Training
Welcome to the CPA Display Masterclass!
Display Advertising Advanced Training
Learn about the future of traffic! I have spent over $200,000 on native ads alone in the last
2 months. I don’t say this to brag, but only to say I know what I am talking about and I am going
to walk you through display advertising using native ad networks, and using one of the
campaigns I am actually running right now! The fact is I would not be spending that money if I
wasn’t making money…So this course is going to explain how I do it.
CLICK THE IMAGE TO ENLARGE – This is one native ads traffic source. The possibilities
really are endless…
Course Content
Lessons Status
1 Lesson 1 - What Are Native Ads & Display Ads?
2 Lesson 2 - Setting Up Your Content for Native Ads.
3 Lesson 3 - How to Create Good Compliant Advertorials Without Getting Sued
4 Lesson 4 - Tracking, Blog Post, and Ad Networks
5 Lesson 5 - Optimization and Summary.
Lesson 1 – What Are Native Ads & Display
Ads?
Many marketers will tell you display ads are not the same as native ads. Everyone has varying
opinions, but the fact is native ads are just a different type of display ad. Display advertising is
very broad and includes several things including many different formats such as text, images,
flash, video, and audio.
If you think about it “traditional” online display ads are banners or flash images.
These have died over the years and you will learn why in this course.
This course will cover “native” ads. These are different than the traditional display banner and
image ads, since they include content. But you are still “displaying” your ads on the same exact
pages as you would if you were to buy traditional ineffective banner ads. We are going to show
just how effective your ads can be on big sites like CNN using the native style. Best of all you
can get your ads in front of these massive audiences with a small budget as low as $10!
Are you not sure what native advertising really means?
You’re not alone.
By the end of this lesson you’ll know what all the hype is about, and why many affiliates and
product owners have moved boatloads of dollars daily into native advertising networks so they
can display native ads.
Native advertising is EXTREMELY HOT right now, and if you aren’t jumping on the band
wagon, then you could be missing out.
There is a huge difference between traditional display ads, and native display ads.
Traditional ads look like this:
Native Ads look like this:
Can you spot the difference?
Traditional ads SUCK!
Numerous studies have shown that the click through rates for traditional ads have been dropping
steadily for over a decade! Its because people are blind to them. This phenomenon is called
“banner blindness”. People are much less likely to click on traditional ads because they know
they are going to be sold something.
There are many strategies for native ads, whether you are an affiliate, or a product owner. In this
course we are going to dive into a native advertising affiliate campaign on one traffic source. But
before we get there I think it is important to cover a lot more on native ads so that you have a
better understanding of what the possibilities are.
Why Are Native Ads Better than Traditional Ads?
Native ads don’t get ignored like traditional ads…this is simply because they are displayed in a
way that they don’t look like ads.
They look MORE like content. You know those article titles you see floating around the
internet EVERYWHERE?
The things that look REALLY entertaining and informative?
Native ads blend into the surroundings on TONS of major publishing sites and social media sites
including platforms like CNN, Fox, CNBC, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Blogs and
any other place where people congregate to consume content.
Let’s look at some examples…
What Are Native Ad Networks or Platforms?
There are few major players when it comes to Native advertising. There is also a lot of confusion
as to who the big players are when it comes to native ads. You can pretty much place your own
native ads on ANY major ad platforms!
The biggest “native ad” networks include places like Facebook, You Tube, Twitter, Linkedin,
Google…etc. You can call these what you want but what you are buying is a placement, and you
are the one in control of what your placement contains.
Many major publishing sites (especially news sites) place ad widgets or ad boxes on their
site that they have obtained from native ad networks who pay them a % of the amount of
money generated by advertisers like you and me! By placing that special “code” or
“widget” in their page it displays the ads that we pay for. If I spend 10 cents for a click on
that ad, the native ad network gets a cut, and the publishing site gets a cut, every time
someone clicks on that ad.
