We are happy to announce our newest feature that will allow you to apply bulk bid and budget adjustments for an enhanced campaign optimization process.  In this article, we will discuss what this feature entails, how it can help you simplify your campaign management, and we will look at specific use cases with examples. The Problem If you have multiple campaigns, ad groups, ads, or publisher sites with varying bids and budgets, it’s very time-consuming to adjust all budgets or bids separately.  For example, if you wish to increase all bids by 20%, you first need to calculate how much 20% of all current bids is, and apply the changes one by one. Apart from taking up too much time, this way of managing bids and budgets is also more prone to mistakes, which eventually leads to avoidable budget waste. The Solution With TheOptimizer’s new feature, this entire process can be done in just a few clicks. You will be able to select as many campaigns, ads, ad sets, or publishers you need to adjust, and apply bid and budget increases/decreases, either by a fixed amount or by a percentage. All calculations will be done by our system, leaving no room for errors.  Let’s have a look at several use cases for our top ad networks to see how this new feature can help you optimize your campaigns in practice. Facebook Apply Bulk Campaign Budget Adjustments for Facebook Let’s say you are reviewing your Facebook data on TheOptimizer, and you notice a few campaigns have been performing exceptionally well recently.  With the new bulk actions, you can now select these top-performing campaigns and increase their budget at once.  For this use case, we want to apply a bulk budget increase of 15% for all selected Facebook campaigns. You have the option to adjust the budget by a certain percentage or set a fixed budget value. You can also optionally apply budget caps to ensure the new budget stays within a certain range.  Finally, you can preview the changes before applying them. With this preview, you can see the calculated value of the new budgets.  Apply Bulk Ad Set Bid and Budget Adjustments for Facebook If you are using ad set daily budgets instead, you can also replicate the same process as above on an ad set level.  TikTok Apply Bulk Campaign Budget Adjustments for TikTok You can also optimize your TikTok campaigns with TheOptimizer’s new bulk actions.  In the example below, we are applying a 15% budget increase on campaign level and previewing the changes before approving the new budgets. Apply Bulk Ad Group Bid and Budget Adjustments for TikTok Similarly, you can apply bulk bid and budget changes to selected TikTok ad groups. You can increase or decrease bids and budgets using a percentage calculation or set them to a fixed value.  Taboola Apply Bulk Campaign Bid and Budget Adjustments for Taboola If you are advertising on native platforms such as Taboola or Outbrain, you can also apply bulk budget and bid changes on a campaign level.  For the use case below, we have selected several Taboola campaigns we wish to test with a lower budget. We are applying a global 10% budget decrease. Apply Bulk Site Bid Adjustments for Taboola A big part of being successful with native advertising is being able to effectively manage publisher sites.  If you have identified a few publisher sites with good performance, you can bulk increase the site bid to scale faster. In this specific use case for Taboola, we are increasing the bid by 15%, but ensuring that it does not go higher than 80% of our reported EPC (earning per click). Outbrain Apply Bulk Campaign Bid and Budget Adjustments for Outbrain You can also optimize your Outbrain campaigns by using TheOptimizer’s bulk actions on a campaign level. You can adjust campaign bids and budgets, as well as change target CPAs in one go.   Apply Bulk Section Bid Adjustments for Outbrain When advertising on Outbrain, you also need to optimize on a section level. Due to the large number of sections, this task can become very tedious when done directly on the platform.  With the bulk section bid adjustment, you can make global changes and preview the results before applying them. In this case, we are increasing the section bid by 15%, but ensuring the new bid does not go higher than the earning per click value. Apply Bulk Bid and Budget Adjustments with TheOptimizer: Conclusion Effectively managing bids and budgets for all campaign levels plays a critical part in your success as an advertiser. Between managing multiple ad networks, campaigns, and trying to allocate your budget correctly, it can become time-consuming to manage everything separately.  TheOptimizer’s bulk bid and budget manager is a game-changer, and it’s currently not available on any traffic source. You can stay ahead of the competition by simplifying your bid & budget management for better results, and save an immense amount of time and money doing so. For more feature use cases with TheOptimizer, read our article about duplicating ads on Facebook and TikTok here. [vc_empty_space height=”15px”]

We have great news for native advertisers looking to make their lives easier: our new TheOptimizer x MediaGo integration is live!  If you are not advertising on MediaGo, stick around to find out why you might want to consider having a presence on the platform.  In this article, we will introduce MediaGo, explain the features & benefits of the integration with examples, and showcase how the integration works in practice. MediaGo Integration: Discover The Platform MediaGo is an AI-integrated native advertising platform, with a strong focus on maximizing return on investment for marketers.  With a reach spanning 29 countries, including Europe and North America, and partnered with 10,000+ premium media outlets like MSN and Google, MediaGo provides a large selection of top-quality ad placements.  They are among the few native advertising platforms that leverage the power of deep learning. Thus, MediaGo is able to provide essential features like fraud protection, predicting traffic quality & click-through rates, and generating dynamic ads.  For advertisers, MediaGo offers advanced targeting options based on ad format, apps, countries, and more.  If you want to explore the platform further, you can sign up here.  MediaGo Integration: Features & Benefits So, what can you actually do with The Optimizer’s MediaGo integration?  For starters, if you have multiple MediaGo accounts, you can connect and manage all of them from The Optimizer’s user-friendly dashboard. If you are using third-party trackers, such as ClickFlare, Voluum, or RedTrack, or you are a search arbitrager working with one of the main search feeds, such as Tonic or Sedo, you can connect all your accounts, fully centralizing your campaign management. For a list of all the integrations we support, click here.  Since The Optimizer has a direct API integration with all these platforms, we will automatically pull the updated data. Now, you will be able to see in a single report all your MediaGo and tracker/search feed data side-by-side. Say goodbye to logging into dozens of accounts each day, switching between tabs, and endless CSV reports! In the example above, the TR EPC and TR CPA are being pulled directly from the tracker, while TS Clicks are being pulled from MediaGo. The metrics you see reported here are customizable, so you can remove anything that is not useful, add different metrics, and even calculate custom metrics of your own using a formula. All these metrics can be used to set up campaign automation in the next step.  Now, you are ready to supercharge your native ads with our campaign automation functionality!  For example, you can now automatically pause or block bad publishers, campaigns, and ads, using rules. Here is how a rule for blocking bad publishers would look like: You have full freedom over which metrics to use, how often to let the rule run, and which campaigns to include for each rule.  Similarly, you can also set rules to automatically increase or decrease bids & budgets based on performance, and apply dayparting to your campaigns. MediaGo Integration: How Does it Work? The new MediaGo integration means that we will be able to automatically pull the data from the native ad platform, and the entire setup on your side will only take a few minutes.  In order to connect your MediaGo accounts, you simply need to select a nickname, account timezone & currency, and input the API token, which you can find directly on MediaGo.  Next, you can choose to connect your tracker or search feed accounts the same way. If you are planning on testing out the integration and need more technical help on how to do it, read our detailed guide on how the MediaGo integration works here.  For more tips on how to boost your native ad campaigns, we have a dedicated article on it here.  MediaGo Integration: Conclusion If you have been manually running ads on MediaGo and looking for an easier way to do things, The Optimizer x MediaGo integration can help you out by centralizing all your ad & tracker accounts and providing detailed reporting.  You can also automate your routine campaign optimization tasks, such as pausing underperforming sites, campaigns & ads, adjusting bids & budgets based on performance, starting or stopping campaigns at pre-specified times and more.  New to MediaGo? You can sign up for the premium native ad platform via this link. [vc_empty_space height=”15px”]

