Follow Along My first PropellerAds campaign

[JonathanB]

I wished this was true but I’m not so sure. If was like that IM would be a lot easier. I’m afraid to break it out to you my friend but there is a lot of bots around. Fortunately we have trackers but by the point to cut all the bots you are already losing hope on the campaign. Sad

Hi Guilherme, hahaha yes you're 100% right. But Bots have emotions, too! Just kidding! ;-)

You're right, the bot traffic s#cks. As you said there are trackers for it. Maybe blacklisting more aggressive can help. Once you blacklisted the worse bot placements, maybe then you can get the campaign profitable.

My suggestion would be to include the bot-blacklisting phase into your test budget. I don't have a fixed rule for that, but if you can add another 1x payout just for the bot-traffic killing to your test budget. Maybe this can change the way you approach (and feel about) it. (Mindset)

Example:
Offer has a $10 payout.
Your test budget is 3x Payout (so $30)
Now that we know that bot traffic is a problem, we might add another $10.
= $50 total test budget.

If you spend this over 3-4 days I'm sure you'll be able to blacklist the bad placements very fast so the next $50 test-loop will look much better in terms of ROI.

Maybe we should test it and do a follow along about it? ;-)

 

[PropellerAds]

Hi @jonathanbouchard. We really love your story, so many learnings! And now it looks like a detailed guide.

Ping us in case you'll start a new campaign, we'll be happy to share some tips and to help you with the settings.

 

[JonathanB]

Hi @jonathanbouchard. We really love your story, so many learnings! And now it looks like a detailed guide.

Ping us in case you'll start a new campaign, we'll be happy to share some tips and to help you with the settings.

Hi @PropellerAds , nice to meet you here and thanks for writing. Glad you like my story/guide It was fun documenting it here and very interesting learning all this as well. Your push ads format definitely looks promising.

We can hop on a call or however you want to help/share some tips. If there's a chance to create a solid campaign I'll be more than happy to give it another try. How do you want to be "pinged" ;-)

 

[PropellerAds]

Hi @PropellerAds , nice to meet you here and thanks for writing. Glad you like my story/guide It was fun documenting it here and very interesting learning all this as well. Your push ads format definitely looks promising.

We can hop on a call or however you want to help/share some tips. If there's a chance to create a solid campaign I'll be more than happy to give it another try. How do you want to be "pinged" ;-)

We think it will be better to discuss the details right here so other participants could also read them and apply in practice. Please ask anything you're interested in!

Also, we've decided to give you a special bonus for your next test, we'll PM you. We really liked how you talked about the work process!

 

[JonathanB]

Alright, sounds good. Looking forward to it.

From the top of my head, here some questions:

• How to get more push ads volume?
  As you can read in this follow-along I started a push ad campaign on a CPM basis. Unfortunately the click prices where too expensive so I switched it over to CPC basis. Now the click prices went way down which was great, however so did the volume. After only 16k impressions (and 20 clicks or so) the daily cap was reached. My GEO was Germany, 80+ million people live here and it should be EASY to generate more than 20 clicks
  
  
• What to do with popunder traffic?
  I'm not a big fan of this traffic type (yet), because it's pretty much spam-like and ultra-random. Users don't intent to watch my ad, compared to push ads where the user clicks the ad manually, so I wonder how to monetize it.

I also watched your webinar replays on how to convert push and popunder "like a pro". In the webinar your moderators mention some type of offers that work well like sweeps, casino/gambling, dating etc. so pretty much mainstream offers which is a good start if you want to scale.

• So I wonder how you or other users are converting them predictably?

The reason I highlight predictably is because the traffic is so random and I have no idea what to expect from the traffic and how to build the campaign so I can take it from $10 to $100 to $1.000 per day and more. In order to do this the campaign has to have the traffic volume available and some sort of stability/predictability.

Maybe we can start with "the right mindset" to begin with to set the right expectations?

• What to expect from push & popunder traffic in terms of overall CTRs, CRs etc.? (Like do I mean to pay 1 million popunders to convert 1 sweep?)
• What is the potential of the traffic source? Can I scale my ad spend to $1k/day and more once I have my campaign optimized? If so, how? Can I double my ad spend every day or will I have to go with 10% steps etc.?

That's pretty much all my questions I'd have for now and I'm looking forward to hear from you.

