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30 Days To Scale To 100 leads/day profitably - Taboola (29)

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Hello all! Longggg time Facebook BH Marketer here. Getting tired of the grind and looking for a new challenge. I have a potential client interested in buying life insurance leads so I figured I'd give native a go and see if I could see some green. Mind you I've never really ran native traffic before, although have farmed my FB angles on JVs to native media buyers in the past with great success so I'm feeling confident. Goal here is to get to 100 leads/day while maintaining profitability. Potential client is looking for about 10-20k leads a month so if I can get some traction on Native I'm confident I can fill the rest of the volume on Facebook.

Due Diligence:
Initially I spent about 48 hours trying to learn all things native, specifically Taboola as that is the chosen medium. I pulled top creatives, presells, and examined top placements for current life insurance campaigns on Adplexity. I know little about bid amounts, even less about how they effect volume, but I imagine that it works like any auction system. I'm going to create 2 campaigns.

Here's The Rough Plan:

Campaigns submitted last night. Campaign 1 went live today (will post Day 1 stats tomorrow), Campaign 2 was rejected for what I assume was super aggressive ad Title. That was adjusted and resubmitted for approval.



Recap: Launched 2 camps, 1 is live and the latter is pending. I know little about Native but am willing to blow a few thousand on this.

Goals: I am looking to improve my knowledge of bid prices/strategy as well as site optimization and ultimately scale to 100 leads/day. On Facebook my campaigns would have been much more structured and setup infinitely better for split testing (device types, placements, OS versions, connection type, different ad groups etc.) but I find it is insanely time consuming to create ads in Taboola as there is no "duplicate" option. Am I missing something obvious??



****Side note, anyone know how to change dashboard/reporting timezone in Taboola????****

****Also, if anyone wants to shoot the shit about BH ops on FB I love talking about it and have a ton of experience including (currently) a full op from account acquisition team to media buyers. DM me for some fun banter or with any questions***

Posting Day 1 Stats tomorrow, let me know in advance what I should be posting otherwise I'll just paste it all. Can't wait for some feedback. Be gentle.

-Delfino

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Love it man!

Extremely cool!

Here's a few random thoughts:

1. The targeting on native is nowhere near as good as on facebook, so I might split-test a run-of-network smartbid campaign against the ones you set up with targeting. I think it might beat them out of the gate (could be wrong) and also think it could very well beat them long-term. It really is amazing how well the SmartBid works when it works. Definitely interested to see how the targeting ones go too though

2. Wouldn't .70$ X 30% lp ctr X 10% cvr be a 21$ cpa?

3. Don't be discouraged if you're lp ctr is lower than that... for some reason Taboola always seems to have really low lp ctr's compared to other traffic sources, but way higher cvr's that make up for it. I've had profitable campaigns on Taboola at under 10% lp ctr... which sounds nuts but like I said, it just seems to be a quirk of the platform...

4. Are you targeting all devices together? Or just one device? Honestly I think either way is fine if you're using SmartBid. It will automatically bid less for mobile and tablet if you are targeting all. I've increasingly been targeting all three, although most folks still target one at a time.

5. The 'secret sauce' on Taboola seems to be cloning campaigns and then letting the winners run and pausing the losers, so don't be afraid to have several clones going at once even if the targeting is nearly identical. Some get picked up in the system and some don't, it seems, and it's hard to tell why one does and one doesn't.

Look forward to seeing how everything goes!

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Damn I think this FA will have tons of insights soon. Following this one for sure.

Good luck!

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Thanks for starting this thread, Delfino. Looking forward to seeing the results. I think your planning/strategy before starting is great and has given me some insights.

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Same! You can get so granular on Facebook so this is definitely a new approach to me and I'm really interested in learning and eventually understanding exactly how it works. I'll be digging through STM some more to see if I can't find any useful tidbits surrounding smart bids there.

Right you are sir! Updated the post to reflect.

I was anticipating a <10% LP CTR but on first 150 visits CTR is around 32% which surprises me...low CVR though.

All devices yes. I'll segment this out into more device specific campaigns once we have some data in.

So a lot like Facebook with the duplicate ad sets. Makes sense to me. I'll implement this strategy tomorrow once we have a full day of data in. Thanks again for the feedback amigo.