If you are reading this post, you probably already know how important it is to use a campaign automation tool in 2023. With so many choices out there, it’s crucial to understand what each tool offers, so you can choose the best option to help scale your business.  In this article, we will take a deep dive into the comparison between The Optimizer and Revealbot, highlighting the key differences and similarities between these two campaign automation tools. The Optimizer vs Revealbot: Traffic Source Integrations While both The Optimizer and Revealbot have the same core functionality, there is a difference in the traffic sources they support.  The Optimizer is primarily used by marketers who are active on social and native advertising platforms. In total, The Optimizer has a direct integration with 14 advertising platforms, while Revealbot has integrations with four.  Below you can see the top six advertising platforms supported by The Optimizer. Apart from the native sources covered here, The Optimizer supports a variety of other premium platforms including MGID, MediaGo, and more. On the other hand, Revealbot only supports the social media platforms highlighted below.  If you are advertising only on social media platforms, both tools can help you and we recommend reading further to compare their other features. However, if you are running native ads or planning on testing them out in the near future, The Optimizer is a better fit for you.  The Optimizer vs Revealbot: Trackers & Search Feed Integrations Online marketers often use third-party trackers for higher data accuracy. If you are using a tracker, you will most likely want to connect it to your campaign automation tool. That way, you will be able to use the data from both your advertising platform and tracker when setting up your automation rules.  The Optimizer has a direct integration with 13 trackers, while Revealbot has integrations with four. Both platforms can pull data from Google Analytics, but The Optimizer supports a larger number of trackers, including top affiliate trackers such as ClickFlare, Voluum, RedTrack, AssertiveYield and more.  If you are running search arbitrage campaigns without using a tracker, The Optimizer also has an integration with five of the top search feeds. This means that the platform will pull the revenue data directly from the search feed via API.  In case your tracker of choice is not supported by the two platforms, don’t worry! Both The Optimizer and Revealbot allow users to upload their data using CSV or Google Sheets reports.  The Optimizer and Revealbot are constantly working on new integrations, so before making a decision, always make sure to check whether your ad platforms, trackers, or search feeds are supported by these platforms. In general, The Optimizer integrates with 20 more platforms than Revealbot, giving you a wider range of options. The Optimizer vs Revealbot: Campaign Management  Since both The Optimizer and Revealbot are primarily campaign management tools, let’s zoom in on this feature for a bit.  The Optimizer makes campaign management easier than ever with a comprehensive dashboard that displays key performance metrics, such as cost & revenue from all your campaigns and connected ad or tracker accounts. This is extremely important for agencies or performance marketers who advertise on different platforms, using multiple ad accounts, and launching a large number of campaigns. Instead of logging into each of your accounts separately, you can now manage all your campaigns from a single dashboard. This is something that Revealbot does not offer at the moment.  The Optimizer takes it a step further by allowing you to view detailed performance metrics from both your traffic sources (e.g., Facebook and TikTok) and your tracker in a single report. For example, in the aggregated report above you can see the traffic source (in this case Facebook) clicks, and tracker conversions side-by-side. You can also make manual changes to your campaigns directly from this dashboard.  When it comes to campaign management, The Optimizer offers more advanced features and really focuses on saving you time by aggregating data from all your accounts in a single place. The Optimizer vs Revealbot: Automation The automation functionality is pretty similar for both platforms. They both have an intuitive rule builder that allows you to automate campaign optimization tasks using conditions. For example, if you want to set a rule that will automatically pause your Facebook ads with high CPC, here is how it would look like on The Optimizer: Similarly, this is how the same rule would look like on Revealbot:  Both platforms allow you to schedule rules at constant intervals (e.g., every 30 minutes), or at specific times of the day (e.g., each day at 6 AM account timezone). They also both allow you to use custom metrics in your rules, select campaigns you want the rule to apply to, and have the option to be notified each time the rule is executed.  Both The Optimizer and Revealbot also offer rule templates you can use as inspiration, but we recommend being careful with these templates. What works for one business may not work for the other, so always evaluate these templates against your own metrics, goals and priorities. The Optimizer vs Revealbot: Reporting Both platforms have a “Reporting” feature, so that you can generate reports about your campaigns automatically.  This feature is pretty straightforward and user-friendly on both platforms, but similarly to what we mentioned above, The Optimizer has the benefit of combining the data from your traffic sources and third party tracker accounts in a single report.  The Optimizer vs Revealbot: Conclusion Choosing the right campaign automation tool for your business can play a crucial role in how fast you are able to scale profitably.  While both The Optimizer and Revealbot have an excellent automation engine, The Optimizer supports more traffic sources, trackers and search feeds, as well as a more advanced campaign management dashboard that will make your life easier as an advertiser. If you want to learn more about The Optimizer, read how it compares to TikTok’s and Facebook’s in-platform automation. [vc_empty_space height=”15px”]

In the constant pursuit of business growth, it comes as no surprise that lead generation has been the top priority for most businesses throughout 2023. There is an overwhelming amount of options out there when it comes to generating leads, including a mix of organic and paid efforts across an endless list of platforms.  With so many different channels and methods to generate leads, digital marketers are facing a very pressing challenge – how can they filter through all the available options in order to generate quality leads with a high chance of converting?  In this article we will discuss the top paid advertising platforms for lead generation in 2023, and share best practices on how to leverage them to generate quality leads. What are the best social media paid advertising platforms for lead generation? Let’s start with the most obvious answer – social advertising platforms. According to recent data, 68% of online marketers state that social media ads have helped them generate more leads.  But which platforms are likely to generate the best quality leads, and how do they compare to each other?  Youtube Ads Youtube has 2 billion monthly active users, making it one of the biggest social media platforms to date.  We have placed it at the top of the list, mostly due to its advanced targeting options. Beyond the standard demographic targeting, Youtube also allows advertisers to target based on the audience’s past search and watch history. As an advertiser, you can also choose which type of Youtube videos you want your ad to be shown on.   Combine this with a very strong call to action on the ad, and you are likely to increase short term sales by up to 30% according to Hubspot.  The main downside of Youtube is that you need to create longer form videos, which costs time and resources to make. TikTok Ads You have probably heard all about how popular TikTok ads are right now, but actually, only 18% of online marketers are using TikTok ads for lead generation. You still have time, but you need to be quick! A recent study reported that about half of online marketers that were questioned, plan on leveraging TikTok in the near future for this purpose.  In the meantime, this relatively low level of competition means that the cost for advertising on TikTok is the lowest among all platforms at the moment.  TikTok also has a smart algorithm and a plethora of basic and advanced targeting options you can use to generate quality leads. If you want to learn more about 6 winning strategies on TikTok, read our previous article here.  The biggest challenge with TikTok is that you need to create a large amount of videos in order to continue being successful. With this platform, trends come and go very fast, and ad fatigue is very high, with ads often “expiring” after 1 or 2 weeks. More and more companies are using UGC (user generated content) brands that connect you to TikTok creators.  You pay a flat fee, and the creator shoots and edits the video on their end. This is a good solution to produce the videos you need at a much lower cost. Also, these videos blend in better with the rest of the content on the platform, making them more engaging and less transactional.  