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1
 Index

4 TIPS FOR MEDIA BUY BEGINNERS

Wanna begin your Media Buying journey but don’t really know how to start?
Check these 4 essential tips and get on your way to success!
Page 3 - 6

ADULT MOBILE ADNETWORK ANALYSIS

Ad Networks are crucial to Media Buying success! Check the ultimate unbiased
analysis and take your pick!
Page 7 - 17

BEGINNER’S MISTAKES PART 1

Wanna avoid making those dreadful rookie mistakes your friends will tease you
about? Read this Mobidea Academy post so you don’t embarrass yourself!
Page 18 - 23

BEGINNER’S MISTAKES PART 2

There are so many rookie mistakes that can be easily avoided that we had to
come up with a new article! Don’t be a sucker and read up!
Page 24 - 30

CARRIER VS WIFI
Wi-Fi and carrier convert differently. That’s why you should check this Mobidea
Academy post, getting to know how to take advantage of these two sides of the
Traffic Wars!
Page 31 - 35

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 4 Tips for Media Buy Beginners

4 TIPS FOR MEDIA BUY BEGINNERS

Name

Wanna begin your Media Buying journey but don’t really know how to start?
Check these 4 essential tips and get on your way to success!

There are Media Buyers who don’t worry about banners. But you should!
They’re as important as the bid or the targeting – the banners are the first sell-
ing point of the product to the end-user.

Follow these tips and reach the TOP!

Monetizing mobile traffic can be a real challenge. You need logical skills and,

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 4 Tips for Media Buy Beginners

at the same time, you need to trust your experiences and instincts in order to
make the best possible decisions.

However, we’re all making mistakes and it helps us learn lessons, develop, grow
personally and professionally. That’s why we decided to give you a bunch of
successful tips that’ll guide you on your first steps as a Media Buyer:

1 – Select the Ad Network

Your first steps should be about the decision of what you want to promote and
which Ad Network is the one that better fits your needs.

For example, if you have an offer that converts better on a certain mobile oper-
ator, you should work with an Ad Network that works with 3G Carrier Targeting.
If you have a really good product in Thailand, you need to be sure that you se-
lect an adnetwork that has traffic from this country. And so on.

2 – Select the Segment/Target

This is a critical step. When you’re getting started you do not have access to
detailed data. Therefore, your campaign target should be wide enough to cover
the segment you want to launch. Later on, analyze the results, and then start
optimizing and focusing only on the most profitable segments.

The first step to create a campaign is to decide the segment (Country, Operat-

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 4 Tips for Media Buy Beginners

ing System and carrier) in which to work. You may select which one based on
your analysis of their performances. You should cover all segments by invest-
ing in different devices, operating systems, browsers, Languages… You should
then look at the detailed data and adjust the investment in order to get as much
profit as you can. In this step you may begin to detail the segment by stoppingName
non-profitable parameters or adjusting bid and capping.

Do not stick with only one ad-format and try to launch several spots. One spot
can work well for one country but fail for another. If you launch only one spot
and you’re not successful, that doesn’t mean you can’t get money out of that
country. It just shows the tested spot wasn’t a good choice.

3 – Set your Pricing

You need to set the bid and capping for your campaigns on the Ad Network.

You have two options: you can either be more conservative and have more con-
trolled costs or you can be more aggressive, spending more in order to collect
data faster, so you can optimize your campaign faster as well.

This MOBIDEA Academy Article explains the advantages and disadvantages of

each strategy very clearly – click here to read it.

4 – Choose your Banners wisely

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 4 Tips for Media Buy Beginners

There are Media Buyers who don’t worry about banners. But you should!
They’re as important as the bid or the targeting – the banners are the first sell-
ing point of the product to the End-user.

You should be sure about the optimization of your banners – if possible, you
should have 3 to 5 banners rotating. This way you’ll not only have data for all of
them but you’ll also be able to optimize your campaign and get the highest CTR.
If you use fewer banners, you won’t be able to compare performances. If you
use more – you have to spend more time and money to get relevant stats for
the performance analysis of each banner.

If it’s possible, try everything: colors, images, text, layout, lettering, etc. – every-
thing has impact on your campaign’s success! Don’t forget to respect the rules
of both the Adnetwork and the Affiliate Network.

