CASE STUDY: Live Profitable Adwords Campaign

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Hi Everyone,

I've benefited from being a member of the Warrior Forum, so I thought I'd give back by sharing a case study from a live profitable campaign that I've been running for months.

These four 728Ã--90 banners are running in a live, profitable campaign on Google Adwords and are targeted to appear on Android phones only. They are promoting a mobile dating website which is available on many of the CPA networks. It's only making low $xxx in profit per month, BUT it's running totally on autopilot and I think you can probably learn something from it.

Here are the banners, their CTRs, and conversion rates (these numbers are accurate as of a few weeks ago - the stats have changed slightly since then, but so far this month all of these ads are still profitable!):



The conversion rates above are based on the amount of money spent on each ad (which is what really matters) rather than the conversion rate "per click", since the per click price varies.

The Adwords campaign running these ads has only one ad group per ad size (all of these 728Ã--90 banners are together in one ad group). Each ad group has the same set of keywords - all related to singles & dating. The campaign is running on Google's Content Network only, and also includes some standard mobile banner sizes such as 300Ã--50.

You probably noticed that the ads look unprofessional - you might even call them ugly - I think that their ugliness makes them stand out. The images & text in the ads are intentionally large, to make them easily legible on a mobile phone.

Warning: If promoting dating offers (or ANY offers) on Adwords as an affiliate, be certain that you're promoting squeaky clean offers - nothing shady. Also be very cautious about using your own pre-sell landing pages; direct linking is safest. Adwords has a reputation for being trigger happy when it comes to banning affiliate marketers, so advertise at your own risk!

...and there you have it. Hope you enjoyed this short case study!

If you have any questions go ahead and ask and I will try to answer.
#ad networks (cpm/cpl, display) #adwords #campaign #case #live #profitable #study
  • Very nice, mate!

    And I totally agree about the "ugly/unprofessional" banners performing well. It doesn't apply only for mobile, but for pretty much any type of media buys. I always focus on the contrast (e.g. a blue banner on a red page) and try to make my banners look amateurish so that people won't overlook them... you know, our brains are already programmed to ignore the traditional banners / ads.

    Thanks for sharing!


    W
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Wow..this is eye opening.

    May i ask what that offer pays per conversion?
  • Very good case study. Thanks for sharing. I am just curious - what's the visible size of a 728x90 banner in an Android smartphone?
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    • Very good case study!
    • It pays between $2.95 and $3.40 per lead. There's more than one version of the offer, and I'm promoting two of them. I'm using CPV Lab to split the traffic between the two. I'd stick to just one if one of them produced a significantly better ROI than the other, but they're about the same.

      I actually am not certain, but I believe that the size depends on the size of the website on which the banner appears. I'm quite sure that my 728x90 banners are not appearing on mobile-optimized sites. They're just appearing on regular websites that get shrunk when viewed on mobile phones.

      If a website was 728 pixels wide, the site would get shrunk on your Android phone so that the original 728 pixels occupied the full width of your phone's screen (regardless of how many actual pixels across your phone has). On that website, a 728 banner would appear across the entire width of your phone's screen.

      If a website was 1,456 pixels wide, the site would get shrunk on your Android phone so that the original 1,456 pixels occupied the full width of your phone's screen (regardless of how many actual pixels across your phone has). On that website, a 728 banner would appear across the HALF the width of your phone's screen (unless you zoomed in). Hope that makes sense!

      I don't think a mobile optimized site would include 728x90 banners. Instead, it would include standard mobile banner sizes such as 300x50.
      • [ 2 ] Thanks
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  • Excellent case study mate!
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  • Thank you for sharing this cool case study.
  • Good info. Do you use custom landing page ? Or do you direct link dating CPA offers ?
    Does Google allows it ?
  • Extremely sexy data, mate. Good karma to you for sharing this.

    What was your process of optimizing this campaign? Also, I'm especially curious as to how many clicks you have to buy to earn your monthly profits?
    • [1] reply
    • Thought I should give you a better answer. I just checked my stats and for each 1,000 clicks I earn around $25 in profit. Hope that helps!
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  • You should be really proud if you manage it to make *some* profit even with the rather low payouts, and seeing that banners usually have so terrible low CTR.

