1 Weird Trick to A Successful Native Follow Along (33)
***Copying my Follow-Along from another forum to this forum***
In the spirit of running native traffic, I figured I'd make up a funny follow along title.
Been lurking around this forum and MadSociety forum for about a month now just to get re-acclimated to the affiliate marketing scene and to understand tracking and all that jazz. Still trying to figure all the nuances, but thankfully my memory doesn't fail all the way from previous experience.
Traffic Source: RevContent - Will master this source before moving onto other sources.
Offers: - Blood Boost Formula
- Smart Financial Car Insurance
- Oshen Watch
Geo: USA
Traffic: Desktop, Disabled AdBlock & Push Notification
Here are a few thoughts I had when I ran this campaign and what are my actions and goals ongoing forward:
Thoughts
1) Stats on the campaign:
- Blood Boost Formula: 0.134% Ad CTR; Spent: $273.72, 1 Conversion Revenue: $108
- Smart Financial Car Insurance: 0.066% Ad CTR; Spent: $126.98, 1 Conversion Revenue: $7
- Oshen Watch: 0.109% Ad CTR, Spent: $230.51, 4 Conversions Revenue: $125
Based on the stats I decided to choose Oshen Watch as my winning offer because it has a lot more data(conversions) for me to make decisions. Blood Boost probably requires a larger budget to test. Also, this is probably the only mistake I'll make once. I saw car insurance doing well on Adplexity. I've asked my affiliate manager if they had that offer, he said no but he has a comparable one, so I ran that one. The results speak for itself on that campaign lol. #picktherightoffer
2) One thing I *think* I know about RevContent now is when you launch a campaign with multiple ad creatives whichever creative does the best in the beginning will receive all the traffic and the other creatives will get very minimal traffic. See below screenshot.
3) Another thing I'm speculating about RevContent's traffic source is when I set all my campaign's CPC bid as $0.50, the Oshen Watch & Car Insurance campaign seems to spend traffic relatively quickly(within 1 hr) compared to Blood Boost Formula which at the time I'm writing this post it still hasn't reached it's budget. Not sure what's exactly going on here. Pacing is turned on for all campaigns But, it's something on my radar to test in the future. Maybe set campaigns at 0.49, 0.50, 0.51 so that they don't overlap one another.
4) RevContent Settings - Engagement vs CPA ROI - All the campaigns I've setup is through Engagement. I think that if we setup CPA ROI and we pass conversions back to to traffic source, their own media buying team might use our information to create their own campaigns. I do see TS ROI & TS NET on TheOptimzer is not reflecting the conversions. Am I understanding this correctly?
Actions
Since the Oshen Watch is the winner, I went to the next step in the 3x Ad System.
1) Since 2 of the ad creatives aren't doing well in the current campaign, I uploaded 2 different ad creatives and paused the other 2 to see if there's any performance changes. I'm doing this for 2 reasons, 1) To see if the other ads will outperform the winning one. 2) To see if it will start delivering traffic evenly which can confirm my theory for Thought #2.
2) Created a 2 new campaigns and uploaded 3 new ad creatives to each campaign.
- Angle 2(Just one sample):
- Angle 3(Just one sample):
3) Will set these 3 campaigns again to 1x payout and run for 3 days. As well as setting rules below. So far I haven't blacklisted any placements.
Goals
- Hit First Green Day.
- Hit Green Day for at least 3 days.
- Hit $100 a Day.
- Hit $100 a Day for at least 3 days.
- Etc..... Will update goals as I achieve them 
So far this past week, I've tested the Senior Gifting & Blood Pressure Angle 1x payout and there were no conversions. I had to pause that as the original ad creative was still getting conversions.
I ran the winning ad with 5 different ad creatives and still the original image did the best. My plan was to run that test for 3 days at 1x payout to see which ad creative works the best. On Tuesday, it was close to breakeven around -$10 Net. The next day I think it had absolutely no conversions, but I didn't let that stop me from running on Thursday. However, my AM broke the news to me on Wednesday that the offer was facing IP complaints and that by Thursday EOD is the last day I can run it. With that news, I decided not to push any traffic on Thursday.
Instead, I talked with my AM on Wednesday to discuss the offers I was going to run next. I decided to pursue the same vertical(e-com). He gave me some offers to review and decided I was ultimately going to run the offers portable AC(probably only good up until next month), Lumiguard, & RangeXTD Wifi Extenders.
