FB Ads Journey

[CAPN]

Introduction

I have been using content lockers to promote cpa offers for a while now, but never managed to get a very succesful campaign. I believe my highest ROI was 100% and my best day was around $110. I am not saying it's bad, however running a campaign profitable for more than 2 days has always been an issue for me.

Traffic source

I will be using Facebook Ads to promote my offers, which will be a challenge. I know how to make offers convert but I find keeping the costs low on Facebook really hard.

Network

The network I will be using is Adludum. It's mainly used for content locking and incentive cpa but my AM gave me a non-incentive offer which was performing well on Facebook according to him.

Setup

The path my traffic follows is:

Ad -> Landing Page -> Offer
This might change in the near future, I'll keep you updated on that.

I will try my best to update this thread everyday, if you have any questions or tips you can leave them below.

 

[CAPN]

I know I just created this thread, but yesterday I already ran a little test and I don't want to place this update in the OP.

After I got the link of the offer (it can't be found on my network's offer page) I immediately created a landing page so I could run a test overnight. I created 1 campaign with two ad sets, both targetting a different age group. Results Day 1:

Ad 1 (US, 16-18 yrs old):
Spent: €4.91/5.00
Reach: 1.002
Engagements: 31 (4 link clicks)
CPE: 0.16
Ad CTR: 3.09%
Link CTR: 0.399%

Ad 2 (US, 15yrs old):
Spent: €4.85/5.00
Reach: 939
Engagements: 37 (7 link clicks)
CPE: 0.13
Ad CTR: 3.94%
Link CTR: 0.75%

LP 1:
Visits: 11
CTR: 100%

Offer (payout $2.08):
Clicks: 11
Conversions: 1
CR: 9.09%

I don't have enough data yet, but I'll try to optimize my ads first. The image I used was just 5 shades of pink, so I'll need to work on that The costs of these ads are way too high and I'll need to bring them down in order to make a profit. Overall I think the results of this first campaign are pretty good for the first day.

Stay tuned for day 2 tomorrow!

 

[The Mad French]

Hey CAPN,

Great journey, I'd be happy to follow you.

I have a question regarding your demographics :
Isn't it difficult to promote offers to people under 18 ?

Anyway, I wish you good luck and wait for your updates.

 

[CAPN]

Hey CAPN,

Great journey, I'd be happy to follow you.

I have a question regarding your demographics :
Isn't it difficult to promote offers to people under 18 ?

Anyway, I wish you good luck and wait for your updates.

Thanks! To be honest I have always promoted offers to underage people as the traffic is cheaper. They have not that much money yet so I think freebie offers should work pretty well.

I will try to make my ads better so I can get a lower cost per engagement tonight. I simply won't make a profit with a 0.13 CPE.

 

[CAPN]

Day 2

My stats are pretty bad right now. I changed up my ads a lot and it didn't help at all.

Ad 1 (US, 16-18 yrs old):
Spent: €4.86/5.00
Reach: 2179
Engagements: 22 (11 link clicks)
CPE: 0.22 (up 0.06)
Ad CTR: 1.00%
Link CTR: 0.504%

Ad 2 (US, 13-15yrs old):
Spent: €4.87/5.00
Reach: 1933
Engagements: 13 (4 link clicks)
CPE: 0.37 (up 0.24)
Ad CTR: 0.67%
Link CTR: 0.206%

LP 1:
Visits: 15
CTR: 53.33%

Offer (payout $2.08):
Clicks: 8
Conversions: 1
CR: 12.5%

So I know this offer works, as it converts awesome. The reason for why I can't make any profit is on the ad's side. I need to lower the costs a lot in order to get in the positive ROI.

From now on I will use CPC Ads. Because why would I boost my post if I am not looking for engagements?

I calculated that with a CTR of 50% and a CR of 8%, a CPC of 0.04 is needed for a 100% ROI. Now that's gonna be tough...

Plan for Today:

Today I'll create 2 CPC Ad sets both targetting the same age group with different interests, to see which one gives me the lowest CPC.

I'll leave my LP the same as it is now, however if it gives me a ctr lower than 40% changes will be made to make it look better.

Stay tuned for day 3!

 

[CAPN]

Day 3

Alright so I messed up this time. Take a look at the stats, a short explanation will follow.

Ad 1 - CPC (US, 16 yrs old):
Spent: €0.00/10.00
Reach: 2
Website Clicks: 0
CPC Manual Bid: 0.09
CTR: 0%


LP 1:
Visits: 0
CTR: 0%

Offer (payout $2.08):
Clicks: 0
Conversions: 0
CR: 0%

I set my bid to manual and after some tweaking Facebook suggested me to bid at 0.09, so that is what I did. However I didn't get any clicks and my ad only reached 2 people. It really sucks.