Besides these basic 4 Tips, it’s important to be wary of the progress of your
campaigns. You need to be aware of what’s going on around you in order to
achieve goals and get stable results. In Media Buy, controlling your activity on a
regular basis is as important as having the proper technical skills or the perfect
intuition.

Author: Xavier Santana

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 Adult Mobile AdNetwork Analysis

ADULT MOBILE ADNETWORK ANALYSIS

Name

Ad Networks are crucial to Media Buying success! Check the ultimate unbi-
ased analysis and take your pick!

ExoClick: This is the best and most complete adult ad-network. They provide
you lots of stats and data for you to be able to make the best decision when
optimizing your campaigns.

We know that searching for the best traffic, spot, Ad Network, and so on, can
be a hard task for two reasons: first, because there are lots of choices; second,
because (of course) every one claims to be the best one and sometimes you

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 Adult Mobile AdNetwork Analysis

can’t trust what is said on the forums. Indeed, we never know who’s responsible
for an opinion such as “this Ad Network is the only one Chuck Norris is afraid
of”. Because we care about you, we want to share this impartial analysis of the
biggest ones.

Exoclick: This is the best and more complete adult Ad Network. They provide
you lots of stats and data for you to be able to make the best decision when
optimizing your campaigns. The network is huge. They have some high qual-
ity websites and good volumes in various spots. There are many ways to ex-
plore its traffic and, most importantly, they’ve got one of the mediabuyer’s best
friends: SmartCPM!

VERDICT:

TrafficFactory: This adnetwork only has two websites for mobile: xnxx.com
and xvideos.com. For Desktop they now have also sex.com. However, don’t
even think their volumes are small. In fact, you can spend as much money here
as on Exoclick. TrafficFactory’s worst aspect are the spots: 338×235, 928×244
and 180×1030. You’ll only find them here but, trust me, once you get used to the

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 Adult Mobile AdNetwork Analysis

way the platform works, you’ll think it’s really interesting. In addition, they have
an AdRate to measure your position according to the competition. That’s a mix
of your bid and your CTR. You know what that means? Either work carefully on
your banners or be ready to empty your pockets!
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VERDICT:

Adxpansion: This is one of the largest adult Ad Networks. Every week, they add
new websites that are tested and incorporated on their normal list. On this Ad
Network we can select a list of best-performing websites and create a cam-
paign targeting the listed websites. In particular, we can explore the 300×250,
300×100, 728×90 among others. Even so, the optimization isn’t easy due to the
lack of good statistical tools. There’s also no information about mobile devices
and operating systems available. For several reasons, it’s a tough Ad Network
to work on. With the proper skills, though, you can manage to make a good prof-
it there. Without the proper skills? Well, I don’t know! Try birdwatching.

VERDICT:

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 Adult Mobile AdNetwork Analysis

Ero-advertising: They got experience, knowledge and inventory. The platform

could be more organized and easy to work on but it’s quite acceptable. You have
tons of parameters on the campaign planner as well as targets to explore and
“play” with. The network is also pretty huge and you can blacklist Adspots or
domains, create campaigns for only one website (they call it “CPM campaigns”
and have SmartBid on those) and buy Flats. Get used to Ero-advertising and
you’ll see that green really is the symbol of money!

VERDICT:

Plugrush: This platform lets you select different kinds of targets. Plugrush
shows where your next competitor is and how you should bid to get his traffic.

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 Adult Mobile AdNetwork Analysis

Therefore, nobody can rest assured if she/he wishes to have good results. Here,
you’ll run CPV campaigns in which you pay per visitor. Don’t think that bids with
values such as $0,003 are odd. With the transparency this Ad Network gives
you, you’ll feel like you’re fighting a real war!
Name

VERDICT:

JuicyAds: It’s an award-winning adnetwork that’s well-known in the business

and has good relations with other companies. That’s all great! However, the
same can’t be said of the platform as a whole. Indeed, it’s easier to find bad
aspects rather than great ones. The platform is messy, the network has bad
quality, the stats (the few they actually give you) are hard to analyse. Moreover,
since the platform isn’t mobile-oriented, it doesn’t have any mobile banner traf-
fic. Here’s some positive aspects, though: a) you can block sources; b) even if the
network has bad quality you can target the specific websites you want and they
provide you useful dynamic trackings. As a Mediabuyer, I really only care about
the stats and info displayed. In the case of JuicyAds, though, I appreciate the
fact that they put pictures of the Juicybabes. I know…it may sound shallow…I’m
sorry, but I’m a guy!!