For example, see below where I just visited Diply.com (a major publishing site). As you can see
at the bottom of the post there are more suggested articles. If you look really closely it says
“Sponsored by Revcontent”. Revcontent is one of the many other native ad networks you can
buy ads from.
This means the people who own Diply.com placed the Revcontent ad widget on their site at the
bottom of their post. (remember the word ” widget” – we will be talking alot about that later)
Now my ads can display there in that widget if I choose to buy ads from Revcontent.com and
allow that widget to display my ads. You will also notice that all the ads look like content, and
not banners for traditional straight sales. This is because the people buying these ads, understand
the opportunity of native ads and how lucrative they can be! Native ad traffic for the most part is
extremely high quality. (once you weed out the crap)
Also take a look at CNN where they also include some more native ads that are sponsored by “Outbrain”
another major native ad platform.
What is the Opportunity?
A long time ago it would cost a pile of cash to
viewers or other HUGE publishers. In today’s advertising spectrum, anyone with a credit card
les. get your banner ads in front of the CNN
and some time to learn the ropes can get ads live on the front of CNN’s website with small
budget.
But the people who really know what they are doing understand that you can’t just post simple
traditional banners and expect to make commissions.
Native advertising is much more in depth. People want content, and they don’t want to be “sold”
up front. This is why many people, especially affiliate marketers fail with display traffic. You
need to first either build a relationship with your audience, or else you need to provide great
content, or a very good angle.
With native ads click through rates are exploding. Its because these ads look like content. From
my own experience click through rates on native ads have almost tripled compared to my
traditional banner ads.
Why Should You Believe Me?
You don’t have to believe me, but most people who wait to long before taking the jump into a
hot opportunity, usually end up missing the boat. You need to REALLY consider using native
ads for your business.
Think of all those poor saps right not trying to rank on Google because they once heard it was a
great way to get traffic…little do they know they have missed the boat on the easy SEO.
Same as the “suckers” who think now is the perfect time to run Google Adwords PPC search
traffic to their affiliate landing pages…well guess what Google PPC is now EXTREMELY
tough for affiliates unless you got some SERIOUS tricks up your sleeve…or a cloaker which
will only get you banned sooner or later.
Here’s why you need to add native advertising to your arsenal of digital advertising tactics…
RIGHT NOW.
Native ads get clicks, and they get CHEAP CLICKS. But most importantly…they get
conversions because most of the people come from the GIANTS like CNN. You just need to
understand how to set up your landing pages, and how to optimize the traffic source so your ads
are only showing on the best sites for your offer!
In the next lesson we are going to get into setting up the first native advertisement for
a CPA affiliate offer!
Lesson 2 – Setting Up Your Content for
Native Ads.
As we mentioned before traditional ads don’t work as well.
Traditional landing pages don’t work as well either!
Native ads need to be designed like the page you are advertising on, and you need to engage your
visitors with valuable exciting content.
This can be done with a blog post that seems newsworthy or a viral story or by providing
valuable content but not the “whole story”. I’ll explain this more in a second.
We need to design our funnel into a content machine that pushes our visitors into our end
game which is a conversion.
As we showed in CPA Cash Vault 3.0 you can easily set up landing pages and blogs using
Optimizepress to collect leads, or you can go directly for the sale.
I do both. Many times I will go for the sale first and if the campaign is working I will create a
full niche site around that product and collect leads and generate long term sales.
How to Build a Monetized Native Blog Post That Sells
Many of the landing pages I use for my affiliate campaigns, are in fact blog posts that are on a
BLOG platform such as WordPress.
The blog also contains multiple other ways to monetize the traffic that arrives including Google
Adsense ads, and native ad widgets.
I also install the Google Analytics wordpress plugin so I can set up goals, and later use
retargeting on Google Adwords. By adding the Google Analytics code on my site before I begin
sending traffic from native ads, I can later buy ads on Google Display Network that show ONLY
to the people who previously visited my site. This is called retargeting.