I am going to change it up again and I installed a conversion tracking pixel on my website. I setup a website conversion ad, set the bid to automatic and paying per CPM. I am not sure about how this will work out but I can't wait to see the results.

Stay tuned for day 4!

 

[The Mad French]

Great, don't give up and waiting for day 4 !

 

[CAPN]

Great, don't give up and waiting for day 4 !

I will stay at it till we hit that green ROI

 

[naathanz]

Hey CAPN, nice journey you have here
Are you cloaking your offers?
Cause I guess you can't really promote incentive on FB ads.

EDIT:
Oh okay, i see you got non-incentive offer. Anyway, is it allowed on facebook? :O

 

[CAPN]

Hey CAPN, nice journey you have here
Are you cloaking your offers?
Cause I guess you can't really promote incentive on FB ads.

EDIT:
Oh okay, i see you got non-incentive offer. Anyway, is it allowed on facebook? :O

Hey Nathan,

I have been using content lockers for a while and I managed to promote those without any problems, although they do have incentive offers in them.

Now I am promoting a non-incentive offer. I am pretty sure angles like mine are allowed on Facebook but I don't think they like affiliate marketers at all. I probably should be using a cloaker, but I wrote a little php script to hide my affiliate link. I don't think it actually helps, but I don't want to buy a cloaker as they can be extremely expensive and I am not making profits yet.

 

[naathanz]

Hey Nathan,

I have been using content lockers for a while and I managed to promote those without any problems, although they do have incentive offers in them.

Now I am promoting a non-incentive offer. I am pretty sure angles like mine are allowed on Facebook but I don't think they like affiliate marketers at all. I probably should be using a cloaker, but I wrote a little php script to hide my affiliate link. I don't think it actually helps, but I don't want to buy a cloaker as they can be extremely expensive and I am not making profits yet.

Do you mind showing the php script you are using? Or give a tip on how are you doing it? Redirecting thru pages?

 

[CAPN]

Do you mind showing the php script you are using? Or give a tip on how are you doing it? Redirecting thru pages?

I am not on my pc right now but basically how it works is:

From my LP I link to a page that sends visitors to the offer or a totally random page. Example: If a user is from the US, I'll send them to google, but if he's from the country of my offer he is redirected to the offer.

Of course this is not how cloaking works but it's the best I could come up with

 

[CAPN]

Day 4

I am making headway now. Take a look at the results

Ad 1 - CPE with Video (US, 15-18 yrs old):
Spent: €4.79/5.00
Reach: 2.559
Engagements: 428 (11 link clicks)
CPE: 0.01
Ad CTR: 16.56%
Link CTR: 0.43%

Ad 1 - Optimized for conversions (US, 18 yrs old, should have been 15-18, made a mistake in this campaign):
Spent: €5.00/5.00
Reach: 962
Conversions: 4
Cost per conversion: €1.25 (!!)
CTR: 0.416%


LP 1:
Visits: 15
CTR: 100%

Offer (payout $2.08):
Clicks: 15
Conversions: 2
CR: 13.33%

ROI: -60%

Alright so we're getting there. The first ad was a simple post boost ad with a video included. Apparently a video view counts as a post engagement too, so they charge me per video view. I wouldn't mind too much if my target audience just clicked on the link, because only 11 people did that. I think I'll keep this ad but focus on increasing the CTR on the link. Not sure how to go about that but I'll just experiment with different texts and video's.

With the second ad I just wanted to try out optimizing for pageviews. Of course this is not the correct way of doing this but now I know for sure. This ad performed horribly and it will get deleted asap

Plan for Today

I'll be on a short trip for a few days so I won't be able to do much work. I do take a laptop with me so I'll try to run some more tests.

Stay tuned for day 5!

 

[The Mad French]

Yep indeed, a CPE of 0.01 isn't really interesting if only 11 people clicked on the link.

Btw, gratz for the 100% CTR on the LP !

The CR of the offer is still low, maybe you could test another offer if it doesn't do better in the future days.

 

[Tinke]

remember to follow the fb guidline fb are hard on cpa offers

 

[internalsoul]

Interesting journal. So how is it going now?

 

[game333]

Smell some greens, stop by to say good luck!

 

[CAPN]

I haven't updated this in a while as I haven't been home for a few days. While I was away I didn't focus on promoting this offer but only checked my other campaigns every now and then (I don't include those in this journey as it is something completely different then what I'm doing here).

I'll get back at this tomorrow. Stay tuned for future updates!

 

[Alessio]

Interesting jurney. Remarketing on users engaged through video could be an idea to increase CTR ad users on your landing page?

 

[CAPN]

I am sorry for not updating this for a few days again, but I am working on a very big project at the moment (not related to CPA whatsoever) and I had to fix a lot of stuff in the past few days. Tonight I will run the campaign that was the most succesful last time. By changing up my target audience I hope to lower my CPE and increase my CTR.