$12k media buy, fair?

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Spades

Spades

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Not going to out the ad network but just curious if $1.30 CPM is fair on a $12k buy (which is small in terms of media buys, i know.)

It's all relatively new to me and I'm just trying to make sure I'm not getting screwed on the deal. There is an out clause, if for any reason the traffic doesn't end up backing out I do have the freedom to pause and pull out the funds.

After asking my rep about the CPM price I got the response that the network has a segment of their network that has been working very well for similar advertisers already, basically that by reducing my CPM price I would be pricing myself out of this "piece" of their network.

Any recommendations or opinions?
 


There's not really an answer.

I've done CPM's at .50 and did horrible, and I've done $5 CPM and profited a lot.

Each ad network is different, test it out and see what happens. Also don't be too scared if you lose $ initially. I had one network lose about $10k for me while they were optimizing, then it turned into a $3k profit a day campaign.
 
Well before you commit to that you need to talk to your rep and tell them you won't buy anything until you can do a smaller test of $5k first. The brand advertisers are gone and networks are desperate, even if they know you're bluffing they'll probably let you do it anyways.

The second thing you need to do is some competitive intellegence, start scraping google for results with your keywords. Then write some code to visit each site you scraped and save any sites that containt that networks banner ad code, for example if it was adwords/adsense then you'd look for something like this:

Code: 
google_ad_client =
And then save all the websites that contain that code and start seeing how long the advertisers are sticking around. If it's more than 2 weeks you've got yourself a good placement. You can also try scraping the top 1 million websites for quantcast and alexa:

Quantcast top 1 million
Alexa top 1 million
 
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Giving all of it a go, thanks for the feedback guys. After talking to them more it seems like worst case scenario I could lose a couple $1,000. They are going to keep the daily spend down until I'm comfortable with scaling it.
 
ayzo said:
Well before you commit to that you need to talk to your rep and tell them you won't buy anything until you can do a smaller test of $5k first. The brand advertisers are gone and networks are desperate, even if they know you're bluffing they'll probably let you do it anyways.

The second thing you need to do is some competitive intellegence, start scraping google for results with your keywords. Then write some code to visit each site you scraped and save any sites that containt that networks banner ad code, for example if it was adwords/adsense then you'd look for something like this:

Code: 
google_ad_client =
And then save all the websites that contain that code and start seeing how long the advertisers are sticking around. If it's more than 2 weeks you've got yourself a good placement. You can also try scraping the top 1 million websites for quantcast and alexa:

Quantcast top 1 million
Alexa top 1 million
Click to expand...

This sounds like a good strategy to get any kind of placements, media buy or content network.
 
ayzo said:
Well before you commit to that you need to talk to your rep and tell them you won't buy anything until you can do a smaller test of $5k first. The brand advertisers are gone and networks are desperate, even if they know you're bluffing they'll probably let you do it anyways.

The second thing you need to do is some competitive intellegence, start scraping google for results with your keywords. Then write some code to visit each site you scraped and save any sites that containt that networks banner ad code, for example if it was adwords/adsense then you'd look for something like this:

Code: 
google_ad_client =
And then save all the websites that contain that code and start seeing how long the advertisers are sticking around. If it's more than 2 weeks you've got yourself a good placement. You can also try scraping the top 1 million websites for quantcast and alexa:

Quantcast top 1 million
Alexa top 1 million
Click to expand...

Great posts/ideas.. I've been doing this but manually, might build some sort of scraping tool like you mentioned.. would sure save a lot of time!

++rep
 
ayzo said:
Well before you commit to that you need to talk to your rep and tell them you won't buy anything until you can do a smaller test of $5k first. The brand advertisers are gone and networks are desperate, even if they know you're bluffing they'll probably let you do it anyways.

The second thing you need to do is some competitive intellegence, start scraping google for results with your keywords. Then write some code to visit each site you scraped and save any sites that containt that networks banner ad code, for example if it was adwords/adsense then you'd look for something like this:

Code: 
google_ad_client =
And then save all the websites that contain that code and start seeing how long the advertisers are sticking around. If it's more than 2 weeks you've got yourself a good placement. You can also try scraping the top 1 million websites for quantcast and alexa:

Quantcast top 1 million
Alexa top 1 million
Click to expand...
+rep
 
make sure you really stick with them on the spend though. i've had experiences where they've said one thing and then overspent anyway without letting me know.
 
Dont let them dick you around. Make sure they do what they say they are going to do.
:)
 
You cant really judge the CPM until you know the quality of the traffic so as long as you have an out clause you should be ok.
 
narsticle said:
You cant really judge the CPM until you know the quality of the traffic so as long as you have an out clause you should be ok.
Click to expand...

Well shit, the buys up and running and I somehow feel like I'm getting hosed either way. $700 spent for a SINGLE conversion today. When I put any pressure on the rep at all I get the response that it typically takes at least a few days to start turning a profit and figure out the right placements. The rep is also saying that I need to up my CPM's to be more competitive and that they didn't realize that a bid of $1.30 CPM would only get me this much / this quality traffic.

The way I see it, though, is that with numbers this ridiculous it would literally take at bare minimum of $100k to even establish significant numbers to base targeting on, right?

Any pointers would be appreciated again guys, can't help but think that pulling money out would be my best bet. There is obviously a hell of a technique to launching these buys with CPA offers successfully.
 
Unless you're hitting several channels, with that CPM I'm presuming you're doing a RON. They're going to show your impressions on each site within their network, then gradually drop the ones that don't convert. So like your rep. said, it takes some time to optimize. When to call it quits depends on your tolerance of risk of course. And yes - a higher CPM often plays in your favour; your ads are being showed earlier in the game before visitors have converted.

With that in mind, what help do you expect? Is your CTR the issue or conversion rates? Today's report probably won't be prepared until tomorrow, so check what channels your dough is being spent on first thing tomorrow. Was day-parting, frequency caps and even delivery outlined in your IO?
 
Also, make sure you're geo-targeting correctly. I wasted $2k of traffic last week to ppl from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, etc to a US only offer.
 
aim me smaxblog I can help yah.

We buy on most platforms and know most price points.

The thing I've found about buys is your rep is your lynch pin. If you have a great rep that knows their shit then you'll be stoked. If you have a crap rep that's just a sales person then it's like you're flying blind.

We've had CPA's start as high as 300-400$, but those numbers don't sound to good at a 700$ cpa. Again hit me up and i'll see if I can help.

I'll want to know your ctr on your ads, ctr on your lander, conversion % from lander to offer, etc. Then with some metrics we should be able to figure out how to make you profitable or pull the plug.
 
Did you spread out the traffic evenly?

Also you need someone to make you new creatives to test CTR, stock creatives blow.
 
Hey, any updates on your media buy? Also, how many times each person views your banner per day? (Forgot what it's called) I.e. you don't burn hundreds of impressions on each person daily by any chance?..
 
Ended up getting out of the buy after spending $3k and having 5 conversions to show for it. The network kept telling me that I needed to continue spending (even with ridiculous CPA's of ~ $500) to let their system optimize the campaign. I let it go for a while but being so new to CPM on that scale I called it off.

To make a long story short, what Smax said about having a good rep is right on the money. Although, I don't have a ton of experience with media buys I did do some pretty heavy research while going through this pain in the ass of an experience.

It's obvious, a rep that knows how to target your campaign correctly and can offer you tips and critiques on your copy is where its at. It all comes down to a combination of your experience combo'd with theirs (imagine that... it's a damn "dynamic duo" ;))

Pretty shitty first-time experience but I'm gunna try to learn from it and hopefully do some more testing in the near future.
 
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