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Blacklists and Whitelists (17)

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I'm learning so much here at STM, but I realised there are little holes in my knowledge I want to fill.

1. When you create a blacklist / Whitelist are those zone/placement IDs specific to the Traffic Source? or can you use them elsewhere?

2. What is a global blacklist?

3. When we blacklist/whitelist a placement does that mean we will always start new campaigns in that GEO with that placement blacklisted / Whitelisted? Are we saying that the placement is bad then? Or would you start campaigns with it blacklisted and then re-test the placement at different bids if you have a successful camp on your hands?

4. How do people store their blacklists/whitelists? I just have them in a text file.

5. Would I be correct in thinking then that blacklists/whitelists are very valuable and they are one of the reasons certain affiliates can do well in more competitive GEOs (like US, DE etc)?

6. Is the same blacklist / whitelist usable over two different traffic types i.e. PUSH/POPs. Or are the placement IDs different?

Thanks for your help,

Gavin.

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Specific to a traffic source.

Global blacklist should apply to all campaigns that you setup with that particular traffic source

This one is a bit tricky. In case of really bad placements, chances are that these won't work with any vertical, bid or even GEO. But, some placements really show better performance with certain setups. So one vertical might not work, another one could. A placement can have poor traffic in one GEO but it might be different with a different GEO.

What I personally do is to retest large placements when testing a different offer or GEO.

text file or excell table should work, unless the source offers some kind of internal management tool for this

Yes, it definitely is one of the reasons. Fake traffic, BOTs... poor traffic will not convert even with the best offers, so you definitely don't want to waste your money on it.

The placement IDs will be different. Sources usually assign certain IDs to the ad zones, and since POPs and PUSH use a completely different delivery method, the IDs will be different.

Cheers,
Matej.

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Wanted to jump on this, but Matej summed it up pretty well.

Blacklisting is very essential and you should get familiar with it ASAP as it can make or break your campaigns.

Let us know if you have additional questions!

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@matuloo

Thanks so much for your detailed reply. You have cleared up a lot of confusion for me around BLs/WLs.

I guess the only questions I have to just clear up one or two more things are:

1.

How do I know if a placement is large? Because It receives a lot of traffic? Should I mark big placements in my BLs somehow? Just wondering how I'd know which placements to re-test?

2. I've heard people mention that you can't cut placements to get into profit?

My last pops camp was hovering around -40% ROI. I cut a few placements that were X2 payout in loss. I also looked at the estimated daily profits if I targeted certain things (but they all amounted to <$5).

I've read that a -40% ROI camp is hopeful. But I failed to get my camp any closer to profit? Maybe the offer just died away I'm thinking.

I just didn't know what to do to take it from -40 ROI to profit?

I'd love to hear yours and @erikgyepes opinion.

P.s. I enjoyed reading all the posts you have listed in your signature too!

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There is not hard number to consider a placements as large.

It´s rather the relation between such placements and the other placements.
When a placement or several placements have significant more traffic than the rest you could call it large placements.

You could mark these placements or you also could put the real big placements in a separate BL.
In the end it´s up to you, find a way that works best for yourself, something that is easy to implement for you.

Generally you can say that you can re-test all placements that had conversions but not enough to be profitable.

But don´t test them over and over again, there is a reason why they are on a BL.

When you worked with a global BL before it can happen that such placements then convert better in a different geo.
But when you see that they don´t convert in several Geos you don´t need to test them for each new Geo again.

It can also be that placements turn profitable when you have a new or better offer.
So when you have placements that converted but not good enough it can be worth it to test them again when you have a better converting offer.

When a placement didn´t get any conversions at all in several Geos you also don´t need to test it more.
Then it´s probably just a bad placement.

Where did you hear it?
When you have a good campaign setup/targeting and run a converting funnel then cutting placements is what gets you into profit.

Placements are where you get your traffic from.
When they send you bad traffic that doesn´t convert you pay for nothing.

When the amount that you lose on bad placements is higher than the loss you make with your campaign you will get into profits when you cut the bad placements.

Example:

Campaign is at $-20 and 3 placements run at $-40.
Cut these placements and your campaign turns into $+20 profit.

I know, it´s a very rough example but I hope you get what I mean.

-40% can be hopeful but you can´t generalize it.

When you start from scratch in a new Geo with lots of volume then -40% can be absolutely ok.
Then you can cut bad placements and still have enough traffic left to get a good campaign.

But when you had very good campaigns running already at good ROI and then you test a new offer on exactly the same targeting then -40% are not that good but rather show that the offer isn´t that good.

Man, when I read such questions and then think about that stuff I can really feel that all these things probably sound very confusing and complicated for a beginner.