Meta Ads Meta includes Facebook and Instagram, making it one of the biggest social media platforms worldwide, with 3 billion monthly active users.  Although Meta offers the same targeting options as TikTok, Facebook has been around for 12 extra years, which means the platform has gathered more data and supported an even smarter algorithm.  In terms of lead quality, again video content generally works better than static images, especially if you educate the consumer about your product throughout the video. You can do this by focusing on offered value and addressing pain points, instead of just stating features. Having a clear message and including testimonials also helps.  Image by Poll the People One downside of Meta is that traffic is more expensive than TikTok. If you are not sure whether to focus on TikTok ads or Meta ads in 2023, read our full platform comparison here. What are the best native paid advertising platforms for lead generation? If your focus is on generating high quality leads, you should consider native advertising platforms. 75% of customers trust editorial sites, compared to 54% who trust social media. Native ads are often placed on trusted sites, and they seamlessly blend in with the rest of the content on that page, making them ideal for higher conversions. There are hundreds of native platforms out there, but what are the top options?  Taboola Taboola is one of the biggest native advertising platforms with 500 million daily active users. Most of the traffic on this platform comes from Tier-1 countries such as the US and UK.  Taboola partners with high quality websites and trusted sources, such as Business Insider and Fox, and apart from offering advanced targeting options, they also have a strong algorithm that matches the offer with the right audiences for better results. Outbrain With 1.3 billion unique users, partnerships with esteemed sites such as CNN and BBC, and half of their traffic coming from Tier-1 countries, Outbrain is another top native platform to consider. They also offer advanced targeting and retargeting options.  Taboola and Outbrain are two of the most popular native advertising platforms, which also means that the competition is higher and you need a bigger ad spend budget to promote your offers here.  MGID MGID has been one of the industry leaders since 2008, with 850M unique visitors monthly and sites like MSN as partners. The traffic here comes primarily from Tier 2 countries, most notably from Eastern Europe and South-East Asia.   RevContent The last native advertising platform we would like to focus on for this article is RevContent. Most of the publishers are from the US, such as Forbes.  RevContent have branded themselves as a high-quality traffic platform by stating that they reject a large number of publishers and have established very high standards when it comes to their qualifying and compliance policies.  Based on your company’s goals, budget, and target GEOs, you can decide which platform/s to start with.  In terms of content, advertisers still heavily rely on image ads for native platforms, but video ads or gifs appear to work better for engagement. If you want to learn more about how to boost your native ads profits in 2023, read our previous article here. What is the best search advertising platform for lead generation? Google Ads There are billions of daily searches on Google, which gives you as an advertiser access to a very broad audience.  Because you are specifically targeting people who are already looking for your product/service, search ads are the most effective way to generate high quality leads for your business.  This top-notch quality also makes Google Search ads highly competitive, and more expensive than the other platforms on this list.  How can you manage all your paid advertising platforms for lead generation? Depending on your offer, vertical target audience, ad budget, and your team’s strengths and weaknesses in terms of resources, you can decide which platform to put your focus on.  Remember to “not put all your eggs in one basket” and test different channels instead. Platforms are constantly changing, updating their policies, and becoming more competitive, so make sure to not fully rely on only one channel. You can A/B test your offer across 2-3 different platforms, and focus on scaling the ones that are working best for you.  Successful lead gen marketers are often running campaigns on various social, native, and search platforms at the same time.  If you are in the same position, you may need to consider a campaign automation tool like The Optimizer. Our tool has an integration with all the traffic sources mentioned in this article (and more), and it can help you optimize your campaigns from a single dashboard. If you want to monitor performance, stop creatives that are not working, and scale creatives/campaigns that are performing well, The Optimizer can automate these tasks for you without you having to log into tens (or sometimes hundreds) of ad accounts each day.  Advertising Platforms for Lead Generation: Conclusion In this article, we discussed the best paid advertising platforms for lead generation in 2023. […]

If you are an affiliate marketer, you have probably heard the saying “successful affiliates work smarter, not harder”.  A large part of working smarter involves using the right affiliate marketing tools that will help you achieve your goals, scale profitably and save time and money in the process. In this article, we will introduce the top 9 affiliate marketing tools you need to succeed in 2023. We will cover everything from hosting, landing page building, tracking, and automation. Affiliate Marketing Tool 1: Hostinger for Domain Hosting Having your own domain and website as an affiliate marketer gives you a lot of freedom and control over your design, content and structure.  There are thousands of domain hosting services out there, but Hostinger is one of the most affordable platforms. It’s very reliable and speedy, and it’s easy to use even if you don’t have technical knowledge.  They offer various pricing plans depending on your specific needs, starting from as low as $1.99/month for basic web hosting. If you sign up for a one-year hosting plan, you also get the domain for free the entire year.  Affiliate Marketing Tool 2: LanderLab for Building Landing Pages The ability to build high-converting landing pages is a big part of your success as an affiliate marketer. Not only do you need to build a lot of lead or sales pages, but you also need to do a large amount of testing to figure out what actually works.  LanderLab is an extremely user-friendly tool that allows you to build landing pages with no coding or special design skills.  You can choose from 100+ industry-specific landing page templates that are proven to convert. You can also integrate your tracker or lead management system, run A/B testing directly from the platform, and import existing landing pages from zip to use as inspiration.  The starter plan begins at $69/month. Affiliate Marketing Tool 3: ClickFlare for Tracking Being able to track and analyze detailed campaign data in real time is crucial for scaling.  ClickFlare is the perfect tracking tool for affiliate marketers. It allows you to create and track complex funnels, it integrates with all the key traffic sources (native, social and Google), and it gives you the ability to track, route and A/B test unlimited pre-landers, landers and offers. If you are looking for a reliable and affordable tracker, ClickFlare pricing begins at $89/month. Affiliate Marketing Tool 4: Adplexity for Spying on Competitors An important part of online marketing is finding out what your competitors are doing and learning from their successes and mistakes.  Adplexity uses data from various ad networks and allows you to see which ads are getting the most hits and have been running the longest. You can filter by landing page or ad keyword, days running, country, ad network and more. The tool also gives you the ability to see the landing page each ad is sending traffic to, as well as the offer URLs. You can download landing pages you want to use as inspiration, and directly export them to your landing page builder of choice, for example LanderLab.  Adplexity offers different plans for various traffic sources, starting from $199/month. Affiliate Marketing Tool 5: Canva for Design Whether you want to design an ad, social media post, email header, banners, or even edit videos, Canva can help you.  The tool is again extremely easy to use, and you can create beautiful designs that convert without any prior design experience. There are thousands of ready-made templates you can use, and the basic plan is completely free! If you want to upgrade, the Pro version is still only $12.99/month.  Affiliate Marketing Tool 6: ChatGPT for Content & Copywriting We know, we know. You are probably already using ChatGPT, but there are a few tricks that tend to give better results when it comes to writing high-converting copy.  Whether you want to write copy for a landing page, email, ad, or blog post, you always need to give ChatGPT a clear idea of what the product is, who the target audience is, and which goal you are hoping to achieve.  