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WTF am I even doing? (pops/redirects)(sweeps) (26)

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Hey STM

I'm preparing to launch my first campaign and I still really don't 100% know what I'm doing, but its slowly coming along. Just taking things one step at a time. I finally know enough to at least launch a campaign. I'm doing this follow along for feedback on mistakes that I'm making, what I'm doing wrong, things I'm doing right, and what I should be doing to improve. Looking to grow with you guys and have to ability to return the favor to others.

So lets get right to it.

I'm working with sweepstakes offers doing pops/redirects. The geo I want to start out in is MY.

So here are the steps I've done.

-Cloudhosting for my landing pages
-Signed up with 3 networks
-Got 3 recommend offers from 1 of the networks
-5 landing pages
-Translated everything (this was a headache)
-Setup Voluum tracking (postback url, offer setup, landers setup, traffic source setup) (not 100% sure I did everything correctly)

I have everything ready to go but I needed to submit my landers for approval for these offers so now I'm just waiting. Hopefully my landers come back ok and I won't have to edit anything. My campaigns are completely transparent as I have no clue about cloaking and such.

The breakdown:

Geo: MY
Vertical: Sweeps
Payout: $2.00
Traffic: Mobile pops/redirects
Traffic Source: PopAds
Offers: 3
Landers: 5
budget: Depends but $25 a day seems like a good starting point.


Lets see where this goes. First initial goal.... just get profitable lol

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Subscribed!!! Good luck bro

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Hope you are using creatives that you ripped from adplexity or other spy tools.

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3 offers x 5 landing pages is not really enough for a $25 budget especially for MY where the payouts are in the $2-3 range, so hope you can raise it after the first run.

Good note also from @draper - having a good landing pages is a crucial.

Good luck and let us know your progress!

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Thanks, hopefully this follow along with provide some kind of value to help others out.

Yup all the pages have been ripped. It's kind of difficult because 90% of the pages look like they are probably cloaked. So I either have to find one that looks to be compliant or modify one to remove all the good stuff from the page that may have made the lander a winner. Only testing these landers will tell.

What I'm going for when testing is anything over $1.00 to be payout x 3 per lander. The offers are like you mentioned $2.00 payouts. Comes to around $90. I was under the assumption that you should spend $90 total on the campaign to see which offers and landers show potential not $90 per day. So for me $25 for 4 days to reach the $90-$100 to determine which landers and offers are going to stay. Please correct me if I'm wrong here.

Just a minor update.

Haven't heard anything back about the landers so I probably wont be able to run anything until after the weekend which sucks but eh... ill update if anything happens.

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Oooh, sorry I didn't noticed it's per day! My fault, I assumed it was your total budget for this test. Yes, $90 should give you some picture!

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This technique is often wrong..
It is good only in ideal environment and very high quality traffic. Not for Pops.

For example, you spend 100$ for tests. 5 LP, 2 offers.
But...
50-60-70% traffic came from one publisher.
50-60-70% traffic came from Opera/UC or other unsupported browser.
50-60-70% traffic came from unsupported Carrier.
Also possible the variant that only one offer working.
As a result, your stats went very bad (mb -90% ROI) and blurred.

Start campaign. Spend 20-30-50$, block only bad publisher.
Again spend small budget, and again block publisher width small CTR. Not block publisher with 0 conversions.
I also use a trap for bots. preLP width js/meta redirect. This will stop the bots and save the budget.
After that, it is possible to block publishers with 0 conversions.
But .. Once you find the best LP and offer, you need to try return pubs that you're banned before.

Good luck

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CAn you plase give us the script that blocks the bots? and how to use it??

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I'm not sure what language you translated.... but English is a primary language in Malaysia. I would suggest trying that first.

For your first campaign I wouldn't worry about a script for bots, just try to cut placements where the click through rate on the lander is low, or the isp is amazon, google or a similar data centre. Over time you will learn to identify these easily

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No worries. I'll try and be more clear with my future updates.

To make sure I understand what you're saying. I don't need to not worry about spending $100 first to optimize. Instead I should first spend $20-$50. Look at the data and block the bad publishers with low CTR. Then spend 20-$50 more and continue blocking publishers with low CTR. If the CTR is decent even though it hasn't produced any conversions don't block it. Run for a little longer with another $50 and this should give me an idea of what pubs are working, and I can now block the pubs which are producing 0 or vary low conversions?

