Thread: Day 3-8: d)Setting Up Tracking for PropellerAds and PopAds (Voluum)

This will be a quick post, where we'll be setting up PropellerAds and PopAds on Voluum, and generating the campaign urls in preparation for running traffic in the next lessons. Let's go!



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ACTION


1)Decide which offer to run on which traffic network

So you've gotten at least one AM-recommended offer from at least one affiliate network. Next I'd like for you to choose one offer to run on PropellerAds, and another offer to run on PopAds.

Remember how you were checking traffic volumes on both traffic networks before? Try to match an offer to each traffic network, that fits the traffic volume requirement mentioned before.

(If you have more suitable offers you're wanting to test, don't worry - you can test more offers later!)

(If you only have one suitable offer to run, you can run that same offer on both PropellerAds and PopAds - normally I wouldn't recommend testing the same offer on multiple traffic networks - I'd recommend to use the ONE traffic network you've had the most success with for testing new offers.

But what we're doing here is get some practice running our first campaign on both traffic networks - so if you don't have multiple offers, using the same offer would be OK.)


2)Grab the PropellerAds postback link

-Log into PropellerAds, click on the "Tracking" icon in the left menu. Then under "Select a tracker or a CPA network" click on "Select another tracker". Click on the Voluum icon.





Then click on the copy icon at the end of the S2S postback url to copy it.



We only need to grab the postback url ONCE. You'll never need to do this again for PropellerAds unless you change trackers.


3)Add PropellerAds as a new traffic source in Voluum

-In Voluum go to "Traffic sources" tab > "+ New traffic source".



-In the "New Traffic Source" window, start typing "PropellerAds" in the search field to bring up the PropellerAds entry, and click on it. Click "Next".



-Scroll to the "Passing conversion info to traffic source" section. Toggle "Traffic source postback URL" to ON if it's not so by default. Paste the postback link you copied from PropellerAds into the field below. Click "Save".



Please note that you only need to set up the postback url for each traffic source on Voluum ONCE. You'll never have to do this for PropellerAds again for all subsequent campaigns you create for PropellerAds on this Voluum account.


4)Create a campaign in Voluum for PropellerAds

-In Voluum go to "Campaigns" tab > "+ New campaign" > "TRK Simple":



-In the "New campaign" window, for the "Traffic Source" field choose "PropellerAds". For "Country tag" choose the country you're targeting.

-For the "Name" field, put a name to identify your campaign. This is to remind you of what the campaign is about and you can use any format you wish. You can start off with this format and change it as you develop your own preference:

[MMDDYY] [2-letter country code] [Wifi/Carrier Name] [Bid]

Right now we don't know how much to bid yet - we can update the campaign name later when we're setting up the campaign at PropellerAds.

Again, 2-letter country codes can be found here: https://www.iban.com/country-codes

Example: Let's say you've chosen Indonesia as the target geo, and chose to run a Haka offer, and the Haka Top Geos and ISPs spreadsheet tells us that the mobile carrier Telkomsel is doing nice numbers. Let's say today's date was October 5th, 2020. Then you could name your campaign "100520 ID Telkomsel" for example. Or let's say that Indonesia is doing well in general for all mobile carriers, then name the campaign "100520 ID Carrier".

Another example: Let's say you've chosen to run a Mobipium offer. Remember how when choosing Mobipium offers, you picked a 1-click offer which accepts a geo and mobile carrier? Let's say your target geo was Egypt and your carrier was Vodafone. And let's say today's date was October 5th, 2020. Then you can name your campaign "100520 EG Vodafone".

-For "Cost model" leave at "Auto (CPC/CPM)". For "Campaign destination" leave at "Path".

-For "Path Destination" select "Offers only" because we're direct-linking to offers and not using landing pages.



-Under "Offers", click "1. Select offer" and choose the offer you've chosen to test on PropellerAds. Click "Save".



-You will see a "Campaign URL". Ignore it for now, but this is the url we'll be plugging into PropellerAds later.



-This step you don't need to do right now, but in a later lesson when I ask you to copy the tracker campaign url for the PropellerAds campaign, please come back to Voluum > "Campaigns" tab > put your cursor on this campaign and right-click > click on "Copy URL" (note: When you have a lot of campaigns in the future, can use the search field to find the campaign):



Note: This step you'll need to repeat every time you want to set up a new campaign in Voluum in the future.


5)Grab the PopAds postback link

-Log into PopAds > "New Campaign" in left menu:



-Enter values for "Name" and "URL" as in the screenshot below. We're not actually setting up the campaign now - just want to set up a "dummy" campaign as it's the only way to get the postback url.



-Click on "Budgets" tab to expand, then enter values as shown below.



-Click on "Country Targeting" tab to expand, then click on "Aland Islands" then "Add >>":



-Scroll to bottom and click "Create Campaign".



-On the new page, scroll down to find and click the "Pause" button. When asked "Are you sure you want to pause this?" click "OK".



-Click on "Pixels and Postback":



-Copy the link in the "Postback" field:




6)Add PopAds as a new traffic source on Voluum

-In Voluum go to "Traffic sources" tab > "+ New campaign":

-In the "New Traffic Source" window, click on "Load from template", start typing "PopAds" in the search field to bring up the PopAds entry, and click on it.

