My Foray Into Adwords For Gaming CPI (From Dojo)

[PalmaGhost]

So the Dojo isn't being as responsive as I had hoped. That's why I'm moving my follow along here in hopes of getting some more interaction so I'm not just talking to myself.

The Journey Began On June 18, 2015

Hey Everyone

Today I set up a popular Android gaming app targeting a tier 1 country. The CPI offer pays $1.96.

I’ve split the test into 2 campaigns (each set to $25/day) with 1 ad group containing 2 ads in each. The 2 campaigns are exactly the same except one pays adwords on a CPA basis $1.25 and the other is set to $0.04 CPC.

Each ad group contains 2 video ads that use different copy and different videos. The ads are direct linked (because Voluum’s default domain is blacklisted on Adwords).

The tokens I’m tracking are &aff_sub={placement}&aff_sub2={creative}&aff_sub3={campaignid}&aff_sub4={devicemodel}&aff_sub5={adposition}

My plan is to run the ads until I reach 3x payout (like @@cashmoneyaffiliate suggests in his guide) on each angle and then figure out how to optimize based on placements.

My questions:

• Does anyone have any experience with Adwords and gaming CPI offers?
• Do my bids look reasonable for a tier 1 country?
• Are those the tracking tokens you would use?
• Should I wait to see how this tier 1 campaign plays out or should I jump into a tier 2/3 to test in parallel?

June 19 Update

The campaign has been live for 24 hours now and not even 1 impression on either campaign (CPA/CPC). I think I'll pause the tier 1 and get it set up on a tier 3 country to figure out if Adwords has cheap enough traffic to bother with for these offers. The main reason I wanted to try it is because of the way their interstitial ads have in-app autoplay videos and force the visitor to watch at least 5 seconds before skipping past it.

If I get any movement, I'll update here. If not then I'll forget Adwords and focus in on utility apps running on cheaper networks which seems to be most people's best introduction to getting mobile to work at first (from what I've read here and other places).

June 22 UPDATE
CPC campaign:
Max Bid: $0.10 CPC
Clicks: 14
Impressions: 1,637
CTR: 0.86%
Avg. CPC: $0.07
Cost: $1.02
Avg. Pos.: 1
Conversions: 0

I’m surprised, but so far Google doesn’t let me get a placement drill down report, so I can’t really begin to look for patterns or optimize. Seeing that I am #1 and still not getting very many impressions (the campaign has been running for 4 days and even ran over a weekend) shows me that Adwords doesn’t have much in-app volume in this country.

CPA campaign:
Target CPA: $1.46
Clicks: 38
Impressions: 7,147
CTR: 0.53%
Avg. CPC: $0.11
Cost: $4.36
Avg. Pos.: 1
Conversions: 0

I’d imagine that this is me competing against myself on the CPC campaign since it has about 5x the traffic. But still relatively low volume compared to what I was expecting. This campaign does have some placement reports, so I’ve gone in and excluded the apps that had at least 100 impressions and 0 clicks.

I know those numbers are low and wouldn’t normally be the right way to do things, but the app names include things like golf and others which are completely different than the offer I’m promoting. I’ve kept all of the high CTRs and I’m going to let the offer run for a full week to see if it can be salvaged.

The other thing that surprised me here was the fact that I was expecting a “CPA” campaign to only cost me money if I got a conversion. That’s why I put my target CPA so high, figuring I could afford to only make about 25% ROI on every install and still be happy. But it works more like OCPM on Facebook where they are still charging for impressions.

Any advice on how to proceed, when to cut or what to do?

June 22 (Later in the day)

Digging deeper (logging into my offer network) I found out that I actually did get a conversion on the CPA campaign yesterday. But Adwords didn't track it somehow. I've taken steps to enable a Google Click ID so I'll be able to upload conversions manually from now on, but does anyone have a clue as to why Adwords wouldn't automatically receive the conversion data?

Today's (June 23) Update

Still not able to track conversions automatically, but no big deal. I just have to upload them manually and analyze the old fashioned way.
So far I’ve gotten 2 conversions for a payout of $3.84 and I’ve spent $7.28 for around -52.7% ROI which is just fine in this beginning optimization phase from what I understand.

Traffic volumes are still pretty low for most of the placements only 13,441 across both campaigns, but I’ve gone ahead and pulled out the 2 placements with conversions to see if I can increase their traffic and see if the conversions were flukes (1 of the sources got a conversion on less than 2 impressions).

