Thread: Day 11: Intro to Testing & Optimization (Voluum)

A short time ago, we've set up your very first campaign together.

The $10 budget must have been reached by now. So we should have some stats to look at!

You may have made your first conversion though - if that's the case, then CONGRATULATIONS! Seeing your first conversion is always exciting! And I wish you many, many more in the near future.

If you don't yet see your first conversion, don't be disappointed - they will come, and very soon.

I'm not going into details on HOW to optimize a campaign - because we likely don't have enough conversions at this point to make any optimization decisions.

What I'll do in this lesson is just to guide you through how to drill down to various stats in Voluum, and give a VERY general overview of what campaign optimization is about.

I'll talk more on optimization in later lessons, but this primer will prepare you well for what's to come.


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ACTION & EXPLANATION

In this section I'll be weaving explanation into action, as I'll be asking you to drill down into various stats, and describing briefly what we're looking at/for. After that I'll have a separate EXPLANATION section to cover further explanations.


In Voluum, click on the "Campaigns" tab, right-click somewhere on your campaign's row and select "Report".

You'll see 3 drop-down menus:



In Voluum you can drill down to a maximum of 3 levels deep.


Click on the first dropdown and you'll see lots of different variables you can display data for:



If you scroll down this list of variables, you'll find a bunch at the bottom that start with "V#:". These are values that are passed back by the traffic source - which in this case is PropellerAds.

So where did these names come from? Remember when you were adding PropellerAds as a new traffic source in Voluum, you chose a template of PropellerAds that was provided by Voluum? Let's take a look right now.

Go to the "Traffic sources" tab, right-click on "PropellerAds", select "Edit traffic source" and scroll to the tokens. In the "Name" column is where the variable names are defined:



And how does PropellerAds pass these values? Remember when you were creating a campaign in Voluum, you had to choose PropellerAds as the traffic source? When you did that, the resulting Voluum campaign url automatically included PropellerAd's tokens:

http://www.voluumdomain.com/12345dd-...-a029cef988cc?zoneid={zoneid}&device={device}&browser={browser}& os={os}&country={country}&region={region}&isp={isp }&useragent={useragent}&language={language}&connec tiontype={connectiontype}&cost={cost}&visitor_id=${SUBID}

So every time PropellerAds sends a visitor to this campaign url, it would automatically replace all the variables in curly brackets with actual values. And Voluum would store these values in its database - which is why we can drill down to them now.

Then what are all the variables above PropellerAds' "V#:" variables? Those are Voluum variables - values that are detected by Voluum. Voluum has the ability to detect information about each visitor sent by the traffic source, such as what device, OS and browser they're using, where they're located, which mobile carrier they're with (if on mobile), whether they're using wifi or mobile data, and so on.


As was mentioned above, you can drill down up to 3 levels deep. For example, try drilling down to "Device types" -> "OS" -> "Browsers", like so:




Spend 15 minutes drilling down to the various variables and different levels of different combinations yourself, just to get an idea on what kinds of data is available.


All this data can give you the insight required to make wise campaign optimization decisions. This is one of the main reasons why having a tracker is so important.



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EXPLANATION

First of all, let's define the goal of optimization.

The goal of campaign optimization is to maximize profits.

(You may be thinking "DUH!", but you'd be surprised at how many new affiliates would try to optimize for highest ROI - they are not the same thing. See "Mistake #7 " in this post.)

And how can you accomplish that goal? Answer: By controlling the 3 main campaign elements:

Offer, Landing Page, and Traffic.

These are the 3 pillars of a pop campaign. You buy visitors (traffic) and send them to a landing page to presell them on the offer, a percentage of them will click through the page to arrive at the offer, and a percentage of those will convert on the offer. We need to optimize these 3 elements so that the campaign will generate profits for us.

And how do you optimize a campaign to profits by manipulating these 3 campaign elements?

1)By split-testing landing pages and offers until finding a combination that converts well.

2)By controlling which traffic segments to target - which can be achieved by a)optimizing the bid, and b)optimizing campaign targeting at the traffic source.

Here's my definition of a "Traffic Segment": It's a segment of all the traffic you receive, that you can drill down into stats to display. Examples of traffic segments are: Android OS, Chrome mobile browser, T-Mobile USA mobile carrier, and any specific placement (or "zone" as PropellerAds calls them).