Now, I'm just waiting for RevContent to approve my campaigns tomorrow and will run these offers at 1x payout to see which one is the winner and then I'll pursue that winning offer and scale it to the moon .
Here are a few thoughts I had about RevContent as I'm trying to master this traffic source:
1) I think when creating your campaigns on there you have to split ad creatives to 1 ad = 1 campaign. It can't be 3 ads in one campaign because RevContent's system auto pushes traffic to the highest CTR creative.
2) You can't clone a campaign that already has a winning ad creative. For example, in the initial campaign I had 3 ad creatives and one outperformed the others. I decided to clone the original and pause the winning creative to let the 2nd best creative get some traffic. That simply wasn't the case. It didn't give me much traffic at all.
However, another reason why it might not get a lot of traffic is because I have them all running at the same time and all at the same bid. Which makes it look like it's competing with one another and since I cloned the campaign from the original it'll still let the winning ad creative from the original go first because it pulled data from the old campaign. Hope this made sense here lol, I'm still trying to wrap my head around it.
Question: How do you post a normal looking size picture instead of the thumbnail picture above? When I try to copy & paste a photo it's giving me some type of error like character limit. Edit: Here's the exact error message they're giving me: "The text that you have entered is too long (197058 characters). Please shorten it to 30000 characters long."
Vbulletin has some bug, so posting images directly through it can fail at times.
Originally Posted by stungads
In the spirit of running native traffic, I figured I'd make up a funny follow along title.
Been lurking around this forum and MadSociety forum for about a month now just to get re-acclimated to the affiliate marketing scene and to understand tracking and all that jazz. Still trying to figure all the nuances, but thankfully my memory doesn't fail all the way from previous experience.
Traffic Source: RevContent - Will master this source before moving onto other sources.
Offers: - Blood Boost Formula
- Smart Financial Car Insurance
- Oshen Watch
Geo: USA
Traffic: Desktop, Disabled AdBlock & Push Notification
Here are a few thoughts I had when I ran this campaign and what are my actions and goals ongoing forward:
Thoughts
1) Stats on the campaign:
- Blood Boost Formula: 0.134% Ad CTR; Spent: $273.72, 1 Conversion Revenue: $108
- Smart Financial Car Insurance: 0.066% Ad CTR; Spent: $126.98, 1 Conversion Revenue: $7
- Oshen Watch: 0.109% Ad CTR, Spent: $230.51, 4 Conversions Revenue: $125
Based on the stats I decided to choose Oshen Watch as my winning offer because it has a lot more data(conversions) for me to make decisions. Blood Boost probably requires a larger budget to test. Also, this is probably the only mistake I'll make once. I saw car insurance doing well on Adplexity. I've asked my affiliate manager if they had that offer, he said no but he has a comparable one, so I ran that one. The results speak for itself on that campaign lol. #picktherightoffer
2) One thing I *think* I know about RevContent now is when you launch a campaign with multiple ad creatives whichever creative does the best in the beginning will receive all the traffic and the other creatives will get very minimal traffic. See below screenshot.
3) Another thing I'm speculating about RevContent's traffic source is when I set all my campaign's CPC bid as $0.50, the Oshen Watch & Car Insurance campaign seems to spend traffic relatively quickly(within 1 hr) compared to Blood Boost Formula which at the time I'm writing this post it still hasn't reached it's budget. Not sure what's exactly going on here. Pacing is turned on for all campaigns But, it's something on my radar to test in the future. Maybe set campaigns at 0.49, 0.50, 0.51 so that they don't overlap one another.
4) RevContent Settings - Engagement vs CPA ROI - All the campaigns I've setup is through Engagement. I think that if we setup CPA ROI and we pass conversions back to to traffic source, their own media buying team might use our information to create their own campaigns. I do see TS ROI & TS NET on TheOptimzer is not reflecting the conversions. Am I understanding this correctly?
Actions
Since the Oshen Watch is the winner, I went to the next step in the 3x Ad System.
1) Since 2 of the ad creatives aren't doing well in the current campaign, I uploaded 2 different ad creatives and paused the other 2 to see if there's any performance changes. I'm doing this for 2 reasons, 1) To see if the other ads will outperform the winning one. 2) To see if it will start delivering traffic evenly which can confirm my theory for Thought #2.
2) Created a 2 new campaigns and uploaded 3 new ad creatives to each campaign.