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 Adult Mobile AdNetwork Analysis

VERDICT:

TrafficHunt: Traffic Hunt is a simple ad-network. It works only with a few Pre-
mium websites. Their stats are really useful for you to understand your cam-
paigns’ behaviour! But you won’t have a great margin to implement creativity in
your strategies. There, you can control bids, banner performance and adjust the
bids per website. You know what that means? If you wanna be successful, you
gotta read your stats really fast!

VERDICT:

Adamo: A relatively recent adnetwork (created in early 2014), it offers you both

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 Adult Mobile AdNetwork Analysis

Web and Mobile traffic on Pop, Redirects and Banners. It’s a shame their inven-
tory is so weak for Mobile. In fact, the volumes are really small which means
that, if you’re a Mediabuyer that’s dedicated to Mobile traffic, you won’t find
what you need. But if they just manage to work on that aspect, it’s an adnet-
work to take into consideration. They’re a toddler now, that’s for sure. Let’s Name

hope they start walking and running soon!

VERDICT:

Reporo: Clearly another top player when it comes to purchasing adult traffic.
They have good websites, huge volumes, Banner spots, Popunders, Redirects.
Everything’s great, right? Not really. They don’t have a self-service platform
(only analytical). That means that, in order to launch a new campaign or just
change the bid, target or banners of current ones, you’ll always need to speak
with an Account Manager (it’s not always the same as they split them per re-
gion). And there’s more: you’ll never know in which websites you actually are.
Get used to it! Find the best target for you and you’ll be sure to find your gold
mine!

VERDICT:

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 Adult Mobile AdNetwork Analysis

Popads: This adnetwork is specialized in Internet popunders and popups. It

allows you to set the budget, target the visitors and set frequency caps for each
campaign. It also gives you the opportunity to customize your report. The big
difference in the targeting option, compared to other adnetworks, is the possi-
bility to choose the ISP (Internet Service Provider) for each campaign, instead of
the mobile carrier. Even so, you’ll mainly get carrier traffic. The inventory is real-
ly huge and you can have a lot of impressions in a short period of time. As you
set the target for your campaign, it shows you the traffic estimations you can
get, such as your average position and the maximum price your competitors are
bidding on. The bid is based on a smart bid, just like in other well-known adnet-
works. That means you always pay the minimum price in order to guarantee
your position. Yes, there are only pop-ups and popunders, but, with this name,
what did you expect? Purple pigs saddled on the back of a unicorn? Come on…

VERDICT:

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 Adult Mobile AdNetwork Analysis

Name

TrafficShop: A platform I found a few months ago and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed.
It only has two mobile spots: popunder and skimmed (a specific percentage of
clicks on a website redirects the users to the offers). The volumes aren’t exact-
ly huge but it’s simple to work with and all the important info is there (domain
names, main targeting options, etc.). They’re different than most common ad-
networks when setting your LP URL: you need to first prepare it and then link it
on the campaign editor. They also set the bid differently because you don’t set
the value on your own. Instead, you scale up the positions (and they’ll automat-
ically insert the bid needed). They also offer you IP ranges which is not common.
Yes, they’re different, but not Goofy-style different and we appreciate that!

VERDICT:

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 Adult Mobile AdNetwork Analysis

TrafficJunky: Mindgeek big-sharks’ adnetwork. First of all, we gotta thank them

for changing their platform. The one that’s live now is pretty interesting and
far better than the old version. The campaign creator is simple, clear and has
useful features. I like the interesting fact that they show you the dynamic track-
ings when you put your URL cause normally you need to go the Help Section or
explore the website. Regarding the banners, you can use jpg, gif, png, iframes
or Rich Media. You can use your banner bank or upload them directly with the
browsing option. They’re not perfect, though: their low point rears its ugly head
when you take a swing at spot selection. Indeed, they only let you promote on
their network. You can pick a specific site or create a RON campaign. But, then,
they make it all better with a hell of a high point: the fact that you can see the
targeting and the bids of the other advertisers. In conclusion, except for some
few low points, TJ has become pretty good after the recent changes. With this
new version, there’s more to Mindgeek than their amazing home-cinema!

