MGID (Native Ads)

What are Native Ads?

Native Advertising is growing day by day and it actually refers to the sponsored posts that appear on top news sites with catchy images. 

A great example of this is MSN.COM, where you usually see a series of ads at the end of an article. The only con in Native Traffic is that it’s SUPER EXPENSIVE and can blow thousands of bucks in a day. Hence, you have to be really careful with your bids, and daily spending cap.

Native traffic can attract relevant audiences to your ads, who are probably interested in knowing about the product and may ultimately buy it (depending on the lander). You can get numerous sales in a day if displayed at the right time and on the right site. Always consider where your ad will show up, why the audience will see it, and what sort of CALL TO ACTION you will have to put out there to convert your audience into clickers, and ultimately buyers.

Choosing The Campaign and Native Network 

The best way to select a campaign is to reach out to your Affiliate Manager at MaxWeb and explain to them what kind of traffic is most suitable for their top offers.

When I started promoting, I reached out to Daisy and she helped me with choosing the best offer, i.e. Nerve Control 911. I promoted it last year in Oct-Nov.

MaxWeb had an ongoing offer with MGID that if you sign up and add $1000 they will give you a bonus of $500 so I decided to experiment with this network to learn more. You can try any Native platform you want like Taboola, OutBrain, and Verizon Media to name a few.

There is a postback pixel that your designated MGID manager sends you and you have to set it on your MaxWeb dashboard . It was kinda tricky for me as I never ran Native ads. But Daisy was super kind and introduced me to Virgil who helped me set it up and also performed a test sale to see if it fires correctly.

So, if you are new to Native, always ask your managers to help you as there is so much learning and knowledge that you can gain along the way from your managers, who see these offers perform everyday.

As a rule, the affiliates use a third party tracking system so you set a postback there, not in the affiliate network. But I was only getting started, and didn’t know much about third parties so I set the postback on MaxWeb. You can alternatively use Voluum, HasOffers, PeerClick, Bemob , and you can analyse a lot of data. They are quite good, and can be a great addition to track your revenues better. 

PeerClick has a free membership offer for some time and it's good to try it out without paying anything so that you can see if it’s worth it for you to spend on its membership or not.

Setting Up

I created more than one campaign and made a target for desktop / IOS / Android separately.

It works better this way, and we can better analyze the data. They have a different CPC for each of the devices, the cost breakdown is as follows:

• Desktop:     $0.24
• IOS:            $5.8
• Android:     $5.9

This campaign works on Tier1 USA, in this geo the CPC is higher than the rest of the geos, and so I increased the daily limit to at least $ 100 per day. With a limit of $ 50 daily, data collection will be slow for optimization and not objective. Plus as an added bonus, my manager uploaded a black list to my campaign so that I spend less at the start.

We started with the mobile campaigns, and got 2 conversions from both IOS and Android devices.
On day one we spent $100 and made $160 in return. We then submitted two new teasers for this campaign, as it was performing well.

Sending the teasers for the moderation process usually takes up to 24 hours for teasers in English and up to 72 hours for ads in other languages. If the moderation process takes more than 72 hours you can inform your manager to speed up the process. Their moderators work on weekends and most public holidays so that’s a big plus as the traffic is huge on these days.

Everyday we got at least  2 conversions on mobile, which is good for the USA, we only needed to optimize step by step.

I created 2 additional campaigns only on white list, and left the main campaign generating well performing widgets

I made a small Analysis to improve the performance of active campaigns:

1. IOS USA: Generates sales stably, additionally created a white list only from those widgets from where we received conversions.
2. Android USA: Campaign generates sales, but we need to optimize more and reduce the conversion cost.,
3. Canada Desktop + Mobile: We received 2 conversions, one from mobile and the other from desktop.

It is important to note here that your assigned manager at MGID will help you create all the whitelist, teasers, and ads. They have good quality graphics that are capable of grabbing attention and taking the audience to the lander.

MGID has good eye-catching graphics with powerful headlines that can turn the audience's heads. 

As a reference, I have attached one of their Native Ads below:

Results

I managed to get 2 conversions daily, in total I made 19 sales, and my ads ran from 5pm to 11pm.

MGID’s system allows you to choose any date range for your campaign. 

To set it up, just go to the settings of the current campaign in the dashboard and find the "Schedule" option there. 

• You can also, Pause campaign for weekends;
• Pause campaign for workdays;
• Pause campaign for business times.

CONCLUSION

Not many affiliates can afford Native ads when they are starting up. They are costly and can be super expensive if not done correctly. It's recommended to join Facebook groups on Native Advertising where you can learn a lot from other people and take their advice. But always do your own research.

RevContent, Taboola, OutBrain are some other famous Native platforms, but I chose MGID as they give you that bonus on signing up that can help your ads and conversions a lot.

The real catch here is CHOOSING THE RIGHT CAMPAIGN! Discuss it out in detail with your MaxWeb Affiliate Manager, and see what’s working best on the network. Check if the lander is compelling and good enough to convert your audience into customers!

I really enjoyed working with MGID as you literally just have to analyse the data and tell your assigned personal manager to create a campaign the way you want, and he does everything on his own! Just remember to keep monitoring everything, be vigilant of the statistics, and enjoy your sales pouring in!

There are also other offers that would convert more than Nerve Control. You can simply reach out to your MaxWeb Affiliate Manager, who would be more than willing to help you out with that.

Good luck with your Maxweb offer promotions, and try the Native Ads at least once in your life to give your revenues a much needed boost.