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Whitelist Campaigns are not getting Scaled (14)

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Hi there!

I am all new to native ads & using taboola by spending daily budget of $500 for my first Whitelist campaign. But unable to get it scaled up (ROI) close enough to daily spend. Any guidance?

Thanks

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It will help if you will share a bit more data about the campaign

Geo
OS
Vertical
Bids
number of sources in the WL
etc

Cheers

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If it helps, your not alone. I've always really struggled to get custom whitelists to spend on Taboola... my understanding is that that is- or at least used to be- the main way these big lead-gen guys run on Taboola though, so I don't know if I always just did it incorrectly or if Taboola has made it harder to get traffic with whitelists or what. Definitely something I plan to work on more in future though.

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Have you tried increasing your bid and reaching out to support to see how much traffic is available at certain bid prices?

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You're having trouble scaling spend or getting ROI?

IMO avoid whitelist campaigns unless they're on big sites if you want to do bigger volume.

A good enough offer should work broadly across the network without a ton of micro-adjustments needed.

Focus on your ads and getting your CTR up so you can afford tolower bids. Ads are the biggest lever for volume and ROI.

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So do you feel that the ad (image/headline) is a bigger lever than the landing page, or are you including the landing page as part of the "ad"?

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Geo : USA
OS : Desktop & Mobile
Vertical : Insurance
Bids : Smart Bid
number of sources in the WL : 2 websites

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If there's only two sites in the whitelist it shouldn't be that hard to figure out the issue... try duplicating the campaign with a way higher bid (and low budget so you don't lose a lot of money) and see if it caps (spends its whole budget) with a higher bid.

Or if you think the ad ctr is the problem then try using some more clickbaity images/headlines and see how that affects it.

And then yeah, I couldn't tell if you meant you have Desktop and Mobile in the same campaign, but if so would definitely split those up, since they'll convert at different rates and have different cpc's.

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Whenever I can, I resort to blacklisting instead of whitelisting, that way I was always able to get more volume, even for the same sources.

My theory is that networks prefer buyers who are willing to take more off a mix of traffic, instead of cherrypicking just the best sources. This would allow them to sell more inventory, naturally.

But as I said, it's just my theory, so don't take it for granted

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Ads are everything on native. With poor ads your campaigns won't spend, and you wont have any breathing room to adjust bids to affect your CPCs and ROI.

It's much easier to squeeze ROI out of ads than it is LP changes, especially after you've already tested things a bit.

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I guess one reason I ask is because James Van Elswyk in that natives masterclass seems to place more emphasis on the offer and the landing page (not tweaking the finer details of a successful landing page, but rotating in completely different landing pages he's swiped from spying).

I know of some successful FB affiliate marketers who figure since we can't control the offer, we can instead do a kick-butt job of pre-selling. They basically avoid relying so much on the VSL or the selling effectiveness of the offer, and basically attempt to close the person on the landing page before they even hit the offer. Typically it's a story-based advertorial. Apparently it kicks conversions really high.

So, in my head, I had sort of organized what affects the success of a campaign in this order:
#1 (by far) a really good offer
#2 the landing page (presell)
#3 the ad (image+headline)

That said, of course a kick butt image with high CTR would also dramatically affect ROI. Maybe I should swap #2 and #3 .

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I've been doing natives for about a year now and also started with the (excellent) James Van Elswyck course. I also put more emphasis on the landing pages at first, and spent way more time tweaking them than the ads, but after a year of doing this I agree with thedudeabides that ads probably have more importance, at least once you've done a few rounds of lp optimization.

I don't think that contradicts the James Van E course or anything, but just wanted to chime in with my similar trajectory.

Really though you're always going to be testing both- lp's and ads- and the two things work in tandem, so you're really testing out the combination of ads and landers more than anything. Ad A can beat ads B and C overall, and lp 1 can beat lp's 2 and 3 overall, but the combination of ad B and lp 3 can sometimes beat all the rest when combined, if that makes sense.

A good ad can get you clicks for half as much as another one too (or more), and they can have wildly different conversion rates even with the same landing page, so the difference between a great ad and a bad one can be monumental.

It's amazing what a difference a single word can make too... I have a successful campaign I've been running for awhile, and if I change a single word in the headline- "startling" to "new" or "weird" or "revolutionary" - the ad goes from positive to negative... it's fascinating...

But yeah, there's a million things to test, that's for sure

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Great reply, thanks. Good to know you also took the natives course, as well as your subsequent personal experience. It is an excellent course. I can't imagine going in to native without having gone through it.

In the end, I figured it was really the combination of ad + landing page (the effect of the whole funnel) that matters, versus one being more important than the other ... BUT I'm glad you and thedudeabides have emphasized the power of the ad because I otherwise might have not given that part the focus it needs.

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Another point on the ads vs LPs.

When testing LPs, especially on higher payout ones with low conversion rates, it can take thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars spend to find a statistically significant winner if the changes you are testing are not big. Too many affiliates simply copy whatever pages they see on spy tools, often the same copy, just re-worded or styled slightly different. Need to test completely different angles to really see a difference sooner.

Good ads however are apparent way sooner with their improved CTRs and CPMs allowing you to reduce CPCs further or increase volume.

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