PS: You guys do a great job. The dashboard/interface is super clean and easy to use. Creating campaigns is easy. And I like your branding It would be cool to work & earn with you. Let's see what goes. Thanks

Edit: Just found this new blog post on your website: https://propellerads.com/blog/adv-p...ing-strategy-for-onclick-popunder-real-cases/ This sets expectations differently with CR of sometimes only 0,007%

 

[Sam]

Hi AffLIFTers!

This is my first PropellerAds campaign and I thought sharing it with you is a good idea ;-) I always used to write a journal for myself and doing it this time as a follow-along will hopefully benefit you as well (and hold me accountable) ;-)

So here are the details:
Offer type: Sweepstake & Vouchers
Traffic source: Propeller Ads
Tracker: BeMob

Since some tutorials here have been direct-linking this type of offer I'll do the first approach direct linked as well. I might add a lander later to see if I can increase conversion rates of an offer that already worked direct linked. I plan to do that using BeMob's option to add 2nd path (one direct-linked, one with lander). But for now I'll start with direct.

In order to set up my first campaign I basically followed Lukes tutorial here:
https://afflift.com/f/media/setup-a-campaign-on-propellerads-with-peerfly-and-voluum.5/

My main goals are:
- Learn to set up campaigns properly
- Learn how to use and to understand a tracker's reports
- Learn basic optimizations (zone ids, devices etc.)

I've been running "normal" marketing campaigns in the past for my business (generating leads, email marketing etc.) But this CPA type of marketing is very new to me. So wish me luck ;-)

I hope you too will find some value in this follow along and I look forward to hear from you!

Best,
Jonathan

Hello Jonathan,
Great post!
Are you able to share how much is the cost to use Propeller Ads?
I believe BeMob has a free option that might be enough for someone who is just starting.
Your thoughts.
Cheers

 

[JonathanB]

Hi Sam,

nice to meet you! PropellerAds is an advertising platform where you can buy ads/traffic based on a CPM or CPC basis. So the cost of using PropellerAds varies, depending on what ad format you buy, what your bids are and what GEO you advertise in. So I can't give you a specific number here. I recently saw an ad from them where they advertise CPC from $0,001 (depending on GEO).

Now as you can see they're also here in the forum and I'm sure they'll happily answer your question

BeMob is a great tool for both Newbies and Pros. I used Voluum in my first campaign, but switched to BeMob and it's pretty much the same. The only major difference in my experience is the customer support. And BeMobs support is fantastic!

 

[Sam]

Hello Jonathan,

Nice meeting you too!

I am about to start my first ever campaign

Thinking to follow similar steps i.e.

1. I will buy traffic from Propeller Ads. (I will use the promo code that Luke recently posted under Traffic Sources I've Tried and Community Support). I will go for CPC.
2. I will try BeMob. (Customer service is the point. Thank you for the advice)
3. Still thinking what offer to chose (I have few on my list now, will be selecting one that is international. I suppose this might be easier to set up in Propeller Ads)

Cheers

Sam

 

[JonathanB]

Hi Sam,

glad to see you're about to launch your first campaign too! Your choices are solid (BeMob and PropellerAds).

If you want start a follow-along like this one. As you can see many people will comment and help.

Good luck!

 

[PropellerAds]

@jonathanbouchard, We have credited your account with a special bonus, so we wish success with the launch of the next campaigns in PropellerAds!

Let us help you with your questions:

How to get more push ads volume?
As you can read in this follow-along I started a push ad campaign on a CPM basis. Unfortunately the click prices where too expensive so I switched it over to CPC basis. Now the click prices went way down which was great, however so did the volume. After only 16k impressions (and 20 clicks or so) the daily cap was reached. My GEO was Germany, 80+ million people live here and it should be EASY to generate more than 20 clicks

There may be several reasons: a low CPC rate, too narrow targeting (it's not about GEO only), and creative with a low CTR that was not catchy for users.

For the future, we recommend checking the recommended bids. They are displayed in the dashboard when setting up the campaign. The recommended rate is calculated individually, it depends on GEO, device, other targeting options.
We advise you to choose the recommended bid or make it a bit higher.

• What to do with popunder traffic?
  I'm not a big fan of this traffic type (yet), because it's pretty much spam-like and ultra-random. Users don't intent to watch my ad, compared to push ads where the user clicks the ad manually, so I wonder how to monetize it.

I also watched your webinar replays on how to convert push and popunder "like a pro". In the webinar your moderators mention some type of offers that work well like sweeps, casino/gambling, dating etc. so pretty much mainstream offers which is a good start if you want to scale.

So good you watched this webinar about the popunder! We advise a similar one about push-notifications. If you need we can send you presentations from the webinars separately.