The thing is, there are basically no universal rules in AM.
You can and should work with rough rules of thumb but more imprtant is to understand how things are connected.

In the example above you can see that -40% don´t have the same meaning for all campaigns.

It´s always about how the different factors play together.

Well, what to take from it.

When you run a new virgin campaign where you have to test landers and offers and start with -40% ROI it´s not bad at all.
Then you identify the best lander and find a converting offer.

That alone should give the ROI already a boost so that a good LP/offer combo could get the campaign pretty easy into green.

But when you then have a good converting combination of LP and offer and still have -40% ROI you would need to cut placements to get rid of the bad ones for a better ROI.

Then check if you can get the campaign into profit, when you have to cut too many placements move on because you would lose too much traffic.

Now a question from me, are you talking about your PL campaign when you mention the -40%?

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You guys got this covered, so just a couple points:

I could write a sonnet about my love/hate relationship for 1407XX8. If you know, you know. That zone is everywhere and its performance is very different in every geo.


1. You'll know because it receives a shit ton of traffic compared to the other placements in your camp. Usually, there are 2-3 placements with a ton of traffic, then some medium ones, then the rest.

2. You must have misread. That's exactly how you get into profit. I think you're confusing this with cutting too much. You can't cut out all the highest traffic zones, removing all of your volume, and expect high profits from what's leftover.

Offers don't die that quickly. I mean, they can overnight (and it would be way more obvious), but if it's still converting some, it's not dead. The 40 day tutorial does have a lot of talk about offers dying quickly and make you think "you have to act now, now now!" (I think Amy just wants to kick your butt into taking action).

But. With a lot of offers, especially on pops, you have a lot more time than you think. The offers you've been trying have been around for months already, and they haven't quite died yet.

So, you may want to spend a little more time on your well-converting camps before giving up on them.

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@twinaxe

I feel like I need a Greylist and a Blacklist! Use the Greylist for placements I might want to test again and a Blacklist for ones that perform badly over multi-GEOs. I will make sure I make another list of big blacklisted placements to try again in the future.

Oops, must have misread/misunderstood something there. I guess its because I don't fully understand the process yet. I think I may have got confused about not cutting too many placements because it will cut down your traffic?

That actually makes sense, I've never thought of it like that.

Ok, yeah, I think I get it. I'm beginning to realise that AM is like other things I've learned, lots of different ways to do things, and full of confusing aspects that make sense once you know enough about the bigger picture. I'm still very fuzzy about my understanding of the bigger picture in AM. My usual response to this situation is to just keep moving forwards, listen to advice, and hope it all starts to become clearer later on.

Yes that was my PL camp I was talking about. I'm going to re-start it, Jaybot has given me some great advice and convinced me not to throw away the work I've done. I made some mistakes with it because I started it accidentally with that random PUSH camp. I didn't test any landers, I just used a spin lander that I modified. I think I will go back and test landers. I only tested that one offer too. They were giving me -40% together. So I was left with cutting placements.

I also thought that I'd left it too long and that the offer would only last a few weeks at most, so I thought I needed to move on. But apparently I was wrong on that.

I'm going to learn from my mistakes, give the PL offer another go, and try and do it better from the start.

Gavin.

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Haha, I wonder which placements I will form a lasting relationship with?

That was exactly what my camp looked like! I had no idea that was normal. I got worried though about blacklisting one of the big placements. It was >2x Payout in loss. Was I right to cut it? Even though it was giving me lots of conversions? I had a dilemma with that.

I was wrong about that. Don't know where I picked it up from. I think your right, I was confusing it with cutting too much. I did have a high traffic placement that I cut because it was in loss, but I agonised about doing it because it was converting and giving me traffic, but it was in loss! still dont know if I did the right thing there?

Yep, That was exactly my thinking. I was wrong there then. Really glad I know that now, it's changed the way I look at offers completely!

You are spot on, I've drawn up a list of everything I need to do and I'm getting on it straight away!

Thanks for your help @jaybot, your a lifesaver

Gavin

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Sure, I can imagine that it´s not thar easy in the beginning.

Try that you don´t only focus on hard numbers or so, you will see that there are often exceptions so that it´s next to impossible to give a universal rule that can be applied for all campaigns.

When we talk about -40% it could have a completely different impact in the next campaign.
Same goes for CTR, CR, payout, volume or whatever.

All such things just on their own don´t tell that much, it´s important to understand the system and how all these things are connected and play together.

That helps alot to analyze if a campaign is worth to run it or not, if it has potential, if it´s worth to optimize or not and all such things.