- Angle 2(Just one sample):
- Angle 3(Just one sample):
3) Will set these 3 campaigns again to 1x payout and run for 3 days. As well as setting rules below. So far I haven't blacklisted any placements.
Goals
- Hit First Green Day.
- Hit Green Day for at least 3 days.
- Hit $100 a Day.
- Hit $100 a Day for at least 3 days.
- Etc..... Will update goals as I achieve them
Love it man! Excited for your follow-along!
Few thoughts:
- I think your rationale on choosing Oshen Watch vs the high payout vsl was wise - it is indeed really difficult to run those high ticket ones unless you have a whitelist of proven sites to do it on, since you have to spend so much per conversion.
Car insurance would have been fantastic in that regard because the payout is so low so you get more data for cheaper, however in my experience car insurance is a really, really tough, competitive vertical where you gotta have everything dialed in perfectly, since the payout is so low, and it seems to me the folks doing lots of car insurance volume on native are the ones who own the offer themselves and are trying to increase volume in order to raise the value of the business, rather than just making short-term affiliate profits.
With that said, any other low payout stuff like Dating could be awesome for you.
-You mentioned not wanting to pass conversions so they wouldn't steal your data or campaigns - I wouldn't worry about this
They have bigger concerns - plus Revcontent does not have an internal media buying team anyway. With that said, there are other smaller native networks that DO have internal media buying teams, and I agree, as an advertiser that is a bit of a turn-off for me... With all that said I've never been able to get conversions to consistently post to Revcontent anyway for some reason...
-If I were you I would also test Outbrain and Taboola. I know the idea is "not get spread too thin" and "not jump around", but in opinion those are both WAY easier to make profits on than Recontent (although Revcontent is my favorite of the three as a company and a platform). You could even try the exact same offer on them just so you can get an idea of which one you like the best.
Anyway great stuff man and excited to follow your progress!
PS You mentioned Mad Society - is it still active? I was on there awhile back and I really liked Malan but it seemed like it was sort of trickling away and nobody was ever commenting...That would be great if its active again!
PPS Love your goals too! Those are the perfect type of goals to to shoot for my opinion... just keep hitting those and then continually create slightly bigger ones and before you know it you'll be crushing it!
Thanks Jack! That's funny too that you asked about Mad Society because I was on there replying to a comment you've made about Adplexity on MadSociety forums before you replied to this thread. It's still not as active, but there's still new replies here and there.
As much as I love high ticket conversions, I don't think it's right for me at this stage. The Oshen Watch offer was doing well for me until the offer was pulled from the network due to IP complaints. I haven't searched other networks, but will sign up for GiddyUp & DFO(heard at least GiddyUp is ecom centric). Same about Car Insurance or Lead Gen in general. With the lack of targeting options on especially RevContent, the quality of the leads could also be very poor. Would probably do way much better on FB.
Yea, I decided not to setup conversion pixels on RevContent because it looked like they were tracking it all wrong. It showed I made like $8K a day, soon enough though .
I hear ya on testing multiple native traffic sources and not put your eggs in one basket. I have to probably launch at least 5-6 solid campaigns on RevContent before I think about switching over to Outbrain/Taboola. Don't know if Outbrain/Taboola have options to target as RevContent got rid of their Brand/Topic targeting.
I ran the campaigns today and realized I fucked up or complicated things way too much. I tested 3 different offers by 3 separate campaigns per offer(1 ad each campaign). Realized that didn't make much sense and fixed it awaiting approval from Rev.
So I'm trying to find this offer, but I'm having a hard time trying to find it across different affiliate networks. Is this just the brand itself promoting it themselves?
https://native.adplexity.com/ad/3011...ect=keyword.lp
Been MIA for a while just in the trenches learning more about Native networks and offers before jumping into campaigns. Too much overanalyzing that I needed to start launching campaigns which I did again.
So over the past month, I've just continued to learn more about HTML/CSS/JS and some parts are still puzzling me, but I've learned some basics to get by and I'd figured that I would improve debugging/fixing landing pages over time. It's honestly the thing that takes me the longest to get campaigns up and running.
1 week ago, after much reading I changed traffic sources from RevContent to Taboola given that I hear RevContent's traffic is US-centric. I wanted to also run campaigns in a less competitive geos like USA, but still have volume like AU, UK, English speaking countries.....
That being said, I had launched campaigns on Taboola and had my campaign denied due to the landing pages being deceptive and after that I've made some slight adjustments and it was approved. In that phase, I was testing 2 similar eCom offers in one campaign. One offer came out on top so I paused the other ad creatives.