VERDICT:

Etology: If you’re looking for good mobile traffic sources, Etology is honestly
the one to avoid. The volumes are really low, the quality is not worth it and they

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 Adult Mobile AdNetwork Analysis

don’t have a platform for you to manage your campaigns or even check your
stats (you have to ask them from your AM). As you probably know, this is a mas-
sive fault for Mediabuyers. On a personal level, I had a really hard time getting
in touch with them. Nonetheless, since it’s a fresh new company (created by
people with experience in the industry), I’m pretty sure those issues will be Name

dealt with. “Every problem is a gift; without problems we would not grow.” Yeah,
I know some cool quotes. I didn’t even Google this. I swear.

VERDICT:

Author: Xavier Santana

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 Beginner’s Mistakes PART 1

BEGINNER’S MISTAKES PART 1

Wanna avoid making those dreadful rookie mistakes your friends will tease
you about? Read this Mobidea Academy post so you don’t embarrass your-
self!

After optimizing, give your traffic a few days to work, letting your performance
adapt to changes. Remember the time in which you made a change and what
was it that influenced your performance.

Mistakes are part of life. Every day, we make mistakes that help us learn tough
lessons, develop our senses and grow, both personally and professionally. Of

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 Beginner’s Mistakes PART 1

course, we’d all prefer not being caught by the same trap that caught other peo-
ple. That’s why it’s good to learn from their errors before wasting our time deal-
ing with the consequences. Here’s a list of common mistakes that mediabuy
beginners should try to avoid in order to be successful:
Name

Start slowly – You cannot embrace the boundless, so don’t try to be every-
where and cover every segment at the beginning. Just choose one or two coun-
tries with the right targeting and explore them fully. Try to become an expert
on a given country, understanding what influences fluctuations in your profit
and, most importantly, when you’ll be comfortable managing it. When you’re
comfortable you can then move on and explore other countries. Remember: at
the beginning, your main goal is getting used to the platform, its traffic and the
whole optimization process.

Choose easy countries – Opt for stable countries with a big amount of traffic
and small payouts. By doing this, you can gather statistics faster and won’t lose
a lot of money. Moreover, you can understand traffic behaviour more easily, so
you don’t take any avoidable risks!

Launch several spots – Don’t stick with only one ad-format. One spot can work
well for one country but fail in another. If you launch only one spot and you’re
not successful, that doesn’t mean that you can’t get money from that country. It
may simply show that spot was picked wrongly for testing purposes. That’s why
I’d suggest you start with 2 to 3 spots. This way, you’ll be able to test a country,
getting a clear sense of its true potential.

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 Beginner’s Mistakes PART 1

Learn to wait – Don’t get crazy with optimization! When you launch the cam-
paign it will most likely not be profitable at the beginning. You’ll be losing mon-
ey, your heart won’t stand it, and you’ll have an urge to change lots of things as
quickly as possible. Please, don’t do it! Wait! Bear in mind that this is a very im-
portant stage. You’re gathering stats. The important thing is not to panic and to
avoid making changes within the first 3 to 5 days (this all depends on the actual
amount of traffic you have). You need to have relevant stats in order to evalu-
ate the traffic’s behaviour. If you don’t, you may risk making changes without
considering delayed conversions, low-performance hours, or even days. Have
patience. You need to bear the idea of “losing money”. Of course you don’t need
to take patience too far: if you see that all your money was “eaten” by a “bad”
website, or a non-convertible banner, just do the right thing and cut it.

Don’t optimize too often – After optimizing, give your traffic a few days to
work, letting your performance adapt to changes. Remember the time in which
you made a change and what was it that influenced your performance. Here’s a
cool tip: always write what you’ve changed on which day (bid, capping, banner,
etc.). Then, a couple of days after, check the impact of that particular change.
Did the volume increase? Is the performance better? So on and so forth. By
writing your notes you’ll have a clear picture of what can be impacted by what.
It’s important for you to be organized; to choose the correct period, and the
tools for further optimization.

