Home > Paid Traffic Sources > Native

---

Some Questions on Native Ads/Networks (11)

---

Hello Folks,

It's been quite a while since I was last active on STM. Since then I have learned a lot about affiliate marketing and marketing in general. Also have made good and consistent commissions on search traffic which has been my primary revenue maker for the last 2 years.

Now, I'm looking to branch out and start my experiments again with Native Ads which have been and still are very fascinating to me and something that I really want to master.

I have been testing native ads on and off in the last 2 years but haven't really given my all. I have mostly tested VoluumDSP and not so much of direct native buys which is what I'm looking to do now.

So, I'm planning to run a life insurance leadgen offer paying $15 for a valid lead. I'm setting up a budget of around $4k to test and get this profitable.

I had the following questions for people who have been doing direct native buys for good time now:

1) I'm planning to run the offer either on Taboola, Revcontent or Outbrain considering the good quality of their traffic (not many crappy publishers and also not a whole lot of bots). So if I had to choose one of these 3 which one should I go with?

2) On choosing 1 of the 3 networks, my educated guess is that I should try and get a rep and run a whitelist campaign on some good placements/widgets which have proven profitable for others running in the same niche. Is this a good choice or should I opt to run RON?

3) If I decide to run whitelist, how do I go about getting an ad rep on these networks? Will I need to deposit or spend a large amount before getting an ad rep?

4) As this will be my first time buying direct, I wanted to know if they accept campaign tracking links from third-party trackers (Voluum, FunnelFlux etc)? If yes, is a redirect link fine or they require redirectless (page pixel based) tracking links?

5) What's the best and supported way to rotate landers on these 3 networks? As I have heard from a couple of trusted affiliates that they (Taboola specifically) don't like landers being rotated through a tracker, after a lander is approved while creating a native campaign and can even ban accounts who are found to do this?

6) On Taboola and Outbrain, does choosing a marketing or campaign objective matter a lot? Also, which bid strategies work best on these 2 networks?

7) Also on Taboola & Outbrain there are audience targeting options when creating a new campaign. Are they worth it and how do the results compare VS running a niche related whitelist placements/widgets?

Thanks for going through the post and would appreciate insights from your experience.

---

Hey @regjoe - Hopefully some of the resident experts like @platinum can help you, but I'll throw my 2 cents in the ring too

1. Those are all good networks. If I had to pick one I would pick Outbrain as I think it gives the best 'balance' of the three. Revcontent has lead-gen running on it successfully but also has nutra and stuff like that that makes it really competitive, and it doesn't have as much intl volume. So yeah, for life insurance I'd say Outbrain or Taboola. You can always try both and just stick with whatever one you like better.

2. You don't need a rep to run on any of them - self-serve will be fine. Certainly a rep can be helpful but its not an obstacle in the way of getting started. They'll automatically assign you one as soon as they see you spending decent money. Also whitelists have kind of disappeared in the last 1-2 years. All of the networks basically did away with them. Outbrain reps will still upload one if you want... but honestly I do just as good with Outbrain r-o-n as with their whitelists. Just be ready to block 5-10 bad widgets at the start on r-o-n... not too bad at all... I would recommend 'Semi-Optimized' on Outbrain and 'SmartBid' on Taboola so you are using their internal AI. Others may disagree though but we do much better with that vs 'fixed bid'.

3. See above. You can start with a credit card on all three networks and then once you have a rep Taboola and Revcontent will allow you to do deposits to save on the 3% cc fees and all that stuff.

4&5. Yes, you can use trackers like Voluum/Thrive/Funnelflux and rotate landers. However you are 100% right that Taboola as of late does NOT like that and they may ban your account if you do it. Revc and Outbrain should be okay as long as the landers are similar and you're not trying to semi-cloak or anything. On Taboola you can upload multiple links along with multiple headlines and images and split test them that way. So basically you'd have identical ads in the campaign each with a different tracking link, and do your split-testing that way. A little less convenient but I can see where they're coming from on their side too in not wanting people rotating non-compliant landers after the fact, since that causes them grief from the publisher side.