TIP: Sometimes adding too many other ads or widgets on the blog may cause too much
distraction, and may reduce the amount of conversions, so it is extremely important you
test constantly between different landing pages to ensure you maximize your Return on
Investment. (ROI)
There are a few different styles of blog posts I use but the three main styles are:
1. A lead capture such as this page which I am currently running on google display network as a
retargeting campaign. http://blog.powerhouseaffiliate.com/free-affiliate-marketing-traininglive-
campaign-launched/ (Powerhouse Affiliate does have an affiliate program – for more info
CLICK HERE. – We also showed how to set up a lead capture blog page in CPA Cash Vault 3.0)
2. A blog post designed to sell a product directly. (This is more for people who own the actual
product or for offers that allow you to link directly to the checkout page)
3. A blog post with lots of teaser content, that leads to another more aggressive sales page or
“offer page”.
For the purpose of this training I will be doing option 3 using an extremely popular CPA offer
that has been seen on several native ad networks. Now before we get into designing ads we need
to build our page.
Step 1 is to determine what “action” do you want people to take when they arrive on your page?
· do you want them to submit an email?
· donate money to a cause?
· buy a product?
· sign up for a trial product?
· click to another sales page?
Once you know the action you want your visitors to take you are ready to start building the
content.
In this example I am going to share with you a style of blog I use for “testing” affiliate
campaigns. This method works extremely well and saves me a TON of time. I basically set up a
“news” style blog that allows me to set up multiple categories so that when I want to test an offer
in ANY niche I don’t have to go and build a full out niche specific website first.
The site I am referring to is http://buzzpeach.com.
As you can see it has multiple categories and allows me to set up even more if I want to. The
news style wordpress themes work very well for native ads since much of the traffic that comes
from native ads are actually already on a similar designed site. So the transition seems seamless
to the visitors and they are still under the impression they are reading content and not being
directly sold to.
For this site I actually hired a writer to create some more viral style posts just to give the site a
“real” feel. The affiliate landing pages I use are in fact hidden, but for the training I have left the
Survival category open so you can see the example affiliate landing page we will be running in
the next lesson. Keep in mind that once I know an offer converts using this method, I would then
move the offer and landing pages to a niche specific blog all catered around that same niche.
This allows me to further develop other styles of pages in the same niche including the lead
capture pages.
How to Choose a Good Offer For Native Display Advertising?
There are many theories here, but as an affiliate looking for good offers to promote on native
ads, you should look for the medium payout offers. This doesn’t mean you can’t still do very
well with lead offers, and installs or high ticket. You should find offers that pay medium to high,
if you plan develop your own authority niche blog, collect leads, then sell the offers to these
leads. If you only get paid $10 or less payout, it will be hard to make a profit long term without
putting in a ton of work. You can always ask your affiliate manager “what are the best offers to
promote on native ads”?
The offer I am going to choose to promote for this example is the “Nighthawk Flashlight”. If you
have not seen this already then let me explain. This is a CPA offer and is actually for a straight
sale. The offer itself pays out $50 CPA and it is available on a few different CPA networks as
well we have it inside our VIP Club. The offer page itself I am using is actually a video sales
letter (VSL), but the page I will send my traffic to first will be a blog post with the call to action
being “watch this video”
How Do I Decide What the Blog Post Will Be About?
There are two trains of thought here. I can spy and see how others are promoting or I can write
something myself and come up with an angle. Let’s talk about both
1. Spying – There are numerous services out there that allow you to spy on what other
people are advertising. The one we have used and highly recommend is NATIVE AD
BUZZ. Plus if you sign up using this link you can get a 7 day trial. This tool allows you
to search and find ad text, images and strategies that are working online right now. The
key to spying (and I say this all the time) is that you can’t expect to just find a campaign
and copy it exactly and make money. This rarely works! That is because professionals
have ways to fake the data for you, or they have already optimized the crap out of it. In
any case these tool are EXCELLENT for finding “angles” and ad ideas.