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Thank you! Though I must admit my planning, all 48 hours of it, could have been a bit more diligent. Either way grab on and enjoy the ride.

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Day 1 Stats:
Spend: $32.84
Revenue: $18
Profit: -$14.84

I've definitely had worse day 1's that's for sure. I think it's too early to be doing anything here except assess and plan ahead.
Updates: Campaign 2 is still pending after amending the Ad Titles to be more compliant - can't wait for that to go live I think it will savage. Campaign 1 lost about 45% but there were some positive takeaways. Peep the stats:

CPC: $0.25
Visits: 148
LP Clicks: 47
Blended LP CTR: 32%. (click here to see a detailed breakdown of each LP CTR)

Initial Thoughts:
I think I have a lot more money to spend before I can start cutting placements, turning off ads, and making LP decisions (correct me if I'm wrong). Smart bid seems to be working nicely coming in at $0.25. LP CTR is much higher than anticipated which is also a plus. I suspect once there are a lot more conversions in to optimize around and placements cut/bids increased this will start rolling quite nicely.
My conversion rate was lower than expected for this offer, network EPC is $1.35. Working with Affiliati on this one (shout out my guy Sonny, great dude, huge fan).

I have some questions for the native experts:
I want to be spending around $XXX/day on this to start. I'm trying to get data QUICK and optimize even QUICKER. Any suggestions on bid/budget setup for that?
My sole conversion didn't post back to Taboola (rip), messed up pixel placement, there will be more to come.

Looking for any tips on scaling this quickly, optimizing placements, and playing with bids. I will be implementing jack_l suggestion to clone Campaign 1 today. If there's more data I should be posting at this early stage to help with the FA don't hesitate to let me know. As this progresses and budgets scale I'll be incorporating placement and creative stats.

Thanks for tuning in.

-Delfino

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This is awesome FA, I am doing BH Google and FB would like to join Native as well

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No time like the present

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Day 2 Stats:
Spend: $54.24
Revenue: $108
Profit: $53.76
CPC: $0.20
Visits: 267
LP Clicks: 96
Conversions: 6
Blended LP CTR: 31% (click here to see detailed breakdown of each LP CTR)

Still early in the campaigns life but I think due to the slipping performance on Header 2 and Life Insurance In {State} landing pages and domination of Header 1 I will turn them off (click here to see MTD stats on all 3 pages).

Interesting note: I implemented jack_l suggestion of running a run of the mill smartbid campaign side by side with my original campaign (which was targeting 40+ year old marketplace audiences).The run of the mill campaign was responsible for all conversions yesterday and has a 70% cheaper cpc ($0.17 vs. $0.59). I don't want to write this campaign off entirely but until I learn how to master bid strategy and placements with competence it will be going in the trash.

I doubled my monthly flight from $600 to $1200 yesterday on the profitable campaign with the hopes that it would blast some spend out with just a couple days left in March but that hasn't been the case so I'm guessing it's spending the $1200/30 days ($40~/day).

Update on my original content campaign: Edited creatives to be more compliant and campaign was still rejected again for: "Prohibited Product or Services". Should I just resubmit this on a new URL path? I'm fairly confident my presell is compliant and the rejection message pertains to landing page not creatives right? DYING to get this campaign live but I don't want to risk my Taboola account by continuously submitting disapproved campaigns, Facebook has left me paranoid.


Questions:
When should I start playing around with bid amounts on top performing placements?
What is the rule of thumb/common practice for blacklisting placements, 3x CPA spend with no conversions? Can I automate that?
What is the best way to scale out native campaigns? Taboola has quite a few different budget options and they all seem annoyingly confusing. Looking to get spend to $500/day asap, not sure best way to do that.
With "Creative Traffic Allocation" turned on do I need to worry about pausing underperforming creatives at scale or will Taboola handle my housekeeping?
WHY IS MY CAMPAIGN SPENDING ALL IT'S DAILY BUDGET IN A 2 HOUR WINDOW (CLICK HERE)?

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Great stuff man! Very cool!

