enough data we decide what to do next.
We can cut bad placements ie. do blacklisting or we can run the best performing placements ie. whitelisting.
It's a bit expensive technique to run on RON, but int the end you can examine all placements and find your own gems.
So there's no best practice to follow when choosing a placement?
Just chose any placement available, or RON, and see which one Performs best for you?
What kind of traffic you plan to run on? If it's pops then the above is the case most of the times.
The thing is that most of the time you anyway run "blind" because traffic sources do not reveal what site is behind the placement, so the placement for you is just a meaningless number until you run traffic to it.
I''ll be running display traffic in adult vertical.
So there really is no rule that people follow or a way of figuring out which placement type would be best to run on?
Basically, just chose one and test it out?
Would it be a good idea to test a couple placement at the same time (2-3) with the same funnel to find the one that works best?
Hope you don't mind all the Q's, I'm just a bit confused on this atm.
I do appreciate your help, Erik.
Thank you.
Okay, so adult display.
On traffic sources like Exoclick you have one extra option though - they have option to choose premium placements.
These are selected and quality placements where you can expect better results than on some random RON placement.
Also regarding "placement type" you will have different ad positions - the most of the times the more the placement is on the eye, the bigger chance visitors will see it.
In this case you should test out placement A and B which are mostly on the right hand side of the video players.
I did run adult display some long time ago, so I believe some adult affiliates will chime in soon to point you in the right direction regarding placement types, but in the end you will still have to do the work yourself and do proper testing as sometimes other placements may be more hidden, but cheaper and therefore they could work out.
Thanks for your help, Erik.
I had a feeling there was no way of figuring out which placement would be best to run on, but I just had to hear it from someone else.
What about when choosing a site to run on?
Would you say it's the same, just choose a site with enough volume and test it out?
For "site" I mean like on TrafficJunky they offer a variety of sites to choose from. How do I decide on which one to run on.
Any tips you or anyone else can share would be nice.
Thx
Hello again Victor!
You are looking for answers that are not easy to give as there are no fixed rules to follow here. But I will try to give you a few pointers.
First of all, you need to understand the difference between using RON and targeting particular sites or even spots on sites. When you pick RON, you will get traffic from a TON of sites, which isn't a problem alone, but also from very different types of zones. So NTV zones, in-video, footers, homepage cubes ... the problem is, all of them have different CTRs, different competition levels and different traffic quality. Another problem is, that networks like exo have several 10.000s of sites in their portfolio and tons of them are cheating webs with bot traffic. This makes this traffic hard to optimize so you should only try it once you are experienced enough. NOTE : the smaller the network is, the easier it is.
Targeting a limited amount of sites is better for anyone who is starting out. The really large sites are not cheaters, so you don't have to worry about bots - they will still be there but that's as good as it gets. The sites are legit, that's all that matters. Wherever possible, target the same zones in one campaign, do not mix footer spots with NTVs in one campaing. In case of very large sites, make one campaign PER PLACEMENT!
When choosing what sites to run on, you can use one of 3 factors so to speak : niche, GEO and size. Promoting a fetish dating offer? Choose fetish sites. Want to promote russian dating offers, try to search for local russian sites. Have a certain budget in mind that is not so big, stay away from sites like xhamster that will burn your budget in an hour. You can also mix these factors in some case. And you can ignore all of them and simply try whatever is available and let the data decide.
The last option is usually the most used by with advanced marketers, you simply take what is available and run tests that match your budget limits. Then you try to find offers that work with that kind of traffic.
When I was starting out, I tried to focus on all the details : right niche, right GEO breakdown, right spots, matching colors, banners similar to the site, consistent funnel ... then I realized adult is about volume so I threw in the towel 
After some years of running adult, we (me and my team) already know what sites are solid and reliable, so when testing something, we start on those. Once we have a promising funnel, we simply take it to whatever sources we are currently using and test it everywhere
You mentioned traffic junky - this is a solid source and it's a good idea to start testing there.
Good luck!
Hey Matuloo,
Thank you so much for your post. I really needed this right now.
I'd like to start a campaign soon but I'm going through analysis paralysis. I'm over-thinking every little detail, so much that I've spend this whole week just trying to get everything perfect for a campaign.
Deep down I know that I can't get everything right before I start the campaign, but I just can't get it out of my brain that I NEED to run through every little detail before I press the "Launch Campaign" button so I don't waste any money.
I will choose one placement/site and let the data decide if it's the correct place to be running on, it not then I will move on to different placements and test them out.
I've already chosen a site & placement to test my campaign on. I have everything ready and will begin testing tomorrow.
And yes, I will be starting out on TrafficJunky as I've heard it's a good place to start and the quality of traffic isn't that bad.
Also, thank you for this tip
Originally Posted by matuloo
Thanks again, Matuloo.
Don't overthink and launch, you will loose money anyways. Set a small daily budget and simply spend it Actually having a running campaign will clear a lot of the confusion you are facing now. There is no other way of dealing with this, just launch something.
What kind of offers are you going to run actually?
I'll be running adult dating offers (milfs - to be specific). I'll be split testing 2 offers.
Ok, MILFs is a general niche so to speak, it's such a broad appeal niche that it's not actually a niche anymore This can work anywhere to some extent, older woman usually pull older guys too, so it doesn't produce so much lead quality problems.
I would suggest to prepare more offers for testing in case these two fail and also do not forget to test the various offer urls in case there are more than one.
I actually have 3 offers that I wanted to split test, but decided on just 2 since I have a small budget. So I have another offer that I will test when one of the first 2 fails.
Yes, I also will be testing the different offer landing pages.
Thanks for your help, Matuloo.
Originally Posted by victor s
Thanks for the tips, Matuloo.
I will reach out to my AM and ask him about the offer. It's a good idea, never thought of it, thank you.
I started a campaign two days ago with two offers, so far both offers have the same amount of conversions so I can't cut an offer just yet. But when I do, how many offer URL's do you think I should split test? Should I do 2 at a time, or more?
Originally Posted by victor s
In reality, if there are 5, I start with 2-3 and in case at least one of them shows promise, I will retest the rest. If all of them fail, I usually move on to another offer. Differences between the URLs can be pretty big, but the offer has to convert even with the poor ones. So it's unlikely that 3 urls suck and 1 will suddenly kill it.
Home > The Newbie Zone > Questions and Answers