I wanted to upload more ad images to test which started my problem with Taboola's ad approvals method amongst other things as well. But, we'll get to that later.
When it comes to testing, I take a more granular approach which is maybe a bit overkill.
*I've also stopped worrying too much I should allocate to test if a offer works or not, a general rule of thumb is 3xCPA.
1) Testing various similar offers.
2) Testing images and once I find 2-3 winning images I move on to the next variable.
3) Headlines, after finding 2-3 winning headlines go to landing pages.
4) Find 2-3 winning landing pages with the images and headlines and then from that point on you'll start messing around with the budgets/bids for scaling.
My Taboola campaign setup is the following:
- SmartBid
- Even Allocation(This is one of the main reasons I switched over from RevContent to Taboola. When I was running campaigns on Rev, the algo would try to find the winner pretty quickly and start driving all the traffic there without giving the other ad creatives a chance hence I'd like to be more manual in this process).
- Bid was at .75(I reduced it by 10% everyday to allow pacing of the traffic. Followed @thedudeabides advice)
Now to get on my soapbox about Taboola:
- When I wanted to test more ad images and used the same LP, it got denied. I tried adjusting it a little bit more and also it still got denied. It's the same landing page that got approved. SMH at this point.......
- Taboola API access - I wanted to integrate theOptimizer with Taboola, but I haven't heard back from their support email and I'm trying to get a account manager, but it seems from my research you'd have to spend a considerable amount each day with them to get a AM. Now, I understand why they would do this because they want to weed out the people who are serious about this and those who aren't.
This being the case, I am a bit discouraged about not being to get a specific reason as to why my LP's are rejected, I tried to submit them multiple times and still rejected. I'm still launching campaigns on Taboola to see if they get approved. So, I'm cold emailing Taboola reps on LinkedIn to see if I get any luck.
With that out of the way, I just didn't want to sit on my ass and wait for something to happen. So, I started some eCom campaigns on RevContent again since I do have a good chunk of account balance in there still. Like I mentioned above, I don't like that all the traffic goes to one ad creative after a minimal amount of traffic is driven to the campaign. And if I have to test ad images/headlines/LPs by separating them out into separate campaigns, I guess it's just the way it has to be. So, stay tuned for updates on this.
Lastly, I would like to be honest about my progress and it seems like I'm not doing enough to move the needle forward. I would like some insight into when you first started, what would you do like every single day(including weekends) in order to get to the point you're at now. As a newbie, I can't imagine I'd launch campaigns every single day because that would just burn through the cash very quick. At this point, I don't mind working hard, I just would like to be smarter about working hard
Maybe check with the support at TheOptimizer. They might have an agreement or contacts to help you get an API access.
For some reason they must've seen my post and those ads on Taboola got approved now . I basically changed a letter in the headline and resubmitted for approval. I have also read through Taboola's advertising policy and it made me change some stuff up on my LPs not major changes though. Now, I'm going to run my campaigns for a few days and see how it performs and will report back.
My main focus is on eCom offers right now due to Q4 coming up soon and I figured it would be good to take advantage of the online shopping season.
Today was the 1st day of stats for my Taboola eCom campaign that I restarted. I took the winning image from the prior campaign and tested it again other creatives as well.
To rehash the settings I'm using on Taboola:
- SmartBid
- Even Allocation
- Bid @ .75
Thoughts:
1) Spent $165 today and no conversions. Keep on truckin!
2) Possible reason for no conversions. Low Ad CTR%. Even the first one ad which was my winning image from my prior campaign has a lower CTR. Based on
Next Steps:
1) Upload more ads. Goal is to get to at least .15 - .25% CTR for ads while also getting conversions before moving onto the next step.
Originally Posted by stungads
To rehash the settings I'm using on Taboola:
- SmartBid
- Even Allocation
- Bid @ .75
Thoughts:
1) Spent $165 today and no conversions. Keep on truckin!
2) Possible reason for no conversions. Low Ad CTR%. Even the first one ad which was my winning image from my prior campaign has a lower CTR. Based on
Next Steps:
1) Upload more ads. Goal is to get to at least .15 - .25% CTR for ads while also getting conversions before moving onto the next step.
Hey man - great work on all the details and all the purposefulness! Very good stuff!
That's a bummer you went 0/160$ today but it happens to all of us!