You also need to instruct it to write a text focused on benefits (instead of simply features), include a compelling call-to-action and headline, include testimonials, and address pain points. If you want to take it a step further, you can use the ChatGPT prompt, “I will show you 5 examples of my writing. Replicate my writing style and tone of voice to write a new text about X topic”.  You can use the basic version of ChatGPT completely for free. Affiliate Marketing Tool 7: Trendzi for Video Ads We could drop endless studies and statistics on why it is absolutely crucial to incorporate videos into your affiliate marketing strategy in 2023. To keep it simple, all research strongly indicates that videos are better for lead generation, branding, sales, and overall performance. Especially if your advertising platform of choice is social media, you need to consider using UGC (user generated content). As Trendzi says on their page, UGC videos are video ads that don’t look like ads. Through platforms like Trendzi, you can choose a creator and give them instructions on what type of video you are looking for. They will create a video that blends in and feels organic, which has been proven to lead to better conversion rates.  Trendzi offers different pricing packages, starting from $500 per video. If you want to learn more about how the platform works, we recommend watching their presentation from the Search Arbitrage Meetup in Barcelona in 2023. Affiliate Marketing Tool 8: The Optimizer for Campaign Automation If you are advertising on various platforms through several accounts, launching and managing a large number of campaigns, and playing with big advertising budgets, our campaign automation tool The Optimizer is made for you.  With The Optimizer, you can set rules to automate routine campaign optimization tasks, such as adjusting bids and budgets, pausing campaigns or ads that are not performing, cloning ad sets, and more. This will allow you to free up an immense amount of time and make sure you are efficiently managing your advertising budget in order to scale faster.  Here you can read how some of our top clients used The Optimizer to scale on TikTok and native platforms. The Optimizer’s starter plan begins at $199/month. Affiliate Marketing Tool 9: NordVPN for Cybersecurity Using a VPN service such as NordVPN will mainly provide you with online security, making sure that your online activities and sensitive data are secure and protected from potential cyber threats. For example, the tool will ensure your information is kept private in public places, like cafes or while on the move.  NordVPN will also protect you from competitors finding out about your strategies, provide access to geo-restricted information, and allow you to check how your landing pages appear to people in various locations. The monthly plan begins at $12.99/month and there are multiple discount packages available. Top 9 Affiliate Marketing Tools: Conclusion To keep up with the competitive landscape of affiliate marketing in 2023, you will need to use specific tools for different parts of your operation.  The affiliate marketing tools discussed in this article are: Hostinger for domain hosting, LanderLab for building landing pages, ClickFlare for tracking, Adplexity for spying on competitors, Canva for design, ChatGPT for content & copywriting, Trendzi for video ads, The Optimizer for campaign automation, and NordVPN for cybersecurity.  Regardless of which tools you choose to leverage, make sure that you are always working smarter rather than harder. [vc_empty_space height=”15px”]

“Within one month of using The Optimizer, I have been able to automate about 90% of my campaign management tasks. I haven’t checked my campaigns that much in the past 10 days, and everything has been going great.”  Ara Davtian  Co-founder & Lead Media Buyer of Ten Digital  Vertical: Ecommerce  Networks: Taboola, Outbrain, MGID, Google, Meta Introduction In 2020, Ara co-founded Ten Digital, a fast-growing digital marketing and ecommerce agency, catering to various GEOs in 7 different languages. With more than 8 years of experience in media buying, Ara had already mastered Meta and Google ads, and was ready to scale his business further by launching his first native ad campaigns.  Problem While native ads are great for engagement rates and conversions, getting started with them comes with a few challenges, especially when you are transitioning from social media platforms.  Social advertising platforms such as Meta and TikTok have advanced and fast-learning algorithms, while native algorithms still have a lot of catching up to do. This means that when you are getting started with native ads, you need to spend an immense amount of time (and money) testing things out and optimizing your campaigns as you go. You need to be very quick with cutting publishers and placements that are losing money, and managing bids and budgets accordingly.  Ara needed a solution that would allow him to leverage the power of native ads, while still having enough time to focus on the other aspects of his business.  Solution He found out about our campaign automation tool, The Optimizer, and booked a demo call with our team.  His main goal was to save time while limiting any possible budget waste on underperforming ads and publishers.  The Optimizer has the ability to completely automate the process of blocking or pausing sections, sites, campaigns, or ads based on custom conditions that can be easily set up on the platform.  After showing a few examples of different rules that would fit his needs, Ara decided to give the platform a try.  Implementation Before starting to actively use The Optimizer, we asked Ara to come up with a set of campaign management tasks that were consuming his valuable time on a daily basis, and that he would like to delegate to our tool.  During a practical on-boarding session, our team helped Ara replicate his manual tasks on our platform, and let them run on autopilot instead.  He ended up automating over 90% of his campaign optimization tasks, including blocking unprofitable publishers, changing site bids, pausing underperforming ads & sections, and increasing or decreasing campaign budgets based on performance.  Results After using The Optimizer for one month, Ara reported that he was able to cut off 80% of campaign management time, while his CPA dropped by around 20%.  “Apart from that, our overall spend also went down. I noticed that we are now not wasting any money and we are generally more efficient with our budget. I will definitely be recommending The Optimizer to my ecommerce friends.”  Conclusion Spending endless hours behind your computer and obsessively monitoring & optimizing your campaigns is clearly not the way to grow your business. Automation tools such as The Optimizer allow you to delegate routine and time-consuming tasks, so you can shift your focus towards big-picture activities that will actually set you apart from the competition.  [vc_empty_space height=”15px”]

In 2023, the majority of people on the internet still do not know about native ads, and that is what makes them so effective. It’s no secret that everyone hates ads. But native ads have found a way around this obstacle by seamlessly blending in with the rest of the content on a given platform, essentially not looking like ads.  And it works! Reports suggest that 75% of customers trust editorial sites (commonly used on native advertising), but only 54% of them trust social media. This leads to native ads being perceived as less intrusive, getting higher engagement rates, and ultimately resulting in more conversions.  Image by Outbrain In this article, we will look at all the steps you need to take to boost your affiliate marketing profits in 2023 through native ads.  How do Native Ads for Affiliate Marketing Work? There are two key components to native ads for affiliates. First, you need an offer (or product) to promote. The most common way to find offers is by signing up for affiliate programs or networks. Next, you need traffic to send to your offer. You can buy traffic from ad networks. We will explain these two steps in more detail below.  You can then create an attention-grabbing ad that will be placed on different native sites. This ad should include an image and headline related to your offer that will make people want to click on it. Finally, you will need a landing page to direct traffic to. Image by Taboola Native Ads for Affiliate Marketing Step 1: How to Choose the Right Offers There are many methods to help you figure out which offers to promote on native platforms. First, you need to identify booming verticals and industries. For example, health-related offers always perform well. In 2023, offers related to weight loss, nutrition, fitness, and supplements will continue to garner interest.  The fastest and most effective way to figure out which verticals are “in” right now is to use spy tools, such as Adplexity. Adplexity uses data from a vast number of ad networks, and tells you which offers are converting.  If you look at the example below, you will see which offers have been receiving the most traffic in the United States in the past 3 months. You can clearly see that health-related ads are dominating. Apart from health, other booming verticals include financial offers, search arbitrage, cars, travel, and dental care, amongst others.  