You mentioned the right top verticals that convert well on popunder, the full list can be found in the webinar presentation.

As for bidding model, we recommend you to start with the SmartCPM - it is the most optimal for the first tests.
Also we have a new feature for automatic optimization - CPA Goal.

By the way, the minimal bid is now decreased for popunder traffic, for all GEOs and verticals - $0,05 CPM only.

• So I wonder how you or other users are converting them predictably?

The reason I highlight predictably is because the traffic is so random and I have no idea what to expect from the traffic and how to build the campaign so I can take it from $10 to $100 to $1.000 per day and more. In order to do this the campaign has to have the traffic volume available and some sort of stability/predictability.

It is very important to optimize campaigns manually and monitor the resources that bring no conversions. Disable them in time and don't' forget to make the blacklists. Also, remember that it is very important to configure targeting options correctly and accurately. Be sure to check all campaign settings once more before launching it.

Maybe we can start with "the right mindset" to begin with to set the right expectations?

• What to expect from push & popunder traffic in terms of overall CTRs, CRs etc.? (Like do I mean to pay 1 million popunders to convert 1 sweep?)

It depends heavily on your offer and other details. Such things are very difficult to predict. Our Traffic estimator can help you with that and predict approximate results.

CTR should be about 1-3 for push notifications, but it depends on the GEO again - sometimes 0.5 is enough. We do not track CR.

What is the potential of the traffic source? Can I scale my ad spend to $1k/day and more once I have my campaign optimized? If so, how? Can I double my ad spend every day or will I have to go with 10% steps etc.?

This is a very broad question Many affiliates spend more than 1k/day with us. Everything depends on the specific offer, creatives, GEO, frequency capping and other targeting options. But right you are - don't scale your campaigns and increase budget until you optimize them!

 

[PropellerAds]

Hello Jonathan,

Nice meeting you too!

I am about to start my first ever campaign

Thinking to follow similar steps i.e.

1. I will buy traffic from Propeller Ads. (I will use the promo code that Luke recently posted under Traffic Sources I've Tried and Community Support). I will go for CPC.
2. I will try BeMob. (Customer service is the point. Thank you for the advice)
3. Still thinking what offer to chose (I have few on my list now, will be selecting one that is international. I suppose this might be easier to set up in Propeller Ads)

Cheers

Sam

Hi Sam!

We see that you're going to try Push Notifications. Best converting offers on this ad format are: finance (forex, binary), nutra, dating, betting, gambling, crypto, CoD and sweepstakes. Hope this helps to make a choice

 

[JonathanB]

Hi Propeller Ads,

thanks for your detailed reply and the special bonus. That's great!

So I just set up a new campaign yesterday on Popunder. I will watch the webinar again to see if I missed something when I watched it the first 2 times. However the result of this 2nd popunder test is pretty much the same disappointing the my first test. And I can tell you why...

By the way, the minimal bid is now decreased for popunder traffic, for all GEOs and verticals - $0,05 CPM only.

Yes it's true. There is an option to bid only $0,05 CPM. But in this case you'll only get 38 impressions. IN THE USA! I can generate more then 38 clicks when during my coffee break manually...

So in order to get some popunders you'll have to bid $4.21. You suggest bidding what the system recommends. And that's fine

Here's what happens when I bid $4.21:

Estimated impressions: 62k - well that's much better. But still very low for USA. This is not a small country...

So that's what I did. I bid $4,21 and 1-2h later the budget was spent at a CPM of $2,76. (3.618 impressions). Since I'm direct linking on popunders there is nothing I can do. Only blacklist.

My offer payout is $2,75 (I used $20 of your bonus). What do you suggest/advice to do next?

 

[superwarrior]

Hi Luke,
thanks for your reply. I'm excited as well and super curious

Yep, I have signed up and already made the deposit. I've seen the promo code as well, but that was too late then. Hehe...

So here's a little update:
I decided to create a "native push ad". I found that format very interesting especially because we get the chance to presell through banners and text. It's submitted now for review and I'll let you know once it's running and receiving impressions etc.

