Day 13: Testing & Optimization - Cutting Placements (14)
Day 13: Testing & Optimization - Cutting Placements
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EXPLANATION & ACTION
Intro:
This will be the first practical lesson on how to optimize your first campaigns.
Specifically, let's start by learning how to optimize what are known as "placements".
"Placements" are also commonly referred to as "publishers". PropellerAds calls them "zones". Other traffic platforms may have other names for them.
Basically, placements are the various websites that display our pop ads to their visitors. We pay money to the traffic network for the visitors, and the traffic network pays a portion of that to the owners of these websites.
The important thing to note is that, due to various reasons, some placements convert better than others.
Usually, when we're running a campaign in a new geo on a new traffic source, because we don't yet have data, we wouldn't know which placements convert well, and which ones convert badly.
In that case, we would include ALL placements in our targeting, run some traffic to collect some data, then gradually exclude placements that convert badly - a process known as "cutting placements" or "blacklisting placements". Essentially, it just means to exclude/pause bad placements at the traffic source.
In this lesson, I'll offer a method you can use to optimize campaigns by cutting placements. As you gain experience, you will develop your own method, but this one would be a good start.
The criteria used in the method below assumes that you're NEITHER using landing pages (i.e. that you're linking directly to offers, which is all we've been doing so far in this tutorial) NOR have other campaign variables that can be optimized besides placements (that is, your campaign only targets a single OS, and either wifi or a single carrier). The method below also doesn't explain how to test bids.
In future lessons I'll go into how to optimize other campaign variables, and how to test bids. For your first (or first few) direct-linked campaign(s), the method in this lesson will provide good practice on how to optimize placements.
However, even if your current campaign targets multiple OSs and carriers, you can still start with this placement-cutting method. When you get to those future lessons on optimization, you can come back to optimize your current campaign some more.
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Before going into how to cut placements, let's go over a couple of small things...
Where to Find Placement Stats
You can find placement stats in two places: The tracker, and at the traffic source.
The tracker will show at least the number of visits/impressions. Some traffic sources, including PropellerAds and PopAds, will also pass cost data to the tracker. However, the visits/impressions data and cost data in the tracker is rarely accurate.
Specifically, you'll find that the number of impressions/visits shown in the tracker tends to be less than what's shown on the traffic source. More importantly, the cost of traffic - how much was spent by each zone/placement - often appears lower in the tracker than what you were actually charged by the traffic source.
So, when your tracker stats are telling you that your campaign is finally profitable, don't open that champagne just yet - because if you were to look at the stats it may still be in loss.
There are ways to manually adjust the costs in the tracker - and I have recommended doing this in the past. But over time, I decided that it's rarely worth the trouble.
Instead, for cutting placements, I would recommend to view placement stats at the traffic platform, and cut accordingly.
If you're thinking at this point, "if tracker stats are inaccurate and I'm just going by traffic source stats anyway, why use a tracker at all?"
Answer: 1)Trackers allow us to split-test landers and offers way easier, and 2)trackers allow us to drill down to 3 levels of stats or more, which can allow us to make better campaign decisions (we'll go into this in later lessons).
Back to cutting placements - below are where you'll find placement stats on the two traffic sources, and how to cut a placement on each source.
Placement Stats on PropellerAds:
-On PropellerAds' Dashboard, click on "Statistics" in the left menu, then click on the name of your campaign to bring up campaign stats. Placement/zone data is displayed by default.
(Beside the "Zones" tab (circled in the screenshot) there's also a "Targeting" tab - feel free to play with that to see what kinds of stats are available there. We won't be looking at anything but placement/zone stats for now.)
-We'll learn how to cut/pause placements later. Whenever you want to cut/pause a placement/zone, simply click on the blue toggle to turn it grey. Another way to cut placements on PropellerAds would be to edit the campaign and specify them in the "zone limitation" section:
Placement Stats on PopAds:
-In PopAds, click "Campaigns" in the sidebar, find your campaign and click on the sandwich behind the campaign name, then click on "Reports".
-Specify the "Date Range" you want to view data for. Usually when cutting placements you'd want to see all data since the start of the campaign, in which case you can select "Lifetime". Also specify the timezone if applicable (if your date range is wide enough you shouldn't need to worry about the timezone).
-For the "Additional Filtering" tab - nothing to do here. Your campaign should already be selected.