I would actually recommend trying more campaigns, less ads... wait to focus on the ads until once you get something converting...
Also, don't count on the 'Optimized' ad setting... especially if you're using SmartBid... using 'Optimized' lets the algorithm really work to its fullest potential. The algo can buy traffic better than you or me or anyone else on earth, IF all the variables of the setup are right, and once it has the data to work with.
Also, I was gonna add, it's gonna take you a decent amount of time just to get the hang of the platform and 'learn it', as it were, so if you can do that with really cheap clicks in lower-tier geo's that will help you get there quicker and less expensively vs the US or even the UK or Germany where clicks are more expensive. Try New Zealand or Italy or Ireland or Finland if you can, or even places like Romania, Brazil, the Philippines, etc if you have offers that can run in them.
Great work and good luck man!
Originally Posted by jack_l
***Revised Step 1 should be finding a good offer that pops.***
*I've also stopped worrying too much I should allocate to test if a offer works or not, a general rule of thumb is 3xCPA.
1) Testing various similar offers.
2) Testing images and once I find 2-3 winning images I move on to the next variable.
3) Headlines, after finding 2-3 winning headlines go to landing pages.
4) Find 2-3 winning landing pages with the images and headlines and then from that point on you'll start messing around with the budgets/bids for scaling.
Simon
Originally Posted by stungads
There's lots of weird little hacks like that... like for whatever reason I always get better mobile traffic when I just do an 'All Devices' campaign but bid at the mobile level. It's still 99% mobile, but it just flows way better.
Or another one I've had a lot of luck with is combining Australia and New Zealand together. Their traffic is very similar and for some reason just having two geo's instead of one always seems to improve the results a bit.
Other people may have different results though... the SmartBid almost seems to evolve over time and I think there might even be account-level changes that happen (though I'm not clear about that), so it's gonna be a bit different for each person.
I just like to think of it as a big video game and you gotta go explore every nook and cranny to truly master the game
You could try this strategy
#1 start a campaign with 5-7 headlines
#2 And another one with 5-7 images
#3 Based on the results, start your money camp with the winners (keeping it at max 5-7 ads)
#4 Run everything on a performance whitelist - never run RON
#5 Block fast and hard - it's totally ok to have a campaign running on 3 high volume placements
NOTE: Do not think with the campaign too much - taboola is VERY sensitive
If you will pause ads - do it only 1 or 2 at the same day
#6 Then look at the data and see where you can apply dayparting
#7 Your bid might be very different from 8AM to 12AM compared to 1PM to 7PM (run separate campaigns for both timeslots)
Originally Posted by iAmAttila
#4 & #5 - In the thread you posted Optimizing Taboola on Smartbid you emphasized that we shouldn't really take any major adjustments on campaigns does that include blocking placements? I don't have a rep currently so I don't think I can access the performance whitelist.
I would have to run RON first and ideally it would be with SmartBid since I don't have Taboola's API access for Fixed Bids. SmartBid can then bid accordingly as jack mentioned on well performing placements. That being said, it seems that if I want to run a SmartBid campaign, I'm going to have to let it run for a couple of days in order for the SmartBid to work itself out. Taboola has like a meter on how long it's learning on SmartBid, for me it's running/learning timeline is 10 days.
Right now, I'm more focused on finding an offer that converts pretty well when I start a campaign. I was running a wifi extender gadget campaign and didn't see the same results on Taboola as I saw on RevContent. On Taboola, I spent like $2-300 with no conversions and that's when I deemed the offer is not worth pursing as I've learned a good offer will convert even if you have mediocre ads/landing pages. I've also made sure my landing pages and redirect links were live before that campaign ran too just in case it wasn't my own negligence that couldn't make the campaign convert
.
Tested 3-4 offers this past week. Found one that shows somewhat of a promise. I definitely let one of those offers go x9 offer payout. I should learn to cut losers quickly. This weekend I have found another similar offer to the winning offer that I'm going to test. And I'll be testing another new offer that could look promising for Q4.
I'll only be discussing Taboola stats and findings for the campaign I think that has promise.
Taboola - Smart Bid - Optimized Campaign
Offer Payout: $30+
1) I didn't track conversions/revenue correctly which would've threw off the Taboola algo to see which ads it should serve to it's viewers which would then skew the results a bit. The 1st day it should've displayed 5 conversions instead of 3. I was profitable by $2.75 on day 1.