    ESPECIALLY on adwords. So if you're "only" making a low hundreds per month, this IS still impressive given there are so many factors which make this not easy to achieve.
  • 'Good info. Do you use custom landing page ? Or do you direct link dating CPA offers ?
    Does Google allows it ?
    '

    I have same questions as Aniket

    I tried to work with google adwords too, but never get accepted with direct linking to aff offer.

    Needed to create blog and there put some links after ads is accepted.

    Very nice case study
    • [1] reply
    • I'm direct linking to the offer. I'm afraid that Google would slap or ban me if I tried to use a custom landing page.

      In a nutshell, it was this: upload a bunch of ads and target them using keywords (i.e. let Google decide which sites to place my ads on based on the keywords). Then after I've accumulated some statistically significant data, start pausing poorly converting ads or placements. More extensive optimization is possible of course (i.e. adjusting bids based on placement performance, creating new ads specifically designed for certain placements, dayparting, etc) but since this this campaign is low volume I haven't bothered with that.

      It varies. I can tell you that I'm averaging around $0.12 or $0.13 per click.

      I'd guess that you were linking to an offer that Google doesn't like. I don't think you'd have a problem if Google liked the offer.

      IMHO it's a bit risky tricking Google like that. I personally try to avoid doing anything Google doesn't like (even if I think I can hide it from them for the time being) - been banned once before and don't want it to happen again!
  • Excellent data again man.

    Have you had any problems with G disapproving or banning ads? How do you avoid this?
    • [1] reply
    • I'm guessing that you mean the same thing by both "disapproving" and "banning", right? (I'm not sure what the difference is!)

      Yes I have had ads disapproved by Google, including ads within the campaign that this case study is from. The solution is to either fix the problem with the ads (if they're breaking one of Google's rules) or if you're pretty sure they're not breaking any rules, delete & resubmit the same ads (personally I wouldn't resubmit the same ads to Google TOO many times - anything to avoid making Google angry!)

      Whether or not an ad is breaking a rule of often subjective. One reviewer might think that your ad is too far into a grey area, whereas another review may not. So if you're in that grey area you might want to consider resubmitting a disapproved ad, or making a minor tweak to it and resubmitting.
      • [1] reply
  • Thanks for sharing. Mind to share on this "I'd guess that you were linking to an offer that Google doesn't like. I don't think you'd have a problem if Google liked the offer."

    How do I know whether a cpa offer is liked by Google? I check the content guidelines, but it is quite general. Are there any guidelines or checklist you follow?
    • [1] reply
    • Aside from testing and finding out, or hearing from other people who have done so, there is sometimes no way to know for 100%. Some offers that seem legitimate to me have been blacklisted by Google.

      Other things you can do are:
      • Read Google's guidelines (as you mentioned)
      • Ask your affiliate manager (but they won't always know)
      • Search or ask in a forum like this one
      • Contact the Merchant themselves if you're using a network like Clickbank (some merchants know that their offer isn't accepted on Google and will tell you)
      • Check Google's organic search results!!! (If the offer ranks well in Google's organic search results for relevant keywords, I usually take that as a sign that Google likes the offer and I assume it's safe to promote on Adwords)
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Just curious whether you have expanded out to other PPC providers to see if you could lower PPC costs and increase ROI - or tried media buys to see if it scales 10x, 50x, 100x. How far have you pushed your Adwords campaign ceiling to test scalability?
    • [1] reply
    • Yes absolutely I've expanded outside of Adwords. Most of the advertising I've done has been on other ad networks (too many to list). A lot of factors determine ROI... sometimes I've gotten a higher ROI on Google, but often I get a higher ROI in other places.

      Yes I've done media buys also, but haven't had a lot of luck with them so far... which doesn't mean much because a lot of people HAVE had luck with them!
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  • I think there's some confusion judging by the questions asked above.

    This is a mobile media buy targeting android phones.

    I think most are missing that it's not a typical search or content network campaign that we're all used to running. So that's why the direct linking thing keeps coming up.

    You can run these on Adwords, just target mobile only and in this case smartphones. WPA works a bit better I've heard, but sending people to a mobile dating site on their mobile phone would convert higher then the search or content network campaigns we all automatically think about.

    • [1] reply
    • So the campaigns which are mobile media buys have less stringent rules?
  • This is some very informative information.

    Thanks for sharing.
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    • Can you tell me which network has similar dating offers? I cant seem to find a decent one.
      • [1] reply
  • Nice case study and thanks for sharing. I also believe 728x90 pixel banner is not a problem. It will be optimized for phone browser.
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