A couple of things I realized along the was:
1. It seems like the push ads are only served to android devices and desktop (no iPhones, no iPads).
View attachment 599

2. There's an option for "user activity" which is very interesting. Based on PropellerAds algo they can predict user activity level. Here's a detailed post on that: https://propellerads.com/blog/adv-pick-the-right-audience-with-user-activity-targeting/
View attachment 598

3. Campaign Scheduling:
Not sure if it makes much sense, but I didn't wanted to send my ads during the night. I know people are online all the time, but I still decided to schedule them during day-time. It's important to know that the schedule (at least in my case) is in EST time zone. My target audience is NOT in EST, so I had to use a time zone calculator. I used www.worldtimebuddy.com (screenshot). This way I could check the EST timezone and "translate" it to my timezone.
View attachment 597

hi jonathanbouchard ,
what do u use to build yr landing pages

 

[JonathanB]

hi jonathanbouchard ,
what do u use to build yr landing pages

Hi @superwarrior , I'm currently using Instapage. But I'm also learning how to use Adobe Dreamweaver so I can have faster pages.

 

[deeeeals2018]

I followed along the whole followup, but I was surprised by the sudden end of updates and replays.

 

[Luke]

Hi @superwarrior , I'm currently using Instapage. But I'm also learning how to use Adobe Dreamweaver so I can have faster pages.

How do you like Instapage?

 

[ckalvin_wijaya]

Port your campaigns to CPC-based, this way you can set a fixed bid for each click for your ads. With CPC-based, even for USA, the recommended bid is around $0.077, way cheaper than what you paid for. CPM-based is great if you have a proven high CTR ads.


Impressions refer how much people see your ads, clicks refer how much people click on your ads. Since popunder ads automatically display your ads to the audience, it simply referred as impression. You can refer your push notification campaigns, there will data for both impressions and clicks. Hope that make sense.


Can you snap your campaign setup for the flow?


You can't track the cost because you set the campaign on CPM, the cost is not based on how much people click on your ads, but it is based on how much people see your ads. Anyways, the {cost} PropellerAds tracking token is only for onclick popunder.


If you have a very specific questions about your campaign setup, you can also contact them directly through online chat. Their support pretty good.

Hi Afiq

Do you have the list recomended bid for each country?


best regards
Suili

 

[JonathanB]

Hey fellow AffLIFTers, Hi @Luke ,

long time no see!

It's kinda funny + shocking: I started this follow along in August 2018, and now it's already 2+ years later. It's crazy how time flies...

And while I haven't been updating this follow along "a while ago", and haven't been a member for a while, it doesn't mean that I've been quitting. I had to re-focus myself. And probably I also had to digest all that new learnings from back then...

I just joined again today, and I thought, why not say "hello", and see if we can continue this follow along and turn it green.

Man, so much has changed since then. There seems to be much more traffic sources and players in this game now. That's cool!

Quick update: Here's what I did the last 2 years in short:
After "pausing" CPA marketing in 2018, I went back and focused on selling my (marketing) services to B2B clients. After all, this was for me the more predictable way to bring in cashflow...

• Cashflow: I started offering link building services and do have repeat clients. I currently build about 30-100 links per month through this. This helped a lot to build up funds that I can invest in ads now
• SEO/Assets: I also started a couple affiliate-based websites for myself...
• Ad successes: My biggest "success" so far has been on FB where I had a couple $500-1,000 days, but Facebook was shutting down ad accounts all year so I paused that for now. I will revisit that again once things get back to normal - if there's such a thing
• Native Ads: I the tried to bring my FB winners to native, invested a considerable amount in VoluumDSP. But DSP didn't work so well with Clickbank offers. And I think going direct would be the better way to run native.

For those who don't know me, I've been also living a full-time travelling lifestyle for the last 5 years. I think I visited about 10 countries in the last 2 years. During CV only 4.

I'm currently in Cyprus. When I look out of the window, I see the beach and palm trees. Definitely a good place to restart in CPA

Alright, my plan going forward (with the follow along):

• Start running push ads (Propeller Ads still good for this?) ;-)
• Network: Clickdealer (my AM stayed in touch with me even if I don't sent traffic which is cool)
• Vertical: Split-testing Dating + Vouchers
• Setup tracker: RedTrack

I pretty sure the next few days will be rocky since I'll get myself all the tools again and setting things up can take quiet a bit of effort. But I look forward to running ads again and see how it goes.

If you have any tips & tricks - or questions - let me know!

Thanks and see you soon!

Best,
Jonathan

 

[PureLander]

It's kinda funny + shocking: I started this follow along in August 2018, and now it's already 2+ years later. It's crazy how time flies...

@jonathanbouchard, i still remember your follow along, it was just like yesterday.
welcome back Bro.

Start running push ads (Propeller Ads still good for this?) ;-)

yes, still good.

 

[JonathanB]

Hi @Tyoussef, thank you! Yeah, it's literally just like yesterday - plus 2 years