-Click on the "Grouping and Ordering" tab. Under "Group data by:" only change "Website ID" to "Enabled" and make everything else "Disabled". For "Order data by:" select either "Website ID (Asc.)" or "Website ID (Desc.)".
-Skip the "Save and Schedule" section and click "Generate Report".
-Again, we'll learn how to cut/pause placements later. Whenever you want to cut/pause a placement, simply click on "Exclude". Another way to cut placements on PopAds would be to edit the campaign and specify them in the "Website Targeting" tab:
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How to Add More Campaign Budget
On PropellerAds:
Go into "Edit Campaign" and increase the "Total Campaign Budget" by the additional cost you wish to spend. e.g. Say your offer payout was $1.20 and you wanted to spend 10x payout = $12, and you've already spent $10, so you want to spend an additional $2.
Simply change the "Total Campaign Budget" from the original $10 to $12, and make sure the "Daily Campaign Budget" won't restrict your spend. For example, if you spent that first $10 earlier in the same day, and now you're wanting to spend an additional $2, you'd need to ALSO change the "Daily Campaign Budget" to $12 or more, or else the campaign won't send traffic until the next day (when your budget "resets").
Finally, click "Save and Start".
On PopAds:
This is how you can add more budget:
In the example above, there was $2.50 left for the campaign to spend if I clicked "Start". But I wanted to run $10 more, so I added $7.50 to the budget.
One more thing before you "start" the campaign: Be mindful of your daily budget and make sure it won't restrict your spend. For example, if you've spent $10 earlier today already, and you're wanting to spend an additional $10, then make sure your daily budget is at least $20.
Lastly, click "Start".
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With that prep work out of the way - let's talk placement-cutting strategy!
STEP 1: Set a Minimum Daily Profit Goal
You want each campaign to make at the VERY least, $5/day in profits, to even justify the effort required to keep it running.
At a minimum, you need to check stats daily to make sure the campaign is still profitable, and you'd probably need to cut a placement here and there. If the campaign is making peanuts, you'd be much better off spending your time on testing more offers/landers for the same or a new campaign, or scaling another profitable campaign.
When you're more experienced and have bigger campaigns running, you likely won't want to babysit the $5/day campaigns. But for a newbie, $5/day campaigns will give you the motivation you need to keep hustling.
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STEP 2: Run 5-10x Payout in Traffic as an Initial Test
By this point, you've already run some traffic to each of your PropellerAds and PopAds campaigns.
On PropellerAds, you've run $10 of traffic. If your offer payout is $1 or less, then you've already completed this step - by running at least 10x payout's worth of traffic. If your offer payout is more than $1, please resume the campaign to 10x payout in total.
On PopAds I've specifically asked you to run 10x payout in traffic, which was easier to do because their minimum budget is only $2.50. So again, you've already completed this step.
What we do next: Evaluate stats and decide whether the offer is worth running further or not.
My recommendation is this: If after the first 10x payout to the offer, you got fewer than 5 conversions, don't continue to promote the offer.
(Disclaimer: This recommendation is based on the assumption that placements are the ONLY variable you can optimize. If you have other variables that can be optimized, such as if you're targeting multiple OSs (e.g. IOS and Android) and/or both wifi and mobile carrier and/or multiple mobile carriers, then you MAY be able to lower your bar. It's all about how much room for optimization you have.)
You'll find that a lot of offers won't even pass this initial test. Don't worry - just test more offers!
What you do NOT want to do, is take a subpar offer and try to make the campaign profitable by cutting a lot of placements. Why? Two reasons:
1)Cutting placements requires running traffic to collect data, which can get expensive.
2)Worse, by the time you cut your way from negative to positive ROI, you may not have a lot of traffic left to give you profits.
So yeah - you may as well put that money towards testing more offers to find a real winner that you can scale.
So what if the campaign has made at least 5 conversions during the first 10x payout in traffic?
First of all, go through your placements stats (as described earlier in this lesson) and cut/pause any placement that is in LOSS by 2x payout or more.
Why 2x payout? Because based on experience it would be less likely for such a placement to "catch up" and all of a sudden turn into a profitable placement.
Then, proceed to the next step.
(Note here that you could actually just run 5x payout to the offer first - if you don't make a single conversion, it would be HIGHLY likely for the 5 conversions to arrive during the next 5x payout in spend. This way you can potentially cut your test budget by half.)
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STEP 3: Run Another 10x Payout in Traffic to Verify Offer Performance
All the veterans have experienced this: Sometimes, a campaign would make a bunch of conversions on the first day, everything would look really promising - and then on the second day the performance would drop and things would stop looking peachy fast.