Regarding the denied ads for the more aggressive campaign (if I remember everything correctly)... do they reference Covid-19 at all? I seem to remember you mentioning that... If they do I think there is 0% chance Taboola will approve them unfortunately, and I would not try uploading them again (although getting banned from Taboola sounds incredibly rare so I doubt they would do that). All the big native networks seem to be extraordinarily hypervigilant about not allowing anything related to the pandemic right now, so it makes sense they aren't approving them if they allude to it (if that is indeed the case).

Also Taboola's moderation is extremely strict and extremely inconsistent in general. Even once you have a rep, you'll have identical ads approved then denied and vice versa all the time. They also change policies on a whim... so all of a sudden they'll decide to no longer allow government buildings in ad images... or no longer allow people holding checks... etc...

Regarding the SmartBid campaign that is fantastic you got all those cheap clicks! Sometimes the smartbid campaigns will do that on day one but then the cpc's will jump up from that point on, so if they are higher tomorrow don't worry, that is normal. You can definitely have a profitable life insurance campaign spending much more than .19$ per click, the important thing is the SmartBid seeing what works and building up it's "pixel" to borrow from Facebook lingo.

Same thing with how quickly it spends each day- if it spends in two hours I'd say that's the SmartBid just picking the best clicks, which all happen to be in that window. You could probably spend 10k in that two hour window in the US each day, so even if it keeps doing that I wouldn't worry, although I would guess it will spread out more as you increase the budget.

Regarding your goal of increasing to 500$ per day, you could certainly do that by just increasing the budget on that campaign. Much like Facebook- just double every day... or double it for every two days in a row its profitable or something like that... OR you can just duplicate the campaign... you could have three identical campaigns spending 150-200$ per day, or you could clone a pure desktop and a pure mobile and a pure tablet each at 100$ per day... or just clone three more campaigns also targeting all devices but each at a different bid level... etc...

Regarding creative allocation, what do you have it set to now? I do 'Optimized' but a lot of other folks do 'Balanced'... either way I would just delete the poor performing ones and continually upload new ones - either in the same campaign or in cloned new ones. Some people just add them to the same campaign, some people (especially if you're nervous about re-moderation) only add new ones to new clones. No right or wrong way just whichever you prefer

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No they don't, they just allude to it using the term "pandemic" once or twice on the LP. I'll redo and resubmit on a new URL tonight.
I was surprised to see sub $0.20 cpcs. Unfortunately those weren't the prices for Day 3 which you'll see in my next post.
This is a new concept to me but ok. So far every day every campaign has blown the entirety of the budget in a <2 hour window. Some spending 95%+ of the budget on one site. Will post Day 3 ​data today.

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Day 3 Stats
Spend: $330.64
Revenue: $54
Profit: -$276.64
CPC: $0.32
Visits: 1008
LP Clicks: 221
Conversions: 3
CTR: 21%


Where to start... The Day 2 profitable campaign tanked yesterday. CPCs increased from $0.17 to $0.53 and the campaign only spent $28 for 61 visits and 8 offer clicks. Dumpster trash stats. LP CTR tanked there, conversion rate was nonexisitent (to be expected on such low volume), and it spent a fraction of the budget. I am officially confused.
You may be wondering where the other $300+ of spend went. I duplicated the Day 2 profitable campaign and changed nothing but the budget strategy. I set it to $150/day strict and submitted the campaign. About 7 minutes later it had blown $300+ for a whopping $54 in revenue at a $0.32 cpc. It blew 95%+ of the spend on one site which I have since blocked (click here to see screenshot). I don't get Taboola lol.

My conversions still aren't firing in Taboola. Very frustrating. It's setup so affiliate network fires back to Voluum, then Voluum fires traffic source postback to Taboola. Obviously I'm doing something wrong but can't place my finger on what that may be.
Postback looks like this: ?click-id=#s2#&name=lead&revenue=#price#&currency=USD&par tner-name=Voluum

Update: I lowered the budget on the new campaign from $150/day to $25. Makes no sense to me that setting a STRICT $150 budget would spend $300+ but maybe that's just one of the Taboola quirks. I lowered the smartbid on BOTH campaigns to $0.20....so now there are 2 campaigns, both run of the mill Taboola campaigns running on $0.20 smartbids, one campaign on a monthly flight (balanced) of $2k and one on a $25/day strict campaign.

What can I do to optimize and hone in on my Day 2 success? Was that just fluke traffic or lucky CPCs?

