Open This Immediately If You Want To Run CBD On Native (21)
haha, sorry for the clickbait title, but we all gotta hone our skills somehow right. I haven't done a follow along in a long time, but feels like right now is the best time. I been doing marketing full time for 5 or 6 years now, and I've always ran anything that I saw was hot regardless of the product. I don't know about you guys, but that gets to you after a while. But CBD is actually something I believe in and it actually had a positive effect in my life, so I feel like its definitely better on my conscious to promote. Also I been getting so much from this forum its definitely overdue that I give back somehow. So lets get started!
For the traffic I am going to choose Outbrain, I have a good grasp of how the network is, back in first quarter this year I was doing pretty well in the health niche, my high days were 5k profit on there, but it fizzled out. I feel like I can get back to that level or even surpass it.
Campaign Info:
Niche: CBD
GEO: UK
Device: Desktop
Starting Bid: .41
Campaign Structure: Ripped Lander, With 3 new angles 9 new ads
Man Outbrain was not like it was before it seems. a lot harder to get things approved. back in Jan I was able to get things approved in 2 days max, now its like a week, and also they've gotten a lot more strict. My campaign was just approved yesterday! and it took me like a week of back and forth. make sure u have the word "advertorial" up top, contact us page, and privacy page. also if ur promoting CBD gummies, better not have any CBD liquids in any of your funnels, i can't believe they check that.
here are my stats after 2 days...
what do u guys think? do those ad CTR look right? i feel like its kinda low, definitely an area worth improving. also not sure if the Landing page stats got attached, but i have a lander CTR of about 7%. but any feedback is appreciated. I will post as often as I can!
Originally Posted by vtredskins
For the traffic I am going to choose Outbrain, I have a good grasp of how the network is, back in first quarter this year I was doing pretty well in the health niche, my high days were 5k profit on there, but it fizzled out. I feel like I can get back to that level or even surpass it.
Campaign Info:
Niche: CBD
GEO: UK
Device: Desktop
Starting Bid: .41
Campaign Structure: Ripped Lander, With 3 new angles 9 new ads
Man Outbrain was not like it was before it seems. a lot harder to get things approved. back in Jan I was able to get things approved in 2 days max, now its like a week, and also they've gotten a lot more strict. My campaign was just approved yesterday! and it took me like a week of back and forth. make sure u have the word "advertorial" up top, contact us page, and privacy page. also if ur promoting CBD gummies, better not have any CBD liquids in any of your funnels, i can't believe they check that.
here are my stats after 2 days...
what do u guys think? do those ad CTR look right? i feel like its kinda low, definitely an area worth improving. also not sure if the Landing page stats got attached, but i have a lander CTR of about 7%. but any feedback is appreciated. I will post as often as I can!
Sounds like good stuff to follow man , wish you luck!
So I am still running CBD. But The UK one did not show any promise after about $500 spent. So I moved on to another CBD Offer. And after a few days of running traffic I finally got 2 conversions. Right now I am I am split testing two of the same offers from two different networks. But I will kill one. Also bidding very low since I find that when u run multiple GEOs u don't have to bid that high to get a ton of traffic.
Info on New campaign:
Targeting Multiple GEOs
Targeting All devices
Budget at 100/day
Using Angle that was spied on but new ads
https://imgur.com/GNxou5R
Next Step is just waiting for more traffic to emerge. I will update once again after a few days, hopefully this will turn green next week!
https://imgur.com/a/NzixzOl
Just a few questions for you guys! I never really messed with ROAS, not sure exactly what that does lol. Is that something you guys use for optimization? Also do u guys find that bidding lower on Outbrain results in shittier traffic? I know like cnn.com has the scroll of ads, i am wondering if you bid lower, your ad will end up on the bottom.
Originally Posted by vtredskins
Do you mean 'ROAS' in terms of the column on the Outbrain stats page? If so it just means 'Return On Ad Spend' and is just the ROI based on whatever payout per conversion you added in.
If you're talking about one of the optimization strategies ('Target ROAS'), I haven't used that one much, but I've heard it works well. I always use 'Semi-Optimized' although I don't know if its the best one necessarily.
And then yes, lower bids will result in ads appearing lower on the infinite scroll, yes. Hard to control for that kind of stuff when running multiple geo's + devices though, but you can tell how high or low you're bidding on Outbrain based on how quick the campaign caps. Unlike Taboola Outbrain doesn't seem to purposefully space it out. So if you bid high it will cap super quick. If you bid low it won't cap at all.
I usually start out bidding super high on new Outbrain camps, where it caps in like 10 minutes, then slowly lower it until its taking maybe 6 hours.
Eventually once you're running it for awhile you may reach the point where you can't cap with the bid you need to be profitable, then you either need to lower the budget or raise the bid and optimize more, etc.
Its a really tough balance as I find campaigns die a little quicker on Outbrain vs Taboola or Revcontent, so I like to keep my bids a bit higher on there vs the other networks.
Outbrain also does have some bad sites too that need to be blocked. Its unfortunate but I've been blocking maybe 10-20 on some campaigns lately (based on having a 0% lp ctr).
But yeah excited to watch you get this vertical mastered! Very cool stuff man!
Thanks for the quick reply Jack, no wonder they call you MVP around here! yeah that make sense about the bidding strategy, i am spending the cap very slowly, once i see some more promise, I'll pump up the bid for sure.
also your comment about the 0% lp ctr, i don't think i ever saw 10-20 sections with 0% lp ctr. my manager said that he set my account to "performance mode" a long time ago, and that will weed out a lof the bad sites. Do you have the same set up?