(If you're not familiar with how pop ads work: The traffic network - PropellerAds in this case - are in collaboration with webmasters that are willing to add to their site a piece of code given by PropellerAds, that would allow PropellerAds to display ads on their site. I refer to these sites as "placements" - they're also called "publisher sites" by the traffic source. PropellerAds charges us to show our ads on these publisher sites, then pays a part of that money to the webmasters.)

In any specific campaign, and at any given time, when you drill down to the various variables to view the different traffic segments, some will be in green (i.e. profitable) and others will be in red (i.e. in loss). The trick is to either just target the profitable segments, or to stop targeting (i.e. "cut") the unprofitable segments to make the campaign profitable.

Everyone does testing and optimization a bit differently, but here's the general approach in a nutshell:

1)Split-test landing pages and offers until finding a combination that turns enough traffic segments profitable, to result in a satisfactory amount of total profits across these green segments.

2)At the traffic source, either a)target the profitable traffic segments (an approach also referred to as "whitelisting") or b)exclude the unprofitable traffic segments (an approach also referred to as "blacklisting"). (The testing of bids is also a necessary part of this process - more on this in a future lesson.)

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Of course there is a LOT more to campaign optimization than just what I've described above, and I will go into campaign optimization in more detail in the next lesson and in future lessons. But I hope this lesson has provided you with a bird's-eye-view of what campaign optimization involves.



Amy

Originally Posted by ahmedmtr

Most of the variables are there already by default on Voluum, except placements/zones/websites

What’s the value/reason to include already existing variables like os, device, country, city…

Great question!

So, both your tracker and the traffic source will track the same variables such as the ones you've listed. And most of the time, results will be the same.

But occasionally, they'll be different. For example, depending on which IP database service your tracker uses, and which one the traffic source uses, the data they gather can be different for country, city, ISP, and/or mobile carrier.

So you may be thinking, "which one is more accurate?" I don't know, and I don't need to know. All I know is that when I'm optimizing a campaign, I need to change my campaign target at the traffic source, and not at the tracker.

So, say for example your tracker is telling you that CarrierX is in profit, but the same variable tracked by the traffic source is telling you CarrierX is in loss. What do you do?

Of course you would go with the traffic source, and stop targeting CarrierX! It wouldn't make sense to go to the traffic source and tell them, "you guys are tracking carriers differently from the way my tracker does - you guys need to change."

You won't see such drastic discrepancy very often. Therefore, it's probably OK for the most part if you choose NOT to include those variables in your campaign url (i.e. for passing data back from the traffic source to the tracker).

But once in a while, you MAY see big discrepancies like what I illustrated in this series of posts:

https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...testing-part-1

In that case, the variables [ISPID] and [ISPNAME] can really save your campaigns.

Also: Voluum allows us to track 10 variables from networks - wouldn't hurt to gather more data to fill up all 10 spaces. Same pricing anyway.

Hope that helps!



Amy

Originally Posted by adsguypro

Hi,
It appears that my token values in Voluum are not completely the same as yours. Is this a cause for concern? Will it mess up my tracking?

Did you use the template (for PropellerAds) provided by Voluum? If so, you should be good!

Basically, this is where you input a list of tokens you'd like for PropellerAds to pass to Voluum, so you can see them in Voluum stats.

The full list of available tokens can be found here:

https://help.propellerads.com/en/art...MDI4OTg1My41MQ..

In the screen capture you attached: The "Name" or "TS Parameter" columns, you can basically put any names you like. The values in the "TS Token" column though MUST be exactly the same as what's shown in the PropellerAds' help page I've linked to above. The order in which you put them into the TS Tokens column does not matter.

In short: No your screen does NOT have to look exactly like mine - as long as all the criteria I've listed in this post are met.

Hope that helps!



Amy

Hi @adsguypro , I checked your tokens and they are all fine!

As Amy mentioned, if you're using our template you're on the safe side.
You can track up to 10 Variables. If there is one that your Traffic Source (PropellerAds) supports that we didn't add here you can always change it! To search for the correct tokens refer to your Traffic Sources Documentation please.

If you have any other question feel free to contact me via DM.