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Eck... that sucks man...

I have had the exact same thing happen so many times... absolutely incredible day one... then day two is horrible... it's almost like they purposefully set it up to have day one get the max conversions possible...

I think what it actually is is that they test the new campaigns on the best impressions, as it were. They also typically send really cheap clicks the first day. Then from there maybe the smartbid starts testing, etc.

Is your strict budget set to a daily spend or monthly? If daily that's weird it went over... if monthly it may be that because it's the end of the month it spent more, trying to fit it all in.

Re: conversion firing, I would wait on spending very much more money til you get that fixed, since the SmartBid can't optimize if it doesn't know which impressions are leading to conversions obviously. I am sure Voluum's support team can get it fixed if you email them.

I use Thrive but for me, I have to set up a custom conversion in Taboola, then whatever the name of that conversion is (e.g. USLifeInsurance or something like that) goes at the end of the postback, which looks like this: https://trc.taboola.com/actions-handler/log/3/s2s-action?click-id={externalid}&name=USLifeInsurance

It isn't sending anything other than the Taboola click id that made the conversion. I also have it set up on a campaign level in Thrive rather than using the global postback.

Here's how it looks in Taboola when you create it:



But yeah, it's really frustrating how inconsistent the results can be on Smartbid. Especially with all the spend being on that one site. If you had a rep I would almost tell them about that as that is really rare- usually it's not THAT bad in terms of a single site eating up budget... maybe 30% or even 50% but not that much...

Anyway though, if I were you I would get the conversions tracking and then just set 1-3 campaigns at Balanced budget for 2-3k/mo each. That will equal 67-100$ a day per campaign, which is a decent amount for each campaign. Let them run for one week like that and then evaluate the weekly stats. I would also probably bid higher than .20$... even though you got clicks cheaper than that day one, that's definitely much less than you would normally spend on Taboola for US lead gen so it's likely they'll either not send you traffic after awhile or just send you bad quality traffic. I would think US Life would be closer to .50$ for mobile or 0.90$ for desktop.
@thedudeabides is a Taboola whiz so hopefully he'll chime in too

Also... just for comparison, here's the stats from one of my profitable Taboola campaigns this month... you'll see the spend jumps from 30$ to 150$ depending on the day and the cpa ranges from 9$ to 55$... now, granted with higher volume that range would probably be lower... but this is a long-established SmartBid campaign with thousands of conversions for the SmartBid to optimize based on, and it's still sending inconsistent amounts of traffic and conversions each day...



So yeah... bummer of a day man but day one did show the campaign can be profitable so I would just pick a budget and bid and let it do it's thing for a week and then see how everything looks.

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I run Life Ins on Google (Since Last 5 years, UK GEO ) , One thing I can tell is that big companies are in survival mode so they are a bit agressive, Its just like christmas times usually during these times i avoid creating campaigns and stay less aggressive, Not trying to discourage you but just understand that its unpreditable most time, People are panicked and big spenders are trying to get as much market share as possible .. So keep going just whilst budgeting be careful and don't get too aggressive take baby steps ...


P.S I also noticed a spike in desktop traffic as compared to mobile .. CR has defiantely dropped

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Hey so quite a lot in this thread already but let me just give my general advice.

It looks like your starting bids were quite low, with campaign only spending $30-50/day.

Best practice is to start high and lower bids each time as campaign caps out to give those ads a fair chance at gaining traction.

Regarding overspend, Taboola will often spend 2x your cap the first day. It's like trying to hold back the ocean when you have a small cap

Life insurance is a competitive vertical on Taboola so it'll be tough to make it work, but at least the payout seems decent. Last time I ran a similar offer it was like $24.

I think your ads are needing work though. Senior images generally work best, that one you do have I actually ran a few years ago. I'd search for some better stock photos to start with, or even use Taboolas own stock photo library (when you go to edit an ad image its an option).

Taboola like other native sources are all about offers, creatives and bids. If you're starting to get into micro-managing placements you're probably doing something wrong. Better ads will allow you to get more traffic for less cost so focus on that part first.

