I barely did any optimization on the images, I only got rid of the ones that were having the worst CTR, like the worst 10% and that equated to like 2 or 3 images on each campaign. I also submitted 37 creatives for each campaign and all but one creative was approved in every campaign.

My conversion ratio on the original campaign has tanked. I’m contributing that to the other two campaigns. I also wasn’t getting much traffic on it at 40c and raised it to 45c on Friday and 50c on Saturday.

The campaign targeting Login Count ≤ 50 wasn’t getting any traffic so I jumped the bid to 50c on Friday and 60c on Saturday and I’m still not hitting my campaign budget of $20 per day. I have a feeling that there’s not a lot of traffic here because users who are new to POF might not know of the iPhone app just yet, but I’m only guessing.

The campaign targeting Session Depth ≤ 20 was getting plenty of traffic, but I jumped it to 45c on Friday since I bumped everything else and then knocked it back down to 40c on Saturday. I was able to spend most of that $20 budget every day. I’m pretty sure by playing with my bid on this campaign and optimizing the creatives, I could get this profitable.

Plans for this coming weekend are to create a campaign that combines Session Depth ≤ 20 and Login Count ≤ 50. I also want to scale the campaign on Login Count to 50 – 100 and 100 – 150 to see how they perform.

Just so you guys know I’m more about testing out things and seeing how different targeting combo’s work on WAP traffic and not necessarily going for a profit. I’m just trying to find out what works and what doesn’t.

Last weekend saw the final phase of my case study using POF’s conversion tracking to help turn a campaign profitable. Unfortunately, Phase 1 provided some skewed results because I tried to split $500 in testing between men and women and I only was able to spend $250 testing each gender. Simply put, that wasn’t enough and I realized it after analyzing the results. But, I took what data I had and went with it. Since I learned that $250 wasn’t enough testing, I decided to test the results of only the male gender because they provided the most statistically significant results. The campaigns didn’t lose as much money as the first round and none of the campaigns were profitable, but I’ll explain why it was my fault and what you can try to turn a similar campaign profitable.

Targeting Criteria: Body Type – Average

Analysis: On my previous case study an average body type showed a conversion rate of 5.56% which was higher than average for the entire campaign in the testing phase. On this final phase these numbers held true and the conversion ratio even increased a bit. This campaign had the second most amount of traffic. The CTR was the highest of any of the other campaigns. If you were going to start a campaign, I would definitely include this targeting criteria in your campaign.

Targeting Criteria: Drinking Habits – Socially

Analysis: When I did my original test campaign, this criteria converted right at the same percentage as the overall campaign.  In this second go round, it didn’t fare so well and performed well under what I expected to.  This target criteria by far had the most amount of traffic available.

Targeting Criteria: Education Level – Bachelors Degree

Analysis: This target criteria performed the best in the initial testing stage converting at 7.61%, but it only had 7 conversions.  I had high hopes for this campaign and a little bit of worry because I wasn’t sure if the conversion ratio was a fluke.  And as you can the conversion ratio didn’t perform as well as I had hoped.  After the testing, it converted just under the average ratio for the campaign.  I’m also pretty sure the target demographic for this criteria is pretty small, hence the CTR dying out on all my images really quickly and most images not even being clicked on after a few thousand impressions.

Targeting Criteria: Income – $35,001 – $50,000

Analysis: This is another target criteria that was pretty risky.  In my initial tests it only had 7 conversions, but it converted at 5.22%, well above the campaign average.  After sending a fair amount of traffic to it, it converted even better than in my initial tests.  The only thing holding this campaign back from being profitable was the CTR.  I struggled with CTR in this campaign for a reason unknown to me.  I used what I thought were some of my best images at this campaign without any luck.  So if you know you have some images with really good CTR, this is something you might want to build into your next campaign.

Targeting Criteria: Search Type – Long-term

Analysis: This criteria converted right at the campaign average and I wanted a fifth criteria to test so I threw it in there.  Unfortunately, the campaign didn’t convert nearly as well as it did in my initial tests, which could be contributed to it only having 6 conversions.  These users seemed to be pretty click happy as it had the second best CTR of all the campaigns, they just didn’t convert nearly well enough.

Final Thoughts

The day after the campaign I received an email from Convert2Media that informed me the payout for Singlesnet 25+ was raised to 4.50. So you can take all the revenue figures here and increase them by 12.5%. It still doesn’t make any campaign profitable, but it definitely helps out quite a bit.

It would really help if Plenty of Fish could include the estimated number of people in our target demographics to give us an idea of how long we can expect our images to last before the users succumb to banner blindness.