6. On Taboola we usually either do 'Leads' or 'Online Purchases' and then set it to SmartBid. On Outbrain I think we do 'Conversions' and then set it to 'Semi-Automatic', which is their equivalent of SmartBid but with specific bid. Fully Automatic is their version of SmartBid where it picks the bid for you too. Although in my experience Fully Automatic and Semi-Automatic work pretty much the same.

7. I've never had success with them but other people might... The most I've ever used their targeting options is to limit it to 'Female-Only' or something like that, but 95% of the time we just do r-o-n.

Hope that helps man! Excited to see your progress

---

Thanks for sharing your experience Jack. About the demo targeting options (age, gender), did you find them accurate enough after cross-verifying with Google Analytics etc?

---

I didn't cross verify them... but I'd imagine they must be pretty accurate... I think on both networks utilizing any demographic targeting is going to raise your cpc's, though so the only time I've done it is when I have an offer that's like 100% female or male or something... and in neither of those instances did we actually get the campaign to work lol, so take all that with a grain of salt

---

@jack_l has already given you some really great feedback on your questions.

Although you might find most of the answers similar, here's some feedback from me too.

Considering the offer you plan on running I would stay away from RevContent in the begining. As @jack_l already mentioned, the competition has become pretty high recently due to nutra or even crypto offers running there. This doesn't mean that you cannot get things profitable on RC, it might not be suitable to start there.

So from the 3 I would start with Taboola. It is somehow easier to manage compared to Outbrain,


I've noticed that some networks tend to assign reps that don't even know what an advertiser is promoting, and when they find someone with little to no experience with their platform, all they do is push them to spend, spend, spend... Don't waste time on getting a rep, you'll find the way to success way faster by testing things for yourself. Running RON is totally fine.

You will need to spend a hell lot of money before getting a chance to run a whitelist (officially they don't support it anymore), then when you do, it doesn't mean it will yield positive results like you used to get with a profitable RON camp.

Definitely go for Redirectless tracking. These traffic sources have become a lot picky lately, so on new accounts you'll need to use redirectless traffic for sure.

As Jack mentioned already, they don't like lander rotation. However, what most affiliates are doing to overcome this limit is to approve the camp with a single lander, then once it's approved add the second variation in the rotation (updating the rotation weight of the campaign). Just be careful not to add anything too aggressive in the rotation, that might put your account to high risks of getting banned, try to play with small changed variations (2-3 landers), where none of the main variations has any aggressive claims.

Optionally, you can use Google Optimize to run a free (limited) MVT test on your landers. It works great on split-testing headlines and images under the same lander.

Yes it matters! Also make sure to setup conversion events under their respective known categories. I think that doing so, will help their algorithm engage faster using the data the traffic source has already from similar campaigns.

Here's an example from one of the duplicate campaigns I had on Outbrain when running my last case study:


Don't over-complicate your life with gender targeting

If you're running leadgen all it matters is to send leads that convert on their calls. Gender targeting on native can be tough to manage (if ever possible on some sources).

---

@platinum As always genius and helpful.Thank you platinum. Do you have any suggestions other than RC, out brain and taboola to run nutra offers since you mentioned revcontent has a lot of competition. ALSO, is there any traffic network (no adult to avoid getting banned) I can sell my exit traffic with decent payout to publishers to reduce my testing costs while running native?

---

I think it would be hard to get aggressive nutra offers approved on Taboola or Outbrain. Despite the competition, RevContent still remains a good source to focus on. If for some reason it's still hard to get things rolling in there, you can always try Content.Ad or MGID for such offers.

These last ones tend to be less strict in terms of compliance, so you shouldn't have an issue running nutra with them.

---

@platinum thank you for your reply.Can you provide at least a tip to reduce native costs to be able to bid higher than competition while remaining profitable. I heard media buyers in the past used to sell exit traffic, decreasing cost significantly but I think as prices goes up this is not as effective as it used to be unless there is a twist to it. Please give us at least a hint. I know how knowledgeable you are and just signing to stm to get advice from people like you is definitely worth it.

---

Can you please stop posting the same reply in multiple threads that are not even related to what you guys offer? We're glad to have you here on the forum, but random messages in unrelated threads will just get you banned from the forum.

Thanks,
Matej.

---

Thank you. I almost said something but didn't know if it was tolerated here.

---

Everything within reason is tolerated and fine to post, let's just keep the discussion polite please

---

Home > Paid Traffic Sources > Native