2. Coming up with your own original angles – This is likely going to yield you the best
long term results but will require much more testing and tweaking. People who can be
original will always have the upper hand on lazy people who don’t think outside of the
box. Just don’t be heart broken when someday you see someone else has copied your
original angles. :(.
In the end we want people to click our ads like crazy, but we also want this piece of content to
convince them to watch the video. We are also going to “pre-sell” them with an amazing story
about this DAMN FLASHLIGHT!
So now we need to ensure our native ads are reflective of what the blog post will be about. After
considering much of whats going on the news and after doing some preliminary research on
some other ads, I have come up with 5 different ad angles (my favorite are the last 2):
1. With Domestic Terrorism on the Rise, how Will You Protect Yourself and Your
Family?
2. INCREDIBLE MILITARY ISSUED FLASHLIGHT NOW AVAILABLE TO
PUBLIC
3. New Military Flashlight Every Patriot Needs
4. Americans Should Carry This With Them At All Times
5. Police Urge Americans To Carry This With Them At All Times
I believe the #4 and #5 will yield the highest click through rates, and I can get “crazy” on the
images on my ads. It will not be hard to craft up a blog post about this, but I am also going to use
some content that was given to me from the advertisers, and network (so it’s not all my own
original stuff – but much of it is including high CTR ads).
Everything about this SCREAMS high click through rates for ads. Now I need to develop the
blog post.
The blog post itself is going to feed into the video and is not going to contain a ton of content.
The angle on this is pretty much fear, protection, and blatantly selling. While in many of my
other campaigns I try for helpful blog posts in the niche, this one is more about explaining many
of the cool benefits, but incomplete so they want more information about this CRAZY
FLASHLIGHT! At the end, and throughout the post, I will be link to the offer which is a Video
Sales Letter (VSL).
All of this is going to be tracked using CPV Lab! If you don’t know what I mean then you need
to go and read about tracking in our forum > TUTORIAL: How to Setup a Campaign From
Scratch – Using CPV Lab
If you are not using a tracking platform you will fail. Period. You need to track your ads, and
CPV lab does the job fine. See you in the next lesson.
Lesson 3 – How to Create Good Compliant
Advertorials Without Getting Sued
Yes you read that title right, we’re going to go over the finely tuned art-form of writing a killer
Advertorial that not only pulls in those sweet-sweet sales and conversions but also won’t get you
sued; how awesome is that! In the last lesson I shared the advertorial style page used for the
sample flashlight campaign. In this lesson I will talk more about how to craft up high converting
Advertorials.
DISCLAIMER: While we try to provide accurate information we are NOT LAWYERS,
and therefore we make no guarantee that your pages will be compliant following our
guidelines since the rules are constantly changing. It is up to you to make sure your pages
are compliant.
For those of us who don’t yet know what the f-heck an advertorial is… They’re native
advertisements which can be found on any number of different types of websites… think of it
like this. You want to put an ad up on some website but you don’t want to be glossed over by the
dreaded “ad-blindness” which plagues the majority of poorly crafted ads these days. How do you
do this?
It basically works like this:
· Find a target webpage you wish to advertise on
· Take note of what sort of content populates said page
· Gather up some killer info on the subject and make sense of it
· Write a small article which is a blend of part info, part advertisement
· The ratio of information to advertisement is roughly 80/20
· Create an extremely bizarre or captivating image if one is permitted in the ad-spot
· Launch the ad and monitor your stats for the duration of its life-span
· Tweak and optimize as necessary
I know that may seem like a whole lot of junk to do and it is… but the good news is that it’s all
really short, sweet and simple steps which honestly won’t take even the “newbiest” of new
marketers more than maybe an hour to get through- and that time will drop dramatically as you
continue to get better at doing this stuff.
Why AdvertorialsWork So DarnWell
Before we jump into the specifics of how to craft these little pieces of marketing magic let’s talk
about why they work so well.
The short answer to this is simply that you are essentially borrowing the credibility of the
website you’re advertising on. Although they are perfectly legal and completely ethical forms of
advertising (provided you craft them in that way) the honest truth is that advertorials are a bit
sneaky because the majority of people reading them will just naturally assume they’re looking at
“just another article” on the site you’re advertising with.