So, before we invest into cutting placements hardcore, it would be safer to make sure the same performance will continue.
Which is why I'm recommending to run another 10x payout to the offer.
Again, you can monitor stats and cut placements that are 2x payout in loss or more.
If after spending an additional 10x payout on traffic, you make at least 5 additional conversions, continue to the next step.
Otherwise, pause the campaign.
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STEP 4: Run Traffic Unthrottled For 30 Minutes to Identify Major Placements
If the performance keeps up, then we can consider investing in cutting more placements - because there's a decent chance that the campaign can become profitable.
But let's talk about one other thing first.
Major vs. Minor Placements:
One of the biggest problems of cutting placements on pop sources, is the fact that there are so, so many placements - anywhere from hundreds to thousands - and many of those placements are so small, that they will never give you enough traffic to be able to decide whether to cut them or keep them.
To see what I'm talking about, go open up the placements stats of one of your campaigns, sort by descending cost (by clicking on the "Cost" column heading):
Then scroll down through the placements (may need to click to go to subsequent pages) - and you'll soon see placements that have only sent a few impressions, with tiny spend.
On many pop platforms, there are tons of these tiny placements. These little buggers elude the newbie into believing that if they would only cut enough placements, they could optimize a -90% ROI all the way to +10% ROI.
What's especially bad is that some of these tiny placements would even make a conversion here or there, and because the spend is so low, the ROI appears to be through the roof.
Always keep in mind that the first conversion made by a placement should be considered a "lottery" conversion, i.e. a lucky conversion that may never be followed by another one. In other words, in my example above, I'd be crazy to expect that by spending another $0.003, I'd make another $10.43 in revenue.
So how should we treat these tiny placements? Before I go into that, allow me to define a couple of terms.
Major Placements: These are placements that, at the current bid, are sending enough traffic to "matter". Later, when you have more experience, you can define yourself how much traffic is enough to "matter". For now, let's just define a major placement as one that can spend at least 1x payout every 2 days.
Minor Placements: Placements that each spends less than 1x payout every 2 days.
What's the significance of Major vs. Minor placements?
Minor placements will take too long to collect enough data for us to decide whether to cut it or not. Therefore, do not try to optimize minor placements. Rather, look at ALL minor placements as a COLLECTIVE ENTITY, with an average daily profit (or loss) that we CANNOT CHANGE.
In other words, our goal here is to cut enough Major placements so that Major + Minor placements together will result in a profitable campaign. We'll go into how to do that in a bit.
But first, let's look at HOW we can identify which placements are Major and which ones are Minor. Again, we defined the Major placement as one that can spend at least 1x payout every 2 days.
How to Identify Major Placements:
Here's what I would suggest to do:
1)Edit campaign setting to run traffic unthrottled:
2)Set the daily budget and campaign budget to a sufficiently-high amount so that we're not restraining traffic volume, for an hour. On PropellerAds and PopAds, $100 should be enough if you're bidding $1 or less. (We've covered how to do this at the start of this lesson.)
IMPORTANT: Set an alarm on your phone so you'll remember to pause your campaign after an hour! Otherwise all $100 would be spent on a campaign that may not even end up profitable. Another thing you can do is use the scheduling feature on PropellerAds/PopAds to specify a specific hour you want to run the traffic, for example starting on the next hour.
ALSO IMPORTANT: Try to avoid running traffic between 12am & 8am local time (of the country you're targeting), as these hours typically have less traffic.
3)When the hour is up, pause the campaign, sort placement costs by descending order, and export placements stats as xlsx or csv file:
4)Multiply the cost of each placement by 24 to estimate the daily spend of that placement. I'm assuming you know how to do this. Simply start a new column, type in the multiplication formula, and copy down through all the rows of data.
If the daily spend is more than 0.5x payout (= 1x payout every 2 days), then it's a Major Placement. Else it's a Minor Placement. So - if placement costs are sorted by descending order, there would be a "cut-off" Major Placement, below which would all be Minor Placements.
5)At the end of that hour, if you want to revert to throttled traffic an a lower Daily/Campaign budget to curb your spending, you can do so by editing campaign settings. Or, just continue to run unthrottled at the $100 daily budget (or even increase that budget further to run unrestrained throughout the day) to collect data quickly and optimize your campaign quickly. (If you choose the quick way, please remember to check stats often to cut placements, as well as make sure campaign performance is still promising enough to continue.)