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Day 4
Spend: $523.76
Revenue: $432
Profit: -$91.76
CPC: $0.24
LP CTR: 24%

Lots going on here. I took Jack_l advice of setting 1-3 campaigns at Balanced budget for 2-3k/mo each. Those puppies went bananas and blew $160 each in about 10 minutes haha. I was expecting them to only spend $65 each. Anyways, panic paused them because I thought (since I launched with only 2 days left in March) that they were going to blow $1k each.

Conversions are finally tracking.

Left those 2 campaigns paused and relaunched a new campaign with specific targeting parameters but same creatives and a strict daily budget of $60.


Day 5
Spend: $120.26
Revenue: $306
Profit: $185.74
CPC: $0.14
LP CTR: 30%

The only campaign running was the aforementioned "new campaign with specific targeting parameters but same creatives and a strict daily budget of $60." It boasted an EPC and LP CTR erring on the higher side of average as well as a CPC that definitely falls below average. I imagine this has a lot to do with what jack_l said about having incredible day ones and horrible day twos. Also thedudeabides mentioned that Taboola will often spend 2x your cap first day. For a while yesterday my dashboard reflected $220 in spend before updating down to $120. I wonder if they gave me extra traffic (like trying to hold back the ocean, right? some spilled over?) and then just watered down my cpc so the total daily spend in my dashboardwouldn't exceed my budget? Interesting thought as todays CPCs on that campaign are 4x and the campaign is losing money.

thedudeabides touching on my creatives, they definitely definitely need work. I just ripped some nonsense off the ad spy and am trying to find stability in Taboola with budgets and bids to establish a baseline. Life insurance is a new vertical for me and Taboola a new advertising platform. I will 100% be mixing in new creatives and new angles altogether. To continue along that train of thought I am still re-editing and re-submitting variations of my original idea in hopes to get approval. I have also been assigned a Taboola rep who can hopefully help expedite that process one way or the other.

My goal today is to find new creatives to mix in with the generic life insurance campaign.

thedudeabides - Question - So on Facebook your actual cpc is a derivative of many variables...CPM, ad ctr, relevance score, auction demand, etc. I know that with a high clicking ad and great relevance score I can best combat CPM prices and in turn get lower cpcs. What is the equivalent of that on Taboola?....Looks like bid amounts and vCTR have a majority to do with my cpc. Is smartbid the way to go here or no? You mentioned my bids were low but the campaign budgets are still spending. I can't really afford to be paying much over $0.30 cpc if I want to make this offer work at a 25% LP CTR and EPC of around $1.50...
Let's say I bid high $X on a campaign with ad vCTR of >2% will my click prices likely come in well below my bid?

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5 days in and already over $100 in profit day. I'd say you're already on the right track.

Those Day 3-4 Daily sudden spends are scary af though.

Native is still scary for me

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Haha thank you for those encouraging words! If I had to guess I'd say my profitable Day 5 was a traffic fluke, insanely low cpcs. However, it is a positive indicator of campaign potential if I can get quality clicks at a <$0.20 cpc. The spends are scary yes but they weren't huge losses. All in all I think I'm down maybe $200 after $1200 spend. Would love to be spending $X,XXX+ /day at the end of this 30 day challenge. Hopefully with all the new campaign angles and funnels I'm putting together that will be an attainable goal sooner than later.

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Yup that's exactly what happened. Anything over 2x daily spend cap they'll refund you that traffic so you get it for free.

Your vCPM is the main metric to scaling. With good enough ads you'll have higher CTR and thus vCPM, which allows you to drop your bids more and squeeze out more profit.

But it's important that you start at high bids so you gain access to the more premium traffic that converts better like MSN, otherwise at low bids you'll never serve there and be missing out. Worse yet, you may you may be tempted to play whack-a-mole with lower quality placements trying to make the campaign work.

Native, especially Taboola doesn't really behave as you'd expected at low daily caps; there's so much variance at that scale. The good news is you're just about out of that phase as you're reaching the 500-1000/day spend mark.

Looking at your Day 4 results, I would have raised the cap and slightly lowered bids by 5-10%.

What happened on Day 5 that spend dropped from 532 to 120? You had the momentum in your favor there, things were looking really good.

You want to start out campaign and make small adjustments over time in the beginning to keep the momentum going and avoid making drastic cuts or changes, namely just budget cap and bids.