Due to the variety these types of ads come in and all the different places you could put them it’s
not hard to see why the native-ad has become king of the hill in recent years.
Advertorials come in a variety of flavors such as:
· Listicles, or list style guides and articles
· Informative video adverts which blend perfectly with the original site’s content
· Full-sized articles which combine the craft of a sales page with solid article writing
· These advertorials can be part of a page or five pages long or more!
· Pretty much any form you can relay valuable information while setting a sales pitch
works
In short, advertorials work so well because of the places they’re often times found and how
they’re crafted to look like well written and informative articles instead of just some typical ad
you’d find plastered up on any number of sites all over the internet. The power lies in the
placement and format of these ads.
How To Write An Advertorial That Actually
Works
The frame of mind you should approach these advertorials from is one of giving value. I hate
using that phrase as I feel its way over used to death but it’s absolutely true in this case. You
want to write an article based around whatever your offer is, but that isn’t enough. This article
needs to be so informative, it needs to give so much value to the reader that they’ll love it over
anything else they could possibly read on that website. In fact, you want it to be so awesomely
informative that it’ll make the reader just forget about the site they’re on completely and want to
go visit your site or offer and make that conversion thus landing you a sale!
I’m sure you’ve already considered this but what we’re effectively talking about writing here is a
sales page which doubles as a tutorial or some sort of informative article that brings to light all
the benefits and features of whatever your offer happens to be.
When you keep in mind that these articles should be mostly well crafted information and
marginally sales-pitch then you have everything you need to formulate an effective advertorial.
It’s a good idea to keep the call to action near the bottom of the article. The reason for this is
simply because pushing the product or offer before you’ve effectively given a solid case for the
sale will often times yield in lower conversation rates. You might get people clicking over to
your site just out of curiosity but when you recite your call to action after you’ve hyped up all the
cool stuff your offer has in store for the reader then you stand a much higher chance of actually
landing that sale because it only makes sense that people who read what you have to say all the
way through are more likely to want to buy than those who don’t.
Study your target publication
Each site you wish to place an advertisement on will be unique in its own way. You need to
study the details to know how your ad should be crafted. Looking for details such as:
· Site context, is it a medical site, viral “entertainment” site, etc.
· The layout is important, pay attention to how they organize their content.
· Typography matters in most cases.
· Look at the column choices and design the look of your ad to fit within them.
· Pay very close attention to things like headlines, blurbs and bylines.
You need to have a grasp on the audience which visits these sites. If you don’t know who you are
speaking to then you’ll find your words will often times fall on deaf ears and that’s no good for
conversion rates.
Mimic opening sentences
One thing you’ll notice on most websites is how they often tend to flow in a certain way. Most
articles will have opening lines which follow a certain type of flow, mimic these in your own
advertorials whenever possible by borrowing the style of other articles you find on your target
site.
Mimic article bodies
Just like the opening line of an article is important to pay close attention to, it’s also a good idea
to do similar with the rest of the article’s body. It’s perfectly fine to put your own flare on your
articles but you’ll want to do your best to make your advertorials have a certain cohesion with
the rest of the content found on the publication you’re targeting.
Study the readership
Knowing your audience is extremely vital for any level of success otherwise you’re shooting
blanks in the dark. You need to have at least some understanding of the type of person who
follows the publication you’re composing your native-ads for.
Follow the advertising policies
This is important to do because your ads will be reviewed before they’re accepted and if you’re
breaking rules not only do you stand the chance of simply not being accepted at all but you might
wind up slipping through the cracks only to have your ads yanked shortly after at a loss. This has
been known to happen from time to time and you’ll have nobody to blame but yourself if you
pay for that advertorial only to get it pulled down the very next day, or even worse… just hours
later.
Following Guidelines & Keeping It Legal
On top of keeping on good grounds with the FTC which do require certain forms of disclosures
when advertising online, it’s also necessary to be mindful of the terms of service when dealing
with individual websites and the like.
