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Mobile Pop + AV Offers. (11)

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Traffic Source: PropellerAds (using Pop Under with CPM cost model).
Aff Network: MUNDOmedia
Vertical: Mobile Utilities - Antiviruses.

Direct Link Tested the following countries

1. South Africa
2. Malaysia
3. Ghana
4. India
5. Norway
6. Costa Rica
7. Czech Republic
8. Italy
9. Luxembourg
10. Belarus

Results: Ghana about 3 - 5 conversions before company disappeared.

Following countries tried to test but...

1. Turkey: No Avea (service provider) traffic at PropellerAds.
2. Australia: Too expensive CPM for a beginner like myself to compete in.

Took several months off to train how to code so I could build my landing pages, then...

Tested 5 English Speaking GEOs with 5 Landers using 1 Angle.

1. South Africa
2. Ireland
3. Malaysia
4. Ghana
5. Austria

Results: Zero Conversion, but roughly 14% CTR for South Africa.

Improved landers and simplified Copy using Hemingway Editor.

Tested using Landers on South Africa.

Results: Zero Conversion, but CTR increased as high as 33%. Here is a snapshot: https://www.screencast.com/t/kLjBYMzW

I came to the conclusion that either...

A) The offers suck, and I am did an ok job at my end.
B) The offers are great, other Affiliates are making money, therefore; I am the one that stinks.

Contacted my AM and she gave me the Top Performing AVs at the moment. List was a short 5 GEOs. Checked every link, only 2 were active. Turkey and Germany. Turkey as I mentioned earlier, no traffic from my source and switching to another source at the moment wouldn't be too wise. So I am left with Germany to test so I head over to One Hour Translation and got my Copy with the 33% CTR converted into German Deutsch. At the moment I am waiting for my Lander to be approved so I can go for one last test before... Ohhh I have no clue any more lol...


Looking forward to any and all advice!
Aras

P.S. I am not hooked on doing ONLY Antivirus offers. I only stuck to it because my AM told me it was a great beginners vertical. So if you're planning to tell me to switch to another vertical, I am open to suggestions.

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Hey Birdman, congrats on starting a follow along!

Although South Africa may be listed as a Tier 3 country, competition there is pretty tough (CPM may go as high as $20) so I would stay away from it until you're pretty confident on how to properly optimize.

Since you've tested quite a lot of geos, it would be nice to know:
- How much did you spend on each test
- What was your bidding strategy
- How were you running your optimization process on cutting placements and landers
- What is the conversion flow of your offers?

Which company did disappear?

Actually Avea has been operating under Turk Telekom as of January 2016.
Check this out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avea
I would suggest checking with your AM if your TR offer accepts traffic from Turk Telekom since Avea is operating under it's name.

You already went over a pretty competitive Geo like ZA. Australia may not have the same volume like ZA or TR but still doable, even though we're talking about a T1 english speaking geo.

Considering that you've had quite a reasonable CTR on your landers, have you already conducted any bot test to get a better understanding on what kind of traffic were you testing your offers on? In case not, it would be safe to run some bot tests.
In addition, at this stage I don't think you need to waste budget on translation services for these types of offers, since on spy tools you may find quite a lot of variations to test your offers with. Also Google translate is pretty fine with short sentences/headlines, so focus on the optimization process instead.

In case you're open to test other verticals as well, I'd suggest trying sweeps using landers in addition to AV.

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Hey Platinum,

Here is a screenshot.



I actually don't understand what you're asking here. I simply placed the lowest CPM I could place to test the offer. Example: Ghana $1.15 CPM.


I was planning to cut placements once I received conversions, that way I could tell which placements were useless and which were beginning to perform. With landers I just used CTR as judgement. The low CTRs were cut off, then replaced.


User would have to agree to a paid subscription, they vary depending on AV offer. I suppose that's what you're asking...


I wouldn't be able to recall the specific company. I do remember it was an AV offer from Ghana with a black and green theme. After I got back with my landing pages (which was a long while) the offer was no longer around. It would redirect to "App of the Day!" page.


Dude! This is GOOD NEWS! I immediately Skyped my AM to see if I can test Turkey under Telekom. A Big Thank you!


How in the world do you run a bot test? This is very new to me...

I agree with you, my optimization skills stink, that's exactly where I need to spend time. I'll dig some posts on bot testing at the moment and looking forward to your reply.