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Day 4 results were from brand new campaigns so I'm thinking I got some free traffic there. About 10 minutes after going live they started PUMPING traffic and over reporting spend. After the dust settled and a few hours passed the campaign spend updated from around $1000~ to the $532 you see above. Not so certain those would be the best to turn back on? When you say raise cap what do you mean by that, daily spend?

All new campaign variations are being rejected left and right. Spending some extra time today going through Taboola policy docs before revising and resubmitting.

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Yes raise cap as in daily spend.

If you were getting flooded with traffic AND converting then that is a really good start, even if you're at -50% ROI, because it means you'll be able to lower bids bit by bid until you're at break-even then in the green.

I don't know what your total budget is like, but you have a winning campaign here it looks like, it's just a matter of how profitable and how much volume you can take it to per day. Based on those initial results and last time I ran this type of offer I'd say low to mid 4 figures a day.

Regarding whether to re-activate that campaign or re-launch with a new set of better ads, I'd probably lean towards the latter if its been a few days, and this time only make small bid adjustments after the cap is reached, and determine how much to raise cap based on how things are looking. There's really not a lot to it once you've got a handle on the essential components.

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Thanks amigo, noted. Will relaunch today with new and improved ads. San Diego local myself, will owe you a beer for the advice when the Covid madness is all over.
Cheers

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Day 6
Spend: $58.79
Revenue: $36
Profit: -$22.79
CPC: $0.48
LP CTR: 18%

Day 7
Spend: $62.95
Revenue: $36
Profit: $26.95
CPC: $0.51
LP CTR: 25%

Nothing sexy here, been busy with other projects so just the campaign with specific targeting parameters is live. All other campaigns are going through a maze of disapprovals! Have a phone call with the Taboola rep on Monday to sort these issues. Nothing new to report otherwise!
Below is a screenshot of that campaign summary by site. Any advice here? CPA's are so low because the first day of this campaign (Day 5) I was over served free traffic big time for anyone just tuning in.
I did as thedudeabides suggested and increased cap/decreased bid on this campaign today since it was profitable upon waking up.


Going to also be relaunching one of the run of the mill smart bid campaigns on a bigger monthly flight and continue increasing cap/decreasing bid prices. Stay tuned.
-Delfino

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If it's profitable I wouldn't touch bids just yet, rather raise cap and see how it does. Definitely wouldn't be lowering bids for a campaign only spending $50/day though. Needs to be spending more first and capping quickly before you start making adjustments, which it should be if your bids are high enough to start. I like to shoot for 250/day for a starting campaign but that's just where I'm at now, and will often be scaling same day to 500/1k if it looks promising after it caps. Once you know an offer is good enough and you get a feel for what constitutes good vCPMs and CTRs to drive volume you should have to confidence you need to scale up fast.

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How's this campaign going, @delfinoloco?

Questions for thedudeabides, if that's okay:

1) When you say "if it looks promising", what are you looking for? (Actual profit, or certain 'signs of life', or a certain 'negative' ROI that indicates it's not worth doing, etc)

2) If you're starting at $250/day, and could be scaling the same day... I assume that means you think $250 or less is adequate to see if a campaign has promise enough to continue? (You're just wanting to get a quick Day 1 answer, versus taking days? At what point on that first day do you decide it's worth spending more?)

3) Do you start with one campaign at $250, or multiple campaigns at lower cap?

4) If an initial campaign gets some sales (Day 1 for you, I guess) but it's not profitable, what aspects do you tweak or edit in an attempt to get it into the green? And what would you tweak first?

5) How do you determine what a "high enough" bid is to start?

Just getting back to natives and could use some clarity on how to quickly test and find what's working in order to scale.

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@thedudeabides ... just realized I didn't tag you for my questions above... just when you get a minute I'd love to hear your advice.

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You might have figured it out already but in case you didn't it should be "?click-id={externalid}&name=lead&revenue={payout}&currenc y=USD&partner-name=Voluum" instead of what you pasted above. In traffic source postbacks it's always traffic source's (Taboola's) parameters mapped with Voluum's tokens.

If you have more questions related to Voluum, it's best to tag me. Sorry for missing your follow along earlier.


Karolina

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@delfinoloco is this a U.S. life insurance offer that pays $18? If so, what fields do they ask for to trigger a payout?

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