2) On Day 2, it took a nose dive. No conversions at all. I upped my budget to $200 as I wanted to spend more throughout the day and see what results it would yield(opened up the campaign to 7AM- 7PM). The 1st day I had at around 1PM - 7PM, I think I spent the whole $150 within 3-4 hours. But I know better now since I know affiliate marketing has to up and down days, so I wanted to let it run on Friday as well.
3) On Day 3, only 3 conversions, spent $300. At this point, I'm still thinking this is a good offer because I was profitable the first day and had quite a few conversions to prove it.
If there's definitely one thing I took away from this test is that on the second day I see that my actual CPC increased almost by $.60, so that's an indication to me that my ads are being served out there, but no one is willing to click the ads hence the higher CPC. Also because there's no conversions, I would also assume Taboola's algo would think that my ads aren't good so they would charge me more in order to serve the ads. So, in that case my next action step is to upload more ads which I have just done and awaiting approval. I've also lowered my bid by 10% because I was bidding pretty high at 0.75 the 3 days I ran the campaign.
Is there anything else you have noticed with the stats below?
Looks like you're doing everything right...
One thing I might throw out there, depending on how much money you have to burn, I might try to set the new campaigns to 50$ a day, and plan on waiting a week to get a good full set of data, rather than spending more in a shorter time frame.
Some might disagree of course, but my thought is that sometimes the algos just spaz out (as it looks like it did on day two) so if you're only spending 50$ it isn't as expensive when that happens. Once its a vertical or country you know better that kind of thing will happen less, but anything you can do to save money on testing is good.
And then yeah, finding the right ad is often the hardest part, its mind-boggling what a difference in performance there can be between two ostensibly similar ads.
Thanks Jack for the advice. I do have quite a bit of money to play around with to test, I'm at a point where I'm comfortable spending $150-200 a day on testing. But, I do know where you're coming from and I guess it all comes down to risk tolerance. At this point, I feel okay spending that much per day, but maybe after 2-3 campaigns if it yields the similar result ermmm... maybe I should cut down the spend.
With ad creatives, I'm trying to find unique spins on ad images since with ecom products it's harder imo because you have to show what you're selling and can't deviate too much from the ad image. So, it could be limited there in terms of the types of images you want to use. Wakeboarder brought up a good post where he sold a ecom product with a Trump spin on it or something like that so those kinda ideas will help me get my creative juices flowing.
Would like to know how you'd approach the following: Would you cut placements(sites) first or ads first? I would assume you'd cut the bad placements first to see if that improves the the CTR/conversions of the ads in the campaign. After a few days of testing there, you would then proceed to cut(or pause) the ads that aren't performing.
Does anyone also notice a discpreancy between Taboola &
Quick Update: I have stopped running the other offer that is almost the same product. Although that offer was semi converting the offer I ran previously converted better and has a better payout and they're both spending the same. I have asked my AM for a payout bump and awaiting for response. I'm not at the point where I'll test different affiliate networks of the same offer, that will be done when I find the best ad/LP combo.
Here are the stats for the whole week thus far:
There wasn't a significant change that I've made to get to this point, but I did significantly reduce the bid on a placement yesterday that was averaging spending $5 a day but as a collective for the whole month it spent around $75 with no conversions(The Weather Channel).
I've also cut placements based on the parameters below:
- Cut site ID with a Average CTR - 10%, so since my average CTR is 28% if a site ID has a 18% CTR, I will cut the placement only if it has spent more than 50% offer payout. So if a site ID has a 18% CTR & spent $16 on a $30 payout offer, cut.
Next Steps:
- I'll be taking the best creatives that has the highest CTR and conversions and make variations of those images. I haven't paused any ads yet. However, after tomorrow I'll pause ads that has spent 2x payout and continue to pause placements.
***For everyone's reference, when I talk either about pausing/cutting placements I'm not really pausing the placement, I'm just significantly reducing the bid on that placement so little to no traffic will drive to that placement.***
@stungads weather channel spent over 75 in 1 month because your ctr was 0.02 %. So for example in similar situations you shouldn't wait to spend x2-3 times payout, especially if you're running RON. Weather channel is a big traffic source, but from what i see from your screenshot, sites like ballpool window app would kill from scratch. I saw that you got 17 sales so far on this offer i would look at where did the majority of sales come from, from which traffic source and look at performance/day.Another thing i noticed your avg cpc is (i'm assuming it's a desktop campaign) is pretty high, so definetly focus on getting higher ctr on ads . Excited to see your native journey 
Originally Posted by nativeq
For those particular 2 placements, I've increased the CPC above 10% of the actual CPC. This is to ensure the #1 spot on the placement. Yea, this is also a desktop campaign. My CTR on the ads for my top performing creative was 0.08% and the rest of the creatives were below that. My aim is definitely around 0.10% - 0.20% CTR.