My question is. How long should this testing last? Should it go something like this...
Day 1 $50 spend: Block bad pubs.
Day 2 $50 spend block more bad pubs with low CTR.
Day 3 $50 spend: block pubs with 0 to low conversions.
Day 4 $50 spend: Start looking at which landers and offers are doing good and eliminate the low performing ones.
Day 5 and upward keep optimizing landers and offers until I get the winning combo?

With the prelander JS script for bots. I think I may have seen this before but not sure if its the code you're talking about. I don't want to post bad info on here so I will pm you the code and you can tell me if this is correct.

I translated the pages to Malay. From spying most of the landers were in Malay but there a few who weren't. I ripped some of the popular landers that where already translated in Malay, and took a couple from English speaking countries and had them translated to Malay using one hour translation. From spying I assumed that people where having better results with their pages in Malay. I will have no prob switching things back over to English if that's what's recommended. Its just always time consuming to do so sometimes.

How do you know if an ISP is coming from amazon and such. Will this info be displayed in Voluum?

I'll take these recommendations and make the necessary adjustments:
New campaign test budget strategy
Change pages that where translated to Malay back to English, and have the Malay ones translated to English.

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Hope you didn't think I just vanished before I've started. Not gonna happen lol.

So here's an update.

I have everything ready to go but I'm still wanting for my landers to be approved. There has been some delays that I didn't see coming with this process. My first creatives where rejected because of the wording. Had to make changes and resubmit. I have access to 3 different networks but I'm trying to start out building a solid relationship with 1. My AM manager has been super helpful during all of this.

Couple things I wanted to ask for opinions.

- Is this whole "approve" landing page the norm or is mainly for sweep offers? I can see how this will impact performance and the ability to continually launch campaigns if I have to wait and submit my creatives every time I make changes.

- Is the sticking with 1 network and building relations with them a good strategy when starting out? I'm thinking in terms of reaching the weekly payouts and maybe get access to exclusive offers later on

- I realize that I need to play a different game as most of the landers I see are non compliant. I need to capture the visitors attention with different tactics. So I have created new headlines and such. Should I began testing the original but now edited version of the lander first, or should I use the landers with my spin on things and if it does well test it against the original edited one as an A/B test to see which one performs better?

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-"Approve" landing page is the norm across all niches, not just sweeps/pops mobile networks. The compliance team/your AM has many pubs they have to deal with. Try to get him on skype, and send an email to him every-time you launch a new ad to get their attention. I recommend you to visit affiliate summit west (ASW) in January to be friends with your AM (and possibly the network AM if they're there). This can help fastrack all your creatives.

-You don't need to commit to one network. Go with the one with the good offer and payout per country GEO so you can reach profitability. Then you can experiment with the riskier offers on the network you want to commit to, to get access to exclusive offers later. The exclusive offers is overstated, and if you have a good relation with your rep, he can vouch to have you try the good offers. You don't need historically good performance to unlock that. It's mostly up to your relationship with your rep and his vouch for you.

-Test the original so you can get baseline benchmarks, before taking a risk with your landers. Then you can compare the two.

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English is well spoken in big cities like KL. But if you use tracker like Voluum, you can keep both language versions of the LPs and redirect by language rules to the right one.
So if the user has EN as primary language then it will go to EN lander and vice versa.

It's a good idea in regards of cashflow, your goal is get to weeklies ASAP.
On the other isde don't limit yourself just to 1 network, another step is you should take is to spread out quickly as well, so you get access to bigger inventories of offers.

The name of the game as mentioned many time around is: Imitate and then innovate.

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Good NEW's!

Landing pages approved, but for only 2 offers. I will be applying for other networks to get access to more offers. I have one iPhone 7 and one iPhone 6s offer. I edited all my pages to reflect this. I will run the iPhone 7 campaign first, then the 6s.

Quick question - How does the URL setup for popads work? I have 4 landers. I setup a campaign in Voluum that rotates evenly between these 4 landers to the offer. Am I supposed to use the Single URL and put my Voluum link in the campaign setup in popads, or do I need create separate campaigns for each lander and use that url for the Multiple URL option?

I will start updating this ASAP when the campaign starts with screenshots of stats and such.

Edit here is the option I'm referring to in pop ads

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I'm running into some unexpected problems.

So my offer only accepts carrier Umobile, TuneTalk & XOX 3G+WIFI

Here is my connetion speed targeting


Looking at the ISP providers all I see is Umobile


It says that I will receive less than 1000 impressions if I only choose this but over 82000 impressions if I leave all ISP's.

I don't want spend money on traffic that the offer doesn't accept. Am I missing something here?