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Agree with platinum on multiple points! My advice will overlap with his.

Some suggestions:

-It wouldn't hurt to try to ask the traffic source for a list of available inventory by geo, preferably even by carrier. They don't always oblige, but it wouldn't hurt to ask.

-As a very new newbie, choosing small geos may be a good option that would allow you to circumvent the worst competition while getting some practice on how to run and optimize campaigns. However, once you have some experience, aim to make profits instead - by avoiding geos that don't have much traffic on the particular traffic source for the most part.

-The toughest thing about promoting antivirus offers is trying to decide how aggressive (i.e. misleading) you want your landers to be, and how lenient your aff network / advertiser and traffic sources are when it comes to aggressive landers.

With regards to traffic sources: PropellerAds is quite strict when it comes to lander compliance. For example, they don't allow any type of trademarked logos on landers. And yet, for antivirus offers, the most effective landers are often the most aggressive (i.e. misleading). There are traffic networks that are more lenient - popads for example.

Some affiliates use cloaking to show compliant landers to the traffic network while directing actual visitors to an aggressive lander. Other affiliates would just be as aggressive as the traffic network allows - testing landers of different "degrees of aggressiveness" to see which ones will get accepted, can be a good way of finding out what the tolerance level of the traffic networks is.

With regards to aff networks / advertisers: There are offers where aggressive marketing is allowed (sometimes even when the offer description explicitly states that it isn't - so you'll need to ask your AM for a list of them), that you can run use aggressive landers for. Then there are landers that don't allow aggressive landers, but don't require you to submit landers for approval. And then there are offers that require you to submit landers for approval.

Some affiliates will play it safe by using aggressive landers only for offers that allow them. Others will cloak their landers to make it hard for aff networks / advertisers to see their aggressive landers. Some affiliates would submit a compliant lander, and run landers that are more aggressive. Still others would run non-aggressive landers - although this would be more difficult to do - you'd need to find offers that convert very well to be able to make profits in spite of using non-aggressive landers. Mrbraun gives some great pointers on how to run whitehat landers here:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...on-pop-traffic


DISCLAIMER: Violating the TOS of aff networks and/or traffic networks can get your account banned and/or your balance/revenue confiscated. Please be aware of the risks before engaging in any misleading/deceptive practices.

So these would be your choices - some of them safer but less effective, others riskier but more effective.

-CTR is only an indication of how good a job your lander is doing in herding visitors to the offer page - it doesn't mean that visitors will convert well when they get there. So always optimize according to CR (conversion rate), not CTR. I talked briefly about what a high CTR but low CR can mean, in this post:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post336496

And of course, not even the best landers will convert a dud offer - so be sure not to just test a single offer. For a suggested lander+offer testing methodology please check out these lessons:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...844#post334844

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...845#post334845

Also note that even if other affiliates are succeeding with an offer, it doesn't necessarily mean that you will too. For all you know, they may be promoting the offer on other traffic types and not pop. This is why it's always recommended to test with multiple offers to increase chances of finding one that converts at least semi-well - well enough to help you generate the conversions necessary for you to cut landers down to a winner.

-Like platinum, I wouldn't recommend spending money on OHT in the beginning. Google translate has gotten quite good in recent months, especially if you rewrite the longer sentences into short sentences before running them through the tool. Alternatively, just do a search on Adplexity for landers in the new language, and look for a lander that looks the same or similar as the one you're wanting to translate.

Not every campaign will turn out to be profitable - the trick is try to use your test budget wisely so that your winning campaigns will more than cover the losses from losing campaigns. So we need to conserve budget whenever possible - and translations is something I wouldn't spend money on unless I have a profitable campaign pulling in considerable profits, where a better lander will likely pay for itself.

-If you're looking to test in another vertical (in additional to / aside from AV), sweeps is also quite popular.

Holy shit!!

Are you saying that after spending all that money, you haven't even seen a single conversion??

If so - please THOROUGHLY check your tracking setup. I want for us to be 100% certain it's working before you spend further money on campaigns.

First thing to check: Check the stats from your aff network dashboard, to make sure the traffic has been going to the offers you were promoting. Compare these numbers with the clicks recorded in Voluum to make sure the numbers jive.