Don’t change everything possible at the same time – When you make some
strategic changes (like changing of bid/cap/banner/targeting) you need to

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 Beginner’s Mistakes PART 1

understand what influenced your performance. That’s why you should always
wait after making a change. You need to take time to understand the impact of
each alteration you make. This way, if anything impacts your performance neg-
atively, you can always go back. On the other hand, if you find the changes made
Name
have been positive, you can keep optimizing. Never forget: when you’re optimiz-
ing a campaign, you can never make the mistake of considering each parameter
individually; you need to know that one small change can have an impact on
everything. For example: if, on one campaign, you see that all your websites are
negative, the problem cannot be here. Perhaps you’re bidding too high, or you’re
purchasing traffic on an OS that is damaging your campaign. If you attempt to
correct one of these issues, you’ll find you can make your websites more profit-
able.

Don’t use Daily Max Budget at the beginning – I understand you want to con-
trol your costs and you don’t want to spend too big an amount. However, you
should keep your campaign running for a whole day, at least for you to get valu-
able info. If you don’t do this, you’ll risk missing the best hours or simply running
only for three or four hours. By choosing to act like this, you’ll waste a chance of
knowing whether or not the campaign’s offer or targeting is any good.

The golden mean of banners – If you’re working with banners, choose 3 to 5 of

them for one campaign. If you use fewer, you won’t be able to compare perfor-
mances. If you use more, you have to spend more time and money to get rele-
vant stats for each banner’s performance analysis.

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 Beginner’s Mistakes PART 1

Split campaigns based on targeting with different performance – Let’s imag-

ine that you’re working on an ad-network which allows you to split traffic by
carrier. For example, the carrier X has an eCPM of 15€ and the carrier Y has 7€
and both seem reasonable to work with. If the volume is good enough, you
should try splitting campaigns by carriers, because the competition for these
two carriers will be different. For the carrier with 15€ eCPM, advertisers will
tend to bid higher than the one of 7€. Simple, right? Basically, if you launch only
one campaign for both carriers, there will be two consequences: a) you’ll re-
ceive less quality traffic and have a much lower performance than you might
have with a slightly higher bid for carrier X; b) you could receive good quality
traffic, but be forced to pay so much for it that it gets unprofitable. That’s why
your strategy should be different, taking the two different carriers into consid-
eration. For X, one bid must be increased; for Y, it should be decreased. How do
you get to know this? You got it! You split the campaign.

Consider the average payout of a segment – When optimizing, it’s very import-
ant that you always keep the average payout of the offers you’re promoting in
mind. For example, when you optimize, if you have a website that’s spending 7€
without any conversion, your next step will be different according to the payout.
If you’re active on a country where the payouts are big (10€ for example), you
should let this website run since you only need one conversion to have a pos-
itive result. If you’re on a country with low payouts (0.50€), this is definitely a
website to blacklist. I used the example of websites but it’s applicable to almost
all the campaign parameters (device, OS, banner, etc.)

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 Beginner’s Mistakes PART 1

I hope these tips will help you be more organized and save you some money
and time. I want you to learn from everyone’s mistakes, making sure you’re
playing the mediabuy game as it’s meant to be played. Good luck getting
enough strength to stack that green paper!
Name

Author: Elena Rudneva

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 Beginner’s Mistakes PART 2

BEGINNER’S MISTAKES PART 2

There are so many rookie mistakes that can be easily avoided that we had to
come up with a new article! Don’t be a sucker and read up!

Your top campaigns are the core of your business volume, so you should check
them on a daily basis, constantly monitoring their behaviour.

After creating the article, “Beginner’s Mistakes – A Danger Foreseen is

Half-Avoided”, we felt that we should definitely go back to the subject as soon
as possible. That’s why we came up with another list that’s gonna give you even
more advanced tips! Ready? Here are 10 things you should bear in mind if you

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 Beginner’s Mistakes PART 2

wanna have better results in this business:

Learn as much as possible about the business – Before you start your Media
Buying adventure, you should understand the basics of the business. It’s crucial
that you fully grasp the whole process – from the offers side, to the networks Name
side, as well as what the job actually entails on a daily basis. This will ensure
that you can understand variations on your campaigns and how to do the ba-
sics of this business. I advise you to check forums, read other Mobidea Academy
articles and also talk to your Account Manager, since he can explain things you
might not be able to understand. Sometimes, it can get stressful when a Me-
dia Buyer doesn’t understand why the performance of a specific carrier went
down on all the CPA networks. In those moments, you’ll wonder whether or not
they’re all working together. Rest assured: they’re not. What happened is sim-
ple: you may have forgotten that the carriers set the rules of the billing flow
that will impact all the actors. Those questions and mortifying doubts will al-
ways be easily solved if you trust the expertise of your Affiliate Manager.