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If you already choose ISP you can ignore the connection speeds targeting.
Regarding TuneTalk and XOX, they are hard as they belong under Celcom and they are detected as Celcom, so you won't know if its actually TuneTalk (XOX) or no.

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LETS GO!

Campaign launched on Popads now I'm just waiting for approval. There is a lot more to this AM game then what I initially thought. Doing everything solo is defiantly time consuming but I'm realizing how all the pieces fit together. I have an iPhone 7, and 6s offer. I was intally planing on running these 2 offers together, but all my pages are tailored toward the iPhone 7. It wouldn't be a fair test. So I tweaked the 4 landers and change all images text for the iPhone 6s offer and will launch it separately to see what happens.

Need more offers so I signed up will 3 other networks and waiting to hear back from them. I wanted to test more offers in this camp but its all I have to work with right now.

First launch camp updated details

- Traffic Popads
- Offer 1 iPhone 7 pin submit $2.00
- Geo MY
- Budget: $25 daily spend but set the budget to $50 just to gauge how much traffic I get for $25 without accidentally going over $50.
- 4 Landers

I'm only targeting 1 carrier. The offers other carriers aren't available on Popads. I'm checking with my AM network to see if other carriers may be accepted. Popads said I may receive less than 1000 impressions with my targeting. I don't have a strategy bidding CPM/CPC wise. Looked through the forum but didn't come across anything that talked much about it. So it just put a CPM of what I thought may be a good price for CPM.

Lets ride this out and see what happens.

PS...I'll like me some feedback of what I need to include in this follow along so it will be more easier and friendly to follow. I will try and be as transparent as possible with what I do.

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Do you know what kind of flow this offer has? 2$ seems rather low actually for MY. Might help to simply get a bump from your AM. You should aim for 2.5/ 2.6$ Can already make a huge difference for this campaign.

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Campaign approved and launched!

Thanks for the targeting suggestion. I did some research and saw that Celcom has shares in Tunetalk. Thought therfor it would be ok to target celcom user also. Just to make sure I asked my AM to verify with the advertiser but haven't heard anything from the AM in a couple days. So to be on the safe side and not just throw money away I left celcom out.

Its an Click2SMS on mobile, MO flow on desktop. I'm only targeting mobile users. I can hardly get an answer from AM's since being the low hanging fruit right now. Asking for a bump would probably be kinda silly for me not having a proven track record yet.

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Update

Just received an email. Application denied from Neverblue (GlobalWide Media). Its all good. Moving on

Campaign been running for around 6 hours now on popads and have only received 26 visits...

I'm obviously setting up my targeting wrong. Maybe I'm misunderstanding the offers accepted carriers?


Popads only had 1 carrier available that the offer accepts which is Umoblie. Popads estimated that I'll receive less than 1000 impressions per day. Of course Popads have a host of other ISP's available. If I start sending traffic from ISP's that the offer doesn't accept. That would be like throwing money away as they wouldn't convert or I wont get credited for the conversion correct?

Environment Targeting: Android


ISP Umobile


Final Estimated Traffic


So what am I doing wrong here. What am I missing or misunderstanding when it comes to targeting carriers for traffic?

*Edit* Wanted to add that frquency is 1/24 hours. PrimeSpot only

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Hey,

that's weird.

I just tried to recreate your campaign so I set:
Country: Malaysia
OS: Android (all available versions)
Bid: $0.005 ($5 CPM
Cap: default
Carrier: Umobile
Device type: all

Result: 5000 visits

If I limit myself only to Smartphones it still shows me 4000 visits. Tested both PrimeSpot and all, still same numbers.

So you probably have something else checked? Maybe you did Society or Category targeting?

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Ok I see why we had different results now. In category I have only "general" sites added. This offer doesn't allow adult traffic. When I added all of the adult category I got your same results as well.

Kinda stumped here. Should I just move onto another traffic source?

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Most of the traffic on pops will be adult related. I leave the decision on you. ;-)

Redirects - yes most networks now have geo redirects in place, so it's sometimes difficult to see the real offers, but it doesn't mean they are dead. Good thing is that you double checked with your AM, so all should be good.

Yeah, probably combination of back button script that goes to the offer and then again back to the LP and so on.

It should be statistically significant or just follow a rule of thumb like: spend 3x of offer payout per each lander. If it doesn't do well kill it.