One of my biggest problems with these final campaigns was choosing the correct images.  When I was running these campaigns I had numerous other campaigns I was working on so it was tough to keep an eye on these campaigns, even while using Mr. Green‘s POF Tool to upload new images throughout the campaign’s livelihood.  If you can keep your CTR up on your campaigns you will be way closer to profitability than I was.  I also have to fault myself for not split testing images.  I rarely ever do this and is one thing I need to severely address.  I’ve done this a few other times and I do know that images to play a role in the conversion rates.

There are a number of things you can take away from this case study.  By looking at the numbers above you can clearly see two targeting criteria that convert better than others, so try building those into your campaigns.  Maybe you can even combine the criteria and see how they perform together, but that will limit the amount of traffic you can get it.  Or you can do it the other way and exclude poor performing criteria from your campaigns.

If you use any of the tips I mentioned here and don’t mind sharing in the comments below how it turned out for you, please do!

Here recently I finally took part in my first media buy and I ended up losing my $250 because of the mistakes I made.  I was all dreamy-eyed because it was my first media buy and it ended up costing me my entire investment because of it.  You live and you learn.  Thankfully, it wasn’t an expensive buy and I will chalk it up as a $250 lesson learned in media buying.

I was wanting to promote a niche dating site and I thought I had found the perfect site to contact for a direct buy. After a few back and forths with the domain owner and we agreed on a flat fee of $250 for a 30-day long run of the site. I was going to share the banner inventory with another banner, so I would see half the site’s traffic. When I asked how much traffic his site received, he told me, “[Sitename].com gets around 3000 unique visitors per day.” and “The site gets around 300000-350000 impressions on average monthly.” After my 30 days was up, I ended up getting a total of 17,398 impressions, resulting in 86 clicks and 0 conversions. I have run this offer for well over a year now and the average conversion rate I see is 12-18%.

So here’s my $250 worth of media buying advice to anybody who is about to do their first buy.

1. Check the demographics of the site you’re interested in buying banner inventory on. Use Quantcast, Compete or your favorite demographic website. Even these results will not be perfect. Your best bet is to ask for a media kit, if one is available.  Make sure the demographics match what works best for your offer.
2. Whenever you ask for the amount of traffic a site has, ALWAYS ask for proof of this.  Check the website’s source code, see if they’re using any type of analytics tool, such as Google Analytics.  Ask for a report of the last 30 days worth of traffic, at least.
3. When scouring the details of this traffic report you just asked for, see if you can determine where his traffic comes from. Is it type-in traffic or is it from organic search results?  If it’s a bunch of type-in traffic, you can probably bet that your target audience will develop banner blindness quicker.
4. While you’re still analyzing that report, check which countries this traffic is coming from.  You better make sure the traffic comes from a country that your offer allows!
5. Finally, do some math to find out how many conversions you will need to be profitable.  If it was a flat-fee per month, it’s easy to figureo out what it will take to be profitable.  If it’s a CPM buy, calculate how many conversions you will need per thousand impressions to be profitable.  Using data from other traffic sources, about how many clicks does that translate too?  Using that information, what CTR should you be expecting?  How do these figures relate to other traffic sources you’ve tested?  Does it seem realistic that you might be profitable?  I hope so!

P.S. Yes I’m a fucking idiot for not doing proper research. Thanks for noticing. =)

The real post is here.

I’ve noticed on Plenty of Fish that my impression numbers do not change much, regardless of whether I bid the minimum CPM or a much higher CPM.  So, I’ve decided to do a public case study on Plenty of Fish so we can all see if it matters and how much.  The only thing I will be split testing is my CPM bid.  I will bid 15c, 25c, 35c and 45c.

With some affiliates experiencing problems getting blacklisted from offers they promote on Plenty of Fish, I’ve decided to promote a dating offer where the quality isn’t expected to be top notch in the first place.  With this in mind, I’ve picked the Singlesnet offer on Profit Kings Media that accepts traffic from users that are 21 – 24 years of age.

I will only be using one ad copy.  The ad title will be: Single Available Women and the description will be:  There are 986 sexy, single women online in {state:default}. Sign up and meet them today!  The {state:default} will be replaced by the users state they registered in, so it will look more customized for them.

I will be targeting males in the United States that are 21 – 24 and are single, divorced, widowed or separated.

I’ve picked 6 random images from Justin Dupre’s image pack that he released on his blog.  The ones I’ve choosen are below.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

I will be automating the creation of these ads using Mr. Green‘s Plenty of Fish Ad Uploader.  I suggest you buy a copy today!

I will report back next week on the numbers.