For an example of these advertorial guidelines you can have a look at some of these popular sites
and see what they entail in their own advertising requirements.
· Gawker
· Mashable
· The Onion
· BuzzFeed
· New York Times
What Not To Do In Your Advertorials
The best thing you can do is review the FTC website which was linked above… Here’s another
link for convenience sake.
But most of the usual stuff you’d expect such as:
· Don’t make false claims
· Don’t use the likeness of others without their written endorsement
· Stay away from using copyrighted material unless you have permission to
· Don’t break the rules and follow guidelines laid out by each publication you’re ads
appear on
It’s pretty simple really… don’t do any of that “typical” shady stuff you see plastered up all over
those bogus sites you’ve no doubt run into from time to time and you’ll be alright
Lesson 4 – Tracking, Blog Post, and Ad
Networks
Welcome to lesson 4 where we set up the blog post, tracking and advertisements. We are going
to advertise on Revcontent. They are a “widget” style ad platform and if you visit
http://buzzpeach.com you will see I have also inserted their ad widgets on my own blog posts in
an effort to earn additional revenue from my traffic. These ad widgets are actually helpful in
seeing what others are advertising. If I start to see a trend, it may be a campaign worth exploring
further.
Some other native ad networks worth looking into include:
http://mgid.com
http://taboola.com
http://outbrain.com
http://content.ad
As mentioned I’m using CPV Lab. Therefore I will need to make sure I can insert the CPV lab
landing page code into the wordpress template in the footer file, and also I will be link all my
outbound links to the CPV lab outbound link. If you need help to do this please ask in the forum
and someone will help you. All you have to do is ask!
Now here is an extremely important step for Revcontent! You want to collect what is called
the widget id from your ad placements. I will explain briefly below how to do it with CPV
Lab but for those of you using voluum.com or prosper202 then you will need to figure that
out over there. The key is you need to see which ad widgets are winning or losing.
You must ensure your tracking link is set up properly. In CPV lab it is quite simple to capture
widget id, but you should also track targets and ads.
Once you set up your campaign in CPV Lab, and get your campaign link it will look something
like this:
http://yourdomain.com/base.php?c=289&key=873bec4b2ac8e9e413bfea8b0c71259f&target={wi
dget_id}
It is very important you the {widget_id} to the end where it says target=
If you want to add even more data to your tracking you can also track {adv_targets} which gives
you the actual topics your ads show under, as well as ad=. So your tracking link should actually
look like this:
http://yourdomain.com/base.php?c=289&key=873bec4b2ac8e9e413bfea8b0c71259f&target={wi
dget_id}&topic={adv_targets}&ad=1
For ad 2 it would look like this:
http://yourdomain.com/base.php?c=289&key=873bec4b2ac8e9e413bfea8b0c71259f&target={wi
dget_id}&topic={adv_targets}&ad=2
To do that you need to set up Revcontent as a traffic source inside your CPV installation in the
settings area, and then you will be able to add targets in your campaigns settings.
If you did everything right you should see this (above) in your campaign settings. If that doesn’t
make sense ask in the forum or read this CPV lab User Guide.
This is the link you place in your ads and when someone clicks the ad it will record the widget id
which is the id # of the ad placement. This is the most granular way to track Revcontent ads. In
the next lesson we will see how to optimize those widgets.
Now that I have the blog post set up and the tracking is working, it is time to set up my ads using
the tracking link I got from CPV Lab.
If I have lost you now, then it is very important you ask for
help in the forum or else this will likely be where many of
you reading this will quit.
Now let’s head on over to Revcontent.com.
First of course you need to sign up and pay the minimum budget of $100. This does NOT
MEAN you have to spend $100 per day! It simply means you need to set your budget to that in
order to get your ads live. You can adjust your bids, turn on and off your ads at any point and
your ads will not spend nearly as much. In order to set up ads you need to click at the top where
it says campaign boost.
