Disclaimer: Please note that this case was provided by one of our clients, and the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of PropellerAds.

The original text of the case study is posted on the ZorbasMedia website.

Ad Format: Push ads

Offer:  Sweepstake (iPhone X)

Campaign period: Mar 01, 2019 – Apr 16, 2019

GEO: Germany

Total spent: $4,889

Total Revenue: $6,734

Net profit: $1,845

ROI: 39%

The offer

YepAds is our longtime partner and friend, and so their managers provide us with the best campaign options. This time they offered us to drive traffic to Germany. It was actually a good sweepstake offer (the prize was iPhone X) with the payout of $2.7. Later the advertiser repeatedly praised the excellent quality of our traffic and increased the payout several times. The total price for conversion rose to $3.5!

Another case study : UEFA Champions League Final + Giveaway (ROI 87%)

The offer, creatives, and landings that we used in the campaign not so important here. This case will show you how to boost your profit significantly by means of cloning campaigns in an advertising network, but first things first.

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The first ad campaigns were launched in March. As it is our habit (and also for simplicity’s sake), we opted for the pay-per-click  (CPC) model. The campaigns got a foothold straight away and started generating profit. The very same creatives had worked well in other GEOs, and so we were not particularly surprised:

We’ve always bought traffic at the recommended price. The sad truth is that push notification campaigns are often not sustainable for the long run. However, we didn’t want to lose the opportunity to get the maximum profit from that offer, and that’s why we decided to launch several CPM campaigns.

We wanted to clarify:

• Will the CTR of ads differ?

• Will the tracking metrics differ?

• What EPC and CPC we would get?

This is the targeting that we used:

Our top creative and text:

Title: Sonderangebot / Special offer

Description: Kostenlose iPhone X / Free iPhone X

Landing page: a standard sweepstake rotating wheel

In regards to CPM campaigns, we were targeting mobile devices only to divide campaigns according to carriers. In this case, the system offers you the best bid, and you don’t pay extra for cheap clicks. We also launched similar CPC campaigns to compare results.

Lifehack: if you drive traffic to some populous European country, especially the one with a large migrant community, then you should adjust your browser language accordingly. Up to 10% of your traffic can turn out to be of Turkish, Arab or Romanian descent. Your advertiser is not looking for such leads (as a rule, they would reject them already at the approval stage).

We used the blacklist of zones compiled from our CPM campaigns, set the budget = $30 and started waiting for the results.

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Helpful articles:

Connection Type and Mobile Carrier Targeting: Why Bother?

Nerd It Out: White and Blacklists for Affiliates

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The results

The outcome was truly surprising. We had never seen such ROI on any of the campaigns:

Here are the statistics for the three CPM campaigns in PropellerAds:

The CTR, however, is far from great.  For instance, here are the statistics for the CPC campaigns for the same day:

The ad clickability is almost twice as high! And now take a look at the day’s performance as it is represented in the tracker:

Nothing particularly impressive.

So, what do we have now? The campaign that was launched in March received an impetus and generates even more profit due to cheaper clicks.

All the campaigns have brought us almost $2000 profit so far.

Answers to questions

Having run a successful test ($100 for pay per lead offers is a decent sum), we can finally answer the questions we raised when creating campaigns:

1)  Will the ads’ CTR differ? 

The difference was almost 100%. It’s uncertain whether it was accidental or not. Right now, we are transferring all our CPC campaigns to the CPM pricing model. It’s a shame that we didn’t think about it before.

2)  Will the tracking metrics differ? 

As regards CTR, the campaigns do not differ much. But this is not the case with CR, as the CPM campaigns converted much better. See for yourself:

More than a month had passed until we returned the CR that the campaign initially had with just two clicks. And now we pay much less for the traffic, and this is evidenced by the CPC indicator in our tracker, which is discussed below.

3)  What EPC and CPC we would get? The numbers speak for themselves:

So, what do we have now? The campaign that was launched in March received an impetus and generates even more profit due to cheaper clicks.

All the campaigns have brought us almost $2000 profit so far. Total costs in PropellerAds:

And a screenshot from the affiliate network:

The Conclusion

To sum up, everything mentioned above:

1. It is possible that right now you can relaunch some long-abandoned campaign and use it to its fullest capacity by switching to CPM;
2. Be sure to test both CPC and CPM, as well as various audiences. It is believed that the algorithms of advertising networks divide the audience according to campaigns with different payout formats. If you save some extra $30 on a test, you can miss a true goldmine;
3. Create several campaigns according to the connection type, such as Wi-Fi and 3G, and carriers. The system will offer you the best bid and the narrowest targeting, thus enabling you to save some part of your advertising budget;
4. Don’t forget to optimize your campaign depending on a platform.

We hope that this article will come in handy for you!

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