AfricanAffiliate
Active Member
PropellerAds is among the major players in the Pop-Ads industry with an ad inventory in nearly every GEO for all platforms.
I decided to try out their self-serve platform by running a mobile CPA campaign.
Signing up to the self-serve platform was quite easy and straightforward and only took me 3 minutes to complete.
PropellerAds only accept deposits via Bank Card or Bank Wire and have a minimum deposit amount of $100. I hope in the future they will accept Paypal or Payza.
DAY 1: (18-Aug-2016) - Tracker Setup and Campaign Creation
Running a successful CPA campaign requires the below requirements.
1) A good traffic source
2) A good CPA Network
3) A good offer
4) A good tracker
5) A good budget
I talked to my account manager on one of the CPA networks I am signed up to and she gave me a list of offers doing well on the network. She also mentioned the best converting carriers and OS so I had an upper edge when launching the campaign. After skimming though the offers I settled for one offer in a certain country.
I headed over to PropellerAds Traffic Estimator to check the amount of traffic and the average bid. The stats were amazing considering I had narrowed down to a specific OS and carriers.
I then headed over to my tracker to setup PropellerAds as a traffic source. PropellerAds self-serve platform supports two tracking tokens
PropellerAds is set as a pre-defined traffic source on most common trackers like Voluum AdsBridge and Thrive so you if you are using either of the trackers setting up PropellerAds as a traffic source will be a lot easier.
I am a huge fan of Thrive Self hosted tracker and I use it quite a lot especially when I am running high volume pops. You can use any other tracker you prefer just remember to track the tokens I have mentioned.
· General Information
Enter your campaign name, campaign URL that you pick from your tracker and the country you intend to target. I set the frequency to 1 view per 24 hours.
· Advertising Budget
Enter the CPM you are willing to pay (PropellerAds will automatically recommend the best CPM rate depending on your targeting options) so don’t worry much about this option. Enter your daily budget and the total budget for the campaign. My budget was $500, thanks to Mari from PropellerAds. J
· Campaign Schedule
I left this as is because it was a new campaign. Once you have gathered enough data on your tracker and you finally know what days of the week and time of the day that your offer converts best you can edit the campaign schedule appropriately.
· Targeting
PropellerAds offers the best targeting options by far. You can ideally target OS and OS Versions, Connection type (3G or Wi-Fi), Devices and Device types, Browsers and Browser language.
You can even create a whitelist campaign by adding performing zone ids or a blacklist campaign by excluding non-performing zone ids.
After creating my campaigns I was ready to run traffic and make some money. All was left now was to patiently wait for campaign approval.
DAY 2: (19-Aug-2016)
My campaigns were approved and I let them run until they had exhausted the daily spend limit. The stats looked like below.
Both campaigns like expected made a loss. The android campaign was at -82.4% ROI while the IOS campaign was at -85.6%
The android campaign received more traffic and had more conversions than the IOS campaign. I decided to concentrate on the android campaign.
From my tracker I could see clearly where my conversions came from.
OS Versions: (Best Performers - Android 4.4, 5.0, 4.2 and 5.1)
Browser Types: (Best Performers – Google Chrome and Android Browser)
ISP: (Best Performer – CXXXX)
I headed over to my PropellerAds account and made changes to my campaign based on this information.
After making the changes to my campaign I let it run again and this time round there was great improvement.
The campaign was now at -32.4% ROI and had more conversions.
I checked the zone id information on my tracker and I noticed that I was spending money on some zones that were performing badly. These two zones received the highest number of clicks and yet had no conversions.
I therefore decided to exclude them from my campaign.
DAY 4: (21-Aug-2016)
After blocking the poorly performing zones and pushing more traffic, the stats were as below. The campaign was now at -23.6% ROI and had even more conversions.
I then opened an excel file and made a zones blacklist and a whitelist based on the data I had collected on my tracker.
The campaign was at -55.2% ROI. The campaign got less traffic and fewer conversions. I believe this was due to the fact that I had been outbid by a competitor who got more traffic. I raised my bid and kept the campaign running.
At this point I decided to run a whitelist campaign only and target only the zones that had registered conversions. I also checked my day parting stats on my tracker and noted down the times of the day that I was getting more conversions. I however did not alter campaign schedule info on my PropellerAds.
Unfortunately the campaign did not perform any better. The campaign made a -88% ROI even after targeting only the converting zones.
Something was definitely wrong. I reached out to my affiliate manager who confirmed that the offer was pretty much “dead”. I immediately paused the campaign and started fishing for a similar offer from another networks.
It took me sometime but I eventually got the right offer to replace the “dead” offer. It was a huge gamble since the new offer had a higher payout than the initial one and I had my doubts about its conversion rate.
I added the offer to my tracker and replaced it on my campaign. I then increased my total campaign budget and re-started the campaign.
I decided to try out their self-serve platform by running a mobile CPA campaign.
Signing up to the self-serve platform was quite easy and straightforward and only took me 3 minutes to complete.
PropellerAds only accept deposits via Bank Card or Bank Wire and have a minimum deposit amount of $100. I hope in the future they will accept Paypal or Payza.
DAY 1: (18-Aug-2016) - Tracker Setup and Campaign Creation
Running a successful CPA campaign requires the below requirements.