Then click on “create campaign boost”
You will then be presented with some options for your advertisement. This stuff is critical to how your
ads will perform. First you need to name it, and choose certain targeting features.
Name it something that represents your targeting so you can keep organized. For e
have an offer that only accepts US traffic, call it ‘OFFER NAME
This means I set up a campaign targeting US for that offer and I have chosen mobile and topic
targeting.
For CPC usually start much lower then their recom
get you to spend more so they create high “suggested bids”. For budget amount select daily then
choose how much you want to spend daily.
When starting out a campaign on Revcontent I usually begin with a run of t
topic targeting campaign which means my ads will show across all widgets. (I call this my
“blacklist campaign”) This is called a blacklist campaign because I will blacklist all the widgets
that appear to be bots or that are not converting.
which widgets perform best, but at the same time it will likely result in some initial losses up
front while I collect data. Eventually I will blacklist SEVERAL widgets from showing my ads,
and for the good widgets I may create what I call a “Whitelist” campaign. This is basically a
campaign where I target only specific winning widgets, and blacklist them on my other RON
campaign as well so I am not competing against myself.
For country targeting be sure to select only one country per campaign or else your tracking will
be difficult to understand in terms of which country did best.
For device the same rule applies. Only run 1 device per campaign. For example, if you want to
target only mobile/tablet customers, then select mobile and tablet, but don’t select desktop.
Now that you have your targeting set up you need to also click on the little gear icon on the
bottom (see image below)
When you click the little gear icon you will see a page that looks like this and you need to be sure all 3
boxes are selected. This tells revcontent to send all that data into your tracking link.
example if you
– US – MOBILE – TOPIC’.
recommended bid. I find most networks just try to
the network (RON)
This allows me to test all the traffic and see
idgets lect xample mended he
Now click “build tracking code” then click “save” and save your campaign settings. Your next
step will be to create the ads themselves.
Next step is to click on the “Manage Content” tab and create new content. You will see this:
This is where you are going to insert your campaign tracking link from CPV Lab as described
above and click submit.
Now you have have some final settings to adjust. See below.
The system has pulled the information from my landing page automatically. First select the
content type as “article”. Then insert a
My main goal will be to increase click through rates. (CTR) This ensures more delivery and
lower click costs. The brand name must be set to the offer you are promoting. Then I will change
the photo.
I usually just go here and find images then right click them and
download. https://images.google.ca/ Here’s a little secret. You are looking for images that catch
your eye. While they should somewhat be related to your ads, you need to get high click th
rates as well. A simple picture of a flashlight here will probably perform poorly, but I will test it.
I am looking for images that beg for clicks
Here are some sample ads I have set up for this campaign.
catchy title. In this case I am going to test multiple ads.
mple through
Now if you really want to get crazy, you can set up a couple of blog posts each of which tells a story
about the offer you are promoting. this way you can test different angles and content. For now I will
leave this as is and in the next lesson we will look at how the ads performed.
Lesson 5 – Optimization and Summary.
Welcome to lesson five where we will be diving into the results of the ads, and seeing how we
can make improvements.
I let the campaign spend $400 USD and my income on the first test was $165.
When I reached $80 in spend I had actually received 2 conversions and was actually profitable
for a brief period of time, but then things seemed to drop off. In the end I got 3 conversions but a
lot of clicks to the offer. While it is still way too early to make any really solid decisions, let me
share the stats then I will explain my theories and explain why I think certain things can be
improved right away.
There were many clicks to the offer but the earnings per click (EPC) are only $1.36. However at
one point when I checked stats the EPC was above $4. Based on that I am making an informed
decision that there could be some “bot” traffic, or else the time of day may influence the
purchases. But from my experience I think there are some bots I need to weed out.
What is Bot traffic or Ad Fraud?
