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Difference between Revcontent and Bemob / Clickbank? (13)

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Hi Guys,

i am trying to run native ads the first time on revcontent direct.

But i am pretty sceptical if the traffic is legit. First of all i am trying to direct link, because one competitor did the same and was obviously successful, so i thought i would give it a try.


Ok here's the problem:

Revcontent shows as number of total clicks: 83

Bemob shows total clicks of 45

and clickbank shows a number of hoplinks in the same date range: 42


I enabled bot tracking in bemob but this tool dont show any "suspicious" traffic so far...


How is it possible, that there is such a big difference? Its almost double the clicks, what revcontent charges me!?

Does anybody have experienced the same??


Thanks so far

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In general - at least for the US and similar countries - Revcontent has very high quality traffic.

Usually I think any discrepancies between traffic network/tracker/affiliate network are just logistical stuff based on how they track clicks.

With that said, its absolutely possible that you had one bad widget in that bunch of clicks that really was a "bot widget" or something similar.

I would look in your campaign data on Revcontent at what sites the traffic came from.

If it was all from Breitbart and Everydayhealth and similar sites I would guess its just a tracking/logistics issue.

If you had 50 of those clicks from some weird url like xyz.push.india476qq or something, then maybe it was a "bot widget" issue, and then I would just block that widget on the account level.

Also if you are targeting geo's like India, Brazil, Indonesia it always seems like these kind of issues pop up way more. I'm not suggesting that's always because of fraud, but if I remember right there are just weird things about how a "click" is measured, and how all the backend plumbing works, and for some reason it seems like data from India is always skewed for me across all the native networks.

But yeah, in general Revcontent has very high quality traffic (at least within English-speaking geo's, which is 98% of their traffic). Indeed the biggest obstacle you'll run into with Revcontent isn't the quality of the traffic but rather the expensiveness of it.

The fact that you can actually see what sites the widgets correspond too though is a big plus for Revcontent in terms of transparency and that fact alone puts them way ahead of competitors like MGID in my opinion, where you don't have any idea where the clicks are coming from.




Edit: Also - not trying to discourage you from direct linking - nothing wrong with that at all I do it alot myself - but if you are concerned about low-quality sites/fraud/etc- you may want to try putting one of those little mini-advertorials in the middle of your funnel (the kind everyone uses before Clickbank vsl's). The advantage of doing so is you can see which widgets have a normal (40% or so) landing page click through rate, vs which ones have a 0% click through rate, and quickly block the ones with the 0% landing page click through rate after 8-10 clicks or so. Whereas if you are direct linking, the only thing you can go on for blocking widgets is whether they are profitable or not, meaning you'll likely need to pay for 100-200 clicks per widget before you can decide whether to block one, instead of 8-10 if you're using a lander.

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Sounds like clickloss and or bots to me.

Ask revc support or Rep if the clicks were legit or not if you’re really concerned.

As jack_l said, without a lander in between, it’s hard to tell what’s happening to the visits if just direct linking.

And if it’s a brand new account, you’re bound to get a ton of garbage at the beginning to weed through while you make your BL.

If it were 30 LP views and 0% CTR you could make a case for bot.

If it were a widget with 30 clicks on revC and only 24 LP views in tracker, then just normal 20% clickloss.

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Thanks guys for your input.


I looked at my stats in revc. and it turns out that out of the "83 clicks" 66 clicks came from the widget id 167908 on newsmax.com...


Is this site know for fraud traffic? There simply have to be some issues with that placement....



And i am not sure what i should think about this tiny prelanders as you mentioned...


In my mind i am always thinking: if you have a lp ctr of 33%, that means in reverse, that you have to buy 3 times as much traffic to get 100 people in front of the offerpage (the salesman).

And why would the conversion "skyrocket" just by this little paragraph with 4 lines? I dont really get it why people do these things....


Are you really experienced with natives? Do you recognize a significant ROI boost with this short presell vs direct linking?


Thanks so far

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Are you sure you're ready for Native?

