Home > Paid Traffic Sources > Display / Media Buying

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Official SiteScout Q+A Thread (41)

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Taking a page out of Ben's book, I thought it would be a good idea to have a central thread where you can ask me any questions you have about SiteScout.

To start the thread off, I thought I'd share a tool we recently developed to help advertisers narrow down site placements that actually ALLOW their specific vertical - based off the Pub Details in the system.

http://rtb.sitescout.com/apps/offers/

It requires that you're logged in to the system, and queries take about 15-20 seconds to run, but it does the job. It's going to be added to the Sites interface soon, so that you can combine it with other filters like geo and category.

I have another tool in mind that's being developed, which will be extremely useful.

I'm also just finishing up a blog post about the new upgrade to the RTB we released yesterday. I'll update this thread regularly with any new information that could be helpful to you guys.

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You have websites for promoting male enhacement pills offers?

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oh wooowww..... man that is a fukin time saver. Thanks!

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Oh my fricking god, I was racking my brains trying figuring out which placements accepted what..

This is gold.

Thanks Rocco.

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Oh ya... any plans for adding in an "ad types" drop down, and export tool so we can get placements into our account?

I guess having the tool available in our accounts would be easier for you guys... either way it's cool.

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Unfortunately not. Male enhancement would fall under Adult ads, which are pretty much disallowed across the board.

Absolutely. The URL I gave above is just a temporary page we set up for advertisers. It will be part of the Sites interface as a filter soon.

You can already export placements directly from the Sites tab to a new campaign by clicking the "New Campaign" button in the upper right corner of the Sites tab, after you've made your selections.

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Here is sort of an undocumented feature of the system that will allow you to get the jump on new inventory.

From the Sites tab, click one of the column heading drop-down arrows and select the "Created" column to be shown:



Then sort the list by the "Created" column, showing the newest sites first:



We can see that new sites are added pretty frequently. We can also see that freeads.co.uk is a newcomer with some decent daily impressions. Let's confirm that most of the traffic is actually from the UK:



Yep.

Now let's take a look at the Pub Details to see what type of ads/offers we can potentially run on it:



Interesting. Pretty lax on most verticals. That will give us room for finding the right offers to test on it. Let's take a deeper look at the site's demographics to see what might work well:

Alexa Info:


Based on the Alexa information, it's mostly middle-aged-to-older people with low-incomes, little education, and mostly browsing from home.

Let's correlate that information with another source like Google Ad Planner:



Ad Planner appears to confirm the Alexa data we gathered. For some reason the audience seems to also have a high affinity for animals.

So let's make some educated guesses as to what types of offers might work well for this audience.

We know it's a site that allows people to post free ads. We assume, based on our research, that they are likely to be low-income, older in age, and perhaps not very educated. Maybe a daily deals type offer? Education lead gen? Bizopp? Dating? Finding a solid UK offer would be a major key.

I'm not trying to single out freeads.co.uk in any way other than as an example for what your evaluation process might look like.

My point is just to show you that by keeping an eye on the newest sites added to the system, you can get a jump on unexploited inventory.

Hope this helps.

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SiteScout = LEGENDARY!
I would highly suggest these guys new to media buys that want to test on more restrictive budgets.

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The new update is filthy Rocco

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Un + Real = Unreal. Brilliant.

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i'm currently testing some campaigns in germany and bidding $2cpm ( will lower it later, i'ts just to make sure i'll be the top bidder to get data fast) and i see impressions bid: 70.000 but impressions won:0 so i'm not getting any traffic at all...how can that be?

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Take a look through this post to make sure it's not one of these reasons: http://blog.sitescout.com/2011/04/11...lacks-traffic/

To check if you require whitelisting, or to see if you've been blocked, talk to Steve, one of our account reps - stevem@sitescout.com or "sitescout-rep" on Skype. If the blog post I linked above doesn't help, he can also review your campaign thoroughly to see what's up.

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So, as some of you saw, we soft launched our new release last week. This week was the official announcement: http://blog.sitescout.com/2011/06/si...se-notes-demo/

OpenX traffic just started getting traction today. The "winning bid %" is the highest out of all of the exchanges and the traffic costs less. Good time to test some of their placements.

As for mobile traffic, we ran some tests and there are approximately 5 million impressions per day on the system. We hope to have much more in the future by integrating with Nexage.

Also, I thought I'd pass on some internal stats: starting yesterday we've seen a sudden 25% jump in European traffic available in the system. Worth exploring.

I'd also like to point out that audience targeting (retargeting/untargeting) is a massively underused feature in the system - yet it has some of the best ROI. I'm working on a guide that I think will help.

I'll share more about what we have going on for the next release, but I'll save it for another post.

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can you make a feature to auto fit the columns like in excel? Also can you increase the time out to liek 20 or 30 mins please its really annoying doing research on a campaign and coming back to a tab and I lost building a campaign or trying to login again, also can you ad the ability to archive sites on a campaign like you can with campaigns themselves if we turn the site placements offline etc.

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Would it be possible to make the sites a live link, so one can view them from the software - maybe right click view in new tab/window.

Also to increase the timeout as ht says, to about 30 minutes.

Thanks in advance.

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Hello,

I'm just thinking to join sitescout. Could anyone recommend me which vertical perform good?

Thanks

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Steve kicks ass - very quick to respond - another great guy to deal with, like Ben at PoF.

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Click >options > auto logout > disable.... It was bugging me as well......

