The Summary and Thinking of A 2 Years Old Campaign

This is a small campaign that has been running for more than 2 years. I say it’s small because the average daily traffic is less than 1000, the average daily spend is less than $1, the average daily profit is less than $1 too, and the websites in whitelist is only 2. The good thing is that the maintenance cost is very low and it has been profitable, so it could run continuously.

1. Overview
Offer: Smartlink
Payout: Dynamic
Affiliate Network: Monetizer
Traffic Source: PopAds
GEO: TH
Revenue: $637.89
Spend: $334.21
Profit: $303.68
ROI: 90.68%
Date Range: 2020.6-2022.7 (still running)
AOH: PopAdsHelper

2. Stages of the Campaign
1). Origin stage
This campaign is a whitelist campaign, originated from a blacklist campaign. That blacklist campaign ran for 3-4 days, spent more than $10 (about 20 times Payout), because the ROI was negative, -40%, after excluding some websites, but did not see a very obvious ROI improvement, so I stopped it.
After checking the data, I found 2 sites with good ROI and conversions from these sites, so I took these two sites out for whitelisting. Then, copy the original blacklist campaign to a whitelist campaign.

2). Initial stage
Because the performance of whitelist sites in the blacklist campaign is good, so the whitelist campaign conversions is still as good as ever.

3). Optimization phase
ROI performance is good, 0 optimizations.

4). Maintenance phase
As the ROI is okay and the profit is enough to cover the cost of testing, so in addition to adjusting the bid a few times, the rest is basically not adjusted.
Now the campaign is in this stage.

3. Data
1). Overall data

The first part is the traffic source data, the middle is the affiliate network data, and the last part is the overall data.
As you can see, fluctuations are the norm, with fluctuations in traffic and fluctuations in offers (reflected by conversions).

2). The best month
September 2021.

Traffic prices are not very high, ROI reached nearly 500%, the initial inference is that the competition is not too hot.

3). The worst month
December 2021.

Because the traffic obtained became very little, and tried to get more traffic by increasing the bid. After raising the bid (average cpm=$3.4, highest cpm=$4.0), the traffic was significantly improved, but the CR did not improve with it, resulting in a loss. If the offer was strong, after raising the bid, the traffic was obtained and the conversion should be there, however, it was not. Traffic fluctuations and offers fluctuations, a double kill, so the overall performance can not go up.

4). Offer

It is a smartlink, so the offers ars not fixed, there will be some changes. This also shows that the ROI has become worse, mostly because of the offers, as this campaign’s whitelist site traffic is relatively stable.

5). Bid
At the very beginning the campaign was out of the average bid, at more than $1, and the bid mode was smart bid. Because the campaign’s roi performance is not bad, in order to get more traffic, the bid was raised several times, $2, $3 and $4. After going to $4, the conversion was there, but the traffic cost was too high, so I started the operation of lowering the bid again. Finally, set at $3, which is 2-3 times higher than the average bid.

4. Summary and thinking
1). Only change is the only constant
Change is fluctuation, fluctuation is change. There are fluctuations in traffic, fluctuations in offers, and weakness in material, only change is the only constant. In this case, the only way to see more accurate results is to stretch the time span. Even in the case of limited budget, it is important to leave enough time for testing and observation time.

2). Look at the long term and not the short
There are only 2 sites in this whitelist, one of which has a relatively small traffic, so these two sites can be considered as one site, which is more convenient for testing traffic. This campaign is not profitable every day, and there are many consecutive days that are loss money. But we know that this site is a whitelist site, is a good site, even if the temporary performance of a few days are not good, there is no need to make it blacklist, can be observed for a period of time, to seize the good station does not let go. Maybe encounter a good offer, it will come back from the valley bottom.

3). Profit is the father of profit
It is said that loss is the mother of profit, do not treat losses as losses, but as costs, as money to buy data, but even if there is a profitable campaign behind, if the profits generated are not enough to cover the money lost in the previous test, then it is easy to fall into the dilemma of the more you go on, the more you lose, and finally lose confidence.
This campaign is profitable from the beginning of its creation, and has accumulated some profits by the time it reaches the front, so when it doesn’t perform well for a certain period of time, it is stable and won’t be rushed to adjust or stop, and it will be a good day again when it passes through that valley stage.
From the negative ROI optimization to positive ROI is very good, but a good father (campaign profits), a birth in Rome, then many things should be easy and much simpler.

PS: The data and conclusions are for this campaign for a specific time period and situation, they do not represent the general situation and are for reference only.