AM Insights - Gina from Pushground (1)
Today it´s time for a new post in our AM Insights Interview Series.
It´s with Gina from Pushground, a trafficsource that probably many of you already know.
If you dont know them yet you can learn a bit about Pushground now and enjoy some insights from one of their account managers 
Hi Gina, can you first tell a bit about you that we know who you are?
I am Gina, an account manager for Pushground.
I have personally only been in the industry for 2 years but the majority of the Pushground team has around 5 years of experience in the affiliate space.
And can you tell now a bit about Pushground so that our users that are not running your traffic yet get a better idea of your platform?
Pushground is a premium traffic supplier offering traffic across two ad formats, push ads, and in-page push.
We offer traffic on a CPC model meaning you only have to pay per click.
We always recommend beginners to start off with push because first, it is a simple format and easy to quickly turn a profit.
There is plenty of room to scale so once you get the hang of it you can quickly start making some serious money.
Other push trafficsources also offer the CPM bid format, you only have CPC.
I personally also prefer the CPC format over CPM, can you tell a bit why you think CPC is better suited for push traffic?
For push campaigns, I would say the best bidding type for testing new campaigns is the CPC model.
It allows you to test with the security of only paying for those interested in (or just click on) your ad.
This means that if you end up showing your ad to the wrong audience that has little interest in your ad, you won’t have to pay much.
If you are trying to scale CPC also works great but if you know you have a higher than normal CTR then you could squeeze out more profits from a CPM model where you only pay per impression.
I see it like you, CPC is better for testing and also gives you much better control about the budget.
CPM basically only makes sense when you have already proven creatives with high CTR but even then CPC often outperforms.
Now let´s talk about trends, what verticals and what geos are at the moment good to run on push traffic?
Right now the US is hot with dating and antivirus, India with gambling, dating, and entertainment.
South America is on fire with finance and crypto.
FR, DE, and ES all have a lot of sweepstakes and dating campaigns.
With the holiday season coming up we should see a spike in e-commerce in tier 1 and 2 countries.
And because of COVID, travel is still in the dead.
I can agree about the South American trend as I run financial campaigns there myself.
A huge advantage in such geos is that in some of them you can get high volume but almost all of the geos have pretty low bids.
About the travel vertical, will be interesting to see if it can recover when Covid is over.
Ok, now let´s move on to some tips for our beginners so that they can get some info directly from the frontline for an easier start
What is your recommendation for beginners to start with, can be offer verticals, geos, flows or whatever comes to your mind.
A great place to get started would be with a simple SOI sweeps or lead gen offer.
They are normally pretty easy to convert and allow you to quickly gain real-world experience for little cost.
I would also recommend starting with tier 3 geos because normally they have less competition and the traffic is cheaper.
Once you are more confident, you can move up to tier 1 geos where the payouts are bigger and there is more room to scale.
This is basically what we recommend beginners as well and what we also see in the replies from interviews of the other AMs.
Probably good to listen to it
When a beginner then makes first stable profits, what would you tell them to do when they want to scale their biz?
Once you are making stable profits with one campaign, you would then want to incrementally bring in new sources of traffic (different feeds, different traffic sources, different ad formats) to test with your campaign.
If the new traffic converts and shows potential then work on optimizing it to increase your revenue.
If it doesn’t convert or you have finished optimizing, move on to the next traffic source.
Hopefully by the end, you will still be making the same stable profits but at a much higher level.
I am absolutely with you, I also think that it´s best to first use what you already have and try to get most off it.
This means first scale on the original source and when you have used all your options there take the winning funnel to other sources.
Well, in the end beginners could get all that info from their AMs as well but it happens more often that they don´t really know how to communicate with their managers so they rather shy away and try to avoid much conversations.
Nonetheless it can be really helpful to have a good communication with the AMs so can you give some tips about how to talk with AMs to build a good and longlasting relationship?
Beginners often struggle with communication because sometimes they don’t know how.
Unfortunately, beginners often fail to grab the attention of their AMs because they don’t spend that much money.
At Pushground we try to offer AM support to everyone rather than just those spending a couple thousands per month.
What they can do to build a better relationship with their AMs is to do their research beforehand and ask good questions.
Normally AMs don’t want to spend their time answering basic questions that affiliates should already know.
Good point, I also think that a bit of groundwork could already help alot.
Many questions can be answered already with just a bit research and then you don´t risk to waste your AMs time with things you could answer yourself.
This gives more room to talk about more important things or questions you can answer on your own.
But it also happens that an AM just don´t reply, what should an affiliate do in such situations?
Don’t get discouraged and try again, we are people and can miss things too sometimes.
There's intercom, skype, telegram, mail... lots of tools to get in contact with us.
And how do you decide how much time you dedicate to your affiliates?