-Scroll to the "Passing conversion info to traffic source" section. Toggle "Traffic source postback URL" to ON. Paste the postback link you copied from PopAds into the field below. Don't save yet!

-Next we'll need to replace a couple of things in that url - replace "impressionId" with "{externalid}", and replace "conversionValue" with "{payout}.

For example if this was the postback url you copied from PopAds:

http://serve.popads.net/cpixel.php?s...onversionValue

Then the final postback url in Voluum should look like:

http://serve.popads.net/cpixel.php?s2s=1&aid=longstring&id={externalid}&va lue={payout}

(Note: There should be no spacing within the url - vbulletin just adds spaces seemingly by random which is super annoying.)

Don't click "Save" yet - we're still not done!

Again, you only need to set up the postback url for each traffic source on Voluum ONCE. You'll never have to do this for PopAds again for all subsequent campaigns you create for PopAds on this Voluum account.


7)Change PopAd's tracking tokens on Voluum

-Next let's replace some of the tracking tokens. PopAds has more tracking tokens than just the 10 spots Voluum has for tokens. I'd like to suggest what I feel are more useful tokens than the ones included in the template. Replace the PopAds tokens in Voluum as follows:



If you want to copy and paste instead of typing everything in, you can find a completely list of PopAds tracking tokens here:

https://www.popads.net/kb/advertiser



Make sure all the tokens are toggled ON.

Obviously there are more tokens available than the number of slots provided, but I've included the ones that I feel would actually provide some new data on top of what Voluum is already tracking. Stuff like campaign name and target country, for example, is just redundant.

-Please especially triple-check that you don't have ANY typos in the "TS token" column - PopAds needs to recognize those in order to replace them with actual values for storing in Voluum. Click "Save" when you're done!


8)Create a campaign in Voluum for PopAds

-In Voluum go to "Campaigns" tab > "+ New campaign".

-In the "New campaign" window, for the "Traffic Source" field choose "PopAds". For "Country tag" choose the country you're targeting.

-For the "Name" field, put a name to identify your campaign. Again, feel free to use this or any other format:

[MMDDYY] [2-letter country code] [Wifi/Carrier] [Bid]

Right now we don't know how much to bid yet - we can update the campaign name later when we're setting up the campaign at PopAds.

-For "Cost model" leave at "Auto (CPC/CPM)". For "Campaign destination" leave at "Path".

-For "Path Destination" select "Offers only" because we're direct-linking to offers and not using landing pages.

-Under "Offers" add offer you've chosen to test on PopAds. Click "Save".

-You will see a "Campaign URL". Ignore it for now, but this is the url we'll be plugging into PopAds later.

-This step you don't need to do right now, but in a later lesson when I ask you to copy the tracker campaign url for the PopAds campaign, please come back to Voluum > "Campaigns" tab > put your cursor on this campaign and right-click > click on "Copy URL".



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Next, let's take that PropellerAds campaign url we generated, and set up a campaign on PropellerAds!



Amy

Added step 1: Deciding which offer to run on which traffic network. Thus no longer matching offers from a specific aff network with a specific traffic network. This is in case the newbie affiliate did not get accepted to all networks.


Amy

Originally Posted by i2raelgil

Hi there, I'm tyring to follow the popads flow. But I can't get passed creating the campaign to get the postback url.
On the bidding it says I have unfsufficient funds, but there's no way, I can deposit money to popads. The only possiblity for me is Paypal. And whenever I choose this method, it says I have a connection issue.

Their techinical support page is also unavailable.

PopAds would sometimes block access from certain countries or devices, which they deem high risk.

Please submit a support ticket to PopAds to see if they could help you.

If not, just focus on PropellerAds - that's the network that has the traffic volume anyways.



Amy

Originally Posted by adsguypro

Hi, on the PopAds campaign under the "Active" section there is no option to pause campaign. Is this because it is pending approval?

That's correct!

If you'd like the campaign to remain on pause after approval, simply edit the campaign and set "After approval:" to "Paused".



Amy

Originally Posted by martinbe

Hi Vortex, sorry I'm not getting this part:"Remember how you were checking traffic volumes on both traffic networks before? Try to match an offer to each traffic network, that fits the traffic volume requirement mentioned before."

Where do you explain this part please? Thanks.

Sorry that's not clear!

So in the lesson below, I talked about choosing offers in geos (and carriers etc. - whatever the offer's targeting restrictions are) that have enough traffic on at least one traffic source.

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...-Haka-(Voluum)

For example if your AM is recommending an offer that only accepts traffic from a small mobile carrier in a small geo, unless you know of a traffic source that has enough traffic for that segment, I wouldn't suggest running it.

(Yes there's money to be made in small "obscure" geos, but if you're still learning testing and optimization, you NEED traffic volume - thus my volume requirements).

What I mean by your quote, simply, is that you need to find an offer for each traffic source, that both satisfy traffic volume requirement I stated.

Hope that makes sense! If not, please ask further questions.



Amy