After this is verified, I would suggest to run some very low-payout offers via direct-linking just until you get that first conversion to 1)make sure the set up is correct, and 2)give yourself a psychological boost in your beliefs that AM actually works - to get used to expecting conversions (this is way more important than most people realize). For very low-payout offers, look for offers in the $0.03-$0.50 range - you'll typically find them in geos such as BD, ID, PH, EG, PK, IN. Ask your AM to recommend a few of those and run $10 to them (total, not each). You should get some conversions.

After that - please follow the offer+lander testing methodology in the lessons I've linked to above.


Are you targeting mobile carrier traffic or wifi traffic? For wifi traffic that bid may suffice. For mobile carrier traffic it may be a little bit low.

In any case - try to bid a bit higher than the first "bend" in the traffic estimator chart. This way you can be sure you're not the lowest bidder and get stuck with the crap traffic.

Also: Incorporate the bot test script into your landers to test placements for bot traffic:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...Live-Campaigns

This will enable you to identify bot-infested placements, and cut the ones that have for example 70%+ bot traffic.


I wouldn't cut landers based on CTRs UNLESS they are so abysmally-low that the math would never work out (i.e. the CTR is so low that the CR would need to be impossibly-high in order for the lander to convert reasonably well). I've seen MANY landers that had lower CTR than the rest, that have won out in ROI.


Great tip!

Company structures of mobile carriers are changing all the time, and many traffic networks are not kept up-to-date with the changes that result when there's a name change. So when you can't find the name of a carrier when trying to target it on a traffic network, do a search in google to look into the history of the mobile carrier, to see which other names it has operated under.


Looking forward to your next update!



Amy

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Hi Amy,

Sorry for the late reply, been busy testing out how to make Bot Detection work with Voluum. Thanks to Platinum, I can finally move on from that stage and resume with your comments.

I've heard this advice before but I can't seem to understand why. The idea is to go after Tier 2, Tier 3 countries (GEOs) where the competition is much lower (lower CPC, CPM). When I check PropellerAds (Traffic source I am testing on), I can't seem to find a cheap GEO. Tier 2 and 3 don't seem much different than Tier 1 as far as bids go.

I wish to follow your advice but where do you buy traffic with cheap Tier 2, 3 GEO bidding?


I personally wish to stick to whitehat. This will require more creativity but at least I won't suffer any draw backs. Great article by Mrbraun, thanks for sharing it.


I have trouble understanding these articles. Reason being, I haven't gotten a single conversion for any offer I've ran therefore I wouldn't even know what to apply. Thanks for sharing it, perhaps I'll look back when I have some real data to work with.



My stats are accurate. In Voluum, Network, and Traffic source.


Generally bidding Carrier, sometimes combination of Carrier + wifi.


Thanks for taking the time and giving me all this advice Amy. To be honest I feel information overload and feel more confused than prior to joining STM. I think I need to turn off everything and just think about what I need to do.

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@birdman let's make a quick recap of what you've been dealing with based on the info we already have and let's move further

- Until now you've already spent like $500+ testing AV offers on Propeller. Great traffic source with huge inventory, but pretty strict when it comes to compliance as already mentioned by Amy above.
- Tested offers only from one network
- Not enough aggressive landers
- Not cutting budget wasting placements consistently
- Generally low bids

To make the process a bit more easy for you, try to optimize your campaign right from the start. There is when you get the first batch of raw not optimized traffic that will eat quite a good part of your test budget. Optimizing right from the start you also are able to leave doubts apart from the offer you're pushing. If it's not working, who cares! There are hundreds of offers out there you can still work with.

Now I strongly believe you already have all the right tools to get all the information you need about hottest offers about a specific geo, isp/carriers, landers and from which networks most stable offers are coming through.

With this in mind, make a quick list of the GEOs you feel confident to approach. This way you can be slightly more organized and create accounts on those other networks that have plenty of options for your targeted country.

The main reason why Amy suggests to start out with T2/3 countries is the fact that the bid rates are lower compared to T1. Hence that is why payouts are much lower. So you basically learn the process on a lower budget.

If you're having a hard time getting to convert AV offers while running whitehat, again sweeps is a great option. Also keep in mind the conversion flow difference among verticals. On some countries AV offers, including other mobile content offers usually go through a PIN submit flow on others on 1Click Flow. On both cases the visitor is somehow alerted that they will be charged for that service. On Sweeps is different. Single Opt-in offers or Double Opt-in offers. Where the visitor has to enter his/her credentials or on DOI confirm their email address through email verification and that's it - conversion fired.