You can go even further and research trending topics within your chosen industry to narrow down your focus. Google Trends is a great free tool for this. Simply choose a country and type your keyword, and you will see how popular that term is. For example, the keyword “diet” has been enjoying a steady high interest in the US throughout the past 3 months.  When deciding which affiliate network to sign up for, you need to choose a well-established one that has plenty of offers within your target vertical and pays out good commissions. A few of the big platforms are ClickBank (the biggest offers as of May 2023 are supplements and weight loss), Perform [cb] (previously known as ClickBooth), GiddyUp (mostly for e-commerce offers), Jumbleberry (diet, self care, e-commerce offers) and more.  You can also go on comparison sites such as OfferVault, where you can find an overview of top affiliate offers and connect with trusted affiliate networks. Because commission rates and application guidelines constantly change, we highly recommend doing your own research as well. Affiliate marketing communities such as the STM Forum can help facilitate this research by giving you access to the latest information in the industry.  Native Ads for Affiliate Marketing Step 2: How to Find the Right Native Ad Networks There is a large amount of native ad networks you can buy traffic from. The key factors to consider when choosing your native ad network are:  The size of the platform: bigger platforms have more publishers and users, which leads to more high quality traffic. Their top-performing verticals: if your offer is within the travel niche, you should also look for an ad network that is big within that niche. Here you can read which verticals are working best for various native ad platforms. Their available GEOs: if your main location (or GEO) for the offer is Brazil, but your ad network only has US traffic, that is not a good fit. Always try to find platforms that support your key GEOs. Costs: bigger platforms have advantages in terms of traffic quality and advertising technology, but they can be more competitive and expensive. Minimum spend requirements for bigger platforms are also higher. Support: check what kind of additional support each platform provides (such as assigning you to an account representative, quicker approval, etc).   The top five native ad platforms in 2023 are (in no particular order):  Taboola: is one of the biggest native ad platforms, with over 18K advertisers and 500 million daily active users. You can target many different GEOs across a large number of verticals. Taboola partners with high quality websites, meaning the quality of traffic is expected to be very good. If you have a decent budget, you should definitely consider this platform.    Outbrain: another big player in the native ads market, with a large user base and an excellent list of publishers (such as CNN and The Guardian). Outbrain supports traffic from over 50 countries and all the major verticals, and they have great targeting options and traffic quality. Again, if you have a big budget, this is a great platform for native ads.  RevContent: a smaller player in the native ad space, mainly partnering with US publishers such as Forbes. RevContent is also known for supporting various verticals, and offering great support to their members.  MGID: has been around since 2008, with most of their traffic coming from Tier 2 countries (most prominently South-East Asia and Eastern Europe).  Yahoo DSP: the platform is known to be cheaper, with most of the traffic coming from the UK, France, and the US.    Depending on your personal goals, vertical, target GEO, and your budget, you can then choose one or two native ad platforms to start testing.  Native Ads for Affiliate Marketing Step 3: How to Create High Converting Content The best practice to create high converting ads and landing pages is to check what is working within your industry.  Continuing our diet offer example, if you enter the keyword “diet” on Adplexity, you will see the best performing ads related to that term.  If you click on the top left result, you can see the landing page this ad is directing traffic to.  The ad we clicked on lands on the advertorial below. Now you can see the entire redirect chain and learn not only which ads are converting, but also see their landing pages and offers (by clicking on outgoing links).  You can download these landing pages directly from Adplexity and use them as inspiration for your own campaigns. To create images for your ads, you can use free stock photos from websites such as Pexels, and then edit them for free on Canva.  If you are not ready to commit to a spy tool yet, you can also do some research on your own by going to top native publisher sites or looking for examples online. However, this method is much more time consuming and you can never be certain which ads are working and which are not.  Native Ads for Affiliate Marketing Step 4: How to Scale your Native Ads Campaigns Boosting your profits as an affiliate marketer with native ads can be challenging. In order to scale profitably, you need to dedicate a lot of time, and often money, to make it work. Being successful with native ads requires constant monitoring, testing, and optimization, especially during the first couple of months. Since native algorithms still have a long way to go, most affiliate marketers start broad and then narrow down by cutting underperforming publishers, placements, and creatives, and scaling what is already working well.  If you want to take your native advertising game to the next level and play with bigger budgets over a longer period of time, you will need to consider automation tools, such as The Optimizer. [vc_empty_space height=”15px”]

One of the best and most effective ways to reach your desired audiences is through native ads. Carefully and discreetly placed in articles all across the internet, they simultaneously do not disturb a potential customer’s experience, and at the same time present them with an appealing offer. The best way to secure these coveted spots is through Native Advertising Platforms. In this article, we’ll go over the Top 5 Native Ads Platforms you can work with in 2023. Taboola Starting off with one of the major names in the world of native advertising, Taboola. Each month Taboola reaches around 1.4 Billion unique visitors; quite a large chunk of the world’s internet population. It partners with more than 10k+ premium publishers and brands, such as USA Today, NBC, MSN, Business Insider and Bloomberg to name a few. A large part of its traffic comes from geos such as the US, UK, Japan and France. What Taboola does really well (applicable to all the networks in this list), is connecting you as a performance marketer, with audiences that are likely to positively respond to your messaging, products and offers. By placing your ads in strategic places on the publishers’ sites, and through features and targeting mechanisms that increase your conversion chances. Take for example its Headline Analyzer Tools, which tells you which of your ad titles are likelier to have a higher CTR. Read our article on 6 Useful Taboola Details You Should Know About to learn more about it and other features. Some of the best-performing verticals for this year in Taboola have been: software, holidays, fashion, gadgets, health & fitness and search arbitrage. We’re soon gonna release an article in which we go more in-depth into some of the top-performing verticals of each of the platforms in this article, with actual examples and more – make sure not to miss it out! Outbrain If we talk about major Native Advertising Platforms, we have to talk about Outbrain as well. Outbrain reaches more than 1.3 Billion people worldwide, coming from more than 55 countries (half of them from Tier 1 geos). Outbrain too is well-known for its excellent list of premium publishers, which includes the likes of Hearst, CNN, MSN, Sky News, The Washington Post and more. Besides leading publishers, Outbrain also has a quite extensive list of leading niche sites. Combined they generate for Outbrain’s users, more than 9 Billion conversions each year. Like other Native Advertising Platforms, Outbrain provides quite a few targeting options for its users, enabling performance marketers to reach the exact audiences they desire to target. One of the things you should know about Outbrain that can really become quite useful, is the ability to expand its block limits. By default in Outbrain you can block 30 publishers and 100 sections per campaign, you can easily expand that to being able to ban 1000 publishers and 1500 sections per campaign. For more details, check our article on 7 Useful Outbrain Details You Should Know About. Some of the best-performing vertices in Outbrain for 2023 so far are: celebrities, auto, health & fitness, housing and dental implants. Yahoo Yahoo is another of the big players in the Native Advertising game, with more than 1 Billion monthly active users and reaching 2 Billion Ad Impressions per day (with more than half of that traffic coming from the US, UK and France). In Yahoo’s list of top publishers, you’ll find names such as ESPN, ABC News, Apple News (in certain locations) and MSN. Yahoo supports a large variety of ad formats, from