1) A good traffic source
2) A good CPA Network
3) A good offer
4) A good tracker
5) A good budget
I talked to my account manager on one of the CPA networks I am signed up to and she gave me a list of offers doing well on the network. She also mentioned the best converting carriers and OS so I had an upper edge when launching the campaign. After skimming though the offers I settled for one offer in a certain country.
I headed over to PropellerAds Traffic Estimator to check the amount of traffic and the average bid. The stats were amazing considering I had narrowed down to a specific OS and carriers.
I then headed over to my tracker to setup PropellerAds as a traffic source. PropellerAds self-serve platform supports two tracking tokens
- {zoneid} – Zone placement ID
- {campaignid} – Campaign ID
PropellerAds is set as a pre-defined traffic source on most common trackers like Voluum AdsBridge and Thrive so you if you are using either of the trackers setting up PropellerAds as a traffic source will be a lot easier.
I am a huge fan of Thrive Self hosted tracker and I use it quite a lot especially when I am running high volume pops. You can use any other tracker you prefer just remember to track the tokens I have mentioned.
Creating my campaign on PropellerAds.
This was the fun part. PropellerAds campaign creation is divided into 4 parts.· General Information
Enter your campaign name, campaign URL that you pick from your tracker and the country you intend to target. I set the frequency to 1 view per 24 hours.
· Advertising Budget
Enter the CPM you are willing to pay (PropellerAds will automatically recommend the best CPM rate depending on your targeting options) so don’t worry much about this option. Enter your daily budget and the total budget for the campaign. My budget was $500, thanks to Mari from PropellerAds. J
· Campaign Schedule
I left this as is because it was a new campaign. Once you have gathered enough data on your tracker and you finally know what days of the week and time of the day that your offer converts best you can edit the campaign schedule appropriately.
· Targeting
PropellerAds offers the best targeting options by far. You can ideally target OS and OS Versions, Connection type (3G or Wi-Fi), Devices and Device types, Browsers and Browser language.
You can even create a whitelist campaign by adding performing zone ids or a blacklist campaign by excluding non-performing zone ids.
After creating my campaigns I was ready to run traffic and make some money. All was left now was to patiently wait for campaign approval.
DAY 2: (19-Aug-2016)
My campaigns were approved and I let them run until they had exhausted the daily spend limit. The stats looked like below.
Both campaigns like expected made a loss. The android campaign was at -82.4% ROI while the IOS campaign was at -85.6%
The android campaign received more traffic and had more conversions than the IOS campaign. I decided to concentrate on the android campaign.
From my tracker I could see clearly where my conversions came from.
OS Versions: (Best Performers - Android 4.4, 5.0, 4.2 and 5.1)
Browser Types: (Best Performers – Google Chrome and Android Browser)
ISP: (Best Performer – CXXXX)
I headed over to my PropellerAds account and made changes to my campaign based on this information.
DAY 3: (20-Aug-2016)
After making the changes to my campaign I let it run again and this time round there was great improvement.
The campaign was now at -32.4% ROI and had more conversions.
I checked the zone id information on my tracker and I noticed that I was spending money on some zones that were performing badly. These two zones received the highest number of clicks and yet had no conversions.
I therefore decided to exclude them from my campaign.
DAY 4: (21-Aug-2016)
After blocking the poorly performing zones and pushing more traffic, the stats were as below. The campaign was now at -23.6% ROI and had even more conversions.
I then opened an excel file and made a zones blacklist and a whitelist based on the data I had collected on my tracker.
DAY 5: (22-Aug-2016)
The campaign was at -55.2% ROI. The campaign got less traffic and fewer conversions. I believe this was due to the fact that I had been outbid by a competitor who got more traffic. I raised my bid and kept the campaign running.
At this point I decided to run a whitelist campaign only and target only the zones that had registered conversions. I also checked my day parting stats on my tracker and noted down the times of the day that I was getting more conversions. I however did not alter campaign schedule info on my PropellerAds.
DAY 6: (23-Aug-2016)
Unfortunately the campaign did not perform any better. The campaign made a -88% ROI even after targeting only the converting zones.
Something was definitely wrong. I reached out to my affiliate manager who confirmed that the offer was pretty much “dead”. I immediately paused the campaign and started fishing for a similar offer from another networks.
It took me sometime but I eventually got the right offer to replace the “dead” offer. It was a huge gamble since the new offer had a higher payout than the initial one and I had my doubts about its conversion rate.
I added the offer to my tracker and replaced it on my campaign. I then increased my total campaign budget and re-started the campaign.
DAY 7: (28-Aug-2016)
The offer did not disappoint. I was at +385% ROI on the first day of running.
The offer did not disappoint. I was at +385% ROI on the first day of running.
Traffic quantity was much lower due to the optimization I had done to the campaign but atleast I was now running a profitable campaign. I immediately increased my CPM bid and daily budget to get all the traffic they could offer.
If you are looking for a traffic source with quantity and quality traffic to launch your campaign or scale your already profitable campaign, I highly recommend PropellerAds.
If you are looking for a traffic source with quantity and quality traffic to launch your campaign or scale your already profitable campaign, I highly recommend PropellerAds.
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