[Case Study] Music App Download – Pop Campaign (202% ROI)

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Affiliate marketing is all about learning, and the best learning is done when you learn from others.

Check out this helpful newbie case study, submitted by another newbie. We hope you like it!

Ad Network: EZmob

Ad format: Popunder

Offer: Music APP Download (View Mobidea Offers)

Vertical: Entertainment

Geo: US, CA

Device: Mobile Phone

OS: iOS

Spent: $2218

Revenue: $4490

ROI: 202%

Who is EZmob?

EZmob DSP is an easy-to-use self-serve media buying platform for marketers, media buyers, and affiliates. EZmob DSP also enables direct publishers to integrate ad formats (pop, display, and push) to monetize their sites and apps.

What is this Guide About?

Affiliate marketing is new to a lot of our clients and testing offers can be profitable, but when you’re on a tight budget and need to see conversions happen now instead of later, you must set your campaign to succeed before even hitting the ‘run’ button.

We appreciate that many of our clients learn via online courses, YouTube videos, and through other ways and case studies that show the inner workings of ad networks and media buying.

Feel free to check out the EZmob blog or helpdesk to gain crucial advice on making the most of your budget with EZmob DSP.

Oh, and of course we have a special promotion for Mobidea Academy readers!

Special Promotion: Get $50 added FREE when testing $150 in budget as a first depositor.

There is a short checklist you should go through before even setting up your offer on any DSP or mobile ad network:

• Set up your conversion tracking: Conversion tracking is the key to opening your eyes when it comes to what works with your campaign. Read more here.
• Read the offer’s KPI: It is becoming extra hard to meet the advertiser’s KPIs. Chat with your affiliate manager and understand how complex the KPIs are and what you need to do to meet them. Check if pop or push traffic is within this offer’s guidelines.
• Understand the metrics: Understand how many clicks or impressions you need to buy and how many it should take to achieve one conversion. Allow yourself some wiggle room, but, overall, understanding that you should see a conversion within, for example, $2-3 starting out, but that it should reach $1-1.5 by the time you’ve spent half your budget, is key to understanding how much room you have for experimentation.
• Target well: Understand the exact targeting needed for your offer to convert. Some key targeting features may include specific browsers, carriers, operating systems versions, etc. Make sure you target your campaigns within those boundaries. Tip: if you’re promoting an app that takes a lot of space (over 200MB for example), it might not be prudent to target non-WiFi-connected users who might not want to spend their data plan on downloading your app.
• Test: Before you launch, chat with our manager, ask for a test conversion to be submitted and make sure tracking is ready for conversions.

In this guide, we will use popunder ads, mainly because they are cheap, effective, and easy to scale. Popunder bids start at 20c for 1000 impressions, meaning users will actually land on your landing page 1000 times for only 20c.

Of course, there is a downside with pops such as the extra volume and high velocity of the traffic once the campaigns start running, but that is easily solved by limiting your daily campaign budget increasing your bid to reach higher-value publishers and setting up a tighter frequency cap to engage more unique users per day.

In addition to popunder ads, you may find push notification ads as very engaging and effective in most campaigns that pop ads will work for.

How to Choose an Offer and the GEO?

Sometimes it seems there are millions of affiliate offers to choose from, some handed over from network to network, some generated directly by the app developers and while the metrics are similar, choosing an offer that’s closer to the source is key to your ROI.

Keep in mind that while shopping for an excellent offer to test, you would need to generate good creatives, landing pages, and content to go a lot with your marketing, so choose something that you can deliver well upon.

The Offer

In this case, we’re promoting a music entertainment app available online and through each of the app stores.

• Conversion KPIs: Converts on Purchase – US Product Page
• Other technical requirements: Use &sub3= for language and use &sub4= for currency
• Countries: US, CA

Since this offer pays on sale, targeting is very wide. After debating with the affiliate manager I was able to ascertain which targeting should be easier to convert for.

The Campaign Setup

If you can design and deploy your own pre-landers, we strongly recommend you to. If not, start with what’s offered by the affiliate network and discuss performing features that may work for your campaign from your affiliate manager.

Having a great landing page is key in a popunder campaign for obvious reasons. Make sure you have a few variations of your landing page and that your hosting can handle having several thousand users per hour going into your pages.

The Prelander

Before starting a campaign consult with our DSP manager and make sure to apply EZmob’s best performing channels for your offer.

Start with a low bid to understand how competitive you should be for the traffic you’re targeting.

The minimum bid for pop traffic is only $0.20, start with that and increase it as you go. Read more about win rates here.

Targeting

Optimization

Give your campaign some room to ‘breathe’ before you start eliminating placements.

The most important thing in your optimization strategy is keeping quality placements delivering traffic and avoiding less-effective publisher placements, but you should still give a fighting chance for placements that might perform well for you under a lower bid or tighter targeting which you might apply on a duplicate campaign. Read more about optimization in EZmob’s HelpDesk.

Once you have your list of converting placements, duplicate your campaign and whitelist only those placements under a higher bid; that should help you get more conversions. You can blacklist those placements on your original campaign to avoid competing with yourself, although, either way, the higher bid will win the impression.

By the time you understand which placements convert well for your whitelisted campaign check which bid gets you the best win rate and still produces ROI globally.

If you keep this practice for a few more days you should have a few dependable subIDs you can count on for converting for more than just one offer.

Keep your newly acquired list handy for future offers under similar verticals you may choose to run in the future.

A few other optimization tips may include:

• Campaign scheduling – check whether your campaign is likely to convert better in specific hours of the day and apply that scheduling on the campaign level.
• Segment reports by browsers, operating system versions, carriers, etc., and apply adjusted bids to control your bids across your whitelist or global campaigns.

Read more about advertiser reports here.

The Bottom Line

Working with a solid affiliate network and an offer that works is key to making any campaign work.

Allowing your campaign to acquire enough data that is spread around different targeting groupings allows you more room for optimization.

Duplicate your campaigns and whitelist placements or subIDs that convert well for you, bid higher on that campaign, control and scale it with daily budget and capping.

Test several offers and segment your campaigns according to widely different targeting features such as operating systems and countries as placements may work differently.

Consult your DSP managers and get expert advice through on-site chat, email (support@ezmob.com), or EZmob’s knowledge base.

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