& How to Overcome Them

Transcription

1 & How to Overcome Them

2 & How to Overcome Them At TUNE, we get tracking and how important measurement is it s what we excel at. Measuring more than 6.5 billion clicks monthly and with more than 1,700 clients, the HasOffers solution has been helping thousands of companies thrive since Whether you are new to the performance marketing game, switching from an in-house solution, or needing to scale quickly, we have the tools to support every ad network. RELIABLE MEASUREMENT IS NON-NEGOTIABLE Having a reliable and accurate measurement platform should be a network s top priority to enter the market. Without it, advertisers won t work with you, you can t build relationships with publishers, and your chance at succeeding slips away. In 2016, smartphone subscriptions are slated to pass the 4 billion mark that s over half the world s population. Networks can no longer afford to make mistakes when it comes to performance marketing. With the pace the market is moving, mobile ad networks must be precise in their targeting and tracking methods. The formula to success is multi-faceted, and you have to be able to oversee everything: identifying quality traffic sources by tracking lifetime user value, preventing conversion discrepancies by monitoring all campaign settings, passing device identifiers to ensure accurate install attribution, and more. Because we ve been able to see what works and what doesn t, we can pinpoint the most common mistakes made by mobile ad networks. Avoid these seven most frequent pitfalls that keep mobile ad networks from being successful: PAGE 1

3 Not taking the time to set up device targeting, losing you money Why does device targeting matter? It ensures your offers are targeted to the traffic you and your advertisers care about. If you aren t using it, you could be bleeding money. Android and iphone users have different tendencies, and it s crucial to tailor campaigns to use the appropriate parameters, including device type. Performance marketers should become familiar with advanced targeting, which allows you to create specific rules based on how to target preferred audiences. Whether targeting by operating system, device brand, or custom defined rules, you need to get into the nitty-gritty of targeting to get the most bang for your buck. You can even get as precise as only accepting clicks from specific sub-publishers based on the IDs passed in by your publisher. PAGE 2

4 Wanting the success other networks have without mastering the basics We re talking about not having a detailed offer description and name to reflect the advertiser s instructions. The mobile world knows what traffic it does or doesn t want. If you don t have a descriptive offer name, either your offer will be passed on and you will not have any traffic, or you will run untargeted traffic in breach of your agreement with your advertiser and you ll get dropped. The offer description and name must reflect the advertiser s instructions. As the network, it is your responsibility to pass this information to publishers. If your offer is geotargeted to a certain region or constrained to a specific device operating system or version, you should include this information in the offer name. For example: Two Dots 6.0+ (US, CA, UK). From the name, you can see the operating system version and countries allowed for this ad. Additionally, if your advertiser provides you with capping information, such as daily, weekly, or monthly caps, you should make sure your publishers know this by adding it to the offer descriptions. Also, add if the offer allows incentives, or if certain types of traffic are banned. Takeaway: More information passed from the advertiser to publisher in the offer name and description means higher quality traffic delivered back to the advertiser. PAGE 3

5 Stubbornly sticking with client-side cookie-based tracking for mobile campaigns Using client side, cookie-based tracking for mobile campaigns is just asking for trouble. In the mobile world, cookies are extremely volatile they cannot persist across devices and their ability to be blocked continues to grow with ad-blocking technologies built into hardware devices. What does this mean? If a user travels from app to browser, the cookie won t follow, and the conversion won t be tracked. Loss of tracking means credit doesn t go where it s due, and the publisher and advertiser lose money. Yikes. Solution: Server-side tracking with a unique identifier. Using unique identifiers for server-side tracking enables tracking to function across multiple device types and eliminates the downfalls of client-side tracking, such as blocked cookies and single device tracking. HasOffers has a unique identifier called transaction ID that our adserver generates on click to facilitate server-side tracking. PAGE 4

6 Getting frustrated with conversion discrepancies (Psst, your click session lifespan doesn t match the attribution window) Conversion discrepancies lead to hours spent solving them, a hit to your bank account, paused campaigns, and unhappy advertisers and publishers. Matching the click session lifespan with the attribution window may seem obvious, but it s a mistake our support engineers come across often. If the campaign s attribution window is shorter than the click session lifespan, the install will not be attributed to HasOffers at all upon install. If the attribution window is longer than the click session lifespan, conversions will be attributed to HasOffers, but there will be no click session to reference. In this case, they will not show in the conversion report, but will show in server logs with an error saying that no session was found. In each situation, that means losing conversions, losing money, and possibly losing your cool. Solution: Match your click session lifespan to the attribution window set by your advertiser for the attribution method you will be using. By doing this you ll avoid conversion discrepancies. PAGE 5

7 Keeping device identifiers to yourself Setting up placeholders for the main device identifier for the operating system your offer is targeting may seem tedious or unnecessary, but trust us, you re losing accuracy in the tracking if you don t. If your publishers have device identifiers to pass to you on click, they are going to want you to pass these to your advertiser s SDK solution to ensure the most accurate attribution. If there isn t a device identifier present on click to pass to your mobile mobile tracking technology, then fingerprinting will likely be the fallback attribution method much less accurate. Solution: Consult with your advertisers to figure out what parameters they expect to receive for a device identifier to work for their platform to accept and store. Hint: TUNE Marketing Console does this automatically if you drop a measurement URL into HasOffers, because we re directly integrated. PAGE 6

8 Wanting to target everyone, when geotargeting is the better method The beauty of performance marketing technology today is that targeting can get as granular as you want. But there s no point in targeting if you re not confident which countries or states will give you the best conversions. If an offer is valid in a specific country like a discount for users in Spain but the network hasn t set up any targeting to reflect that, the traffic that flows to the offer has very little chance of converting. How to target: If an offer is meant to be shown to a target country, state, or city, you should add geotargeting to that offer to align with your target location. Set up offer groups with offers meant to capture traffic that doesn t meet the targeting you set on that offer. It will give you the opportunity to monetize traffic that does not match the targeting you have set. If you do not do this, geotargeting will send the user to a blank white page, resulting in a poor user experience and deflating conversion rates. PAGE 7

9 Setting up a lot of app install offers, but not using offer goals to track post-install events Post-install events are the present. Forward thinking networks that are serious about growth need to be measuring which traffic sources drive users with the highest LTV. If you do not optimize your traffic for this, you are providing a less than ideal experience for your clients and advertisers. Setting up offers but not tracking post-install events is leaving money on the table. If advertisers want users to continue to complete actions after they download the app (isn t that the point?), offer goals must capture and track these events, and then pass payouts to publishers. Post-install events range from in-app purchases, upgrades, progress milestones, and other categories. PAGE 8

10 ABOUT HASOFFERS BY TUNE When it comes to performance marketing platforms, HasOffers by TUNE is the leader empowering networks, advertisers, and media buyers to measure, analyze, and optimize their online and mobile marketing campaigns. All in real time. Thousands of businesses around the world use HasOffers to track and manage their own publisher and affiliate relationships. The fully-customizable software allows clients to manage creatives, invoices, payouts, their direct relationships and more, at a detailed level. PAGE 9