Originally Posted by vtredskins
That should definitely help prevent really bad, 0% lp ctr sites, so that is good. I've experimented with that whitelist, the MSN whitelist, and just going R-O-N, and I like R-O-N the best for whatever reason, but there's definitely been more 'bad' sites with it lately (although on the whole we've been doing better than usual on Outbrain the last few months compared to Taboola/Gemini/Revc).
So I am at my wits end with @outbrain, they first approve all my landers, then next day same lander, all rejected. I am guessing its the inconsistency of the staff, one thinks its compliant, another thinks its not. How am I suppose to optimize if I am walking on eggshells like this...any help is appreciated, how do u guys deal with this problem?
Originally Posted by vtredskins
So do you mean you uploaded new ads and those new ads got denied? Or did they retroactively disable your whole campaign?
In general though yes, both Outbrain and Taboola have very inconsistent moderation. Outbrain's also takes a very long time to moderate new ads sometimes.
its the lander, I basically duplicated the campaign with different ads, but same lander, but the reason they gave was the lander.
i like to duplicate campaigns to test new ads, since the algorithm doesn't like to give the new ads any love from my experience.
@vtredskins Thanks for starting such a promising follow-along!
If you need to get in touch with Outbrain support, try emailing to stm@outbrain.com. This is our dedicated contact email.
If you still don't get a definite answer to your concerns/questions, please let me know and I'll try to get you some answers from my contacts there directly.
Amy
ok great thanks Amy. just sent them an email. I use to have an account manager, but I think they are really swamped there, and also I been inactive for a bit, so I lost the connection. but hopefully I'll get a dedicated manager again and scale this to the moon!
ohhh just got this message back. did they just get too many emails or something?
Your message wasn't delivered to stm@outbrain.com because the address couldn't be found, or is unable to receive mail.
Originally Posted by vtredskins
Yeah basically they're just inconsistent man :/ I think you're right it was probably just a different moderator the second time around or something...
If its intermittent like that I'll usually just work my way through it and re-submit new attempts, but if I keep getting denied multiple times in a row and its something that seems like it should be fine, or something that I have gotten approved in the past, then I'll usually ask them about it.
Originally Posted by vtredskins
If you like, I could reach out to my other Outbrain contacts on skype with your questions/concerns. Simply PM me the contents of your email and I'll do my best to get you some answers. (And PLEASE update this thread to let me know - as I don't usually check PMs.)
Amy
Originally Posted by vortex
First Green Day on this camp!, Wow Its been two weeks since I started this one. Just to show that if you keep going, good things will happen.
https://imgur.com/Xj03G51
All I did was cut a few creatives that weren't converting. Also cut A GEO that wasn't converting. didn't do much and it turned green. Now I am going to bump my daily budget to 200/day and then turn that green..and then 400/day so on and so on, I will give credit to Malan, Thats where I got the idea to go slower like this. slow and steady wins the race right!
About the Outbrain creative submission, They've turned me into a spammer, as soon as I see them reject, I just resubmit, and then like half will get approved lol. I guess I will just have to live with that.
Originally Posted by vtredskins
Secondly: PM received! But could you please also tell me the email of your Outbrain account? Thank you!
Thirdly: I have very little experience with native/Outbrain, but I'm concerned that resubmitting rejected creatives repeatedly may get you in trouble (potentially an account ban). @jack_l What's been your experience on the topic?
Amy
Hi guys,
Just a quick update on this campaign. I am still going at it. right now spent about $2500 total, with 1200 in revenue. so still a long ways to go. but learning a lot about outbrain, feels like moderation team have different opinions about what is acceptable and not. sometimes i will just resumbit the exact lander and ads, and somehow gets all approved in 5 minutes. I try not to do that too many times, but that is a way to get pass the moderation if anyone is having issues.
also got in touch with the sales guy that recruited me to outbrain, hopefully he will get me set up with a rep soon. it does help to have a rep, since they will get moderator to tell you exactly what needs to be fixed on your lander. will update u guys if anything else comes up.
Originally Posted by vortex
Thirdly: I have very little experience with native/Outbrain, but I'm concerned that resubmitting rejected creatives repeatedly may get you in trouble (potentially an account ban). @jack_l What's been your experience on the topic?
My experience is the same as @vtredskins, in that they are very inconsistent and you can often re-submit stuff and get it approved after it initially got rejected...
I guess my advice would be to only do it if you think the rejection was accidental, don't do it super aggressive to try to "get stuff by them", and then also if you slightly tweak it that's good since it looks like your technically changing it at least a little, or if an entire campaign gets denied, I'll add something in the title of the new one like "Fixed Advertorial" or "New Flow", to suggest that I've gone back and attempted to change it to be more compliant.
The only times I've heard of full-on account bans is when they think your cloaking, or doing a 'bait and switch' on the landing pages. That seems to be the one thing they really have zero tolerance for.
Originally Posted by vtredskins
One nice thing about Outbrain as opposed to Taboola is that you can really optimize it more and more long-term, by blocking bad widgets, trying lots of ads, etc.
Taboola always does way better for me week one, but they're smartbid is really finicky and you can mess it up if you change things, and I don't like blocking widgets on Taboola, but on Outbrain you can really continually improve it with new ads and gentle widget-pruning, so to speak
If you do get up to like 1000$ a day though, just be careful about new ads gaining the top spot too quick and eating all your budget... obviously you still want to try lots of ads, but just be aware that once you get past the $500/day mark its much easier for one bad ad to do damage then when you're just spending $100-$200, as at that lower spend it will take at least 2-3 days for an ad to gain the top spot once even if its high ctr.
But yeah, excited to see how it goes from here!
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