Oh - and please retain this spreadsheet for future reference.
Don't Stop Checking Stats!
During and after this one hour, you should continue to monitor stats to make sure the campaign is STILL promising enough to continue:
1)Cut placements that are in loss by 2x payout or more.
2)Make sure each 10x payout in campaign spend results in an additional 5 conversions or more. Otherwise, pause the campaign and test another offer.
If the campaign still fits these criteria, proceed to the next step.
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(CONTINUED IN POST BELOW...)
Amy
STEP 5: Continue to Cut Placements As Long As Campaign is Profitable or Promising
Next, continue to cut Major Placements - but only for as long as the campaign is either meeting our daily profits goal (defined in step 1 above), or at least looks like it can still reach this goal with further cutting.
How to Calculate "Minor Placements EDP"
Remember when I mentioned above, that we want to judge Minor Placements as a single entity, because it would take too long to optimize them individually?
Here is where I'd like to introduce a measurement called the "Minor Placements EDP" or the Estimated Daily Profits of all the Minor Placements collectively.
To calculate "Minor Placements EDP":
1)Export the placement stats spreadsheet - including stats gathered since the start of the campaign.
2)Sum up the number of Visits/Impressions for all the Minor Placements. Let's call this number "Total Impressions for Minor Placements".
3)Sum up the "Profit" for all the Minor Placements, no matter if they're profitable or in loss. Let's call this number "Total Profits for Minor Placements".
PopAds' placement stats includes the "Profit" column. PropellerAds' placement stats though don't have the placement profits calculated for you. So you'll need to either start a new column to calculate the revenue (= conversions x payout) and another new column to calculate the profits (= revenue - cost). Or, just export placement stats from the tracker and add up the profits there. Costs stats in trackers aren't the most accurate, but for EDP all we need is an estimate, so tracker stats would be good enough.
Note that the sum of "Profits" can be positive or negative.
4)Now, this Profits number is a result of all the traffic since the start of the campaign, which could have been a mix of throttled and unthrottled traffic, that could have been collected over a couple of hours or many hours. We need to calculate an Estimated Daily Profits (EDP) based on our current data, i.e. to find out how much profits/loss the Minor Placements would make collectively, if we ran traffic unrestricted (unthrottled with unrestrained budget).
Remember that spreadsheet from when we ran that one full hour of unthrottled traffic? Open it up, use an excel formula to sum up the number of visits/impressions across all Minor Placements, then multiply this number by 24 hours to get an "Estimated Daily Impressions for Minor Placements".
5)Finally, we calculate "Minor Placements EDP" as follows:
Minor Placements EDP = Total Profits for Minor Placements x Estimated Daily Impressions for Minor Placements / Total Impressions for Minor Placements
Note: Of the 4 variables in this equation, only the one we got from the one full hour of unthrottled traffic will be a constant that won't change. The other 3 variables will change as you gather more and more data (as the campaign continues to run).
I'll explain where to use this Minor Placement EDP in a bit.
How to Calculate "Major Placements EDP"
Similarly, we can calculate an EDP for Major Placements as well. With one major difference:
We can't optimize Minor Placements, so our profit estimates needs to include placements that are in loss as well as in profit.
Whereas for Major Placements, because we can cut unprofitable placements, we can choose to only include PROFITABLE placements in our profits estimate!
Here's how to calculate "Major Placements EDP":
1)Export the placement stats spreadsheet - including stats gathered since the start of the campaign.
2)Sum up the number of Visits/Impressions for all the Major Placements. Let's call this number "Total Impressions for Major Placements".
3)Sum up the "Profit" for all the PROFITABLE Major Placements only. Let's call this number "Total Profits for Major Placements".
4)Again, this Profits number is a result of all the traffic since the start of the campaign, which could have been a mix of throttled and unthrottled traffic, that could have been collected over a couple of hours or many hours. We need to calculate an Estimated Daily Profits (EDP) based on our current data, i.e. to find out how much profits the Major Placements can potentially make AFTER we cut the unprofitable placements, if we ran traffic unrestricted (unthrottled with unrestrained budget).
Again, open it up that spreadsheet from the one hour of unthrottled traffic, use an excel formula to sum up the number of visits/impressions across all Major Placements, then multiply this number by 24 hours to get an "Estimated Daily Impressions for Major Placements".