First off, newsmax.com has some of the absolute best traffic on revC and some of the most quality traffic period. That widget in particular has made me lots of money. I can't tell you how to use it or what to bid as it totally depends on your offer.

Using a lander vs. direct linking is better 99% of the time, regardless of native, FB, push, adult, PPC, or pops. Before trying to 'get' why people do these things: Go get a spytool and see how landers are actually used. For most Clickbank VSL, you will still have a prelander which warms up the visitor with at least some info about the video and a play button to press before redirecting them.
@jack_l is one of the most experienced and most successful folks on Native. Go check his incredible Follow Along to see how much effort it takes to be successful on Native.

I'm not, I'm an idiot. But I've spent a good $25k on Native ads since March, so I have some idea of what works and what doesn't. I've also spent about 28 pages of my life and $200k or so on pops and push, so I have even more of an idea if landers work or not.

We're not trying to give you shitty advice

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Sry this should not be an offense, i don't know you guys....

No, i haven't sayd, that i am ready for native yet, i am still trying to figuring out what works and why... because i dont get this thing in a whole, why and how this concrete works...

Fortunately i read today the revcontent ad policies in detail which sayd that they wont allow cloaking...

So i am not able to run this campaign any further because if i use my tracking link from bemob (i can only use redirecting with direct linking) i would violating their policies, so i did stop that...

Have to find some good landers to test out....


Ok i didnt know your point, that newsmax is a good placement... but how can you explane me such a big difference in the people who should have clicked on my ad and what bemob and clickbank shows to me?

There have to be some issues either on this widget or on the tracker / clickbank, isnt it?


Thanks so far and again, no offense to you guys.

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Hey robeasy83!

I've written a guide on clickloss, please read it to understand what it is and why it happens: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...finitive-guide

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Newsmax and Clickbank seem like a marriage made in heaven.

I'm not really sure you are ready for Native. A bit more homework will save you a lot in the long run.

Cloaking is not redirect, cloaking is using redirects to hide the ultimate destination. Most traffic sources, ie not Facebook/Google, expect you to have a redirect chain. They just want it to always lead to the same lander. They don't want you to have a "safe site" to be reviewed while you send the real traffic to a "money site" that wouldn't be allowed.

Without knowing more, it is hard to say why you had the click loss you did. However, unless it continues it probably isn't a good idea to obsess over it.

Finally, I would question your approach to traffic. It isn't getting the most traffic, it is about getting the right traffic and then as much of it as possible. That is where a lander helps, it allows you to more easily filter out widgets that have clickers, but not people who are really interested. And in the case of Clickbank, it gives you the opportunity to sell someone on why they should watch a 45 minute or longer VSL.

Think like a visitor. They were busy reading about how Governor Abbott is going to do Biden's job (yes, real Newsmax article) and then they see your ad about a miracle weightloss. So they click through, and suddenly this video starts playing (found someone direct linking to Meticore). A fair chance they will quickly bounce, perhaps so fast that Bemob or Clickbank don't even really register the visit.

While with a prelander, you could start to set them up on what they are about to see, how it works and why they should watch until the end.

On a side note, I'm surprised how long it took to find a "good" Newsmax headline.

Amazon ‘Forcing Employees to Brand Themselves With Stickers’ If They're Vaccinated

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Its certainly worth split-testing direct-linking vs using a mini-lander, but there's been billions of dollars spent on Clickfunnels/VSL affiliate campaigns on native, so if the mini-lander wasn't worth it it wouldn't be the predominant thing you see.

As @iwanttofly and @jaybot said, the mini-lander is useful for 1) identifying bad widgets to block quickly (in about 10 clicks instead of 100-200 if direct-linking), and 2) typically increases conversion rate (most people's response when arriving at a url with a video that starts playing is to immediately click away, so the mini-lander preps them and increases the likelihood they won't immediately do so, allowing the vsl to "hook" them so they want to watch more.)

And then yeah, I think its normal to worry about click loss and bot clicks and everything starting out (I did too), but honestly, some of the best advice I ever got is that it doesn't really matter... all that matters is the EPC of the site in question.

