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New Campaign Questions (12)

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We've run about 8-10 campaigns focusing on Tier 3 Markets (2 Geo's to be specific, TH and IN). The campaigns are Video and Gaming. We used the Newbie Guide by VORTEX to set everything up and still have the same numbers in play. (highly recommended; it's a great guide to get started! Thanks VORTEX!)

We've got tracking working, verified that Ads do actually show up with our Voluum Campaign Link and the numbers correlate between Voluum and Propeller (still have minor discrepancies, not 1:1, but nothing too major).

We have had only 1 offer show any sign of revenue (Mobidea AM says we should expect to convert 1/188 through DL, however we converted 1/1300).
$0.81 for $10 worth of Traffic Source.

What we have:
Traffic Source: PropellerAds
Affiliate Network: Mobidea
Tracker: Voluum

What's a minimum CPM number we should use(per geo tier, if possible)?

The primary reason for the ask is twofold, first, obviously to see if we are doing this correctly, but second and most important, so that we have data to optimize campaigns effectively (optimization is the next exercise).

The CPM on PropellerAds is $2.33, Daily Budget and Ad Budget are both $10.

Also in Propeller, I'll see Impressions at 2,200 at one time, and then drop to 1,600 a few hours later (I have screenshots). This is quite confusing to me. Has anyone seen this before?

-TIA for your input/thoughts/advice

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The CPMs depend on current competition levels, so it's absolutely impossible to give you rates per tier that you should use. I can only tell you, that you will usually get the most bang for your buck, when oscillating around the 2nd, 3th or 4th spot in the bidding chain. You can shoot for the top bid with super strong funnels.

This is kind of an universal advice, that works to some extent on all traffic sources. The problem is, most sources don't show the position so you have to guess where you are.

Anyways, you need to do 2 things now -

1. have you run any kind of bot check? If you're buying BOTs, all other advice is useless.
2. check whether you have some large and poor placements sending you a lot of traffic. In many cases, there will be 2 or 3 placements that nobody wants to buy from and you will get plenty of hits from them, which will drain your budget and again help you none. In some cases, it's coming from one or a bunch of IPs, which would be a BOT signal again.

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How can we check for Bots with Direct Links? Does PropellerAds or Voluum have a way?

Good Advice! We've been delving into a way to collect more stats from Users and now this whole BOT world is starting to make sense. I can only guess that there are few if any ways to deter both with Direct Linking but if there are, where can we start?

- Thank you

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We have a ton of threads about bot detection here on STM already, but usually I send people to start with this guide by Caurmen : https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...n-Any-Campaign

It works for direct-linked campaigns, it only adds one more redirect, check it out

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Very nice! Taking action is always good, and the first campaign is always the hardest to set up!

Matuloo is right about bot traffic - but for carrier traffic this will be much, much less of a concern. This is because it's difficult to fake carrier traffic without using SIM cards connected to the specific carriers, whereas to simulate wifi traffic, anyone could fire up a software from their desktop to start visiting any site disguised as a human. (He must have thought you were running wifi traffic - but my guess is you're targeting carrier if you're following that newbie tutorial?)

This method is very easy to execute, but this is a double-edged sword - because it's so simple, lots of people are trying to do it, so competition is high. Therefore, you may need to test more offers before finding profits. $0.81 revenue after $10 in costs is not great, but let's see what we can learn from this camp.

How many conversions have you made? And could you please show some placement (i.e. "zone") stats? Please sort zone stats by decreasing impressions, and also by decreasing conversions in a separate screenshot.

As for the decrease in traffic during different hours - that's normal. 2 main causes: 1)Competition is always changing, so if there are more people bidding higher for example, then more traffic would go to them; 2)Your local audience may be working or sleeping or are otherwise occupied during certain hours of day.

Looking forward to more stats!



Amy

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Hey Vortex, quick question. Seems like I am in a similar stage of the campaign process. Majority (if not all of my campaigns) are 3G for the time being, I am not running any wifi traffic. In those cases is it necessary to do the bot testing? I know you mentioned it is a less of a concern, but double checking.

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I don't personally do bot testing for carrier traffic. Bot tests I've done in the past have shown that the % of bot traffic in carrier traffic was so small that it wasn't worth doing a bot test for.

Have you heard of afflow? https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...utorial-Part-1

The afflow system will automatically analyze the traffic of each placement (if you pass the placement token to it) and show us the % of bot traffic it has. Based on afflow stats I had collected myself 3-4 months back, and also stats that 6WAMC students have been showing me, the same trend hasn't changed to date.

So I'd suggest to just skip bot testing if you're just running carrier traffic.



Amy

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Amy is right, BOTs are way less of an issue with carrier traffic, so you can pass on the bot test for now. Make sure to analyze the data anyways and look for the signals I mentioned in my first reply : many clicks from a limited amount of placements or IPs.

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We seem to be having a huge discrepancy in the number we're seeing on Voluum. We've thrown up 10 campaigns already but not many conversions with the offers we've been testing. For one specific offer we've been testing, we have over 3000 impressions with no conversions. Our tracking has gotten the ok from both mobi and propeller and we're getting all the impressions registered via Voluum. So, our questions would be:
1) Is it normal to have over 3000 impressions with no conversions (We've already surpassed 10-15x our payout)?

We did a test from Idea Cellular and noticed that majority of the traffic we got back when we ran a lander looked like it came from bot traffic (this is test #2).

The other 3 ESDS, Infusion360 and Digital, are part of PropellerAds testing the ad before it goes live (I think).


What's odd is that when we ran the same test last week, we got over 3000 impressions and all of them came back as single visits (this is test #1).


The main difference between test #1 and #2 is the landing page.


Test #1: No landing page, 1:1 visits
Test#2: Landing page (bot traffic redirect), appears to draw more bot traffic.


I'm confused as to how to interpret these results and proceed. Any help would be appreciated...




2) Propeller is showing significantly less impressions than Voluum. Can you suggest as to any reasons why?

Thank you so much, Amy!

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Unfortunately, this is all too normal.

It's about minimizing spend on testing each offer, but casting a wide net by testing lots of offers.

As long as you've verified from Mobidea's stats that the traffic is going to the intended offers, you'd be fine.


I'm confused as well - could you please elaborate? Some screenshots would be nice as well.

What's your landing page like? Is it just a bot testing script?

And what do you mean by 'single visits'?


You'll almost always (if not always) see this trend of decreasing impressions from the traffic network to the tracker to the affiliate network.

Somehow, you "lose" traffic when going from traffic source to tracker to aff network. This is referred to as "clickloss".

Less than 20-30% difference is normal - above that, you'll need to figure out why.

One of the common causes is slow lander/offer loading speed or slow tracker redirection speed. If you're using Voluum then there's not much more you can do to improve redirection speed. What kind of lander are you running and have you done a speed test?


Lastly: Just noticed that you tried to attach some images to your post? Uploading images as post attachment is very hit and miss, and even when it works the images show up small. Consider giving imgur.com a try - just grab the bbcode version of the link and past that directly into the post and you'd be all set. Images will appear nice and big too.



Amy

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Great that makes sense. I actually have not heard of afflow until you just mentioned it. I will give the thread a read! Thank you

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Afflow isn't very relevant to what you're doing actually. However, if/when you start running wifi traffic, afflow can be used as a bot testing tools - either send an initial burst of traffic to afflow, or a percentage of your campaign's traffic to afflow, and it will tell you how much bot traffic each placement has, so you can blacklist the bot placements (e.g. 70% or 80%+).



Amy

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