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Sweepstakes 101 - Part 6 - Ads & Landers (1) (11)

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Tips & Examples on Creatives

In this part of the guide, I present to you all the tips and tricks imparted by the interviewees.

I've also downloaded landers and taken screenshots of ads from various spy tools, to serve as inspiration to get your creative juices flowing.

In the end, when it comes to creatives, nothing beats constant split-testing. However, the tips and examples in this post should be enough to help you with initial testing. Once you find a good offer, I would urge you to continue to split-test creatives - that is what can combat ad blindness to give a campaign longevity.

DISCLAIMER: Some creatives shown below are very aggressive/misleading. Be sure you familiarize yourself with the TOS of each traffic platform so that you don't lose your ad account.



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Regarding Running Aggressive Angles

(DISCLAIMER: We at STM do not encourage affiliates to use misleading/aggressive creatives or use cloaking tactics, or otherwise go against the terms of service of affiliate networks, advertiser, or traffic networks. Please be aware of the risks before you make any decisions. We cannot be held responsible for any losses you may incur, financially or otherwise, as a result.)

Some of us are pretty creative when it comes to creating ads and landers that will convert. Even those of us that are less creative, can get inspiration from spy tools (from which I've downloaded plenty of examples to show you - you'll find links at the end of this post).

The bigger problem is that most traffic sources have requirements against aggressive ads and landers - and a lot of the stuff you see in spy tools fits this bill. For this reason, some affiliates choose to cloak when running sweeps offers.

STM strives to maintain a good relationship with both affiliates and vendors such as traffic sources and affiliate networks - which is why we avoid discussing cloaking in great detail.
Nevertheless, I need to touch on this topic in order to explain WHY you shouldn't always just run ripped landers as-is.

I've asked some of the interviewees about cloaking and using aggressive creatives in general, and you'll see their wisdom when I quote them later in the post. But first, I want to point out some things we should keep in mind when deciding on what creatives to use where.

There are 2 sets of requirements: Offer requirements from the affiliate network / advertiser, and creatives requirements from the traffic source.


Offer Requirements

For offer requirements, you can confirm whether an offer allows aggressive promotion angles. Often, an offer's description will say that it doesn't, but when you ask your AM they'll tell you that it does - so when in doubt always confirm with your AM, and retain a record of their reply to you (in case there are disputes later, e.g. "we're withholding payment because the offer description says not to run aggressive", "but my AM told me I could...!").

Sometimes your AM may ask to approve your creatives before you can run them. Some affiliates will comply by sending actual creatives they're planning on running. Other affiliates would send compliant creatives and run aggressive ones.

If the affiliate network catches you, they MAY overlook it IF your lead quality is good, as long as they continue making money. If the advertiser catches you and decides they don't want to pay for your leads or risk getting in trouble with regulations (e.g. false advertising), and notifies the affiliate network, then it's game over - you'll be off the offer, and may lose unpaid commissions.

Only you can decide which route you want to take. But be aware of the risks involved before making that decision.


Traffic Source Requirements

Different types of traffic have different degrees of tolerance for aggressive creatives.

Google and FB are the least-tolerant. Even when you run very innocent angles, campaign rejections and account bans can still happen. Ads can't be cloaked obviously, but landers can be, and some affiliates do cloak.

For both Google and FB, it IS possible to succeed without cloaking - for example @stickupkid doesn't cloak (in fact, he told me that even landers that use logos may be fine - as you'll see in his quote below).

However, ANY way you run sweeps camps on FB or Google, chances are you will still get accounts banned occasionally. STM does not allow buying/selling of accounts so you won't find info here - ask your other affiliate friends, or your AMs at affiliate networks / advertisers for recommendations on sellers, or learn to create/farm accounts yourself (e.g. from blackhat forums).

On these strict sources, stick with the less-scammy SOI/DOI offers and avoid mobile subscriptions or CC subs.

Native can be pretty up-there in terms of being strict, especially if you're talking about the bigger and higher-quality sources like Outbrain and Taboola.

If you're not cloaking, it would probably be good to stay away from landers that contain trademarks and claim to be a certain company (mobile carriers, browsers, postal services, Amazon/Google...) For example, I'm seeing a lot of sweeps campaigns show up on Adplexity Native for AdNow that are using generic survey landers that say "you have a chance to win the XXX" or even "you have been selected to receive the XXX" - I don't know if the latter was cloaked but you can do testing to see which will get accepted.

But native really isn't ideal for sweeps when you're just starting out - conquer either push/pop or FB first.

Pop and Push are typically associated with more-forgiving rules. However, the bigger networks such as PropellerAds have become more strict in recent years (by the way here are their rules for push). As usual, each specific networks has its own requirements, and they can vary drastically from network to network. Some networks are quite slack in terms of approving campaigns - for example this is what Megapush's moderation team has to say about their approval requirements:

One important thing to point out is that push networks tend to be more tolerating of aggressive angles and cc submit offers, presumably because push notifications are sent directly to subscribers without having to be displayed on publisher websites like pop; and also because push notifications aren't exposed for all to see so they'd be less likely to attract attention from the wrong people (e.g. corporations of trademarks being used on landers, consumer protection legislative bodies, etc.)


