How To Launch Successful Campaigns on Adsterra

In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to launch and run successful campaigns on Adsterra.

Adsterra is a great advertising and CPA affiliate network, used by many successful affiliates, serving 30 billion ad impressions each month. They have wordwide traffic from each GEO you can imagine, and you can buy traffic on all payment models possible such as: CPA, CPM, CPC, RTB.

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Their newest ad format type is called Social Bar. This is basically a rich push ad format but it’s much more engaging then a classic push ad. Social bar has 30X higher CTR then web push. 

Social Bar is displayed as a native ad on publisher websites, encouraging user interaction. These ads also doesn’t rely on OS or browsers, so the ads don’t require subscriptions like classic push.

#1

Native Notifications

Neat, user-friendly icons animated in the way to catch users and prompt them to click or react. You can either add your brand elements to the template widgets, or create your own icons.

BEST FOR: APPS AND ADD-ONS, WEB SERVICES, ANTIVIRUSES AND CLEANERS, GRAPHIC AND VIDEO SOFTWARE

#2

Social Media Elements

Connect with users in the way they prefer. Social Bar ads can look like messages from popular messaging apps. These ads are truly interactive. They don’t annoy users and arouse curiosity.

BEST FOR: DATING, APPS, E-COMMERCE

#3

Multimedia

Create immersive video content to leave users no chance but to visit your page. Use videos and animation when promoting a new game or a movie. New gadgets’ ads are twice more engaging when showcased in motion.

BEST FOR: SPORTS STREAMING, GAMBLING, DATING, CONSUMER ELECTRONICS

#4

Data Collection

Adsterra advertisers have managed to increase CR five-fold by collecting users’ emails right in the ad widget. Create polls, engage into conversation, and make your messages irresistible.

BEST FOR: DATING, ECOMMERCE, SWEEPSTAKES, SUBSCRIPTIONS

#5

Action-boosting Tweaks

Animated coupons, countdowns, and product carousels:All that empowers conversions during a seasonal sale or event.

BEST FOR: SEASONAL SALES, ECOMMERCE, APPS, GAMES, TRAVEL

Adsterra as a traffic source works best with VPN, Utilities, Installs, Adult, Subscriptions, Installs, Sweepstakes, Finance, Dating, Gambling, E-Commerce Offers.

So if you run any of these verticals, you cannot go wrong with Adsterra.

Of course you can run and test any other vertical you like, these are just the ones that are proven to work well with Adsterra’s traffic.

Before you launch your campaign, I always recommend talking to your rep at Adsterra, telling them about your verticals and offers, and they will help you to get the most out of your campaigns.

The first step you need to take before launching your campaign is setting up tracking. 

Tracking your campaign properly is extremely important, if you don’t track your campaigns, you don’t gather important data and you won’t be able to optimize later for profits.

So once you logged in to your account, from the dashboard click on Tracking, and select Conversion tracking.

Next you can choose from 3 postback types, most affiliates who run CPA offers will need to select simple postback with payout variable to track conversions and conversion price.

Then you need to select your tracking system. I use Redtrack which is not in the list so I click on Custom, then click generate Postback.

Next copy your postback URL and add it to your tracker (Redtrack in our case).

Make sure you replace the ClickID and Payout metrics to the correct metrics used by your tracker.

Then go to your tracker and add it to your tracking campaigns Postback Section.

Once it’s done, you can test the postback by generating a test URL.

Once it’s all set, you can create your first campaign.

Go to campaigns in the left sidebar, and click on Create

First you need to name your campaign, select Connection type, Pricing model, Ad format, Traffic type, Device type you want to target, and then you need to add your destination URL (tracking campaign link)

Next you need to select your target GEO and bid.

Then select your creative type

And then you can create your ads.

Next you need to add your campaign budget and select campaign status after approval.

You also have the option to target specific operating systems, browsers, languages etc.

and you can set additional cappings and limits like frequency capping, impression limits or daily budget limits.

If it’s not your first campaign,  or you already have a whitelist of winning placements, or blacklist of bad placements, you can create a white or blacklist in the advanced setting below.

If it is your first campaign, skip this step and you can come back to create whitelist campaigns targeting your winning placements only after you optimized your campaigns and found your top converting placements.

That’s pretty much it.

When it’s all done, click submit and wait for the approval team to approve your campaign.

When your campaign gets approved, you need to run it for 24/48 hours depending on your budget, to gather enough data to be able to start optimizing.

I recommend starting the optimization with the placements. Check the stats in your tracking system, analyze data, and stop all the bad performing placements that are wasting your money. You need to do this regularly since you will receive traffic from many placements.

What I recommend is to stop all placements that spend more than the offer payout. For example, if you run SOI offers (Dating, sweeps, app installs etc.) and the payout per conversion is $5, stop all placements that spend more than $5 and get 0 conversions.

When it comes to creatives, what I recommend is to compare your creatives against each other. Pay attention to the CTRs and Conversion rates. Stop all the bad creatives that are off, and maybe try to add new creatives that are very similar to your best performing creatives.

If you target multiple device types you need to analyze that data too. Compare device types against each other to see which one is doing the best. If it’s mobile for example, cut Desktop and go with mobile only.

When you have enough data and your campaign starts improving, you can dive deeper into optimization by analyzing and optimizing operating systems, browser types, day parting, etc.

Once you find your winning placements, creatives etc. you can scale, by launching new campaigns using your winning ads and targeting your TOP performing placements only.