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Newbie wants to get filthy rich with display banners! (17)

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Hello STMers,

After practicing with popups for 6 weeks continuously I feel it is time to step-up a bit and start with banners at Google Display Network.
It took a lot of effort to get those popup-campaigns profitable (now $$/day) and I think with the same effort I can make $$$/day with banners.

However all posts on STM are at least a year old, is there anyone using GDN in a profitable way here on STM?

To start I've an antivirus-product that does not allow blackhat-stuff, so I have to go whitehat all the way.
It is mainly desktop-oriented.

What is the best way to setup my campaigns?

1 - Throw up the banners in GDN, redirect to tracker, and direct to afflow to check for bot traffic, or is GDN good enough to start without this step, or is it simply useless?
2 - Which formats are most important?
3 - How many banners should I use for the first tests?
4 - Any pitfalls I have to think off

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GDN is possibly the hardest platform to run "black hat" so you're going to run into a ton of issues. Naturally, google won't be too happy about you running antivirus even if it's clean so you will have to ...

1) get a cloaker
2) understand no redirect cloaking
3) figure out how to create a stream of new google accounts
4) find a bank that can give you multiple credit cards with different billing addresses
5) deal with a lot of issues like sourcing resident IP addresses etc
6) create well built out clean sites with content
7) spend $1000's warming up accounts on clean spend

Sounds like you're starting to make the magic happen in pops, so i would suggest doubling down on your efforts there. Master a new vertical, try new pop traffic sources, get bumped on your offers for extra $$$

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Thanks Nickpeplow.

So what you're saying that even a decent whitehat antivirus-offer will probably not be able to run on GDN.

Maybe I should put effort in the pop-campaigns, like you're saying, and test banners at 'easier' traffic-sources and learn from it.
Any suggestions for banner traffic sources?
(since the STM-posts about banners are relatively old they are probably not accurate)

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Hard to say, since we don't know what the offer is - if it's a REAL antivirus software with decent value, then you can promote it of course. But anything shady ... google doesn't like it.

In case the offer is legit, you can try it.

But, in case you will run without a cloaker :

1. do not send anything to afflow, send traffic ONLY to the offer you are promoting. I mean all traffic, even when they send you a hit that is out of the desired targeting. Make sure the affiliate network or advetiser doesn't have any GEO or other redirects in place. Simply put, all hits from GDN have to land on the offer page. You can use a tracker. They don't like simple landing pages - they call them "bridge pages".

2. for me, the best worked the 300x50 and 320x50 banners for mobile traffic. Didn't run desktop traffic for a while on GDN so not sure about that.

3. I usually start with 10 per group.

I do agree with Nick once again though - since you already found some success in POPs, it might be a better idea to focus on that traffic type some more. As nick mentioned, there are many ways of upping the game - sources, bumps, verticals, GEOs ...

If you still want to test banners - try some DSPs, or try adult traffic - there is a fuckload of volume in adult banners

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Thanks Matuloo,

Just as the response of Nick, crisp and clear!

Since I've the most of the week available I'll try some small tests on GDP
Do some more pops testing more offers.

One of the pin-submits that is working for me is an adult offer.
Running at several traffic sources now, problem with further scaling is that they all seem to have different algorithms even with their exchange traffic.

Testing on Exoclick seems pretty expensive, it looks like I need a few thousand dollars for testing alone and to get rid of the crappy placements.
The small tests with popups for this offer on Exoclick did not work, ROI stayed negative, maybe good banners will do the trick.

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On exo, banners are a way better choice than pops, focus on those. If you want adult pops, redirect and stuff like that, check out plugrush or clickadu

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Thanks Matuloo,

I'll leave the pops as they are, and start testing with banners at GDN and for that adult offer banners at Exo.

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Take a look at placements and find out from which sites those clicks are coming from.

You can then determine if the site is shady or the ad-units are placed too close to the navigation elements resulting in accidental clicks. In both cases, you should pause those placements.

I have seen CTRs as high as 25% for well placed banners with Good ROI. (for example, banners with big "Download Now" buttons on a file sharing site)

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Thanks Anstrex.

Yes, those sites look pretty shady to me, so I've blocked them.

It seems that I can implement the methods of the Vortex Guide here - https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...oluum-Version)
(Thanks Amy)

Which gives me these indications for the learning process of GDN
1) 2-3 months of learning
2) $5.000-$10.000 costs of trying and testing before profits
Probably less as I know the people at STM have lots of knowledge and are willing to help people like me.

Ok, next step will be to test for bots, I would like to know if GDN has 'simple' bot-traffic.
I guess a blank page with a javascript-redirect will do the job here.

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GDN is certainly one of the better sources, but some bots will always slip through. When judging the placements based on this, also check how many clicks google reports for them, part of the BOTs get caught by their algo and they won't bill you for that. Just so you don't block a placement that sends you bot clicks that you are not billed for

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Thanks Matuloo, that's a great tip I would never thought of that.

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Small update;

Just a few sales at GDN, all retargeted or similar, no cold traffic, so there is a lot to learn for me.

Tested a lot of popup-campaigns, and adult seems to be working for me. (still xx/day)
However the work and stress is way to high compared to my potential income so I've to change to something else to stay motivated.

Can you guys recommend any course or training I can do right now to learn the basics of banners, probably adult, and get the skills I need?

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The stress is something that will go away from the most part, once you get used to the workflow and all the steps AM is about. I'm not sure you should jump to something new again now, especially since you found some profits in adult pops ... But if you really have to, you might try to use the same funnel, just send banner traffic to it instead of POPs.

As for a training on adult banners, I'm not aware of anything good that would be adult specific ...

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Hi Matej,

With stress I mean, unknowingly sending traffic to an offer from a site with nude children, sending unknowingly mainstream traffic to adult offers,
sending unknowingly adult traffic to mainstream offers, getting threatened with a fine of $10.000 while unknowingly sending traffic from content-locking sites (whatever that means)

While;
- using no tricks
- using only popup-traffic sources that have a good reputation.

Anyway what about a training for mainstream banners?

I know Perry Marshall (anyone remember this old AM hero?) has a training but it is dated 2016 which seems to be too old for such an expensive training.

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Ah, well sometimes the RON is full of crap especially with POPs.

I bought some guide from Perry Marshall in the past, it was about adwords and I thought it was very good actually.

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Hi Matej,

Do you think his training from 2016 is still up to date?

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I only had a chance to check his adwords guides, those were always good, so I wouldn't be worried to purchase anything adwords related from him ... other than that, I can't really comment on it, since I have no experience with that.

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