Which bidding type would you choose for adult dating/ME banners? Smart CPM or CPC? (7)
Which bidding type would you choose for adult dating/ME banners? Smart CPM or CPC?
Male enhancement banners usually get really low CTR. So which bidding type do you think would be the best choice for these banners? CPC or (Smart) CPM? The actual cost per click would be very high if the banner's CTR is very low and bidding type is CPM. I can choose CPC and bid low but the problem here is that the ad networks put CPC campaigns at the back of the queue behind CPM campaigns!
What about adult dating banners? Those get higher CTR when they are animated but I would get terrible CTR from my landing page to the offer link as those banners with video animations don't really represent an adult dating service. They just become misleading thus get a lot more clicks.
So what would be your primary choice for these types of banners and why?
I'll wait for matuloo to come back from vacation - he's the adult expert.
In the meantime - here's my 2 cents:
When bidding CPC, focus on getting high CR, AND high CTR IF the traffic source rewards high CTR with lower actual CPC.
When bidding CPM, focus on getting high CR only.
Ultimately, it's CR that will make you money, and not CTR. But in the case where you're bidding CPC, higher CTR will typically be rewarded with lower costs and more traffic volume, which makes CTR more of a priority than it would be otherwise. But even then, CR would still be important.
I remember when I was a newbie running adult banners, I came up with what I thought was an awesome angle. That batch of banners fetched unprecedentedly-high CTRs - which made the traffic network assign large traffic volumes to them. Sounds terrific right? The sad thing was that these banners didn't convert - so all the traffic increase only served to make my losses all the worse. That was a good lesson I'd never forget: High CTR is useless if CR is too low.
Rather than trying to figure out how to handle all these variables (CTR vs. CR, CPC vs. CPM, static vs. animated banners...) and design a strategy accordingly, another way to approach this would be to just test broad and let the stats tell you. i.e. Throw static and animated banners of all different angles, high/low CTRs, at both CPC and CPM camps. Then just optimize for each camp separately based on ROI: Look for trends as to what type of banners are doing the best ROI, then design the next batch of banners accordingly.
For ME products - have you tested text ads? I had good results with those on Exoclick way back when. Have no idea how they're performing now, but may be worth a test.
Have fun!
Amy
I understand that CR is what ultimately matters but what if my banners' CTR is generally very low which results in very high actual cost per click, assuming the bidding type is CPM? Let's say $0.50-$0.90 per click for some premium top positioned spots on Exoclick and with minimum (Smart) CPM bid for a tier 1/2 country. That cost per click sounds too much for me to let the campaign run even if I still don't have enough conversions to start the optimization process. But the thing is if I choose CPC bidding then with those low CTR banners I will get very little impressions after the cast period from Exoclick is done. I mean that period in which Exoclick tests the newly uploaded banners and finds out the banners are not hot enough.
So would you change your banners to misleading animated ones (even though your CTR on LP would drop significantly) and bid CPM for enough impressions or keep bidding CPC and instead just re-upload the banners, duplicate campaigns, etc in order to get enough impressions and still pay the minimum?
Hello Kian!
BTW: Thanks for helping out while I was gone Amy 
First of all, I wrote an article about bidding, please read it, it should clear a few things for you : https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...-method-to-use
Now to your questions. Misleading banners are not working with some verticals, while they might give you decent results with properly designed carrier billing offers, they certainly won't work with a dating or male enhancement offer - these have to result into sales sooner or later and that's not gonna happen with misleading banners ... you might score a few leads, but the lead-to-sale ratio will be horrible.
You need to realize one thing about the current situation in the adult space - dating is what works the best with it, so the bids are set based on dating campaigns performance. If you can't beat dating advertisers with male enhancement offers, well then you simply cannot compete with them and you need to look for sources/placements where they are not present. Or try to improve your funnels and get higher payouts. One way or another, you need to work with non misleading (not to much misleading) banners in order to get decent CVRs.
The problem with networks that offer both CPM and CPC bidding is that, as you said yourself, they favor the CPM system as it is more effective for them. There is also one problem with CPC, the bot placements usually have a higher CTR, which means you are at risk of getting flooded with such traffic.
Speaking for myself : I prefer CPM over CPC everytime, especially when they have the SMART option available too.
Got more questions? Ask away
But in the end, any efforts you make to increase the CTR will only be beneficial assuming you're not decreasing the CR at the same time by the same amount or more.
And making misleading banners can give you that undesirable result.
Ultimately it's down to testing more banners to see what will give you better ROI - more angles, more designs, more headlines, more images.
Also - a way to increase CTR without compromising on CR, would be to make the ad more relevant to each audience.
e.g. 1: Use different designs when targeting different publisher sites, to make the banner blend-in better with its surroundings (same color and text etc. - make sure doing so won't go against the TOS of the traffic network or the target site).
e.g. 2: Use different angles to target different categories. This is commonly used in adult dating. For ME you'll need to get creative and do some testing.
Another tip: Certain ME COD offers can convert very well in certain geos, but make sure you test a few networks. The initial network I ran with, I got lots of leads but very few of them turned into sales because (I suspected that) the call center had dropped the ball - visitors probably weren't being called within a sufficiently short time period after leaving their contact information. A friend of mine did a test by leaving his own contact info, and didn't get a call until 5 days later (!!!) That was what had probably killed my lead-to-sale CR.
If you do try COD offers, make sure to ask for a schedule of their call centres in the target geo, and to run traffic within those hours only (and probably stop an hour or two before the end-of-day), to avoid delays in your leads receiving the verification calls.
Sorry for having given you outdated information - it's been quite a while since I last ran text ads on there!
The new native format introduced earlier this year would certainly be worth a test though!
Amy
If you do try COD offers, make sure to ask for a schedule of their call centres in the target geo, and to run traffic within those hours only (and probably stop an hour or two before the end-of-day), to avoid delays in your leads receiving the verification calls.
Originally Posted by kian_superaff
https://www.offervault.com/cash+on+d...iate-programs/
Here are some networks I remember have COD offers (in addition to Adcombo which you've mentioned):
Leadbit
Affiliaxe
BizProfits
ReflexCash
Gotzha
Terraleads
Zetaniche
(Disclaimer: STM does not endorse any aff networks - please join at your discretion.)
Hope that helps!
Amy
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