5)Finally, we calculate "Major Placements EDP" as follows:
Major Placements EDP = Total Profits for Major Placements x Estimated Daily Impressions for Major Placements / Total Impressions for Major Placements
How to Assess How Promising the Campaign Is
If campaign is at break-even or better, or at least close to breaking even, without too much optimization - the decision would be obvious: Try to cut further to optimize the campaign to green.
If campaign is in quite some loss, the decision is not so straight-forward. How do you know if the campaign is worth optimizing, i.e. that it would likely result in profits?
Unfortunately I can't give you a step-by-step for this, and not for lack of trying. But I will tell you what signs to look for below. Normally, you should only run a campaign for as long as it still has a good chance of meeting your Daily Profit goals.
As you run more and more campaigns, you'll develop a better sense on what hopeful vs. not-too-hopeful stats look like, and would know when to continue and when to stop.
How to Use the EDP Numbers
Finally - here's how we use the above EDP numbers:
Our goal here is to cut enough Major Placements, so that the overall campaign will meet our profits goal (of at least $5/day).
So, a positive sign to look for would be this:
Major Placements EDP + Minor Placements EDP > $5
It's very important to keep in mind that in order for your Major Placements EDP to reflect actual campaign performance in the long run (over days/weeks, sometimes months for pop campaigns), you'll need to collect enough conversions first. If you calculate Major Placements EDP too early on, when you haven't made enough conversions, this amount could just be a big fat zero.
So you may ask, "how many conversions would be enough to calculate an accurate Major Placements EDP?"
This is a difficult question to answer, as each campaign is different. But I'd say no less than 30 conversions. Preferably 50-100+.
I'm sorry for not being able to provide a straight-forward way to assess how promising a campaign is. I can only provide a list of POSITIVE and NEGATIVE signs to look for - and Major Placements EDP + Minor Placements EDP > $5 would be one of those positive signs.
Note that these are SIGNS and not CRITERIA. Just because you see a positive sign or two doesn't mean the campaign will for sure reach profits. Likewise, just because you see a negative sign or two doesn't mean the campaign will for sure fail. Keep this signs in mind and run some campaigns, and soon you'll have enough experience to spot winners from losers earlier.
Below, I'll list other positive and negative signs to look for.
Other Positive and Negative Signs to Look For When Assessing Placement Stats
The more positive signs you see, the more promising the campaign.
1)Obviously the more green Major Placements, the better.
2)The more conversions a green Major Placements has, the better. Placements with a single conversion could just be "lottery" conversions. Green placements with 2-3+ conversions are more likely to remain green in the long run.
3)The more traffic a green Major Placement has, the better. If most of your green Major Placements are smaller placements, and most of your biggest placements are red (say the top 30-50 placements), then that's not a good sign.
4)Look at all the Major Placements that have made conversions: If a vast majority of them are in loss, it's a sign the offer doesn't convert well enough for the traffic.
5)If, after cutting placements for a while, your traffic volume decreases to the point where it won't likely give you much profits, consider pausing the campaign.
Additional Tips
1)Towards the start of the campaign, you may wish to throttle the traffic (i.e. run "distributed") so that you'd have time to cut placements without wasting too much money (e.g. running placements past the 2x payout in loss). After a couple/few days though, the biggest and worst-converting placements will have been cut, so you may want to run unthrottled to speed up the optimization.
Of course, if you have time to check and cut placements multiple times a day, feel free to run at unthrottled from the start.
2)If you're running unthrottled, and get to the point where you're not finding more than a couple of placements to cut for the whole day, it means you probably have enough data to make a decision as to whether to pause the campaign or not. You don't need to wait for enough traffic from every last Major Placement before making that decision.
3)Observe trends. For example, if the top 30-50 biggest placements are almost all red (after running enough traffic), it would be unlikely for the next 30-50 placements to all of a sudden shown a lot of green. Yes there are always exceptions, but we're always talking about probability and likelihood. Always choose an approach that will make your more money or save you more money in the long run. If a method can save you money across 10 campaigns for every 1 campaign you give up on by mistake, then it's worth it.
4)If you're operating in a big competitive geo on a big traffic network, and getting a lot of traffic from a lot of placements, and you're wanting to curb your losses quickly, you may want to cut placements at 1x payout in loss or even 0.5x payout in loss. Yes you'd be cutting some good placements by mistake, but once (if) you reach profits, you could always unpause the bigger placements in batches to give them another chance.
