Disapproved. Campaign was looking good, so which platform should I use? (54)

Hi

I had a campaign on FB that they eventually disapproved.

The issue is that using the ROI Calculator with the data I got before they did it is telling me that the Campaign has promise.

Which platforms would you suggest I move to?

It is a Cloud Storage Offer.

Thanks everyone!

Andy

I wouldn't run away from Facebook just yet, what did they disapprove it for? Drop me a PM with ad text and I'll have a look if you'd like.

If you are too master FB or at best make a few thousand/mo or master any traffic platform for that matter you can't run away at the first sign of difficulty, this separates the winners from the rest. But if you had a good camp on fb, pof is probably your best alternative assuming your offer is dating.

like john said, POF is probably your best bet. That or figure out how to consistently get new FB accounts if you have profitable campaigns, and work it this way. That or get a cloaker. Pick one of these options, work super hard at it, which one is entirely up to your preferences.

Bro, Stick to it and milk the shit out of it.... Get creative and think of new techniques for staying alive longer

I'm assuming JustCloud or that other one, I forget it's name. Did you get the canned "blah blah violates our terms of service" email or did they just get retro'd. How was your campaign structured with respect to the URL pathway. I.e. Advert -> Tracking URL -> Affiliate URL -> offer.

Hi

Thanks everyone, I am looking at a Landing Page today.

@zeno: It was a direct link via my Demon tracking, which then leads directly to the JustCloud homepage. Yeah, I got the, "Thanks for advertising with Facebook. Unfortunately, the ad or Sponsored story you submitted was disapproved for violating our advertising guidelines. Please resubmit it for review after making the necessary changes"

Do you have georedirection in place to ensure no one is redirected elsewhere by your affiliate link? I think that's the only reason JustCloud would get retro'd. Fix that and you will be alright. And you should fix that before doing anything anymore ever on FB.

Hi @zeno

I am only targeting the USA on Facebook so I am guessing that should not be an issue!

Or am I wrong?

It's not about who you're targeting, it's about making sure anyone from anywhere in any place who clicks on your ad is guaranteed to end up on the offer page. If an ad reviewer checks your ad and they are from India, the affiliate link is 99% likely to NOT send them to the JustCloud offer page. Additionally, Facebook will never deliver clicks that are all from inside your targeted country, it's just not possible to guarantee that. Unless you are 100% confident your affiliate links have no geo-redirection on them (one of the networks ways of monetizing traffic that is from the wrong country), which they undoubtedly will, you need to have a 'checkpoint' of sorts immediately after your advert that diverts everyone from X country -> affiliate link and everyone else not from X country -> direct to offer page.

Hi

I had a plugin that did this but it slowed down my Wordpress system. You simply redirected any link based on their IP to an offer they could see.

Peerfly and others have the ability to redirect traffic to other offers and I do use that.

But you make a very good point that if they Reviewer is in India he could be taken to the wrong place!

andyscraven : you need this, http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...script-for-SAM, the root cause is you will be redirected to some irrelevent page if the viewer's ip is not the one allowed in the offer, hence you need a geo redirection script after your ad. hence the flow should be like this :

ad --> tracker (tracking click through, CTR, CR, ROI or whatever, no need cloaking, just pass through traffic )--> geo redirection script (able to switch link easily and rotate offer) --> LP/offer page.

throw away any wordpress plugin , you no need that, it is just slow down your vps. It is time you understand simple php and how tracking works in order to be profitable, you need to modify the geo redirection script if you need to use with p202 or cpvlab, that one is for BuyBuddy

Thanks for that @hd2010.

Oddly enough I can programme in PHP, I have so far chosen to automate as much as possible, hence why I am using Wordpress. However, I take your point that speed is everything.

@andyscraven, do test your link, make sure the dummy subid or any variables are passing correctly before live the campaign, don't make any assumption, the traffic flow is the example, the tracker position might be wrong, but the geo offer redirection script is a must especially for FB campaign

Hi @hd2010

Yeah I am looking at that now. I always test with a dummy SubId so I can separate out my testing and verify it is being recorded correctly.

Thanks again.

Andy, All be aware of the advertiser scrubbing we run upwards of 2000 leads a day to this offer and pcbackup as well....watch those conversions.

Hi @xy7kevin,

Thanks for the advice. I will!

Hi again!

OK, they keep Disapproving my ads except for one campaign which they allow through.

The reason they give is: The destination URL of this ad violates our Ad Guidelines or could not be reviewed. Please check the URL you have submitted to ensure that it is free of any spelling errors and that it complies with our Advertising Guidelines. Please note that all sites must be viewable and functioning properly, regardless of the viewer's location. Additionally, sites are prohibited from linking to proprietary file types (.pdf, .doc, etc,) initiating automatic downloads, or trapping a user's browser in any way (e.g., pop-ups of any kind).