Image Ads and Video Ads, to Yahoo Mail Ads and Moments Ads, and some of the most extensive targeting capabilities of any Traffic Source in the world. You can learn more about them in our article: 5 Useful Yahoo DSP Details You Should Know About. As well as how to work with lookalike audiences, best practices in Yahoo and how you can use TheOptmizer with Yahoo to increase your revenues. As for some of the best-performing verticals in Yahoo, they are: gaming, beauty, house solutions, trading and dental implants. RevContent Continuing with RevContent, a Native Ads Platform that has significantly improved its list of publishers in recent times and created a nice premium pool of them. RevContent reaches up to 500 Million Daily Impressions, with the largest part of its traffic coming from the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, UK, Portugal, Germany, Brazil and France. Some of those premium publishers include: Forbes, Los Angeles Times, CBS Interactive, USA Today Sports, Tribune Media and Nasdaq. As expected, RevContent has all the features you might need to optimize your targeting accordingly. Among the features it offers, RevContent has built a great space for split testing inside its system. So you’re encouraged to play and compare your headlines, images, CTAs, and every other element on a landing page, to eventually find those offers that will be most successful for you. For more on other details such as targeting tips and best practices in RevContent, check our full article on 5 Useful RevContent Details You Should Know About. Top performing verticals in RevContent to get you inspired are: house gadgets, auto, traveling, diets and trading. We’ll explore some of these fantastical and highly-converting offers in our article about verticals. MGID Last but not least, we’ve got MGID. MGID reaches around 850 Million unique visitors per month, and serves them 185 Billion content recommendations. MGID partners with more than 30,000 publishers, unlike other Native Advertising Platforms, its primary market is Europe, but it also has a significant presence in the US and the Asia-Pacific region. Some of their top publishers include International Business Times, MSN, The Week, Newsweek, HITC, and Inquisitr. Something important to know about MGID, is that it receives most of its traffic from smartphones. If you’re optimizing especially for mobile campaigns, it can be a great place to start. Additionally, MGID isn’t as strict with its ad policies as other networks, allowing for more freedom in what you can potentially advertise. As expected, it also has quite a large list of targeting options. From our article on 5 Useful MGID Details You Should Know About, among other points, you can see which are MGID’s top three performing widgets: the under-article widgets (which traditionally generates the highest CTRs), in-article widget (a perfect fit for long-form articles that is highly preferred by marketers for its adaptability in multiple device formats) and the smart-widget (for those that receive a higher percentage of their traffic from desktop devices). As for the best-performing verticals in MGID, we have: dental, health & food, celebrities, investing and auto. Which is the Right Native Platform for You? We get asked this question quite a lot on a daily basis through our interactions with both new and old customers, and the best answer we can still give is that the best-performing performance marketers use a few of them at the same time or even all of them.  There’s no single platform that is significantly better than the rest. It all depends on the types of offers you want to promote, the publishers you want to work with, and just a bit of trial and error until you get everything right. But how can you run all your campaigns, at the same time across multiple traffic sources? Learn more about TheOptimizer below. Get the Most out of your Campaigns with TheOptimizer TheOptimizer has an integration with all the Native Advertising Platforms mentioned in this list. It is the most complete tool in the market and offers performance marketers all the features they might need to optimize, run and scale all their campaigns on autopilot. Forget about changing budgets and bids manually, thanks to its condition-based rules TheOptimizer can do that for you. To learn more about TheOptimizer, click here. [vc_empty_space height=”15px”]

Yahoo DSP is a major native traffic source that partners with some of the leading publishers in the world. Giving performance marketers a tool that reaches millions of customers, and access to a vast wealth of existing data and insights. Like other tools, Yahoo DSP too has its features and best practices that you can master for maximum results, in this article, we’ll go over five of them. Targeting Options in Yahoo Besides your more traditional targeting options, such as demographics, GEOs, language, device type, and the like, Yahoo DSP also provides quite an extensive and specific lineup of targeting options from which you can benefit. A few examples of what you can do include: •You can target a location on a page (e.g. above the fold, below the fold, etc) where you want your ads to appear •You can choose to target contextually relevant pages to display your ads or to refrain from displaying them in other spaces •For your videos, you can choose to have them automatically start or only when a viewer clicks play •Continuing on videos, you can choose to display your ads in different lengthed videos (e.g. up to 2 min vids, 2-5 min, 5-30 min, etc) Note: The video’s length is different from the ad’s length •You can target specific types of venues (e.g. office buildings, restaurants, outdoor areas, etc) •You can even showcase your ads when certain weather patterns are in place (e.g. when it’s sunny outside or when it is snowing)   Image by Yahoo Lookalike Audiences in Yahoo An excellent feature inside Yahoo that marketers can use, is Lookalike Audiences. Users can harness Yahoo’s existing massive database, to better target their desired audiences. A few examples include: •Device ID Audiences – basically targeting either iPhone users or Android users •Email Address Audiences – targeting users that have previously used their email address, for example, to create a new account •Re-engagement Audiences – targeting audiences based on previous impressions and clicks •IP Address Audiences – targeting audiences based on their IP Address •Search Keyword Audiences – targeting or excluding users that have searched for a specific term or word •Point of Interest Location Audiences – targeting audiences that are within one meter of a specific point of interest (e.g retail stores, stadiums, airports, universities, parks) after a given amount of times during a specified period •Predictive Audiences – targeting audiences based on their past consumer actions (e.g. online purchases, offline purchases, certain downloads, etc) Best Practices in Yahoo Best Practices for Ads •Stay aware of the latest trends and news •Ask yourself: “Would I click that ad?” •Test all the components that make up an ad, and see which performs better •Have at least 5 ads up and running at all times •Use the Bid Landscape graph in the Reports Tab to manage your budget •Make sure your ads look good across all devices •Have a CTA (motivate the undecided)   Image by Yahoo Best Practices for Titles •Titles should be up to 50 characters long •Titles should lead the reader to a benefit (e.g. question, answer, etc) •Remember your targeting settings (e.g. car owners in Michigan) •Use Title Case Properly •Relate to the product or service you’re offering •Try using numbers (e.g. 10,000 Satisfied Customers, Save $30) Best Practices for Descriptions •The text should flow, read naturally, use correct grammar and avoid superlatives •Avoid punctuation that isn’t necessary •Use sentence case •Use the “Sponsored by” field •Use endorsements where possible (e.g. quotes from customers) •Use the ™ symbol if you have a trademark, or words such as “official site” •Descriptions should be up to 150 characters long (two sentences that focus on the most important information you want to display) Best Practices for Images •Try not to put logos on your images •Use attractive images (e.g. popular destinations for travel ads) •Use clean images with one point of focus •Images should be 1200×627 pixels •Icon images should be 82×82 pixels (max)   Image by Yahoo Yahoo Community Guidelines (Getting Your Ads Approved) Yahoo has its own guidelines users have to follow, in order to have their ads approved. Having any of the following elements in your ads, will lead to them (or even your account) getting banned: •Usage of violent language towards any groups or individuals, or usage of words that promote acts of violence •Any type of material that promotes the abuse of minors •Any type of material that promotes adult content •Promotion of illegal activities or drugs •Content that is designed to mislead and deceive viewers •Accounts not used for more than one year may be subject to deactivation •Promotion of any type of content that violates intellectual rights For a more detailed look into Yahoo’s guidelines, go here. Fine-Tuning Yahoo DSP with TheOptimizer To get the most out of Yahoo, connect it with TheOptimizer and run all your campaigns on autopilot. With TheOptimizer you will be able to scale your Yahoo campaigns profitably and save a lot of your time thanks to the platform’s automations based on preset conditions. If you are not familiar with TheOptimizer yet, it is the #1 automation tool for native platforms. It will allow you to replace your media buying manual (and boring) tasks such as blocking widgets, changing budgets, pausing ads, etc, with condition-based rules. If you want to learn more about how TheOptimizer can help with your Yahoo campaigns click here. For details on other native traffic sources, you can check our excellent articles on Taboola and Outbrain. [vc_empty_space height=”15px”]