In this particular case I would look after another offer. Also make sure you target to correct carriers. (double check the terms/conditions on the offer page as sometimes networks screw up the carrier targeting in description, saw this lot of times especially in MY)

Wow that was fast. But don't worry, this happen to all of us. You need to replace your domain.Just buy a bunch of cheap domains and be ready for this next time.

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Lets just say I... setup a camp including adult traffic. Does the advertiser actually know that it came from an adult site?

So if I have 2 offers 4 landers. 1 being $1.68 and the other $2.00. I add the offers together $3.68 x 3 = $11.04 x 4 = $44.16. So I would spend $44 first to see if there's potential. And if not move on. My question is. Is this a budget rule for testing on traffic sources or universal? Say I spend $50 on this campaign with traffic source A and it fails. Should I also try another traffic source with the same camp and the same testing budget?


I triple checked everything and there is nothing on the page about any carriers or restrictions. I thought it was weird myself as all the other networks have the carriers listed. The 2 conversions I had are from the same carrier. I just checked through about a dozen more pin submit offers and none of them have the carriers listed either. I will send the network a message and see what they say.


Yup manu_adefy awared me about this issue. Have 10 domains ready now lol.

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If you use DMR (Double Meta Refresh) ie. your referrer is removed, there is no way to know for them.

It is universal, but please understand that this is more like a rule of thumb.

You must understand that when you are starting out on a new traffic source where you have no blacklists and they have lot of placements, it can end up badly, but in real if you would have the lists you could make it green.

But if it behaves very badly, like -85-90% or so, there is a high chance it won't work on another source as well.

Yeah, better to double check, because these things change quite often. Some carriers are paused for a while, then they come back after few weeks or months and with so many offers in place, networks can make mistakes as well. If 1 carrier converted you can focus on it as you know for sure it works. (but 2 conversions are not statistically significant)

Haha, great!

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Yo Update!

Joined another network with a great responsive AM. Got in touch, and immediately approved for some offers.

I've been hustling learning how to better improve landing page speeds. Figuring all rules and things you can do with Voluum. Voluum is one hell of a tracker. I never knew how many things this tracker can do for your camps. Everyday I'm trying to improve more.

I've launched a camp and have collected some data over the past 2 days but I'm not sure what to think yet.

I'm exclusively focused on MY doing PIN sweeps. Here is my setup

GEO - MY
Vertical - Sweeps
Traffic Source - Popads
Offers - 5
Landers - 8
Payout ($2, $2, $2.80, $2, $1.68)
Testing Budget $25

What I did with this campaign was use a budget of average payout = x10 (believe I read this from Mr.Braun.) So an initially testing budget of $25 for this camp for testing. If I went with the offer x 3 per lander. I would have to spend around $250 for this camp which I think would be too much.

Results of day 1
$25 spend
6,574 visits
607 clicks
1 conversion
End result -$23
Profit -88.66%


What's funny is that the lander plus offer that converted was the one that I didn't think would convert.

Lander stats




Offer Stats




ROI for the first day says -88%. It says my spend is 17.64 but popads reads 25$ so the ROI is actually worse. I didn't think I got enough data to start optimizing. I got at least got a conversion so lets run this 1 more day. Same budget. Same BID and see what happens.

Day 2 results
$25 spend
7059 visits
629 clicks
1 conversion
End Result -$23
ROI -89.65%

Landers






Offers




About the same amount of traffic. The SAME offer but different lander converted this time.

Summarize plus my thoughts...

After $50 spend I made $4.00 back. The same offer converted both times but with different landers. The same carrier is responsible for both conversions. Whats getting me is that 1 conversion came from mobile and the other from Tablet. In volume I setup a rule to redirect tablet traffic to a redirect offer. I guess I setup it up wrong and the tablet came through and converted on the offer anyways?!

Bidding is interesting. I have found that it might be better to start running traffic during waking hours of the targeted GEO you're in. I overlooked it but it does seem to have an impact. I tried launch a few camps and didn't realize I was running them during that GEO'S sleeping hours = No conversions. I switched to waking hours and I get these conversions

There is usually an "average" bid. But around waking hours in the GEO the average starts to shoot up. I placed my bid for the average I usually see since there was no way I was going to be bidding the top price. Low and behold conversions...

After looking I'm not sure if this camp is something I should even try optimizing. 8 landers tested. 5 offers tested. $50 spend, 2 conversions for $4.00. ROI somewhere in the -90% range. Is this even worth to optimize or do I move on?

I'm not sure if I'm heading down the right path in AM right now. Do I need to branch out to more GEO'S? I was sticking with the whole 1 vertical, 1 GEO thing.

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