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

In the previous lesson, we've set up your very first campaign together.

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

You may have made your first conversion by this point - 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 Binom, 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 Binom, click on the "Campaigns" tab, then set the date range to include all the stats you've run up to this point ("7 days" should be enough).



Right-click somewhere on your campaign's row and select "Report".



A new browser will open up to display the stats for that specific campaign. You'll see 3 drop-down menus:



In Binom 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 near the bottom that start with "T#:". 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 Binom, you loaded a template of PropellerAds that was provided by Binom? Let's take a look right now.

Click on the "Traffic sources" tab, click on the "PropellerAds" row to select it, then click on "Edit" and you'll see a list of tracking 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 Binom, you had to choose PropellerAds as the traffic source? When you did that, the resulting Binom campaign url automatically included PropellerAd's tokens:

https://binomdomain.com/click.php?ke...rier={carrier}

So every time PropellerAds sends a visitor to this campaign url, it would automatically detect information such as what device and OS each visitor is using etc. etc., then replace all the variables in curly brackets with actual values. And Binom 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' "T#:" variables? Those are Binom variables - values that are detected by Binom. Binom too has the ability to detect information about each visitor sent by the traffic source, such as what device and OS they're using etc. etc. - just like PropellerAds can.

So all these variables you can choose in tracker reports are a mix of values detected by Binom and values passed back by PropellerAds every time it shows a visitor your campaign url.

(Don't worry too much if you're not understanding how tracking tokens work - I'll explain tracking in detail in a future lesson.)

As was mentioned above, you can drill down up to 3 levels deep. For example, try drilling down to "Device type" -> "OS Name" -> "Browser", 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 (country, device, browser, carrier, etc.) 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 jgadman

My PropellerAds shows 780 impressions but my Binom campaign only registered 630 clicks. What could be the reason for the 150 clicks missing?

For more info on clickloss please see: https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...finitive-guide



Amy