MGID is one of the major native advertising platforms that performance marketers use. Every month it targets more than 850 million unique visitors from multiple countries. Like other tools, MGID has its own tips and tricks that performance marketers can master to make the most out of it; in this article, we’ll explore 5 of them. Targeting Tips in MGID •Based on the nature of your campaigns, target accordingly. What does that mean in MGID? Say you are promoting a product or service, then select Product Promotion in your campaigns’ settings, or if your goal is to bring in views to a page, select Content Promotion instead. Note: You can further target specific categories (each having its own sub-categories). •MGID offers a large list of targeting options you can choose from (e.g. GEOs, Language, Type of Device, OS, etc). When choosing any of them, make sure you are targeting a large enough audience that has at least some unifying elements, such as speaking the same language or using the same device type. •Dynamic Retargeting is a feature inside MGID that lets you personalize every ad impression. The idea behind it is pretty simple. Campaign nr.1 is shown to a large audience, then MGID’s sensors detect users’ interests, and when you launch campaign nr.2, it will target only relevant users. •MGID is well known for its reach across the globe. From an interview we did with one of their chief representatives, he shed some light on some of the most successful Geo & Vertical combos. Note: Experimenting with new GEO & Vertical combos can set you apart from the rest of the competition.  •Lastly, MGID recommends that when you test a campaign, you let it run for around 14 days before taking further action and having 10-15 ads in it. Image by MGID Top Three Widgets to Use in MGID From MGID’s list of widgets, there are three that clearly stand out. •Under-article Widget It’s the most powerful and popular widget in MGID’s inventory, as it is the one that traditionally generates the highest CTR. As the name suggests, it’s positioned right at the end of an article, so it is quite natural for visitors to engage with the ads in this space. According to MGID it has a 40-60% visibility rate and performs really well in pretty much all settings. •In-article Widget Combined with the under-article widget they make for a highly successful and killer combo. On its own, the in-article widget is a perfect fit for long-form articles and is preferred by marketers also for its adaptability in multiple device formats. •Smart-Widget For those that receive a higher percentage of their traffic from desktop devices, the smart widget has proven to perform exceptionally well. It presents users with a feed of multiple ad types (native ads, IAB display units, native video) that combines internal content with sponsored content. Additionally, it has a high CTR as a result of high user engagement provided by internal recirculation and video solutions. Image by MGID (example of Under-article Widget) Know the Space Where Your Ads Appear To guarantee that your ads will perform well, take a look at the space where they appear and how they look there. What does that exactly mean? Say you’re opening a site called www.headphones.music in which one of your ads appears. Firstly check if the ad looks well on different types of devices, so mobile and desktop (below you can read what to avoid and what to include in your ads to make them stand out). If the ad looks alright, then check for other elements such as: whether is it positioned correctly or how well it blends with the site’s overall visual appearance; all these little details can really make a difference and increase the impact of your ad. Furthermore, say you are promoting an ad in our example www.headphones.music, that contains something related to headphones or music, it is likely to convert pretty well, but if you are promoting a dishwasher instead, the typical audience that visits www.headphones.music won’t be that interested in clicking on your ad. This is what the core of knowing where your ads appear is all about. The process can help shape your ads to better target custom audiences or to know which publishers to block. Getting Your Ads Approved in MGID Like any other native ads platform, MGID has its own guidelines users have to follow. Promoting any of the following will result in your ads being banned: •Promotion of alcoholic beverages, illicit drugs, illegal gambling and tobacco products •Promotion of any adult-related content (e.g. pornography) •Ads that promote the sale of weaponry of any kind •Promotion of misleading, inaccurate or deceitful content (e.g. fake news) •Any type of content that promotes hate, violence or conflict •Promotion of disturbing or gruesome content •Poor quality photos or grammatically incorrect texts in your ads will have them banned as well Image by MGID Best Practices in Mgid Thumbnail Best Practices Aspect Ratio: 16:9 (preferred), 3:2, 1:1 File Type: png, jpg, or static gif Max File Size: 5 MB Animated Thumbnail Best Practices Minimum Dimensions: 600×400 px Best Ratios: 16:9 between 1:1 Video Length: up to 15 sec Gif Size: up to 5 mb Pixel Resolution: 1020×680 px or higher Format: gif Text and Advertising Text Best Practices •Apply the correct spacing between your words •Headline should contain no period at the end •Make sure you are using the proper verb tenses •Avoid using ellipsis (…) and excessive punctuation or any other unnecessary symbol (@, <>, **) •The language used in your headline should match that in your campaign •Use elements such as {City}, {Country} or {Region} •Headlines should not contain addresses, emails or phone numbers •Emojis shouldn’t be used CTA Best Practices •A CTA is required for tier brand campaigns, but it’s not mandatory for other types •The CTA shoudn’t duplicate the title or the description text, neither should it sound complicated •If in the form of a question, there shouldn’t be more than one •Don’t uses macros or emojis in your CTA •Make sure the CTA has the same language as the teaser above •Present a strong reason for a viewer to click the CTA Image by MGID Image Best Practices •A landscape-oriented image works best in MGID as the system will automatically crop it to tailor it for each placement size •Use an image with a clear point of focus and a relatively plain background •Avoid images that have multiple subjects and a busy background •Be aware that things will get cropped for different placement, hence the main image shouldn’t be damaged •Avoid using images that include small texts in the image or below it •Avoid using images that include logos or layers of text in their body •If you have to use logo or text in your images, then add a background image to your image Thumbnail Image Best Practices •Use an image where the subject of the photo is looking into the camera •Think how your would interact with the product in the image (e.g. if it is a mug, most people would expect the handle to be on the right) •The above mentioned mental trick is applied to things such as instruments or utensils as well •When promoting a product, remove it from its packaging and display it in a normal setting •Always choose high-resolution images for your ads •Choose an image that has no free space around it •Make sure to choose a quality image and not a stretched one •If there’s an additional element to your image (e.g. a promo code), place it in a way that it blends with the main image and doesn’t seem out of place •Choose images that don’t have watermarks on them and that don’t violate any rights For details on other native traffic sources, you can check our excellent articles on Taboola, Outbrain and RevContent. 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RevContent is one of the largest native advertising platforms in the market. Known for its inventory of premium publishers and its wide reach in the US as well as other GEOs. Like any other platform, it has tips and tricks that performance marketers can master. In this article, we’ll go over 5 details that can enable you to make the most out of RevContent. Targeting Tips in RevContent •A proven targeting tip is to target based on device type. So one campaign that targets just mobile audiences (tablet might be included as well), and one that targets just desktop audiences. •Target one country per campaign (e.g. the United States or France), or a group of countries that share the same language (e.g. Germany, Austria, Switzerland). •Shape your content with a certain persona in mind and target accordingly. Know to which audiences your ads are being served (e.g young adult gamers). •Define your KPIs. If your goal is to just gain more traffic, or increase conversions, make that the focus of your targeting. •Connect to a tracker for a better read on your performance. (Our recommendation would be ClickFlare.)   