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Facebook - My take at the gaming scene! (11)

03-30-2012 07:19 AM #1 river (Member)
Facebook - My take at the gaming scene!

Hi guys, I'm just running a little follow along for my latest Facebook campaign - I've had success before but with an e-mail submit that lasted for around a week before I got heavily scrubbed!

I've scrolled over the forums for the last week reading peoples bidding tactics, Facebook & LP advice. Anyway - I'll crack on and get to the interesting stuff.

Offer: $1.65 Pay-out (Downloadable game with toolbar - Approved by FB so I guess I’m OK)
I ran the offer a few weeks ago before I became a member of STM on my first day of PPC & managed to get 1200 clicks / 44 conversions. I came to the conclusion it was a dead deal & moved on. After reading a post by Zeno the other day I decided to give it another shot & test out various parts of the previous demograph.

I've got around 6 ads which were preforming very well on my previous offer @ around 0.180 - 0.444 CTR (However I'm struggling to get the 0.444 approved again!).

Ad 1 has been approved this morning, this used to receive a CTR of 0.240 among a 8mil demograph. Here are the details of my 'New' ad1.

Age: 13-16
Gender: Male
Demo: 700k
Keywords: 15+ Matching games.
Recommended Bid: 0.17 - 0.33
Bid: 0.22
Budget: $100
Note: I have 4 ad's in total, all the same ad after reading Stackmans post on CTR suckage.

The above bid technique is one that I read about on here (Bid 0.03-0.05 above lowest recommended). Prior to this I'd always try go 0.20-0.30 higher than the top recommended bid but as you can guess - it got quite expensive!

Well there you have it peeps! I'll keep you all updated on how this goes, I'll be hitting the other ads after I've ran enough testing on this one. I then hope to move onto 16-20 e.t.c.

I'd love for some of you to pull this apart & give me some constructive criticism on where I could improve e.t.c.

Thanks

03-30-2012 08:39 AM #2 zeno (Administrator)

Very nice @ getting ~0.25% CTR on an 8 mill demo, definitely a good start for an image ;D

Be weary of the the fact that <18 yr olds are generally the lowest lead quality for advertisers, harder to monetise them since they're less likely to whip out their CC's for microtransactions and such. So you may want to run an older demo in parallel just to mix in higher quality traffic, save you getting pulled from an offer mid-testing. That and if you have the age groups tagged by subids you can potentially get feedback from the advertiser and pull the lower quality traffic, keeping you on the offer and keeping the advertiser happy.

03-30-2012 08:48 AM #3 river (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by zeno View Post
Very nice @ getting ~0.25% CTR on an 8 mill demo, definitely a good start for an image ;D

Be weary of the the fact that <18 yr olds are generally the lowest lead quality for advertisers, harder to monetise them since they're less likely to whip out their CC's for microtransactions and such. So you may want to run an older demo in parallel just to mix in higher quality traffic, save you getting pulled from an offer mid-testing. That and if you have the age groups tagged by subids you can potentially get feedback from the advertiser and pull the lower quality traffic, keeping you on the offer and keeping the advertiser happy.
Thanks Zeno,

I picked such a low age group because it's just a case of downloading an .exe with the intention of getting a free game. I'll get my 16-20 demo fired up now then - Thanks!

I believe the offer installs a complimentary toolbar & makes you jump through hoops for the game. I'm under the impression that it converts when they install (I hope), I might be wrong though - have you had any experience with Playpickle before? I have no way of testing the offers conversion since I'm in the UK & my US Dedi didn't seem to convert!

Also, what do you think to my bidding technique? It's been running for 4 hours now & I've only hit a 280 reach across 4 ads which makes me think its not working - Am I just being impatient?

Thanks

03-30-2012 09:28 AM #4 zeno (Administrator)

Are you running this in the US? It's early morning there now, not surprising to have low reach at the moment. The offer will probably convert on download or install if it's a toolbar - I've never run toolbars or Playpickle. Regardless of where it converts, the advertiser must monetise their product somewhere along the line otherwise they have little reason to pay you for the leads you send them, at least in the majority of cases.

I usually look at the suggested CPM bid and bid a little higher than the max but on a CPC basis, country dependent though as in some countries I find I never need such a high bid. I like to bid high and get high initial volume rather than slow delivery. You cop higher CPCs but I like to give my ads the best exposure I can give em, then let their high CTR push the CPCs down. There are many benefits to having your high performing ads start with generous bids, e.g. volume and a solid CTR history. The downside being you can lose money fast on ads that get lots of clicks but don't convert, and the volume can be biased to a certain part of the day skewing your data a bit. I'm good at micromanaging though so it suits me.

However, if you don't know where along the process your offer converts, i.e. is it SOI, DOI, on download, on confirmation of email, etc - i.e. how far down the path after clicking your ad they get the chance to convert, I would be more carful with the campaign. Sometimes conversions will take minutes after someone clicks your ad, sometimes the average time will be hours and some clickers take days to convert. Quite often I pause ads that are running at -ve ROI then a few days later some lagged conversions push them back into overall profit. I would run a few hundred test clicks and then wait it out, trickle the clicks to the offer while getting the feel for the EPCs your getting. Use your campaign budget to throttle the spend, don't play with the bids initially unless they are obviously too low. Once you have a better idea of your EPCs, then slowly open the budget over time and see if you stay profitable as the volume increases.

03-30-2012 09:46 AM #5 river (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by zeno View Post
Are you running this in the US? It's early morning there now, not surprising to have low reach at the moment. The offer will probably convert on download or install if it's a toolbar - I've never run toolbars or Playpickle. Regardless of where it converts, the advertiser must monetise their product somewhere along the line otherwise they have little reason to pay you for the leads you send them, at least in the majority of cases.