They probably were, but I’d like to speed up the data collection on those sources so I can make an informed decision. Right now for whatever reason that specific placement isn’t getting much volume when lumped with the others so this is the best way I know how to speed up the process.

Anybody around in the Dojo anymore? Or should I take this over to the main forum?

 

[T J Tutor]

Yeah there are folks in the Dojo. I can't believe you didn't get any traction over there. This is right up many members alleys. Keep this updated, it's a good start.

You are on the right track, but you need a load more traffic.

Have you done any spying on the competition to see if this is an app that generates conversions?

 

[PalmaGhost]

@tjtutor Yeah not sure what the deal was, but oh well.

Any suggestions for where gaming apps do well? Adwords is saying I'm position #1 for all my bids but I'm only getting drips of traffic.

The only spy tool I use is mobile ad scout, and that is for pop traffic so I haven't found any games running there.

Today's update is more of the same. Very few impressions and only 89 clicks total.

But, that means the app is converting over 2% across the various campaigns so if I could just figure out how to get volume I'd be in business.

 

[T J Tutor]

I am not a mobile expert, but I wonder about other traffic sources that may produce better for game installs. I know Google has the PayPerCall market cornered at the moment, but I am not certain that they are the best for game installs.

 

[PalmaGhost]

Yeah that's my feeling too. Has anyone been successful using something like MobiCow which seem to offer the ability to make similar landers (full screen)? On that same note, does anyone know a way to get videos to autoplay on mobile devices?

 

[T J Tutor]

Yeah that's my feeling too. Has anyone been successful using something like MobiCow which seem to offer the ability to make similar landers (full screen)? On that same note, does anyone know a way to get videos to autoplay on mobile devices?

Join the MobiCow revolution Dude! Give them a shot.

For auto play feature, this is usually a feature embedded in the video creator. Remember that the best practice for video auto-play across all devices is to have it launch in mute mode. Also, most mobile browsers are equipped to control the auto-play feature so it can be turned on and off within the browser. Social sites give the power to turn this feature on and off within your preferences just like FaceBook does.

 

[CoolSpot]

This is one I will be following, just getting started on mobile myself, well awaiting approval from a few networks, so will be good to get an insite into how things are working for others while im getting started
Thanks
for shareing

 

[PalmaGhost]

Join the MobiCow revolution Dude! Give them a shot.

For auto play feature, this is usually a feature embedded in the video creator. Remember that the best practice for video auto-play across all devices is to have it launch in mute mode. Also, most mobile browsers are equipped to control the auto-play feature so it can be turned on and off within the browser. Social sites give the power to turn this feature on and off within your preferences just like FaceBook does.

If by video creator you mean player, then I guess I'm asking is there any way to have a youtube video autoplay like it does for Adwords in app ads or does anyone know of a player that can autoplay on mobile (in mute or otherwise)?

 

[CoolSpot]

If by video creator you mean player, then I guess I'm asking is there any way to have a youtube video autoplay like it does for Adwords in app ads or does anyone know of a player that can autoplay on mobile (in mute or otherwise)?

Are you coding the landing page yourself? in the video container you can add an attribute to auto play the video, however, Ios does not support this attribute so it wont work on iphone or ipads.


The code you would need to inster for auto play should look something like the below.
<videoid="myvideo"src=""width="{video-width}"height="{video-height}"autoplay></video>

<script>var vdo = document.getElementById('myvideo');
vdo.src ='{link to your video here}';
vdo.play();</script>

Hope it helps

 

[PalmaGhost]

@CoolSpot Yes, I'm coding it myself. So am I correct in assuming that in videoid src="" I need to put the Youtube link and in vdo.src = I don't use the {} brackets and just the single quotes?

 

[CoolSpot]

yea you dont need the brackets, I was just trying to seperate out what you need from whats a place holder. If you need auto play on ios devices there is surely some way of getting it to work, but it wont be from using the auto play attributte

 

[PalmaGhost]

Cool. So the code should look like this essentially?

<video id="myvideo" src="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdJub3Kz2wI" width="100%" height="40%" autoplay> </video>

<script>
var vdo = document.getElementById('myvideo');
vdo.src = 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdJub3Kz2wI';
vdo.play();
</script>

I'll give it a try. Thanks!

 

[CoolSpot]

yep that should be it. @PalmaGhost if it dosnt work, let me know and ill see if i can find out why