Mobile Traffic Case Study: ROI 190% with Social Bar by Adsterra

• Traffic type: Adsterra Social Bar
• Offer: Mainstream Utility
• Time period: 22.06-04.07.2020
• Geo: IN
• Spendings: $421
• Earnings: $1223
• Pure income: $802
• ROI: 190%

Hi everyone! In this case study, I’m gonna show you the benefits of a new ad format - Social Bar by Adsterra, which I recently had a chance to test. Also, expect some hot tips and tricks to make this ad format your next best gainful tool. It’s going to be quite a detailed study, so prepare for some long read :) Let’s start!

Geo, offer and traffic source selection

I chose the offer from the N website and decided to send IN traffic. On Adsterra website you may see the verticals with proven high performance for Social Bar:

• for mobile: utilities, binary, gambling, dating offers;
• for desktop: software, dating, addon offers.

The selected offer is a SOI utility paid $0.07 per install (CPA).

The offer’s KPI:  Install > Registration % must be 12-15%, Registration > Transaction must be > 50% 

Screenshot of the final landing page:

The Strategy

I’ve started with SSP-platform and chose the CPC model. In my opinion, it’s the best option to work on with a new ad format. During the tests I figured out CPC works better than CPV, but anyway I strongly recommend you do your own tests to make sure the offer works well for you.

Since this offer targets mobile devices, I blacklisted all the versions of Android OS, which are too old to download the app. There are tons of cheap IN traffic, thus I decided to set min price - $0.001 per click.

A little hint: target Hindi language - most of the Indian population speak it. Also, you can make one more campaign with the English language target set and compare the performance of the two campaigns later.

Creatives

Let’s take a closer look at the Social Bar. It is an In-Page Push notification that can be mistaken for a system one. Forewarning: misleading creatives with virus alerts are strictly forbidden! You need to find something less aggressive but motivating. By the way, my creatives were approved on a second try because I’ve selected rather aggressive creatives at first.

Let’s start from the pre-landing page. Everything here is quite typical: instead of virus alert, we put something like “Your phone’s memory is full of files not in use. To improve your phone performance and to save your battery charge please download our utility/cleaner/antivirus”. Believe me, it’s more than enough.

Add sound and gleaming call to action to make your preland more flamboyant and potent. My previous campaigns gained performance points when I added an alert on the preland.

The next step is purchasing a domain. I’ve got the one having “androidbooster” in the domain’s URL. As better and more clear the domain name is - as higher the CR. No one would click on the “Download” button if you’d have a domain name made of numbers or a messy set of numbers and letters.

That’s how my preland looked like:

As you can see it is an ordinary preland describing the benefits of installing the utility. It’s important to make the description logical and consequential so the banner and preland look trusted and engaging enough for an upcoming install.

All the prelands which look like system notification would work out for you, but it’s important not to push it too far. here are some preland examples suitable for utilities, VPN and antivirus offers:

And so on. Remember: the contents of the banner, pre-landing, and final landing should be logically connected. Mind your creatives being as less aggressive as possible.

The next step is to create a notification. I used the images connected to the preland to avoid a possible misunderstanding from the user’s side at the very beginning. You can see an example of my Social Bar below:

The approach is the same as for push ads: finding a proper title and description to attract the user’s attention and to provoke him to click on the banner, and adding motivational creatives to make a sense of the process’  importance and serve as another motivation for the click.

It is essential to follow the rules of the platform and don’t put the logo of Android, Google, etc. since your campaign might be declined because of it, and you’ll have to look for new creatives.

My advice is to work hard on title and description. For instance, in India people in each state speak several languages. To cover all the India launch two campaigns - one in English and another in Hindi.

I’ve spent some quality time trying out various combinations and eventually settled upon following:

TITLE:

आपका फोन धीमा हो सकता है

Your phone might work slow

HEADER:

बैटरी समय बचाओ

Save your battery time

DESCRIPTION: 

नए एंटीवायरस मुफ्त में

New free antivirus

This combination will be a 100% catch! Everyone hates when the battery goes down and the phone is slow.

Don’t scare the user too much. Remember: aggressive mislead creatives are forbidden for Social Bar as well!

Optimization

Step 1 (Setting limits)

I underestimated Social Bar, and it was my first mistake. I thought it’s something similar to PropellerAds’ In-Page Push ads, but fortunately, it turned out to be one of the most effective ways to send traffic.

ALWAYS set campaign limits for ad formats like this one. During the first day, I received an incredible 30.000 clicks! it’s a bit too much for the start. Luckily the bid was low and I’ve spent around $30 only. I decided to set a $40 daily limit to spread my budget on several days.

Step 2 (Blacklisting placements)

Always blacklist low-performing placements! Use the tracker and permanently blacklist isps of Amazon, Digital Ocean, etc. Thus you’ll save yourself from bot traffic, fraud, and other “joie de vivre”.

Step 3 (Changing creatives)

If during the test you’ll see some low performing creatives, whatever the reason is, don’t hesitate and change it! Whether it is a banner or a preland, put an extra effort to look for new solutions! I’ve tested around 10 creatives to find the ones with proper performance. For instance, pics with changed Android/Google names described above would work great for Android utilities.

Post-optimization

Eventually, we have the following targeting: Android ver. 4.1 and later, CPC pricing type, mainstream, mobile, IN, $40 daily budget limit, Hindi language.

Screenshot of the final campaign settings:

Results

Screenshot from Adsterra:

Total spent at Adsterra for all the days of the test: $421

Screenshot from the tracker:

• Total earnings: $1223
• Income: $1223 - $421 = $802
• ROI: 190%

Conclusion

In this case study I described some benefits of a new ad format. I just fell in love with Social Bar, and I want more! Feeling myself like a toddler in a toy store - such a broad variety of various creatives combinations is a pure joy! Besides, it has a direct influence on an ad campaign’ results - I’ve never expected such blasting results from the very first test campaign.

The result depends directly on your craft and imagination. Boldly choose utilities for countries recommended by Adsterra and launch the traffic stream while the competitors are yet looking another way.

In my next case study I’ll tell you about managed Social Bar campaigns and why crossing the gross baseline of $100 is just essential. See you soon!

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