Don’t just randomly change your bid – When optimizing a campaign, one of the
most important things is the bid, so you must be aware of the influence it will
have on your campaign’s performance/behaviour. In order to know the bid, you
should use ratios such as eCPM, which is your revenue per 1000 impressions.
This way, you’ll be able to change your bid, knowing how much you can afford
to pay before starting to lose. Here’s how it works: in case you have a really high
bid but a low eCPM, you should consider lowering your bid to the eCPM value
of that campaign; if you have a low bid and your eCPM is high, you should raise

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 Beginner’s Mistakes PART 2

your bid to eCPM, or a little bit higher if you’re using SmartCPM. In conclusion,
you can put a bid higher than your eCPM because, when using SmartCPM, you’ll
be paying a dynamic CPM based on the bid below you. This means that, for
example, having an eCPM of 0.45 and putting a bid of 0.5 doesn’t always mean
you’ll be paying more than your eCPM. This metric is really important for you to
have an idea of the bid you can set, as opposed to just trying to guess.

Don’t be afraid to split campaigns – Sometimes, you’ll see that you have a
main parameter which is bringing a huge slice of your campaign’s traffic (for ex-
ample, a browser like Chrome), but it’s having a very bad performance with low
eCPM when compared to the other parameters. In these cases, you shouldn’t
be afraid to remove from one campaign and put in another just for that param-
eter and adjust the bid according to the eCPM of that particular browser. This
way, you’ll be able to set the target for those differently performing categories.
Moreover, if that bad parameter really continues to go downhill, you can then
stop it, knowing there surely wasn’t anything hidden left to explore. Be careful,
though: don’t separate too many campaigns because it’ll increase your work-
load, therefore reducing your productivity.

Keep an eye on higher bid campaigns – If you have some campaigns with a
very high bid, you have to be twice as careful about them. Imagine that you have
a campaign with a bid above 2 or 3 and that you don’t check it very often. Now,
for example, imagine that a competitor enters that segment and puts a bid of
1.5. What happens? You’ll be able to see you’ll start paying a lot more, eventu-
ally beginning to lose money very quickly. In order for you to avoid having to go

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 Beginner’s Mistakes PART 2

through this, you have to be extremely careful with campaigns with bids that
are a lot higher than your eCPM.

Always check your top campaigns – Your top campaigns are the core of your
business volume, so you should check them on a daily basis, constantly moni-Name
toring their behaviour. Beware: I’m not advising you to optimize them on a daily
basis like crazy – I’m only saying that you should be alert to changes such as
new competition, or changes in ranking/position. If none of these examples
manages to describe the sort of variations you’re experiencing, check if your
costs and impressions remain the same. If they do, and you notice your rev-
enues have dropped a lot, you can ask the Offers Team if there was a drop in
the offer side or any technical problem that’s not allowing you to optimize your
campaigns in a thorough, competent way.

Pay attention to how long you’ve been losing money – I understand that it
may be difficult for you to stop campaigns since there’s always a hope that
they’ll start converting. Nonetheless, you should quash those fears and check
if you had conversions in the last few weeks. In special cases, such as low cost
campaigns, you should also check one month or further into the past in order
to ascertain what’s going on. If you’re having a good amount of conversions but
you’re still negative, you should optimize both your targeting and bid. In case
you don’t have conversions or only very few, you should stop the campaign
even if it’s losing cents per day because, overall, you might be losing a lot of
money.

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 Beginner’s Mistakes PART 2

Test your blacklist – Media Buyers such as myself are used to optimize and cut
parameters, reducing costs without cutting revenues. However, I sometimes
forget that what wasn’t performing well some weeks or months ago might be
working now. If you see that – for a consistent period of time – the general per-
formance is increasing for a specific targeting like carrier/country, you should
think about testing your campaign’s blacklists once again. For example, imag-
ine that you cut some bad websites at the beginning of the month. At the time,
it might have been because they were performing poorly and you had a bad
campaign. After a month or more, you know you haven’t had information about
those websites in a long time and that you should test them again, so you can
create a campaign apart just to test the performance of those websites in the
present. If you do this, you may be surprised: maybe you have been missing out
on some good websites or devices!

