Hey guys!
Regardless of how experienced you are and how well you've learned to optimize campaigns, at some point, your ROI will fall into red and you’ll have to do something to pick it back up.
If you need some help just look at these tips and tricks on how to combat negative ROI and bring your campaigns back to profitability.
☞ Negative ROI happens when your ad spend is greater than the profits coming from ad conversions. Assuming you are running a RON campaign, your traffic is coming from a large number of sources. Under each source there are numbers of smaller placements, for example targets, each bringing you a small portion of traffic.
☞ Not every placement, target, or source, will match your offer. Some of them will be so mismatched that they won’t bring a single conversion. Some of them will convert well but only for more expensive placements (higher bids). And some of them will perform well right from the start.
Launch a whitelist campaign
The first method of combating negative ROI is using whitelists. You have 3 possible options.
️ Make your own whitelist – Look at the data and find the best converting placements (preferably green or close to breakeven) and create a new whitelist campaign with only those segments of traffic, for example sources in Zeropark. Additionally, you can keep the original campaign running with the whitelisted sources paused to see how they perform, if adjusted, with a lower or higher bid.
️ Use recommended whitelist – If you don’t have enough data, or if the data you have is not significant enough, you can always ask a traffic source support team for a whitelist for your campaign. All you need to do is tell them the vertical and ad format of your offer and what GEO you need the whitelist for. The support team will give you a list of selected placements that perform particularly well for the kind of set-up that you have.
️ Mix them – For the biggest volume of well tailored traffic you can use your own findings together with traffic source recommendations. That way you will receive as much traffic as possible from placements that are proven to work with your particular type of offer.
Optimize landers and creatives
Assuming that you’re split testing a number of landing pages and creatives (as you should be), the next step to combating negative ROI should be their optimization.
Just as you want to gather data by trying out as much traffic as possible, you will want to optimize your campaigns by cutting any parts of your campaign that didn’t perform, visuals included.
So, in order to make sure you are only using the best creatives and landers, you should look at the gathered data and get rid of the underperformers. You can do that by simply looking at the ROI and spend of each ad creative and judging by yourself which ones are worth keeping. Alternatively, you enter the number of impressions and the number of conversions into this Bayesian A/B Testing Calculator and let it tell you which creative has the highest chance of success.
Once you find the winners and reject the losers you can continue split testing by slightly modifying the winning asset.
Use auto-optimization rules
It’s easy to end up with a negative ROI when you have a lot of campaigns running simultaneously and you have to keep an eye on each one of them individually.
That’s exactly why using auto-optimization features can be both a life- and money-saving solution.
An example of such an auto-optimization tool is Zeropark’s Rule-Based Optimization. It allows you to set fixed rules in the form of IF-THEN statements so that once specified conditions are met, the algorithm will automatically optimize your campaigns for you.
️ Here is the wording of such condition:
IF a condition is met FOR the selected criterion WITHIN a given time frame, THEN perform a certain action.
By setting some very basic rules you will make sure that even if you leave your campaigns unattended, they won’t keep running at a negative ROI.
️ Here is an RBO rule example:
IF a target has more than $20 spend & ROI is lower than 0% within the last 7 days THEN pause.
Rule-Based Optimization is overall a great tool for making sure your campaigns are always watched over by an algorithm that won’t think twice about stopping the underperformers.
People, unlike software, tend to be biased. You might be reluctant to pause an underperforming source because you had a lot of success with it while running a slightly different campaign. But if the data clearly shows that it doesn’t work this time, you shouldn’t wait until you lose money, you should just pause it.
And if that seems difficult, why not use Rule-Based Optimization to make that decision for you?
Make sure you’re not overpaying for traffic
Overpaying for traffic is not a very common occurrence for beginner affiliates as they’re usually on tight budgets and trying to make things work while spending as little money as possible.
However, no matter what your experience level really is, you need to watch your win ratio. The win ratio tells you what percentage of your bids are winning the bidding auctions. It pretty much tells you whether what you're paying for traffic is enough.
The correct win ratio is between 70-90%. And if you’re in that range and still on the verge of profitability you should slowly try to decrease the bids. That way, you will mostly likely keep buying from the same targets and placements but for a lower price. And if you spend less and get roughly the same amount of conversions your ROI will smoothly slide into green numbers again.
Search for offers with slightly higher payouts
Getting an offer with a higher payout might seem like a poor idea to combat negative ROI but bear with us and we’ll tell you why it makes sense.
We are not telling you to change the offer completely and start from scratch. What we’re saying is – look for the specific offer that you’re currently running on other affiliate networks. Sometimes many networks have the same offers, but since they all charge a different margin, you have a good chance of finding your offer with a slightly higher payout.
Another way of getting a higher payout is simply by asking your network representative if that’s possible. If you’ve been working with them for a while and had no issues with low quality, the network representative (or your account manager) will check if increasing your payout is possible.
Cut aggressively
Lastly, when testing GEOs with huge volume, negative ROI may be caused by many mismatched placements, for example sources and targets, sending traffic your way.
Obviously, this is all very normal and there is no other way to test high volume GEOs. But while cutting aggressively might not be the best option for smaller scale campaigns, dealing with huge volumes calls for assertiveness.
Don’t let yourself drown in traffic. Set Rule-Based Optimization that cuts sources or targets if they don’t become profitable after spending a maximum of 2-3 times the payout. If you’re getting thousands of impressions or clicks every hour, you can allow yourself to be harsh.
Magda
Regardless of how experienced you are and how well you've learned to optimize campaigns, at some point, your ROI will fall into red and you’ll have to do something to pick it back up.