5)When testing a new geo on a new traffic source for the first time, pick very low-payout offers! The lower the payout, the cheaper it is to cut placements. Of course, test different offers until you find one that converts well enough first! You can potentially save a LOT of money.
Think: To run 30 placements to 2x payout, an offer with $2 payout will require $120, where an offer with $0.20 payout will require only $12!
Run a low-payout offer to cut placements first, THEN run higher-payout offers.
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Think This Methodology is Overkill?
If you're thinking at this point, "that's a LOT of trouble and calculations!" I agree with you.
The method above is meant to provide newbies with some crutches. After running some campaigns, you'll most definitely want to take shortcuts.
For example:
-Instead of running unthrottled for an hour and going through all the calculations to identify Major Placements, you may just want to "eyeball" and decide to take the top 100 biggest placements (i.e. by traffic or cost).
-Instead of doing excel calculations every time you check stats, just calculate the Minor Placements EDP once and reuse that in future calculations. And for Major Placements EDP, just visually scan through the Major Placements and mentally add up the biggest green profits.
No matter how you want to cut placements, keep the following big things in mind and you won't go far wrong:
1)Be selective in choosing which campaigns to optimize. Optimization is EXPENSIVE so don't try to optimize every campaign! Set the bar high, test LOTS of offers until you have a campaign that is CLOSE to profitable or better and THEN optimize that. This is what veterans do. Don't be the noob that gets emotionally attached to every offer they run - treat them as one-nighters, not a long-term relationship.
2)Don't count on small placements. They'll take forever to optimize. Treat them as one collective entity, whether they're collectively in loss or in profit. Focus on cutting Major Placements.
3)When looking at stats, always ask yourself "how much more room do I have to optimize the campaign?" and "is that enough room to get me to green?" If the answer is "not likely" or worse, don't continue without changing something significant (such as another offer, another lander, or the campaign bid).
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Blacklisting vs. Whitelisting
So far we've only talked about blacklisting, which means optimizing a campaign by cutting placements (or other traffic segments like OSs, carriers, etc.) I prefer blacklisting over whitelisting, and here is why.
Many traffic sources prefer broad targeting - the more traffic segments (including placements) you target, the more their traffic assigning algorithm will "think" your campaign is, and the more traffic they'll send you.
If you're targeting too few segments, the algorithm can send you next to no traffic. Example: You have a blacklist campaign where you're targeting lots of placements. You see a couple of green placements making a consistent $5/day combined, so you create a whitelist campaign targeting only these two placements, expecting that campaign to give you $5 profits .
Chances are, that new campaign will only get a small trickle of traffic, far from the $5/day you expected.
Whitelist campaigns still have their place though. Specifically, one situation comes to mind where whitelisting would make a lot of sense: It's when your Minor Placements EDP is a large negative number, which would require a large positive Major Placements EDP to offset. In that case it would be easier to just start a whitelist campaign with the green Major Placements.
I would encourage you to do your own testing when it comes to whitelisting. Just make sure you have more than a few placements that have good traffic volume - the more the better.
Here's what you do to start a whitelist campaign on PropellerAds and PopAds, respectively:
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Reusing Blacklists
After optimizing a campaign in a specific geo on a specific traffic network, you'll have identified some bad placements (ones you've cut for reaching the 2x payout in loss criterion) and good placements (profitable placements with 3+ conversions).
Next time you run a campaign in the same geo to test new offers, you can and should take advantage of this knowledge to save money.
Simply clone the original campaign with all the cut/excluded/blacklisted placements:
...then update the destination url etc. etc.
And - if the new offer converts better than the original offer, you could even un-blacklist some of the placements you've blacklisted before. There ARE hopeless placements that just don't convert no matter how good the offer is, but most placements will only convert as well as your offer does, so if you have a better offer, give those blacklisted placements any chance to shine.
If you're finding after a while that your blacklist is getting so long that new campaigns aren't receiving enough traffic anymore, retest all the placements again to start a "fresh" blacklist! Remember - you can do this for cheap by using a low-payout offer.
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The above is only one part of the entire optimization methodology. There are 2 more parts:
-There are other variables that can be optimized as well. These will give us more room for optimization, so that even if we don't have 3 conversions or more in the initial 10x payout spend, we may still be able to continue running the campaign.
-And then there's bid testing, which will change how many placements we can get traffic from, which placements, quality of placements, and how much traffic from each traffic.
But I think we've learned enough about optimization for now! Let's learn how to use landers first, then we can come back to discuss optimization some more.