Getting good profit margins? Think about increasing capping – When you’re
having good margin rates such as 100% daily, you should definitely think about
increasing your capping. This obviously applies to campaigns where you’re in
the 1st position and you should never do it in low position campaigns because
you’re not getting the best traffic, which means you’ll get a higher number of
bad quality impressions. Remember: capping is the number of times your ads
will appear to a specific IP within a set period of time. If you’re constantly get-
ting high revenue margins in the 1st position, with capping of 1, it’s in your best
interest to show your ads more than just that one time in that period of time.
Why? Because you wanna generate higher profits, of course!

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 Beginner’s Mistakes PART 2

Expand your horizons – Knowledge comes from experience. In fact, as you

start working with a specific country on a network, you might reach a level
where you just can’t expand any more. The network has simply given you all it
could give. What should you do, then? Don’t be stuck with that adnetwork and
try the same targeting you already have – and are certain works – on differentName
networks. In the Mobidea Academy, there are articles in which you’ll find expla-
nations and tips on how to work on different adnetworks. Never get stuck with
your comfortable daily network and try a bunch of other ones!

Don’t forget to optimize banners – As you know, banners are the first step of
your campaigns. Indeed, they’re the first thing that appears to the users of a
website, so you must not forget them when optimizing. Always check their per-
formance based on eCPA (cost per acquisition). If they are all even in terms of
eCPA, try checking their CTR, which is the Click Through Rate, a rate which gives
you the percentage of clicks compared to impressions. In addition, you should
change the ones with the lowest CTR. Another thing that can help you is to cre-
ate a compilation of the best and worst banners. By doing this, you get to know
which ones are performing better and which ones you shouldn’t be using at all.
You also shouldn’t forget to test new types of banners from time to time (dif-
ferent colours, layouts, images, etc.) always respecting the restrictions of the
country and carrier you’re working on!

Once again, I hope this article will help you reach a higher level and increase
your productivity. From my experience, I can guarantee these tips work won-
ders!

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 Beginner’s Mistakes PART 2

These tips are basic daily actions performed by our Media Buying Team on a
regular basis. They help us control our campaigns, making sure our business
grows every day!

Author: André Beato

30
 Carrier vs Wifi

CARRIER VS WIFI

Name

Wi-Fi and carrier convert differently. That’s why you should check this Mo-
bidea Academy post, getting to know how to take advantage of these two
sides of the Traffic Wars!

The most logical benefit of the carrier connection is that you can use it every-
where on your phone/tablet and even on some laptops as long as your mobile
carrier provides internet.

Carrier traffic and Wifi. We hear these words almost every day. They’ve become
part of our vocabulary and are connected to our modern life. However, most

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 Carrier vs Wifi

of us don’t even think about what these terms really mean. For instance, what
are the advantages of each one? What are the differences that separate them?
Today, we’ll take a quick look at some of the differences, advantages and disad-
vantages of both from a user’s and an online marketer’s point of view.

User’s point of view

The most logical benefit of the carrier connection is that you can use it every-
where on your phone/tablet and even on some laptops as long as your mobile
carrier provides internet. The signal is coming from the cell tower of the mobile
operator and that’s why it covers a huge area. The disadvantages are also quite
clear: you usually have to pay your mobile operator extra in order to use this
service. Moreover, carrier connection is normally slower than Wifi, so it would
be difficult to actually work with it and process heavy data. Even so, it’s widely
used for logging on social networks, checking your mails, GPS and searching.

What about Wifi? Let’s start with the disadvantages. First, Wifi is provided by
local hotspots. This means the signal is weaker and you can only get it within
a certain area. Secondly, Wifi is more prone to attacks from hackers, especial-
ly because they can access your data in public spaces. As for the advantages,
they’re quite clear. First, the connection is much faster. Secondly, if you use
public spots, you won’t have to worry about spending money.