If you need some help just look at these tips and tricks on how to combat negative ROI and bring your campaigns back to profitability.
☞ Negative ROI happens when your ad spend is greater than the profits coming from ad conversions. Assuming you are running a RON campaign, your traffic is coming from a large number of sources. Under each source there are numbers of smaller placements, for example targets, each bringing you a small portion of traffic.
☞ Not every placement, target, or source, will match your offer. Some of them will be so mismatched that they won’t bring a single conversion. Some of them will convert well but only for more expensive placements (higher bids). And some of them will perform well right from the start.
Launch a whitelist campaign
The first method of combating negative ROI is using whitelists. You have 3 possible options.
️ Make your own whitelist – Look at the data and find the best converting placements (preferably green or close to breakeven) and create a new whitelist campaign with only those segments of traffic, for example sources in Zeropark. Additionally, you can keep the original campaign running with the whitelisted sources paused to see how they perform, if adjusted, with a lower or higher bid. ️ Use recommended whitelist – If you don’t have enough data, or if the data you have is not significant enough, you can always ask a traffic source support team for a whitelist for your campaign. All you need to do is tell them the vertical and ad format of your offer and what GEO you need the whitelist for. The support team will give you a list of selected placements that perform particularly well for the kind of set-up that you have. ️ Mix them – For the biggest volume of well tailored traffic you can use your own findings together with traffic source recommendations. That way you will receive as much traffic as possible from placements that are proven to work with your particular type of offer.
Optimize landers and creatives
Assuming that you’re split testing a number of landing pages and creatives (as you should be), the next step to combating negative ROI should be their optimization.
Just as you want to gather data by trying out as much traffic as possible, you will want to optimize your campaigns by cutting any parts of your campaign that didn’t perform, visuals included.
So, in order to make sure you are only using the best creatives and landers, you should look at the gathered data and get rid of the underperformers. You can do that by simply looking at the ROI and spend of each ad creative and judging by yourself which ones are worth keeping. Alternatively, you enter the number of impressions and the number of conversions into this Bayesian A/B Testing Calculator and let it tell you which creative has the highest chance of success.
Once you find the winners and reject the losers you can continue split testing by slightly modifying the winning asset.
Use auto-optimization rules
It’s easy to end up with a negative ROI when you have a lot of campaigns running simultaneously and you have to keep an eye on each one of them individually.
That’s exactly why using auto-optimization features can be both a life- and money-saving solution.
An example of such an auto-optimization tool is Zeropark’s Rule-Based Optimization. It allows you to set fixed rules in the form of IF-THEN statements so that once specified conditions are met, the algorithm will automatically optimize your campaigns for you.
️ Here is the wording of such condition:IF a condition is met FOR the selected criterion WITHIN a given time frame, THEN perform a certain action.
By setting some very basic rules you will make sure that even if you leave your campaigns unattended, they won’t keep running at a negative ROI.
️ Here is an RBO rule example:IF a target has more than $20 spend & ROI is lower than 0% within the last 7 days THEN pause.
Rule-Based Optimization is overall a great tool for making sure your campaigns are always watched over by an algorithm that won’t think twice about stopping the underperformers.
People, unlike software, tend to be biased. You might be reluctant to pause an underperforming source because you had a lot of success with it while running a slightly different campaign. But if the data clearly shows that it doesn’t work this time, you shouldn’t wait until you lose money, you should just pause it.
And if that seems difficult, why not use Rule-Based Optimization to make that decision for you?
Make sure you’re not overpaying for traffic
Overpaying for traffic is not a very common occurrence for beginner affiliates as they’re usually on tight budgets and trying to make things work while spending as little money as possible.
However, no matter what your experience level really is, you need to watch your win ratio. The win ratio tells you what percentage of your bids are winning the bidding auctions. It pretty much tells you whether what you're paying for traffic is enough.
The correct win ratio is between 70-90%. And if you’re in that range and still on the verge of profitability you should slowly try to decrease the bids. That way, you will mostly likely keep buying from the same targets and placements but for a lower price. And if you spend less and get roughly the same amount of conversions your ROI will smoothly slide into green numbers again.
Search for offers with slightly higher payouts
Getting an offer with a higher payout might seem like a poor idea to combat negative ROI but bear with us and we’ll tell you why it makes sense.
We are not telling you to change the offer completely and start from scratch. What we’re saying is – look for the specific offer that you’re currently running on other affiliate networks. Sometimes many networks have the same offers, but since they all charge a different margin, you have a good chance of finding your offer with a slightly higher payout.
Another way of getting a higher payout is simply by asking your network representative if that’s possible. If you’ve been working with them for a while and had no issues with low quality, the network representative (or your account manager) will check if increasing your payout is possible.
Cut aggressively
Lastly, when testing GEOs with huge volume, negative ROI may be caused by many mismatched placements, for example sources and targets, sending traffic your way.
Obviously, this is all very normal and there is no other way to test high volume GEOs. But while cutting aggressively might not be the best option for smaller scale campaigns, dealing with huge volumes calls for assertiveness.
Don’t let yourself drown in traffic. Set Rule-Based Optimization that cuts sources or targets if they don’t become profitable after spending a maximum of 2-3 times the payout. If you’re getting thousands of impressions or clicks every hour, you can allow yourself to be harsh.
If you’re still unsure how to combat negative ROI, head to our blog to
[URL='https://zeropark.com/blog/how-to-combat-negative-roi-6-tips/'] read the full article [/URL]
[URL='https://zeropark.com/blog/how-to-combat-negative-roi-6-tips/'] read the full article [/URL]
Magda
