Blog / Affiliate marketing
The power of using smart optimization rules to skyrocket your affiliate marketing campaigns
How can you do this?
Being an advertiser or an affiliate marketer is not an easy job, whatever anyone might say. There’s a plethora of things to prepare, to monitor, and then the complex task of optimising your ad campaign to perform at its best. So there’s quite a tedious amount of manual work to put in, which let’s face it, it’s not really desirable.
Fortunately, this is where ad campaign optimization rules come into play. What if I tell you that you don’t have to constantly monitor the ad campaign to get the result you want?
How does it work?
We can refer to these smart rules as a form of campaign auto-optimization via a model of IF-THEN logical statements. Simply, it is an in-house tool within a platform, let’s say, an ad network, that automatically makes your ad campaign behave according to specific actions set by you via a selection of parameters and conditions.
Why should you use optimization rules?
• It offers a feeling of safety and control over your campaigns as you set the rules and goals.
• They save you time (and money) by allowing you to invest in more important tasks
• They’re excusing you from having to keep adjusting bids
• They are automatically disabling low-performing creatives, subids, zoneids and campaigns
• And other cool conditions if you’re creative enough and the system you’re using allows it.
• The right settings can get you better viewability, higher CTR, and money spent only on traffic that converts.
What ad performance parameters can you play with?
These parameters may differ from one provider to another but as a general rule, they can represent timeframes(“last 12h”, “2days”),actions(“pause campaign”, “increase bid”, “blacklist” etc) as well as conditions(“If”, “then”, “and”, “while”, “is higher than”) among others.
For a better understanding, let’s take a concrete example and look at ad network Mondiad’s smart optimization rules:
Mondiad allows a rule to be formed based on 5 elements:
The dimension the rule applies to: Subid, Zoneid, Creative, Campaign
Values reflecting how much the dimension is spending: Clicks, Spent, Impressions
Values reflecting the performance of the dimension: Conversions, Revenue, CTR, ROI, etc
The timeframe of the rule:last 24h, last 2-7 days
The desired action: Blacklist, Pause, Decrease bid, Add to audience*, etc
*Mondiad audiences are an in-house option allowing the advertiser to create and collect lists of ZoneIds/SubIds to be used for other campaigns as Whitelist/Blacklist default sources.
Each rule can be saved as a template to later be used for other campaigns of yours.
Note: To use optimization rules, you need to use a conversion tracker to pass back conversions.
So, as an example:
You make the rules and Mondiad does all the work!
Pretty cool, right? Now think of all the possibilities and all that time and effort saved with these smart, rule-based campaigns.
When is the right time to use optimization rules?
This answer is in the eye of the beholder. There is always time for performance improvements but there are many ways to use optimization rules and the results depend on the advertiser’s goals and expertise. You are not limited to using only one rule but rather combine them for more granular optimization.
Best practices for rule-based campaigns:
Choose an ad network with qualitative and constant high volumes of worldwide traffic.
You can use more than 1 rule per campaign.
Remember that a rule will not be universally good for each campaign. You need to have in mind each offer, especially if your campaigns represent offers from different niches. A rule created for a Casino offer won’t be necessarily fit for a Nutra offer.
The same idea applies when dealing with different ad formats and GEOs.
Be careful when setting up timeframes as they represent how often your rule will repeat itself.
Also, before deleting any rule you think it’s not working for you, try tweaking it differently first, like testing it during various time-frames.
Increase bids for performing zones to ensure you will keep receiving that kind of traffic and kill zones that are not performing.
The takeaway?
MyLead publishers can also join the other side, by stepping into the shoes of an advertiser. Smart optimization rules or rule-based ad campaigns is a game-changing feature when it comes to leveraging your advertising performance, thus ROI.
And for them to work at their full potential, choosing the right ad network that affiliates can use to promote offers is also of great importance. Especially since each platform has its own unique perks, including a wide range of audience targeting options or other cool characteristics.
If you’re interested in getting started with rule-based campaigns, we recommend you ping our friends from ad network Mondiad who have all the tools, knowledge and readiness to help you jumpstart your journey.