Christina

Hello,

I set up a campaign in Exoclick, but I am not getting the zones and website data.

I am attaching my integration with the traffic source, offer, and what I see in the in the V2: Variation ID and all others Variations information.

How can I get this info?

Originally Posted by raceaffonso

Hello,

I set up a campaign in Exoclick, but I am not getting the zones and website data.

I am attaching my integration with the traffic source, offer, and what I see in the in the V2: Variation ID and all others Variations information.

How can I get this info?

First of all, I have a couple of questions:

1)Have you made at least one conversion on Crakrevenue? If so, are you seeing that conversion in Voluum?

2)Are you only wanting to see zone data in Voluum? Or are you wanting to see conversion data when you log into Exoclick's platform as well?



Amy

At first, I would like to thank @vortex for her tutorials. They are the best! I was able to learn so much just in a few days...
So, thank you, Amy, I really really really appreciate your work :-)

Secondly, I would like to ask for advice.
I've run 5 offers so far (not at once) because I thought the first offers were not good.

However, after nearly 16k impressions (for 3 offers) in Propeller's I still have 0 conversions (I've let it work looong after passing 10times the payout)
(I had 10 conversions on Popads for 4k impressions though - -83%ROI)

Therefore, I assume I'm doing something incorrectly.
Everything - aff.network→Voluum→traffic - is working as supposed to.
So, perhaps, I must have chosen improper offers ??? maybe?

I don't know what info to send so you are able to help me, so, for starters, here are my offers I've used in Propeller and the statistics.



Thank you for any help :-)

Veronika

UPDATE
I've done all the steps again and found out why Mobipium offers were not working - when copying an offer's URL there's an another step which I haven't noticed:


I've left it primary eventhough I'd set Voluum as secondary (because primary is popads from $1 tutorial).
And I actually had some conversions I just couldn't see them in Voluum and Propellerads.
And I hoped this would help somehow but I still have 0 conversions.
I have ran 7 campaigns with no success at all. Is that normal?

Originally Posted by polyester

At first, I would like to thank @vortex for her tutorials. They are the best! I was able to learn so much just in a few days...
So, thank you, Amy, I really really really appreciate your work :-)

Secondly, I would like to ask for advice.
I've run 5 offers so far (not at once) because I thought the first offers were not good.

However, after nearly 16k impressions (for 3 offers) in Propeller's I still have 0 conversions (I've let it work looong after passing 10times the payout)
(I had 10 conversions on Popads for 4k impressions though - -83%ROI)

Therefore, I assume I'm doing something incorrectly.
Everything - aff.network→Voluum→traffic - is working as supposed to.
So, perhaps, I must have chosen improper offers ??? maybe?

I don't know what info to send so you are able to help me, so, for starters, here are my offers I've used in Propeller and the statistics.



Thank you for any help :-)

Veronika

UPDATE
I've done all the steps again and found out why Mobipium offers were not working - when copying an offer's URL there's an another step which I haven't noticed:


I've left it primary eventhough I'd set Voluum as secondary (because primary is popads from $1 tutorial).
And I actually had some conversions I just couldn't see them in Voluum and Propellerads.
And I hoped this would help somehow but I still have 0 conversions.
I have ran 7 campaigns with no success at all. Is that normal?

Hi Veronika! Thanks so much for your encouraging words!

Conversion postback can be a b*tch to figure out for newbies. And you never know if you've set it up correctly until you receive your first conversion (or unless you ask your AM to fire a test conversion).

Question: Since you noticed the "missing step" in Mobipium, and selected the correct postback, have you made any conversions? If not, you'll need to wait until you've made at least one conversion, THEN see whether it gets posted back to the tracker.

If you've made at least one conversion (as indicated on Mobipium's platform) but not seeing it posted back to your tracker, let me know and we'll figure it out.

As for running 7 campaigns with no profits - that unfortunately is ALL too common. Pop is about massive testing. Spend as little budget as possible on testing (each offer/lander/placement/whatever) BUT still giving everything a chance to perform. That way you can test more things on the same budget. The tutorial goes into detail on how to cut offers/landers/placements so you don't overspend.

And then when you find something promising, scale to other traffic sources as quickly as possible.

That's it in a nutshell! Happy testing and feel free to ask further questions.



Amy