HOWEVER!

Other than the keyword I pass the destination URL is identical to the one they have approved!

It now goes to a landing page, which is just a bitmap really with a link to the offer via my landing page tracking link.

@xy7kevin: I would be interested in showing you my Ads, Links, Landing Page etc to see what you think.

Is your keyword breaking the URL? I got that message before when I had a broken script in a page that would work once in a while. Some of my ads were approved but others were denied... I opened up the page on some other browsers and IPs and saw the error. Double check your pages to ensure they're loading properly.

That message happens when a) URL or offer is red-rated on MyWoT b) Advert URL doesn't correctly lead anywhere, e.g. with spelling mistake -> 404 c) affiliate URL bouncing people to offer walls. It's JustCloud, so I'm still voting for the latter. These kinds of things seem to be a recurring trend with people trying to break into Facebook, might write some tutes on the matter amongst other things to help people prevent all this hassle.

@zeno: It is odd as they have approved one campaign to the exact same offer page. Justcloud have a good MyWot rating. Can you describe your c) option for me? Do you mean they are not ending up on the right offer page when Facebook test the link? As if they must be viewing it from an invalid Country?

@tical I created a new Similar Ad and changed the Keyword just in case.

It has to be said that when I did create the new Ad, prior to me entering the Tite and Text it displayed the Landing Page so the link must be working! I think @zeno may have a point, if I understand him!

You should assume a Facebook reviewer could be anywhere on the planet. If you follow your advert link while running through a US, UK, AU, DE, FR, ZA, SG, IT, IN, JP proxy, do you ALWAYS land on JustCloud? If you don't, this is 99% likely to be your problem.

@zeno I get it now. Given I use Demon Tracking I guess it should be done at that point prior to going to any LP or Offer, if direct linking? I know Demon Tracking don't have a function for that as I have asked them, so I would need to create a small geo-redirect file for every Offer! Is that right?

Also, on a different subject. If Facebook doesn't Email Submit offers, what is the difference between that and an Opt-in form as we usually give something for free if they opt-in?

I really appreciate all the feedback and advice by the way!

Yes, geo-redirect for every offer/campaign. You could do something elaborate where a passed subid in the advert URL dynamically determines destination/countries, but that can get tiresome and is not a good idea. I have my campaigns segregated at the offer/angle/country/gender/age level on my server so that every single demographic can have it's traffic independently influenced w/o affecting the others. Sounds difficult? It's not. You just copy/paste the same redirection file (with aff links changed inside it) within a folder structure and upload via FTP. Anywhoo, will do a tute on this in a bit to make my approach clear.

Email submits - FB doesn't generally like straight up collection of emails, but you can do it. Leadgen etc. is fine. If you're site is legit they are fine provided you ensure there is a privacy policy link on the page. Any email submits like gift card rewards etc are an obvious decline for them, especially since 99.99% of them are red-rated on MyWoT unless brand new, and even then a monkey could recognise them.

@zeno: The penny has well and truly dropped. It matters not a jot whether you are using Wordpress or HTML as all this happens before the visitor gets to that. Thanks so much for the info. Understand completely.

Do you have a full list of Countries that you always set a redirect to each time or do you select which Countries a particular redirect will go to on an offer by offer basis? So if the Offer is for US, UK, AU and NZ you can send them straight to the offer while all others go to somewhere else?

Or do you have a list of Country specific offers?

Or do you send all the rest to a Landing Page and do some Opt-In stuff?

I have even heard that you can sell on traffic you don't need to other people who do! Is that right?

It's Facebook so you're targeting a specific country, so the large majority of clicks will be from there. All traffic determined to be from that country -> affiliate link. All traffic not from that country -> direct to the offers landing page. When first starting out I would treat this as no exceptions. Don't try and craftily recover out-of-geo traffic in the early stages. In any case, it's usually not worth the effort anyway.

@zeno: Not sure I understand.

If someone is from a non qualifying Country they will not be able to see the offer page so where should I send them?

Originally Posted by andyscraven

@zeno: Not sure I understand.

If someone is from a non qualifying Country they will not be able to see the offer page so where should I send them?

@zeno: I am being really stupid here! Let's say I have a Peerfly offer that is US only and someone from the UK sees my ad and clicks on it, if I send them to the offer even without my affiliate link they can't see it! I have just tried this with a Peerfly offer. I can only see it via a proxy! Sorry to be stupid here! :-)

Originally Posted by andyscraven

@zeno: I am being really stupid here! Let's say I have a Peerfly offer that is US only and someone from the UK sees my ad and clicks on it, if I send them to the offer even without my affiliate link they can't see it! I have just tried this with a Peerfly offer. I can only see it via a proxy! Sorry to be stupid here! :-)

@Kaltera: that is what I thought @zeno meant but even when I did that using a Peerfly offer as an example it took me to one of those stupid Survey / Competition pages and not to the Offer without my Afflink! I am assuming because they knew where I was visiting from and bounced me anyway.