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Hello! Just signed up and I don't see AmEx as a payment option. Any plans on adding them?

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Done!

We increased the default interface timeout today to 30 minutes. If you disable auto-logout in the Options, it will still log you out, eventually, after 65 minutes (for security).

The ability to archive sites, the way you can archive campaigns, will be included in our mini-release next week (along with Site-Level Auto-Optimization and Notifications).

As for auto-fitting columns, the interface should do that already. Each user's column settings are saved using cookies. So, if you notice that the columns go off the screen, first try resizing one of the columns - that usually "snaps" them all back in to place for me. If that doesn't work, try clearing just your sitescout.com cookies. We will most likely add a "reset columns" button to the interface in future release.

Love the feedback by the way. Keep it coming!

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We've tried to, but since we're a Canadian company, processing AmEx is a pain for us on the backend. Our processor, Chase Paymentech, make us enter every AmEx transaction manually. Since the RTB is a self-serve interface, and because of the tedious manual component to AmEx, there are no immediate plans to add them. We could make exceptions for large deposits (>10k) but that's probably not the case for most new users.

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Is there a certain vertical you see doing well? Or is it just dependent on the site your targeting?

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thats like asking whats doing well on adwords.

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Lol my bad then, it was a dumb question

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Thanks Doctor for your reply regards timing out.

Would it be possible to make the sites a live link. So if I'm doing some rearch on a site, I can click on it to be taken to that site - - maybe right click view in new tab/window.

In advance thankyou.

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Nice job on the recent improvements and responsiveness. Looking forward to learning more about mastering the platform. I've run some campaigns on there before but didn't have much luck with my tests.

LOL re: HeavyT's comment above. It's probably true, but I just don't get how...Again I find myself asking, "What am I doing wrong?!" Hopefully Monday's webinar will enlighten me a bit...

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I've found some things but nothing with volume worth mentioning, I've spent about 700 testing offers in about 15 campaigns but i'm still looking for the nugget and haven't found it yet on there.

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Got an email from Scott at Sitescout yesterday offering a connection/guidance from a large affiliate network whose offers are doing well on there. Will see where that leads, or if it's just some promotional thing to get new affiliates...

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would you mind pming me the email I'm possibly interested

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I got a question...

I installed PageRage, so Im assuming I see ads served by you guys right? Also, I've seen ads that dynamically insert my location based on my IP. How do you do this since I'd like to try this out as well...

Also besides by IP, are there any other dynamic options available to try out? Maybe a count down or etc...

thanks!

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What's the deal with those sites that seem to get huge amounts of traffic, but don't pass the sniff test? For example, this website worldnews247.org



I have a hard time believing this site gets 18.5 Million impressions per day/month? Quantcast, Alexa and Compete suggest they don't get near this kind of traffic. Also, it's such a no-name brand that it's pretty obvious.

How do these guys operate? What are they doing to generate that many impressions? I ask, so we can understand how they work and buy RTB more intelligently. As advertisers, if we know what these characters are up to, we can save our money on publishers like these. It's probably worth testing once, in the small chance they are legit and actually convert well, but that just doesn't seem likely.

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I don't know the full details of this particular source, but in general some of the sites on most RTB sources can be quite dodgy. There are all kinds of tricks that are possible to increase measured traffic without increasing actual valuable traffic - buyer beware!

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Still talking to RMX. Given the speed at which they move, Q1 would be optimistic. Likely Q2 with them.

AppNexus integration has been done for a while, but we are bringing on their supply sources on an individual basis*.

Here is a list of sources we are currently getting via AppNexus:

- bRealTime (CPXi)
- bRealtime (CPXi)
- Orange Americas
- Matomy Media
- DMG
- Gourmet Ads
- Dot Fox

More in the pipeline as we speak.

(*We could have gotten access to all of their publishers/exchanges right off the bat, but they have a crazy $1 per creative fee that they charge DSPs, which they refuse to waive, but since we have our own internal ad quality process, we need to request an exemption from each supplier to self-audit our own creatives.)

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They could very well be fraudulent publishers. Bad actors do exist:

http://www.adweek.com/news/technolog...ur-mind-153083
http://www.adweek.com/news/technolog...0m-year-148788
http://www.adweek.com/news/technolog...ers-web-148032

We’ve always taken a very proactive and hands-on approach to removing fraudulent inventory sources from our system, but it's hard to stay on top of thousands of sites. If you come across a fraudulent source, please let our team know: support@sitescout.com

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Don't pass the sniff test?

I am shocked, shocked at your suggestion that there is anything but honest players in online marketing.

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Question: you mentioned "Matomy Media" - does it mean ALL of their inventory is accessible through you? Mostly interested in mobile inv.
Thanks!

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Why is it that certain placements will show up as Online and approved - run millions of impressions but then suddenly stop traffic altogether - even if I up my bids to $30+ ?

Are they blocking my placements but still showing up as Online?

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Yes, you're getting blocked by the ad network/publisher

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Once you get blocked, is it just at campaign/creative level or you can just forget that publisher for all your next campaigns already ?

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The thing is, I'm finding that the traffic starts rolling in again for that publisher at midnight and then sometime during the day it just stops completely again (despite whatever amount I'm bidding). My budget is set to $200,000 and I'm not dayparting the campaign, so I'm not sure why it would stop and then start up again every time at midnight.

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At the end of the day Sitescout is remnant inventory so perhaps all their inventory is already sold for certain time periods and there's none left over going into the exchange. You're not getting any impressions because there is none there.

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