Because of that, I'm cloning my campaign and restarting from scratch with only one adjustment - Even Allocation. This time I will have a better grasp of what creatives are doing well along with which placements I should cut quicker.
@stungads try aiming 0.20% + . If you're running a 30 $ payout offer (if i understood correctly) you needed higher ctr. No worries, it's a process
Originally Posted by stungads
I use Voluum but actually manage the campaigns in Taboola, it's a few hours out of date but at least the data is reliable. I only use Voluum as a sort of 'early warning system' to let me know if Taboola has started to send junk traffic which it can suddenly do with no warning.
To track lander clickThrus in Taboola you can set up a 'clickThru' conversion event and call that javascript on the landing page whenever the visitor clicks through to the offer. These stats will then show up in Taboola Ads.
Some other tips -
If I were you I'd pause everything until you can get a Taboola rep. Best route is to reach out to your affiliate manager and get an intro through them, I think LinkedIn is too much of a long-shot.
My rep will set up an new advertiser account for each campaign with the Preferred Sites setup, and will also manually block hundreds of junk sites. Without these steps in place you'll get just enough decent traffic to keep you hooked but it will be mixed in with a ton of junk making it much tougher to get into profit. Even with those settings, Taboola will periodically try to broaden the sites they target to lower your quality traffic (this is called Dynamic Site Targeting Phase 1) and this can easily kill your campaign stone dead.
Reps can also make the ad approval process 10 times easier. Taboola email support is utterly useless, in the past I've waited 5-6 weeks for a response.
Once you get access to the Taboola API you can also use https://www.postman.com/ to mass block up to 3000 junk sites before you start campaigns, which can also help.
Remember that Taboola has over 60K sites but only a tiny fraction of those (probably a few hundred to a thousand) generate all the profits and the other 59K-odd are middling-to-junk quality. Taboola makes more profit for themselves by pushing the junk as much as they can, this is why they don't seem to allow performance whitelists anymore.
So your mindset is that you need to tip the balance to get on the quality sites by minimising the junk that Taboola are pushing at you. You need your rep, and probably some BlockLists to achieve this.
Until you have these measures in place to ensure a minimum level of traffic quality, then it's tough to find the best Image, headline, lander etc since there's a significant proportion of junk traffic in there messing up your data.
Originally Posted by fallonp
1) For Taboola's LanderClickThrough Conversion Event I'm assuming it's this option here right?
I have a Taboola rep from a LinkedIn outreach. He did mention something about setting up advertiser account for each of my campaigns. At that point, I didn't understand why we needed to do that or even question it. But, now I understand why now.
He also granted me Taboola API access which I thought we'd only use with TheOptimizer. I didn't know I can use the API to find junk sites - I will have to look over the website you've provided.
Since the past day, I've been running Smart Bid - Even Allocation, but it looks like a lot of my spend is going to MSN placements which I really don't want to blacklist in this case, right? I mean I'm not getting conversions on the MSN placements so it might have to do with the creatives I have most likely.
That conversion event setup looks good. I set the conversion value to 1.00 in the hope that the algorithm will prioritise sites with a good LP CTR, and set the Include in total conversion to No.
On your lander include the following in the <a> anchor tags where the visitor clicks through -
onclick="_tfa.push({notify: 'event', name: 'ClickThru', id:account id});"
Taboola API doesn't find the junk sites as such, but using Postman to access the Taboola API gives you the ability to quickly and easily add hundreds or thousands of sites to your blocked publisher list (this is impractical to do manually). But you'll probably need to read up on RestAPI and learn some tech skills to get this working.
MSN sites are generally amongst the best sites so I would not blacklist them to start. But some of them are lower quality so I'd run some traffic to them and definitely reduce the bid and/or block them if they don't convert or have a poor LP CTR.
I also run Smartbid Even, the Optimized setting seems to pick the Ad with the best Ad CTR, not the best LP CTR and conversion rate. i.e. Optimized is picking whats best for Taboola which may not be best for us.
On the other hand, I've read that Optimized may lead to better ad delivery i.e. less situations when Taboola refuses to spend the daily budget. So sometimes Optimized may work better, its hard to say.