I take it we accept that we won't make money on that click given we are sending them without our Affiliate data but I guess we never asked for that traffic!

Originally Posted by andyscraven

I take it we accept that we won't make money on that click given we are sending them without our Affiliate data but I guess we never asked for that traffic!

Originally Posted by jonemd

Correct - It is a sad fact that not every click can be monitised, but just think of the greater good! If losing a few clicks here and there means you can run the offer, just have to deal with it.

Originally Posted by andyscraven

@zeno: I am being really stupid here! Let's say I have a Peerfly offer that is US only and someone from the UK sees my ad and clicks on it, if I send them to the offer even without my affiliate link they can't see it! I have just tried this with a Peerfly offer. I can only see it via a proxy! Sorry to be stupid here! :-)

honestly i didn't read all the posts..only your first post..if you are just starting out you shouldn't jump from traffic source to traffic source...unless you want to burn money quick. stick to 1 source and make it work (it sounds like a standard phrase but it's the truth..you can/have to try different things later if you have the budget)...fb is one of the most powerful traffic sources nowadays...it's like adwords with laser targeting..kinda :-) stick to fb or if you really want to test another source try pof (they REALLY love affiliates) but reach out to ben@pof.com before...he'll take care of you..jumping from traffic source to traffic source is one of the biggest mistakes you can do in the beginning...it's expensive...it's neccessary later but not when you are just starting out...feel free to pm me ;-)

btw: did the download work?

@nusolutionz: Oddly enough I am planning on sticking with FB and looking at trying POF as not to dissimilar!

@zeno: Well it does and that is why I was a tad confused: Here is the link without any Aff Links on it and from England I get something completely different than I do when I go via Proxify!: http://try.valuedopinioncenter.com

It is a Peerfly offer for a iPhone 5 Test and Keep thingy!

And I just picked it randomly to test.

@nsolutionz: Yeah the download worked fine thank again! I'll contact Ben and chat with him before starting POF.

A 'win an iPhone' offer is not really suitable to test this on - and it is not something you would run on Facebook. They aren't even an advertiser, valuedopinioncenter isn't a legitimate website, it's just a shitty domain that bounces people wherever to try and monetise all traffic, so there is no way of properly geo-redirecting this.

@zeno: Doh! Typical that I pick a random offer and it does that! I am on with implementing the Geo redirect scripts so this should be history as of tomorrow. Thanks for all your help! However it does show that you are right I should test everything and not assume anything!

@andyscraveN : you definately learn very fast

@zeno: Working on the Geo-Redirect scripts today.

Am I right?

From Traffic Source -> Tracking Software, which has a campaign with an offer and the offer link is to -> Geo Script ->Offer/LP

I have noticed that on Peerfly you can do this by setting up redirects to other similar offers for each Country. I have tried it. So I have a UK offer and within Peerfly I go to that offer and set up redirects for other Country's traffic!

I prefer my own scripts as I can use them to bait and switch, for instance!

Also, the prospect of manually creating a Geo Script for each offer seems tedious to me! Do you know of any Self hosted solutions to this? So you enter the Offer URL, specify the allowed Countries, specify a filename, which can also be used as a directory name and it creates the Script using the Switch PHP command, creates the correct CASE commands, strips to the base URL for the DEFAULT case, then creates the directory and writes the file!

That would be sweet! Ideally this should be built in to the tracking software, so that when you create a campaign, you specify which Offer they go to based on their Country of Origin! Does CPVLab do this? I am using Demon tracking but when I asked them they said, you only paid $17 so NO!!!! Short and sweet I thought! :-)

This would be easier if you had the geoip db installed on your box. Redirect other countries to the justcloud.com page as someone said previously.

@andyscraven : what kind of hosting are you on ? which hosting company, which package ? what kind of softwares installed ?

@hd2010: I use a Dreamhost VPS using LAMP.

I run Wordpress sites from it too.

Originally Posted by andyscraven

@zeno: Working on the Geo-Redirect scripts today.

Am I right?

From Traffic Source -> Tracking Software, which has a campaign with an offer and the offer link is to -> Geo Script ->Offer/LP

I have noticed that on Peerfly you can do this by setting up redirects to other similar offers for each Country. I have tried it. So I have a UK offer and within Peerfly I go to that offer and set up redirects for other Country's traffic!