Online marketer’s point of view

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 Carrier vs Wifi

As a mediabuyer, you need to understand that Wifi and carrier traffic convert
in a different way. You should keep this difference in mind when you’re buying
traffic, especially on adnetworks that can’t split carrier and Wifi.

The first thing you need to take into account is that carrier traffic usually con- Name
verts more easily and better than Wifi because of the carrier connection’s bill-
ing solution. Lots of carrier offers have direct billing option which means users
are charged directly from the balance of their mobile phone after confirming
they’ve acquired the service. Wifi, however, doesn’t have the user’s billing data.
That’s why another step appears in order for the user to subscribe. The step will
require the user to introduce his billing data and either a phone number or his
credit card details. With Wifi, you’ll notice that both your eCPM and conversion
rates will drop. That’s the reason why, even in the same country, you’ll notice
that the eCPM for the operator traffic is usually much higher than for Wifi.

Moreover, different operators in one country can convert in a different way.

Here’s Mobidea’s global eCPMs for Portugal (the 11th of December 2015): MEO –
98€, Vodafone – 32€, NOS – 18€, Wifi – 1.3€. The explanation for this is simple:
we might have different offers with different payouts, performance, and con-
version rates, depending on operators (and their rules).

We usually try buying carrier traffic first. Why? Because the eCPMs are much
higher and, therefore, there’s a better chance of making a great margin. Due to
the fact that the conversion rate is higher, you can make decisions based on rel-
evant stats with lower volume. However, there’s a catch: because there are lots

33
 Carrier vs Wifi

of people competing for this traffic, the traffic prices rise high. What does that
mean? It means you gotta bid high in order to get a good volume. That’s risky
because it can force you to spend a whole lotta money really fast, especially in
countries which have huge volumes.

It’s a fact that media buyers tend to work with carrier. Even so, that doesn’t
mean there’s no money on Wifi. Remember: Wifi is cheap. That’s a huge advan-
tage because, even if the eCPM of the offer seems much lower, there are some
countries where you can make a profit with the huge volume of Wifi traffic.
Another advantage is that there’s almost no competition for Wifi traffic, so you
won’t need to fight a losing battle to get volume for a reasonable price (more-
over, most of the remnant traffic found on adnetworks is Wifi).

Check these mediabuy tips that are gonna help you work with carrier traffic and
Wifi in different adnetworks.

If you work with adnetworks that can’t split carrier traffic and Wifi, you
should pick one of these options in order to be profitable:

1. Choose to invest in countries in which the profit from carrier traffic compen-
sates the overall spending on traffic (including Wifi).
2. Choose countries in which Wifi and carrier have a similar performance.

If you work on adnetworks in which you can split traffic, here’s my tips:

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 Carrier vs Wifi

1. Create only carrier campaigns. If the eCPMs within operators of an affiliate

network do not vary a lot you can launch a campaign for all the carrier traffic
together. If you see a big difference in eCPMs, I suggest you split your cam-
paigns by operator. This is the only way for you to adjust your bid according to
carrier and performance. Name

2. If you think Wifi is worth testing in a specific country, I advise you to create
separate Wifi campaigns. That way, you can make your bid be much lower than
it was for carrier traffic. This is how your bids will start corresponding to the
profit you’re expecting to make.

Tip: Remember that the device and OS performances can also be related with
the carrier. For example, if I have a campaign for all carriers of one given coun-
try put together (Russia – Beeline + Megafon + MTS + Tele2), my overall perfor-
mance for iOS (for example) may be bad, even though it can be great for Beeline
in particular. Moreover, it can also be awful for the other three carriers men-
tioned in the example. That’s why it’s important to split.

In order to be a successful mediabuyer, you need to select your traffic carefully

but never forget: even though the approach may be different, there’s enormous
potential in both carrier traffic and Wifi.

Hope you can use these tips on your way to mediabuy glory. Cheers!

Author: Elena Rudneva

35
To all you Media Buying beginners, we know this isn’t a walk
in the park but an ongoing effort to success. You can always
count on Mobidea to keep you up to date with juicy content and
give you all the right tools to succeed in the mobile affiliation
world. Make sure you subscribe to the Mobidea Academy and
remember that, even though the future can seem far away, it is
actually beginning right now.

Want to know more about Mobidea? Check it out here.