Thank you so much for bearing with the long lessons!
Amy
Good afternoon, thank you for regularly and promptly commenting on my posts, it is very important for me to receive feedback.
I ran 2 campaigns for offers that advised by managers from haka and zeydoo. One campaign from PropellerAds to Haka and the second from PopAds on the Zeudoo. Got these results.
Propeller - views / conversion - 30,000/4 with a budget of 25x payments. PopAds 48000/77 with a budget of 334x payout.
https://yadi.sk/i/HXGZ5lYVDZOjrg
The first campaign definitely has no prospects. I analyzed the second.
According to the profitability condition of the campaign of 5 conversions per budget of 10x payments, it was only 2.26 conversions in terms of such a budget. When I started to analyze the traffic zones, I realized that all the main zones were deep in the red zone, only the secondary zones turned out to be green.
When I deleted all zones according to the 2x payout condition, I got a very small estimated number of views.
https://yadi.sk/i/OLv9yFBirOuEMw
1. Does it make sense to continue testing this campaign?
2. If I go to searching and testing other offers, what strategy is better to use? I selected these offers and geo strictly follow your instructions, but there is not the slightest hint of profit.
Originally Posted by leo999
If there's not enough traffic to make profits from, there's no point in continuing the campaign.
As for offer selection strategy: For pop traffic, don't choose anything niche - choose broad intention offers. That means offers that anybody and everybody may be interested in. Or, just ask your AMs for offers that can convert well on pop.
Another thing you can do is go to spy tools to see what types of offers or verticals are being run the most in each geo. If a lot of people are running the same type of offer, it probably means the type of offer is converting well. Then test a lot of similar offers to see which one is profitable.
In the end, you need to test MASSIVELY. It's not uncommon to test 30 offers just to find one profitable offer. And then you'll need to scale to multiple traffic sources quickly while the offer is still profitable.
It's definitely not easy to make stable profits from pop, but it's for sure possible and affiliates are still making money. Pop is still the easiest cheapest to learn. Look at your low investment and how much you've learned so far. If you like, you can take that knowledge and try other traffic types, such as push or native.
Or you can stay with pop a bit longer. Your choice.
Amy
Thanks for your reply, I'd rather see at least some profit in low-cost pop traffic first.
1. Can you advice - what is the best way to test many offers? If, for example, take 20 offers. Better to collect them from different affiliate networks, different types? To create one campaign with one geo and all offers or do different campaigns?
2. What spy tools would you recommend for a beginner?
Originally Posted by leo999
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...l=1#post426293
Start with AM-recommended offers from multiple networks. Each network will recommend their best-converting offers to you first - as long as they're not capped/exclusive. (Capped/exclusive offers they'll offer to their best/favorite affiliates first but that's true for all networks.) So it would be wise to go to a few networks.
However, if you run with too many networks, you may run into cashflow issues, with bits of cash at each network, all waiting to hit minimum payout threshold.
So - if cashflow may become an issue, try to choose several big networks with tons of offers and join those first.
As for spy tools - I use Adplexity and you can also try spying in the wild for additional inspiration.
Go through your aff network's top offers lists (ask your AMs for them - they should also be emailed to you regularly). See what types of verticals and geos are the hottest. Got to your spy tool and check those same geos to see what types of offers are doing the most volume on pop. You can also test offers that aren't doing the most volume - sometimes you can discover less saturated verticals in a particular geo.
Also: For a newbie, it may be best to stick to tier3/4 geos (i.e. "developing" countries) to start with. Low payouts <$2 so you can test a lot of offers and gather data fasters on lower budget. Offers that can convert on pop are: Broad appeal (i.e. anyone and everyone may be interested, not niche), easy conversion flow (a couple of clicks to subscribe, or leaving name and email to subscribe), that doesn't require too much preselling/convincing.
In the end though, the truth is you'll never know whether an offer will convert well or not, UNTIL you test it. So test different a few verticals and geos, and test a TON of offers. I know many experts advise to stick to one vertical and one geo to start - that does NOT apply to pop. With pop it's mainly just ripping landers, innovating on them, and testing lots of offers. You don't need to do audience targeting research or even come up with a lot of ad angles etc.
And whenever you find that VerticalX is converting well in GeoY, look for more offers in that vertical+geo - you'd be able to use the same landing pages, and maybe find an offer that converts better than your current winner.
Hope that helps!