I usually look at the suggested CPM bid and bid a little higher than the max but on a CPC basis, country dependent though as in some countries I find I never need such a high bid. I like to bid high and get high initial volume rather than slow delivery. You cop higher CPCs but I like to give my ads the best exposure I can give em, then let their high CTR push the CPCs down. There are many benefits to having your high performing ads start with generous bids, e.g. volume and a solid CTR history. The downside being you can lose money fast on ads that get lots of clicks but don't convert, and the volume can be biased to a certain part of the day skewing your data a bit. I'm good at micromanaging though so it suits me.

However, if you don't know where along the process your offer converts, i.e. is it SOI, DOI, on download, on confirmation of email, etc - i.e. how far down the path after clicking your ad they get the chance to convert, I would be more carful with the campaign. Sometimes conversions will take minutes after someone clicks your ad, sometimes the average time will be hours and some clickers take days to convert. Quite often I pause ads that are running at -ve ROI then a few days later some lagged conversions push them back into overall profit. I would run a few hundred test clicks and then wait it out, trickle the clicks to the offer while getting the feel for the EPCs your getting. Use your campaign budget to throttle the spend, don't play with the bids initially unless they are obviously too low. Once you have a better idea of your EPCs, then slowly open the budget over time and see if you stay profitable as the volume increases.
Thanks Zeno - I actually noticed this when I ran the offer before. I stopped the offer & for the next week or so I'd receive the odd conversion here and there even though I wasn't running the offer. I have a feeling it's because they'd downloaded the installer & then found it at a later date to install perhaps?

Note: I'll wait until AM in the US and then push my bid up & hit up my old bidding technique of +0.20 on the max bid.

03-30-2012 11:23 AM #6 river (Member)

Ok so here's the results from ad 1 - I actually got a surprising amount of hits to say it's early morning in America & aimed at 13-16.



I only received 16 click's & 1 convert on the final landing page - I've decided to scrap the idea of a LP & try 301 direct to the address.

Time to try ad2!

03-30-2012 12:17 PM #7 river (Member)



55 clicks - 1 conversion.

Not bad CTR but still - the profit doesn't look too good. What do you guys think? Scrap it or keep pushing?

03-30-2012 12:17 PM #8 zeno (Administrator)

You should probably try direct linking first, or at least in parallel with the lander, most gaming offers convert pretty well via direct. By 301 do you mean putting a 301 redirect on or do you mean you're just going to use PHP to redirect people? If linking to an affiliate URL you should geo-redirect people yourself so that only people from the US get sent to your aff URL.

Edit: were the above conversion stats from going via a lander? if you got 16/166 and then 55/92 followed by 1 conversion then you should definitely scrap the lander. If you've sent 250+ clicks as the above images seem to indicate, and have got two conversions (EPCs sitting around $.04-.05?) from the amount that have gotten to the offer, then you should probably pause the campaign and wait to see what the EPCs settle at. Looking at the stats above you're gonna be burning cash if the offers not pulling through for ya. The EPCs from direct linking are probably going to be slightly lower too.

03-30-2012 12:19 PM #9 river (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by zeno View Post
You should probably try direct linking first, or at least in parallel with the lander, most gaming offers convert pretty well via direct. By 301 do you mean putting a 301 redirect on or do you mean you're just going to use PHP to redirect people? If linking to an affiliate URL you should geo-redirect people yourself so that only people from the US get sent to your aff URL.
I just do a 301 like this:

Redirect 301 / <Tracking URL From CPA TANK>

I then save this from notepad into a file called .htaccess & upload to my root. Is this what you mean?

Cheers

03-30-2012 12:30 PM #10 zeno (Administrator)

Nup, have never used htaccess based redirection and never will - not as easy to deal with and no way of passing subids, variables and such. If you do that as well, if a reviewer based in India checks your ad the server is going to bounce them straight to an affiliate URL -> random offer -> retro'd ads. You can geo-redirect with htaccess but again, no point since you can't pass tracking data and that is the bread and butter of IM.

~$80 spent, 2 conversions, I'd call that a day and write that campaign off, or at least pause and wait to see if other conversions come in. Either the offer is shite or your angle/creatives are giving you poor conversion %'s. IMO I would think the offer is the weak point but that's just a guess.

03-30-2012 12:48 PM #11 river (Member)

Ok thanks Zeno, how do you go about redirecting people? Would you be ok to give me a small guide on how to do it correctly?

I might throw another $20 at 16-20 and see if I can get anything but I'm thinking it's a dead offer as well.

Thanks for the help bro!

Edit:


Quote Originally Posted by zeno View Post

were the above conversion stats from going via a lander? if you got 16/166 and then 55/92 followed by 1 conversion then you should definitely scrap the lander. If you've sent 250+ clicks as the above images seem to indicate, and have got two conversions (EPCs sitting around $.04-.05?) from the amount that have gotten to the offer, then you should probably pause the campaign and wait to see what the EPCs settle at. Looking at the stats above you're gonna be burning cash if the offers not pulling through for ya. The EPCs from direct linking are probably going to be slightly lower too.
The first SS was with a lander & the 2nd was directing straight to the offer - I also agree, I'll leave it paused & see if any conversions come in over the next few days.

At least one good thing has come from this - I can use the ads later on for my co-reg & I know what results in decent CTR. On a side note I managed to get a 0.240 CTR image loaded for dating so I may take an approach at that with my secret new angle I just came up with!

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