Hello everyone,
New member here at STM and getting stuck in with Vortex's $1Guide.
After initially running a multi-geo campaign to see which GEOs showed promise, I've created new campaigns with individual GEOs . I did this mainly due to the widely differing payouts so I could bid and optimise the various GEOs separately. I now have more control.
My question relates to how to correctly cut poorly performing placements and assumes one traffic source, one offer (in this case direct linking to a push notification smartlink).
When cutting placements, which of these two approaches would be best practice:
Approach 1) If you identify a poorly performing placement in a campaign for ONE GEO, cut it/exclude it across all the other GEOs (logic being if the placement is poor, it's likely to be poor regardless of the location of the visitor)
or
Approach 2) Strictly cut poorly peforming placements on a GEO by GEO basis (on the basis each placement may perform differently Country to Country).
I can see arguments for both. Which is best practice?
Thanks
It comes down to one thing: is the placement poor because it's filled with crappy bot traffic or is it not converting because the offer is not a good match?
In case of a bot flooded placement, chances are that it won't work in other GEOs either, if that't the case, you can blacklist it completely.
But in some cases, the particular placement simply isn't a good match with the offer ... in the case of push smartlinks, maybe there aren't enough buyers for the specific GEO, maybe the push subs collection page is not a good match with that particular site that you are buying the traffic from. But it could work with a different GEO or a different offer setup.
The problem here is that since it's directlinked, you can't put a bot trap on the LP or look at the LP ctr to see some abnormalities... are you using some tracker that would have some bot detection functionality?
To make things simple: if you see some "smaller" placements to perform really poor, just block them "globally". In case of the big ones that can actually send solid volumes, give them a chance to prove themselves in some other GEO, before blacklisting them for good.
I'm not yet using a tracker but leaning towards
I can see from your answer, there's a bit more to it and without a tracker, I don't have the full story. I'll keep going for now and appreciate your time.
Thanks
Trackers really make the life of an affiliate easier, they provide lot's of crucial data... so at some point in your AM career, you will likely have to start using one.
In the meantime, since you're basically just trying to get the feel of running a campaign, you can stick to Vortex's guide and follow the steps listed there. Once you feel more comfortable about the optimization process, you can step the game up a bit.
On pop traffic you often have placements that perform similar good or bad in different geos but there are also placements that perform good in geo A but are really bad in geo B.
A good way is to make an Excel file for your blacklists for each trafficsource.
There you make one column for global blacklist and then columns for the different geos.
| Global Blacklist | Thailand | Poland | Indonesia | South Africa |