Amy
Thank you, Amy. The main question for that topic is testing variations with different landing pages. But at this stage, we are doing a campaign without landing pages, and since I encountered zero conversions, I have to test other offers, geo and traffic sources, but for some reason there is no such scenario in your guide. This is only mentioned in passing. It seems to me that this is a rather voluminous and informative topic that deserves a separate lesson or several.
As you wrote, I need to test a ton of offers, but technically I can't find how to do it. The main issue is the division of offers by campaign. Intuitively, I understand that each GEO needs its own campaign, but many other questions remain.
Should I insert offers from different affiliate programs into one campaign?
What is the optimal number of offers in a campaign?
What are the main differences in the conditions in the offers that can be the reason for the division into different campaigns (targeting conditions, payout amount, vertical)?
Originally Posted by leo999
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...g-(Funnelflux)
The thread I linked to in my previous post, includes some tips on how to test a lot of offers:
1)Look at all the top offers across many networks (most networks email them to affiliates from time to time) to see what niches are popular, and what geos are popular for each niche.
2)Choose a niche that has lots of offers, and one or more languages that are spoken in as many of the popular geos (for that niche) as possible.
3)Prepare landers for that niche+language(s).
Please ask any further questions you may still have after going through that lesson.
Amy
Hello Amy, I have a question...
Theses days I have built 3 campaigns, all of them are direct-link,
Two of them operated in Propeller ( The best one had 3 conversions, but I costed $11.131, and payout is $0.35)
The rest one operated in Popads ( No conversion, I costed $5.26, payout is $0.35)
I don't know if I should optimize "the best one" , or test other offers, or choose offers to start the exercise of landing pages?
Without any profit, a little disappointed....
Amy, I wrote a follow-along thread about my campaigns, could you help me check what the problem is?
This is the thread: Learning 40-day tutorial, but my conversion data is really bad.....
Originally Posted by dienmykieugro
If you allow yourself to be disappointed that you're not in profit after only $20 in spend testing 3 offers, you need to tweak your mindset.
If anyone could just throw up a few campaigns and start making a profit right away, everybody in the world would be doing this.
The typical affiliate spends several thousands of dollars on testing and learning, before standing a chance of reaching any consistent profits.
Of course there are exceptions. But I wanted to give you the typical picture.
I don't wish to be harsh or discouraging. I just wanted to give you the truth from the start so you can decide whether you want to continue or not.
Of course, we'd love it if you decide to stay and learn, and will do our best to guide you.
Amy
Originally Posted by vortex
Although it seems like there is something wrong for me ( I read a member's thread named "5$ a day with click2sms", compared with him, I feel I didn't get the good result, he is really great~), I‘d persevere in it, and continue adjust my plan until I get the goal.
Maybe I'll bother you more in the future, please don't be impatient with me ( I know you won't~)
Thank you Amy, I love this place, you are really friendly.
Hello Amy, today I tested 3 new offers, one of them seems better, costed $9.658 and got 5 conversions, this is the best offer I have tested, but it didn't meet this condition: If after the first 10x payout to the offer, you got fewer than 5 conversions, don't continue to promote the offer....
I want to sure from you, if I need stop it and try another......
Although my ROI is -81.88%, I feel better than some days ago( at that time, there wasn't any conversion....)
Thank you Amy~
Originally Posted by dienmykieugro
It's great that you're reading about the success of others! But do keep in mind that everyone will get different results depending on what and how they run. Just because someone happens to hit on profits early, doesn't mean YOU are doing something wrong.
Plus, you never know if a member has previous experience running campaigns.
You're right - I would never by impatient with you - as long as you're willing to take action! You're progressing well, fixing lots of issues along the way. I would say it's a case of "so far so good"!
I want to sure from you, if I need stop it and try another......
Although my ROI is -81.88%, I feel better than some days ago( at that time, there wasn't any conversion....)
But nothing is 100% certain! There are exceptions for sure. If you want to throw more money at it and see what happens, feel free! But before you do that, please post all the stats you can, so we can optimize or stop the campaign before you waste money unnecessarily.
You can post the following info in your follow-along about this campaign:
Geo, what type of offer, your campaign settings (bid, device, connection, etc.) And I'm assuming you were NOT using a lander?
Please post the following stats as well: The first 50-100 placements/zones (sorted by decreasing conversions; another screenshot sorted by decreasing traffic), mobile connection, mobile carriers, OSs.
Let's see all that first, then we'll discuss.
Amy
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