As an example, would you rather buy clicks from Widget A where 50% of clicks are fat-finger clicks lost to "click loss" but where 1 out of 50 of the actual clickers buys the product, or from Widget B where 100% of the clicks are "real" clicks that show up in the tracker but only 1 out of 400 of them buy the product?

The only way to evaluate whether to block the widgets is a) epc, and b) landing page click through rate as proxy for potential EPC. If the first 10 clicks = 0 landing page clicks, it doesn't matter the reason behind it, you want to block it.

Conversely, if the first 10 clicks = 4 landing page clicks and then you let it keep going and the first 100 clicks give you 3 sales, it doesn't matter if there's any click loss happening or not. All that matters is EPC.

If you definitely want to invest the time and money to master Revcontent, I would check out @jaybot 's excellent follow-along, and also check out my follow-along from last year running Diabetes Freedom on it. I would also invest in TheOptimizer to set up auto-blocking rules, and some kind of landing page SaaS to create mini-landers (I like Clickfunnels even though its a bit slow but Landerlab is great too).

Also I don't know if that James Van Elswyck "Nothing But Natives" training is still available, but most of us on here who have done big volume on natives all learned the majority of what we know from it.

I'd also search for all threads including @platinum (the genius behind TheOptimizer and Landerlab) and the words "native"/"revcontent"/"taboola"/"Outbrain"/etc.

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Thanks, very helpful, i've read it and now it makes sense to me

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Really great answers here!
I love how the “STM Native Gang” is jumping in with lots of amazing answers and suggestions.


Wanted to add a few more points to the discussion…

Whenever there is present such a noticeable difference in clicks, the firstborn thing I would check is the time zone reporting between the ad network, tracker and offer network. Sometimes even an hour difference can reflect huge differences.


Second, in your tracker you would be able to check the internet service providers if they are residential or datacenter providers. Sometimes web scrapers get stuck inflating clicks aggressively. Thing which has happened with RC and other networks too. But don’t just stop here.

Third, most networks (don’t specifically remember Clickbank interface) filter raw vs. valid clicks. You should check that too.

Fourth, the discussion whether a lander is needed or not has been going on for ages. However in reality it’s a must-have piece of content in your funnel. Here are some of the reasons you should use a lander:

- Get rid of unintentional clicks. Generally clicks coming from low intent placements tend to generate very low to 0 lander clicks. This is a good indicator to block a widget, no need to waste budget on these.

- Warm up visitors. Here again, there could be people that may have an initial interest when clicking on the ad, but then have no will or time to watch a 30-45min video if its a VSL.

- Warm up visitors - again. In most cases its best to prepare them about where/what they are getting into. A good angle on the landing page, can trigger great positive reactions on the visitors. Think of it as a good vs. bad sales person in a physical store.

- Easier to manage optimization. All of the above, including interactions (lander clicks) and angles, are all important parts of a successful or failing campaign.

For instance you can buy great quality traffic, but if the lander angle sucks, creates no trust with the visitor, you’re most likely to kill a great campaign. Ok the other hand, by just improving angles, as well as interaction rate level optimizations, you can even make a horrible campaign get to small profits.


Obviously there are also cases where you don’t need to use a lander. Most of these come from the fact that the network provides the pre-lander included in the offer link. Yet again, even in these cases you’d want to manage for yourself a copy of the pre-lander. This way you read way more data, and gain better optimization insights.


Don’t get scared of all the work and initial efforts needed to invest when starting with native. Its all worth it and will absolutely help you in the long run. Just be patient to pass the learning curve

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Hi guys, i Just wanted to give you a little Update : i asked the Manager of revcontent with proof of this huge difference and He told me, that indeeed this widget / site placement had some implementation issues and i got Credit for the whole spend on this widget / placement, so big props to revcontent on this place 👍🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽🙌🏽

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Ah nice, its always great when the network actually admits something went wrong on their side... I got a refund from revcontent some time ago too, due to massive overspending and ignoring my daily budget for a campaing.

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