Image by RevContent Split Test Your Campaigns Anywhere, but especially in RevContent, split testing your creatives is highly encouraged. Test all the elements that make up your offer, your image, headline, CTA and the entire landing page on itself, to find out which is the better option. Take each one at a time, so compare Headline A with Headline B, and then move to compare images and so on. If you got an ad that isn’t performing as it should, but you sense some potential in any of its parts, say it has a great image for example, before scraping it, you can try and play with its other components. By making a few simple tweaks here and there, you can potentially turn a low-performing ad, into a highly successful one. Keep testing and refining until you’ve got a killer combo! Headline and Image Best Practices in RevContent Talking about shaping your ads to better their performance, here are a few tips to follow: Headline Best Practices •Use questions that leave room for mystery (e.g. Did You Know That This Product…?). •FOMO (Fear of missing out) is a great driver for more engagement, make sure to put it in your headlines (e.g. Do Not Miss Out On This Offer…). •Good old humor has proven to do the trick time and time again, so a joke or an element that can provoke a laugh can be quite enticing. •Top X-numbered lists have always sparked the interest of users. The promise of specialized information in an easy-to-digest form is quite irresistible (e.g. Top 7 Movie You Should Watch…). •Lastly, news always sells, so if you’re promoting something recent and new, you’re sure to get some eyeballs’ attention (e.g. Latest Discovery Promises…). Image Best Practices •Make sure that your image and your headline jell together. Say you’re promoting a Top 5 kind of content, make sure to showcase one of the 5 points in the image; enticing the viewer to click and learn more about the other 4. •Think of your images as a door that leads your audience to a revelation, to a discovery. Put yourself in their seat, would the image make you want to click it to know more? •On a more technical side of things. RevContent recommends that your images be 1000 X 750 pixels (a ratio of 4:3). •Make sure to fill the entire space of the creative and choose a high-quality image, so no blurry or pixelated parts. For a full list of Headline and Image requirements in RevContent, click here.   Image by RevContent Making Sure Your Ads Are Approved Like any other native ads platform, RevContent has its own rules when it comes to what you can promote or not, or elements that shouldn’t be in your ads. Make sure to avoid the points listed below: •The image on your ad or its headline doesn’t match with the landing page’s content. •The ad includes inappropriate content (promotion of adult/ pornographic content, of unapproved pharmaceuticals, illegal drugs, etc.) •Headline includes inappropriate language (offensive language), uses incorrect grammar, or promotes a misleading message. •Any type of virus or malware is found on your landing page. •Your linked product page in your lander, doesn’t load or work at all. For a full list of elements to avoid and getting all your ads approved in RevContent, go here. Fine-Tuning RevContent with TheOptimizer To get the most out of RevContent, connect it with TheOptimizer and run all your campaigns on autopilot. With TheOptimizer you will be able to scale your RevContent campaigns profitably and save a lot of your time thanks to the platform’s automations based on preset conditions. If you are not familiar with TheOptimizer yet, it is the #1 automation tool for native platforms. It will allow you to replace your media buying manual (and boring) tasks such as blocking widgets, changing budgets, pausing ads, etc, with condition based rules. If you want to learn more about how TheOptimizer can help with your RevContent campaigns click here. For details on other native traffic sources, you can check our excellent articles on Taboola and Outbrain. [vc_empty_space height=”15px”]

Outbrain is one of the largest native traffic sources in the world. It partners with thousands of major publishers and niche ones; simultaneously reaching massive and unique audiences. Like any other tool, it has its tips and tricks that you can master. In this article, we’ll go over some of the key details that can enable you to make the most out of Outbrain. Separate Campaigns by Platform It’s no surprise that the majority of views these days come from mobile (as of February 2023, 60% of all website traffic). Since mobile receives higher CTRs than Desktop, it is recommended to separate your campaigns per Device Type. So, one that targets mobile (and tablet users), and another one that targets just desktop users. You can include all in one campaign, but be aware that in most cases Outbrain’s algorithm will have a preference for mobile traffic. Once you got some data on the performance of either of the two, you can spread your budget more effectively and make the necessary changes to improve your results. Advanced Audience Targeting Outbrain offers a few advanced targeting options that can really help you reach your desired audiences. Here are a few things to keep in mind when using these features: •Be aware of not applying too many targeting layers, this may limit your potential reach. •Keep an eye on your Potential Reach Estimator to see how big the audience you’re targeting can be. •If you choose to use either Outbrain’s Interest or Attribute Targeting features, it is recommended to increase your CPC. •Using both Interest or Attribute Targeting on the same camping can result in a more limited reach. You might opt to use each of them on separate campaigns instead. •You can include up to 20 Interest segments and 20 Attribute segments per campaign. To learn more click here.   Image by Outbrain AdBlock Targeting Another element you can add to your Outbrain campaigns is AdBlock Targeting. As the name suggests, this feature will exclude those users that have an ad blocker installed on mobile or computer devices from your audiences. Presenting your ads instead to users with a higher probability of engaging with your content. Note: If you are promoting a page that doesn’t have ads on it, there’s no need to activate AdBlock targeting. Blocking More Publishers and Sections All of those who have used Outbrain, are well aware that by default you can block up to 30 publishers and 100 sections per campaign. These limits can be filled up real quick, so what to do? By contacting Outbrain’s support or your account manager, they can expand that limit to up to 1000 publishers and 1500 sections per campaign. For more than that, you gotta start and see where you can make some CPC adjustments. Note: In Outbrain, publishers are made up of sections. So for example, if we are talking about the New York Post as a publisher, its sections are New York Post Sports, New York Post Business, New York Post Entertainment and so on.   Best Practices to Follow in Outbrain When shaping your ads in Outbrain, keep in mind the following tips: Title Best Practices • Keep your titles up to 60 characters long (or even less than that). • Use questions – e.g, What are the best…? • Include numbers in your titles when you can, in particular, odd ones – e.g, 9 Ways to… • Place dynamic words to drive engagement – e.g, Gamers in Miami… • Address your target audience directly – e.g, 5 Destinations Travelers Must Visit…. Image Best Practices • Recommended image size in Outbrain is 1200 x 800px • Use a 3:2 ratio for Standard Campaigns, and a 1:1 ratio for Carousel and App Installs • Use clean high-resolution images • Real images usually perform better than stock images or illustrations • Include the product you’re promoting in the pic • Close-up images work better than wider shots For more on Outbrain’s best practices and elements to avoid in your titles and images, go here. Getting Your Ads Approved Talking about some of the things you want to avoid in your Outbrain ads: • Do not showcase pornographic content • Do not showcase content targeted at children under 16 • Do not showcase any illegal, prescription and recreational drugs, or tobacco-related products • Do not promote fake news or misinformation • Do not promote any content that supports hate, violence, or discrimination There’s a full list of guidelines you can read here. Not following Outbrain’s guidelines may lead to your ads being blocked or even your account; so do your research beforehand and have all your ads approved. Bid Strategies in Outbrain Outbrain offers two bid strategies that you can deploy, Conversion Bid Strategy (CBS) and Engagement Bid Strategy (EBS). These options base their decisions and adjustments on Outbrain’s machine-learning capabilities. When you are prioritizing conversions and app installs, choose CBS. It will automatically adjust bids toward top-converting inventory and audiences. There are different CBS modes you can choose from based on your goals: Max Conversions, Semi Manual, Target CPA, and Target ROAS. On the other hand, if your aim is to reach more engaged and more attentive audiences, select EBS. For details on other native traffic sources, you can check our excellent article on Taboola. [vc_empty_space height=”15px”]