It depends on their response times, the level of detail they provide when talking about their problem, their budget, and profile.
If they respond quickly with detailed questions and show interest then I normally spend more time with them.
Also if they have reliable info, such as a valid skype & telegram, I would bet more on them.
If they directly contact me before I can do it (so, very quick) I also pay special attention because they seem to be interested.
Yes, providing as much details as possible in requests can definitely help alot so that the AM doesn´t have to do guesswork what the matter even is about.
Let´s get back to geos, what geos are good for beginners and why?
As I said earlier, tier 3 geos are often the best for new affiliates because they offer a cheaper and less competitive place to build your affiliate knowledge and experience.
It may be difficult if their language and culture is different than your own but this extra effort means you have fewer competitors and it allows you to develop a more scientific approach which, in my opinion, is a key factor to success.
Ok, now we know about good offer verticals and geos for beginners.
When they are ready to run campaigns, what´s a good approach for testing and once they find good campaigns what´s the best approach for scaling?
To learn how to test new campaigns, I recommend you check out our media buying template which provides a detailed strategy for testing new campaigns telling everything from how to set your budget to when to change your angle.
After you have finished testing and have gotten good results, you can scale it with the incremental method I said before, adding and testing new traffic sources to expand your campaign horizontally.
Especially in the beginning it can happen that affiliates overpay for their campaigns, how can they avoid it but still receive high volume and good quality?
Narrowing your campaigns by user freshness is a great way to focus your spending on higher-quality traffic without overpaying for everything.
You can quickly find what feeds convert best and then expand the user freshness filter for those feeds. This help stops you from overpaying for the traffic that you want.
Another great way is to use automatic rules.
This can help you quickly (and automatically) get the right bid for each source along with quickly cutting the spend to the feeds that aren’t profitable.
How can we find hot traffic opportunities on Pushground?
Ask me or one of the other account managers or by checking the CPC rates page.
When you think about your daily work with affiliates, what are the most common issues and what would you recommend to avoid them?
I see a lot of affiliates wrongfully targeting campaigns that results in huge drops in volumes and then not knowing why.
For example, targeting France and using the English language filter instead of the french filter.
Another common issue is affiliates using inappropriate test budgets with very low bids.
Testing is normally not just a one-day thing and comes with a budget that allows you to optimize.
Yes, I also recommend beginners to always double or even triple check their first campaigns to make sure that they didn´t tick a wrong box or so.
About the budget, it´s absolutely understandable to think that you can save money on lower bids but when the quality then suffers it often results in higher lsses than testing with an appropriate budget.
Now let´s switch from beginners to your most successful affiliates, what are they doing better or different that could help beginners as well?
I would say that a key to success is to constantly analyze the data and the results of your campaigns.
It is important to differentiate the campaigns by topics that are useful for your business and to be able to optimize them properly and make meaningful changes.
Alright, the interview is almost over but I would like ask you to tell a bit about whatever comes to your mind where you think it could help our beginners.
My biggest advice would be to do your research ahead of time so you are in a better position when you first start testing new campaigns.
There are tons of great resources here on STM and in network blogs like ours here that can help you learn new things and improve your skills.
Also start building relationships within the industry because having the right friend can help you learn a lot and open up a lot of doors.
Oh yes, bulding good relationships is often underrated as it can help alot to get a competitive advantage.
Well, thanks so far for your input.
If you want to feel free to tell a bit about Pushground that motivates our users who don´t have an account with you yet to run your traffic
Can be unique features, strong going verticals, special geos or anything else that makes it worth it to give you a try.
I think that there are a lot of things that make Pushground unique.
First, we are the only traffic source that offers such advanced user freshness targeting options.
In our push ad trends report, we showed a strong correlation between conversion rate and user freshness.
Being able to target those within the first hour of subscribing greatly increases your ability to run successful campaigns.
Another thing that sets us apart from other ad networks is the availability of our account manager.
We don’t just show up after you start spending a couple thousand dollars but instead we are there with you from the start which is especially important for green new affiliates who may have extra questions when getting started.
And of course, we offer a huge volume with over 1.3 billion impressions per day.
Our strongest verticals range from dating and sweepstakes to finance/crypto and gambling/casinos.
And as for our best geos, we provide quality traffic around the world but perhaps our best opportunity is in tier 1 and 2 countries.
Sounds good so far and from my own experience I can also confirm it
I can imagine that some of our users got curious now and want to test Pushground themselves so here is the last question:
Do you have some kind of special deal or a discount for affiliates that want to test your traffic?
Of course.
We can offer everyone reading this a 20% signup bonus to test our traffic.
Just tell me or one of the AMs that you are coming from STM.
That´s nice, 20% signup bonus is definitely a motivational boost 
Thank you very much Gina for taking the time to answer my questions.
I hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I do and if there are any questions or suggestions just comment below.
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