Pretty much every display ad network has the issue of advertising fraud, or “bots”. This is
something you will have to deal with, and if it makes you feel uncomfortable paying money to
thieves, then you are not alone. Unfortunately we as advertisers are at the mercy of ad networks
to combat this fraud, but we too have to use our own skills to block these bad sources from
delivering our ads so we don’t end up wasting thousands of dollars on fake traffic. This is not
something only Revcontent has to deal with, this is something you will experience pretty much
EVERYWHERE you buy traffic from. If you want to learn more about this topic check out this
informative post from Adweek. http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/whatsbeing-
done-rein-7-billion-ad-fraud-169743
So why do I think I may be experiencing ad fraud? For a few reasons, but the main reason is
that I am running RON traffic and I am already aware that some widgets deliver fake traffic and I
should be blocking those. When we look at the widget stats in a bit I will explain how I find
potential bots.
So let me share my stats from CPV lab which shows which widgets the traffic came from and
where the conversions happened.
Looking at these stats the most important columns are the # of ad clicks, the # of conversions, the
Landing page click through rate (LP CTR) and the keyword/target which is actually displaying
the widget id where my ads are showing.
The $’s don’t really matter here since they are not accurate. All I want to examine are the four
things I just mentioned. I don’t actually see anything that stands out as a bot. Usually bots are
either 0% LP CTR, or extremely high LP CTR. (Landing page click through rate)
Extremely high LP CTR can cause your EPC on your network to look really low when in fact it
was only bots. But in this case the top 5 widgets seem to be costing a lot of money and getting a
normal to low LP CTR, but they account for the majority of clicks to the offer.
So the first change I am going to make is I am going to block those 5 widgets from delivering my
ads. To do this I go inside Revcontent and choose the campaign, then click the targeting tab then
in the top right corner I click “Widget Optimization” . Then choose to “blacklist” widgets. Then
add the widgets.
Now lets move on to the ads. I will also examine these
Looking at this I see only ad 1 and ad 2 converted. I will pause the other two and perhaps try a
few more like those two that converted. Ad 4 didnt get enough traffic to make a decision s
may try it again as well. These stats also tell me my landing page CTR is way too low. Even
though it is mobile, my LP CTR should be above 10% and more like 15
because I have too many other distractions like adsense and Revcontent
adding in a new mobile landing page so I can split test. Looking at the stats inside Revcontent I
also see that the ad click through rate (AD CTR) is highest on the two that converted.
In the end the best strategy is to do a full RO
then find widgets that do work and start a new campaign by whitelisting only those working
widgets. All along you will continue running your RON campaign and blacklisting bad widgets.
This is kind of like “mining” for good widgets. You will also blacklist the good widgets in your
RON campaign once you add them to the whitelist campaign so you are not competing against
yourself on the good ones.
At this point I have explained pretty much everything it takes
Even though this course is coming to an end, please understand I am ALWAYS in the forum,
and many others who are running ad campaigns like this DAILY. All you need to do is come
inside the forum and talk to me and others,
If you have upgraded to access our case studies
live profitable campaigns we are running right now.
in CPV Lab.
– 20%. I think it is
widgets. I will also be
RON campaign, then blacklist widgets that don’t work,
to get a campaign up and running.
and we will work together to help each other.
and done for you campaigns you will see more
so I
N
Course Summary
It is evident that traditional ads no longer work as well as they used to. Native advertising is
delivering phenomenal results for affiliates. The campaign above is something that can easily be
turned into a profitable campaign with some optimizing and tweaks to the ads. These are the
types of campaigns you will find working for affiliates on native ads.
To get started you need to decide whether you want to collect leads or do a straight promotion.
Then choose your niche, offer and build your pages with tracking. Then set up your ads and
review your results. If you have questions about your results or setup along the way just ask.
We have discussed pretty much all there is to know about what to do in order to start but you
likely still have TONS of questions. Please join us in the forum or on the Facebook group and
ask…ask…ask…
No question is a stupid question! Understand there are a ton of newbies here who probably
have the same questions as you. We were all newbies at one point so we understand what
may seem like a trivial question, can make a huge difference! So please contribute and ask
questions in our community.