That´s why I asked if you mean the PL campaign.
Because in your FA thread you posted

So I wondered about the proven lander.
How did you know it´s proven when you just started the campaign?

I thought you tested 3 offers there, now I am confused

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You know what I would do if I had a high traffic placement that is giving a ton of conversions but is still losing money?

Test a different bid

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Guys above me pretty much covered it all in great detail, so not much I can add here

Lots of the decision making you are about to do requires some experience, then it's all gonna come together.

Like determining what's a large placement worth re-testing ... it's basically about the volume, on case you can buy a solid amount of traffic from a placement, but you didn't find the right offer for it, it's worth it to test it again. The threshold depends on your budget/goals pretty much ... for someone it might be a placement that can spend $10-20 per day, for someone it has to be like a $100... you definitely don't wanna bother with placements where the possible revenue is minor, because that would equal to wasting your time.

As for the ROI % that can be optimized into profit, depends on how well the campaign is optimized already. If you're just starting out with a test funnel and offer that you know nothing about, even -60% can be OK. But if you already spent a ton of time and $ on a campaign and you're still -20% and there is not much left to optimize, then it's time to call it quits. Keep in mind that your goal is +20% at least or something like that, so going from -20 to +20 is quite a journey, when you already optimized all the placements and tested tons of creatives.

Experience will help here again, once you'll have a few proven funnels, you will know what initial performance you need to see in order to be able to optimize into profit by cutting placements. When I start something these days, I need to be around breakeven or just slightly negative straight of the bat, otherwise I stop trying. But thats because I work with funnels that I know are solid.

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Ok, I understand. That's good to know. I guess when your new, like me, you desperately try and search for any kind of rules that you can rely on because everything is so confusing. I'm hoping that I'll start to get a sense of how everything works together if I carry on testing and learning.

That was a bad choice of words. That whole campaign was a bit messy, after what I've learned now even in the last few weeks, I know I did so many things wrong. My plan is to start the camp up again and rectify my mistakes. I meant that I had testing the lander in another GEO on sweeps and it had performed well, and on Adplexity the lander was the only one I could find for that kind of offer. I realise now that it's not good enough, I made the mistake of not testing enough landers. I hope to change that now.

I forgot actually, I did test two other iPhone sweeps for PL and the giftcard one.

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I didn't think about changing the bid for that one placement! I'll try that, thanks

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I know, that´s why I try to avoid to mention specific numbers or so.
Because then there is the risk that someone with not that much experience takes just that number and tries to use it for all campaigns or so.

And then they wonder why it won´t work.

So I better like to explain why things are they way they are so that you can learn to understand how things are connected and play together so that you can think in a logical way yourself.

Then you are no dependent on numbers or rules from others.

Different Geo is different Geo.

Just because something is good in one Geo it isn´t automatically good in others Geos as well.

It would be fantastic when it would work that way, then our life would be a lot easier

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There are a few different ways to do this.

To keep things simple, I *would* blacklist it from your main camp and then start a new camp which would take advantage of SmartCPM with a WL with only that one placement to see if it has enough volume on its own and if it can still convert at different bid levels.

Or, to keep things simple, you could go into the dashboard and select the one zone from the list in propeller and set its bid lower. This will be a fixed bid though, so no SmartCPM on that zone.

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Looks like most of the questions were covered, just wanted to add some more insights to blacklisting:

There are basically 2 groups of placements that you should watch out for:

1) The large ones that Matej mentioned, and are driving ton of traffic and can spend lot of money in a short time.

2) The second group is less noticable and can be easy to miss:

Some traffic sources will flood you with thousands of placements, where each of them will bring just couple of clicks.

You would say, you need more data as you cannot really tell from that if they will be profitable or no and that's right.

The problem though is that there are thousands of them and if each spends just $0.05 * 1000 = you are already at $50, with no actionable data.

So it's something to consider to block in the beginning.

Also good thing is to watch out for bot placements or placements with a WAY lower CTR than your average one (or those that gave you conversions have).

The rest of placements will be the profitable ones, but as you will find, from thousands and thousands of placements there will be just couple that actually bring money (so the classic 80/20 applies here).

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Thanks, that's a great tip. I've never thought of that before. I'll give it a try. I'm guessing I would run the camp for a bit, find out the placements getting the most traffic, whitelist them and run the new whitelist camp?

I'm using Binom, is there an easy way to do this through my tracker? or is it best just to consider each placement at a time?

I'm so glad I asked these questions about BLs/WLs. Because I had no idea that the bulk of my conversions would come from a smaller group of placements. But when you point out that some placements only get a few cents spend, then it makes sense.

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