I prefer my own scripts as I can use them to bait and switch, for instance!

Also, the prospect of manually creating a Geo Script for each offer seems tedious to me! Do you know of any Self hosted solutions to this? So you enter the Offer URL, specify the allowed Countries, specify a filename, which can also be used as a directory name and it creates the Script using the Switch PHP command, creates the correct CASE commands, strips to the base URL for the DEFAULT case, then creates the directory and writes the file!

That would be sweet! Ideally this should be built in to the tracking software, so that when you create a campaign, you specify which Offer they go to based on their Country of Origin! Does CPVLab do this? I am using Demon tracking but when I asked them they said, you only paid $17 so NO!!!! Short and sweet I thought! :-)

@andyscraven : make sure inside your vps, nginx + php-fpm + mysql are installed and properly tuned, another thing I want to addon is you can't able to win the affiliate game, just bacause you see the tunnel of light, you need to have mental breakthrough, learn what you need to learn, do what you need to do and you will get what you're craving for. The first choice you have decided to use wordpress to do your whatever landingpage stuff is a NO NO, this show you still opt for easy route, ask yourself this question, do I need an instruction guide to drive a car, maybe you need a simple guide when learning to drive the 4 wheel, but once you get the A-HA moment, smooth sailing, what Zeno said is true, do what he said, seek the solution when facing any obstacles before asking, programmed yourself into super affiliate mindset, you are set to go

@zeno and @hd2010: Thanks for all your advice guys!

So with the above in mind, do either of you guys have a blank Geo-Redirect script that I can start with? Do I need anything else on my server? Someone mentioned the Country Database but do I need that?

Hi Guys,

On Chad Hamzeh's forum Six Months From Today, some of the guys are using this free service for geo redirect. http://w3max.net/

It is not self-hosted so you are reliant upon their site being there.

Wondered what you thought of this as a solution?

don't rely on 3rd party, what if when need to do geoip lookup, the 3rd party site is down, your advertising dollar will go down to the drain, get your hoster install maxmind php extension for you : http://ctrtard.com/code/blazing-geo-...n-your-server/

the database, i use a shell script download from maxmind very 1st week, run from cronjob

# Geoip database
30 23 5,6,7 * * root /usr/local/geoip/geoip_download >> /dev/null 2>&1

#!/bin/sh

geoip_url="http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/GeoLiteCountry/GeoIP.dat.gz";
geoip_city_url="http://geolite.maxmind.com/download/geoip/database/GeoLiteCity.dat.gz";

#####################################
# Do not modify anything below
#####################################

rm -rf /usr/local/geoip/tmp/*

wget -t 3 -N $geoip_url -P /usr/local/geoip/tmp;
wget -t 3 -N $geoip_city_url -P /usr/local/geoip/tmp;

sleep 2;

gunzip /usr/local/geoip/tmp/*.gz;
mv /usr/local/geoip/tmp/*.* /usr/local/geoip/data/       
chown -R root:nobody /usr/local/geoip/data/
chmod -R 755 /usr/local/geoip/data/
/bin/cp -fRp /usr/local/geoip/data/GeoLiteCity.dat /home/whatever/sites/domain.info/geoip/GeoLiteCity.dat
/bin/cp -fRp /usr/local/geoip/data/GeoLiteCity.dat /usr/local/geoip/data/GeoIPCity.dat
chown -R whatever:nobody /home/whatever/sites/domain.info/geoip/GeoLiteCity.dat
chmod -R 755 /home/whatever/geoip/GeoLiteCity.dat

@hd2010: I am actually installing the Maxmind stuff on my server as I write. Just having a Permissions issue with part of the install. I got the exact same link from @zeno so great maxminds think alike!!!

Thanks to you both.

Wanted to launch 10 new camapigns today but now I have to wait for the Support guys to fix the permissions issue

Originally Posted by andyscraven

@hd2010: I am actually installing the Maxmind stuff on my server as I write. Just having a Permissions issue with part of the install. I got the exact same link from @zeno so great maxminds think alike!!!

Thanks to you both.

Wanted to launch 10 new camapigns today but now I have to wait for the Support guys to fix the permissions issue

QUESTION:

In my Geo-Rediect script when I send NON qualifying traffic to the Base URL of the offer without my All Links etc? Has anybody tracked this traffic to see what is a normal % that goes to it? In other words how much we are spending for nothing?

I am testing one offer going to GB, IE, AU and NZ. I have set my Geo-Redirect to add the Country Code as a prefix to the keyword passed by 7Search, that way I can see which Counrty likes my ad!

Just compare network stats to traffic source stats. If you really wanted to know you could set the script to log to a txt file when someone is out of geo.