Additional points to consider, that apply to most/all traffic sources in general:

-So the big decision is whether to cloak or not to cloak. Obviously if you do cloak you can use whatever landing pages you wish, but if you get caught you will likely lose your traffic network account - which is why most affiliates that cloak have plans in place for obtaining additional accounts, either for scaling or for replacing banned accounts.

-To implement the actual cloaking, there are commercial cloakers which can be found with a simple forum search or google search, and some are more-effective than others in their ability to cloak. Then of course some affiliates develop their own cloaker.

-Cloaking is definitely NOT essential to success with the sweeps vertical! You'd be competing against affiliates that are cloaking more-aggressive landers, but you can aim to hustle harder than they do by split-testing more landers. You'd need to find that sweet spot between getting ads and landing pages rejected by the traffic source, and using creatives that don't convert well. Testing creatives of various degrees of aggressiveness to see what does and doesn't get approved would be an option - but be careful not to overdo things to the point of getting too many accounts banned. With push and pop and probably native, you can do a fair amount of such testing and still keep your account alive. With FB and Google you'd likely need to sacrifice accounts initially to learn what is and isn't acceptable.

-Some traffic networks will allow high-volume affiliates to run aggressive landers they'd otherwise forbid. As soon as you're able to run bigger volumes, contact your traffic sources and ask for a dedicated account manager. Ask them whether it'd be possible to run more-aggressive stuff. Account managers know which publishers (placements/websites) are lenient and won't get pissed off by the aggressive angles or offers.

-If you're not cloaking, or if you're just starting out, or if running on strict sources like FB and Google: Run lead gen (SOI/DOI) sweeps. Save cc subs for later and only for less-strict sources (like push).



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A Super-Aggressive Sweeps Angle

I want to start by showing you one of the most popular angles being used right now to promote CC sub offers. It was Gijs @ VIP Response that first told me about this angle (I don't run sweeps these days myself so had no idea), and I later went on Adplexity Push where I found a ton of examples on ads and landers for this angle.

It's an EXTREMELY misleading angle - outright scammy. I'm not going to comment on the ethics, but want to warn you that using this angle, with or without cloaking, can get accounts banned.

Here are some example push ads for this angle:



...basically telling the push subscriber that there's a package - a free gift or something that's been paid for in full - waiting in a post office somewhere to be picked up.

When the subscriber clicks on the ad, they could arrive at a lander that looks like this - if they're lucky:



When they click to the offer page, they would only need to leave their email and maybe also their name. Again, this is if they're lucky enough to land on an SOI/DOI lead gen offer.

What if luck doesn't happen to be on their side on that certain fateful day? Well - they'd land on something like this:


(Screenshot provided by Gijs @ VIP Response)

Or this:


(Screenshot provided by Gijs @ VIP Response)

...where if they click through, they'd land on a CC Submit offer. And if they're gullible enough to believe the lander, they would proceed to make the credit card payment.

Aside from ethical considerations, there may also be legal implications that can result from misleading consumers in this way. But this is the angle many affiliates appear to be using and I'm merely a reporter. I hereby leave it to you to decide what to do with this information - as long as you understand the possible repercussions and that STM/myself cannot be held responsible for them.

As for where you can run this aggressive angle, Gijs @ VIP Response told me that:

My guess is that not all push networks would be fine with this angle, but will leave it for you to test and find out. I've shown that second lander above from Gijs to Neill @ Zeropark and he told me:

That's all I got to say about that. Next, onto the juicy tips from the experts!





Amy



Links to Entire Guide:

Intro+Index | Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8

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Those push angles aren't that aggressive, I've seen worse

One nice thing about push, is that you can use those aggressive creatives (even soften them a little), but then link to a non-aggressive simple quiz or spinner and go to SOI/DOI and not feel too bad about it.

Interrupt marketing, right?

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Indeed! Push really is a format that requires a strong angle that would interrupt with whatever the user is doing at the moment.

And you're right, there are more aggressive angles floating around too. Just today, I got bombarded with "Electrolux bonus program" pushes and emails Funny thing is that I actually bought some stuff from Electrolux a few weeks ago, so if I wasn't familiar with these aggressive concepts, I'd probably fall for it.

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Thanks for the tip @jaybot!

Care to share some of the "worse" ones you're talking about? I'm intrigued!



Amy

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If you insist



Aggressive enough to use local/national post office logos... This is Spain, but I've seen every country in EU and US.



Not a FedEx/DHL/UPS logo, but you can imagine what it would look like if it did...



Oh, shit! Did I pay for something? I better check...



And other variations on this theme

Best I can do for now, but... I'm sure you can imagine how even more aggressive these can get

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Can you tell me please where is the best way to get landing (pre-lenders) for sweepstakes? Maybe I can get some templates and then change it?

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Have you seen the Landing Page Depository?

Another way is to browse AdPlexity.

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perfect, thank you)

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Hi,
I looking for some payment service for sweeps. I tried Payeer but they rejected my website because of content of website.
Can you please recommend good solution?

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Fabulous post.

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Are you an advertiser of sweeps offers? Please clarify.



Amy


Sent from my iPhone using STM Forums mobile app

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