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Wasting money on Taboola: low quality sites list (10)

10-14-2020 09:06 AM #1 team_native (Member)
Wasting money on Taboola: low quality sites list

Whenever I launch a campaign on Taboola, targeting a European country, after 2-3 days I notice that the placements that spent the most are always foreign (out of target) and low quality sites.
Does this happen to you too? If so, how do you behave? Have you found an effective way to avoid this problem?

10-14-2020 10:37 AM #2 Juniper_Tree ()

Quote Originally Posted by team_native View Post
Whenever I launch a campaign on Taboola, targeting a European country, after 2-3 days I notice that the placements that spent the most are always foreign (out of target) and low quality sites.
Does this happen to you too? If so, how do you behave? Have you found an effective way to avoid this problem?
are you using any traffic tracker in between to analyze traffic?

Or just use to see domain stats on Taboola platform itself?

also what targeting are you using in Taboola?

Best to keep excluding unwanted domains frequently in campaign start (with high CTR%, 100+ clicks with no conversion)

Also make a habit of creating black list for these domains, and exclude them from all future campaigns in start.

10-14-2020 12:25 PM #3 team_native (Member)

Thanks for your answer.
The domains I referred to are from Taboola stats.
I used to add these sites on BL but it's frustrating find so many new sites every 2-3 weeks that waste lots of money in few days (sometimes they are the same sites with different names).
Does it happen to you too?

10-14-2020 07:08 PM #4 matuloo (Legendary Moderator)

Quote Originally Posted by team_native View Post
I used to add these sites on BL but it's frustrating find so many new sites every 2-3 weeks that waste lots of money in few days (sometimes they are the same sites with different names).
It's normal yes, new sites are added all the time, to any network. So there really isn't any way around this, you have to keep monitoring this and block any widgets that are underperforming.

10-14-2020 07:49 PM #5 iAmAttila (Veteran Member)

Your bid decides if you get on premium placements.

Start with high bid (60+ cents) and drop it day two.

10-14-2020 11:00 PM #6 jack_l (Veteran Member)

Quote Originally Posted by team_native View Post
Thanks for your answer.
The domains I referred to are from Taboola stats.
I used to add these sites on BL but it's frustrating find so many new sites every 2-3 weeks that waste lots of money in few days (sometimes they are the same sites with different names).
Does it happen to you too?
We tried doing this back in 2019 - just running fixed bid and blocking 'bad' sites... it was impossible... they have 20,000 publishers and they just kept coming and coming and coming... we just gave up and embraced the SmartBid Their smartbid will blocks sites on it's own now it really works quite well. And it's clearly what they want us to be doing, so trying to do anything else is just swimming against the current (not that I wouldn't do it if we could get it to work!)

So yeah, if you're making it work on fixed bid at all you're doing better than us lol.





Edit: Also just for interest sake... at least with SmartBid, there's quite a few sites that seem like they would be bad but actually do fantastic (some of the pushnami ones for instance), so it's hard to judge based on name. Sounds like your going by performance obviously but just wanted to throw it out there as an observation.

10-14-2020 11:03 PM #7 jack_l (Veteran Member)

Quote Originally Posted by iAmAttila View Post
Your bid decides if you get on premium placements.

Start with high bid (60+ cents) and drop it day two.
This X2 - sometimes when we have a campaign that's struggling we'll lower the budget and raise the bid and this will often raise the conversion rate since its providing better quality impressions. And it's usually good to start out a bit high so you make sure you're getting the good impressions at the beginning, like @iAmAttila said.

10-15-2020 12:38 PM #8 team_native (Member)

Thanks everybody, I will continue my tests following your tips. I'll update you when I got some news.

Anyway if you have a EU Taboola Blacklist to share please ping me!

10-16-2020 04:11 PM #9 team_native (Member)

Does anyone have a good experience with the "audience marketplace" on Taboola?
I don't expect it to be as good as the FB ones but if anyone can share their opinion on it

thanks

10-16-2020 08:51 PM #10 jack_l (Veteran Member)

Quote Originally Posted by team_native View Post
Does anyone have a good experience with the "audience marketplace" on Taboola?
I don't expect it to be as good as the FB ones but if anyone can share their opinion on it

thanks
We've never used it by itself... I think it could maybe work if you had a super niche audience or something, but it would dramatically reduce volume as a result. Also I think the data might primarily be for the US market although I'm not sure...

Let us know if you test it I'd be curious how it goes!

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