It's a bit tough at the start, but as you get more familiar with how AM works things become more easy to deal with.
Looking forward to see you succeed on this

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If you've spent $500 and haven't gotten a SINGLE conversion, then something must be wrong.

I know I've recommended this before, but I want to make 100% sure that you have everything set up correctly.

I don't usually do this, but I feel that I need to take a thorough look at your setup before we do anything else. If you're not getting conversions, then no advice will help you - all that needs to come AFTER.

Sending you a PM. Please get in touch.



Amy

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Hi Amy and Losid,

I apologize for disappearing for a few days, I had to re-think everything. Here is my check list that I wrote on a napkin at work and currently working to check them off one-by-one.

I tried to break down where I am lacking the most and begin focusing my attention there.

1. Complete AdPlexity Tutorial (3rd time).

2. Study AdPlexity inside out, get comfortable spying on competition and their data rather just using it as a landing page ripper.

3. Get a 1 month membership with BrowserStack and test my landers that I've created to make sure they actually fit most mobile phones properly. For all I know my landers are appearing in odd shape and sizes and perhaps this is one of the factors that's causing no conversion. It's also a way for me to get a sense of what a "universal" lander should look like so I can recycle it for all future verticals.

4. Perhaps I don't have enough landing page variations so I went ahead and generated 10 of them using Photoshop and coded 8 of them ready to go. Again I think about creating something I can re-use for other verticals as well.

5. Take updated notes from Amy & Losid's suggestions and see how I can integrate with all that I am working on.

7. Whether I run AV or not, there is one step that I never got to and I lack greatly. Angles/Copywriting. I wrote several steps I need to take even if it just turns out to be for practice.
A) Research AV companies.
B) Write Angles as headlines.
C) Write Lander Copy based on Angle Headlines.
D) Run it through HemmingWay Editor to make sure it's 6th grade readable.

8. Present following scenario and see what Amy & Losid have to say.

Scenario 1: I see in AdPlexity that the affiliate's making money with AV are running it on many different networks. Should I sign up for every single network and try to test the offers that those affiliate's seem to have success with?

Scenario 2: Stick with my own network (MUNDO media & PeerFly) and find what's working in AdPlexity for those networks and stick to offers there until I go Green.


Do let me know if I am making things more complicated than it should be

I just can't thank you guys enough for all the energy you've poured into helping me succeed. I hope I can return the help one day.

Thanks,
Aras

P.S. I'll PM you Amy right after I post!

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Hey Aras,

Thanks for putting in more details! Btw, how many hours a day are you spending over AM?

I would like to add a few comments on some of your points:

I've went over hundreds of whitepapers, datasheets, product features or whatever when it comes to AV companies. Usually their research/report style copy maybe can better work on native traffic rather than on mobile pops. So skip point A for the moment and focus on other stuff.

As for writing angles and headlines, reading some books on copywriting can help you a lot. Check out this thread:
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...on-Copywriting

I'd go for Scenario 1. Even if you already have access to an offer in one of the networks you're currently working with, on another network you can either find a better payout or have a better conversion rate.

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@platinum

I can squeeze 2 - 3 undisturbed hours Wed - Sat to work on AM. Mon & Tuesday I get to work much more. After I take care of "life", I can generally have full Tuesday to work. Basically I work part-time 4 days, half day Monday, Full day Tuesday, Nothing on Sunday as I am exhausted from work at this point.

Yea I think it's time I focus on something else. Thanks for the heads up.

This is a bit embarrassing. I am a slow reader, no matter how hard I try I just cannot read fast. With the short amount of time I have to work on AM and my slow reading skills, I decided to read one single book and and keep reading it until I have used all that is applicable to my AM business. It's Cashvertising. I also listen to the Audio while I drive on the job. Appreciate the list mate, I'll refer back to it when I have put Cashvertising to good use.

Thanks Losid,
Aras

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So I've checked Aras' tracking setup over Teamviewer - have found nothing wrong with tracking. The main reason for the lack of conversions was from trying to direct-link to AV offers.

He's a very honest person by nature and couldn't bring himself to run aggressive landers - something which is almost crucial when running AV (whitehat landers can work, but only if you can find really good offers that will generate profits in spite of using non-misleading landers).

So we examined some alternatives. Was an enjoyable exchange. Best of luck Aras!



Amy

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