Originally Posted by fallonp
So how do you use Postman to determine what pub sites to block? I'll have to read into this, I don't even know what Postman does and now you got me intrigued
I like having a little bit more control over the ad creatives so I like starting with Even and then once I washed through a whole bunch of creatives then I can probably set that to optimized, but I haven't done enough campaigns to know which one is better.
Originally Posted by stungads
Using Postman talking to the Taboola API I can quickly & easily block all this sites from a new campaign.
Originally Posted by fallonp
Spend 1x payout, pause placement
More than 100 clicks, but no LP CTR, pause placement.
If I'm understanding this correctly are you using Postman to help you block placements/site IDs because you have access to Taboola API when running live campaigns? If that's the case is there a reason not to use TheOptimizer or Automizer in these situations regardless of the subscription cost?
Originally Posted by stungads
I've experimented with theOptimizer, Brax and
My opinion - In theory Brax and theOptimizer are a great idea, but given the time, money and hassle to set up and troubleshoot them they just don't work well enough to make them worthwhile.
Much better to get the LP CTR data to show up in Taboola/Outbrain as I described, then manually manage the campaigns there.
Update: I'm still running eCom campaigns on Taboola. Part of the battle is getting Taboola to approve my campaigns and I've been trying to find a campaign that will just "take off."
Currently, I'm running 2 eCom campaigns, one of which is a singular product and the other campaign being a Giddyup Q4 eCom listicle campaign.
I'm still stuck at what kind of strategy I should use to launch campaigns - Smart Bid/Fixed Bid - Optimized/Even - Bid High/Low. But, as I'm running more and more campaigns I'm kinda getting a feel for what I should be starting my campaigns off with.
With these 2 new eCom campaigns, I have decided to launch with Fixed Bid - Even Allocation and boy did I find quite some irregularities between running Fixed and Smart Bid.
Here is what I discovered so far:
From the looks of it fixed bids campaigns tend to give you lower quality sites to begin with and you'd have to weed out which ones are good and bad. While smart bid campaigns seems to allocate more of your budget to higher quality sites. The Fixed Bid campaigns had a way much higher ad CTR, but when looking at the stats on
Here is a screenshot of the top spending for a fixed bid campaigns. Now this screenshot may have garnered better results if I asked my account rep to blacklist push traffic which I didn't 
. I should've realized that before I launched the campaign. These 2 campaigns did not generate any conversions after spending around $250 in traffic in each campaign.
Here is a screenshot of a smart bid campaign I did in the past and more of the funds are allocated to better quality websites. And the LP CTR on those sites are way much higher.
Next Steps:
1) I'm going to duplicate this fixed bid campaign and have the new campaign start with Smart Bid - Even to see if there's any different results.
This was interesting to test as Jack_L mentioned how preferable the Smart Bid campaigns were instead of the Fixed Bid campaigns. I see why he said that now and I see a portion of people preaching fixed bid campaigns too. But, I'm assuming people that are running fixed bid campaigns have already accumulated all the junk sites/push traffic they want to block when they're starting new campaigns. Unfortunately, I don't have that list and frankly I don't know which sites would be considered low quality vs high quality. All I know, authoritative sites like MSN/The Weather Channel/ABC News are considered high quality.
2) Depending on eCom listicle performance after testing Smart Bid, I may pause this campaign as there's a lot more that goes into a listicle than I thought. There's ways to reorganize offers on the LP I think automatically based on offer performance and I haven't learned how to do that yet plus I may be too late to capitalize on the Q4 opportunity. However, I think I should be getting ready to launch New Years Resolution listicle and figure out how to rotate offers on the LP and installing a heatmap on the LP.
Hi @fallonp just joined STM, although I've been in affiliate marketing, and ad-tech since 2000 (ex-Azoogle founder).
Now I'm running Brax and saw your feedback. DM me with the details so I can see where things got too complicated and if there is anything we can do to help.
Joe Speiser
Brax.io - Owner
joe@brax.io
@stungads there's another important factor that determines your traffic quality on taboola. And that is the tier you were labeled with based on a campaign level. The previous campaign which you posted below with higher quality traffic is most likely Tier 1. The first screenshot with lower quality sites could be labeled as tier2.
So i would ask my account rep what is my campaign labeled as? Tier1 or tier 2? If it's tier2, you might want to ask what info needs to be changed on ad/lp level.
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