Lady Kim and Benyonce from POF.
There are four reason why you aren’t currently running on Plenty of Fish Ads:
- You don’t think there is volume – There is volume, people are spending mid-high $x,xxx/day.
- You only think dating offers work – Some of those high volume campaigns are nowhere close to the dating niche. Sorry I cant disclose the niche.
- You tried but to no luck – No problem this post should help you!
- You can’t be bothered – Plenty of Fish are the most affiliate friendly and transparent network on the interweb. I would advise to get in before the brand advertisers take over.
Now you now how dreamy Plenty of Fish is here are some tips to get your campaigns rocking:
Frequency Cap – More than just a pretty face.
The frequency cap feature is a powerful tool if used correctly. This is how you utilize it.
- Use the exact same campaigns and test it at a higher cpm (0.50 – 0.60) and tighten the frequency cap to 3.
- At the same time run it at a lower cpm (0.15-0.25) and open up the frequency cap to 5 or 10.
- While the offer may not convert at the same metrics as the higher cpm, the lower cost will offset this and overall your ROI should remain the same with a lot more inventory to be had.
- In the US right now the lowest cpm for the smaller units is around 0.32. In Canada and the UK there’s lots of traffic to be had around 0.15 – 0.25 so I’d test this in these countries first.
Standard IAB sizes – They kind of look like these big ad thingys. You can use them you know!
I’m not sure why these ad sizes aren’t used often. Maybe it’s people stuck in their ways with Facebook Ads, who knows? Although only around 30% of impressions are served to IAB ads, most people don’t realize that the option is there because they have to deposit $1000 before it’s available. These ads are shown on completely SEPARATE pages from the smaller ad units. What pages are they? Glad you asked! They are all profile pages as well as the sent messages and view messages. Use that knowledge to your advantage by, I dunno, maybe talking about messages in your ads???
Extra Traffic – Yes Please.
Markus the Marlin posted this great tip on Wickedfire. The way the POF system works right now is if you create 3 campaigns, your traffic will increase by a factor of 6-9. If they don’t have 3 types of ads to show at 20 cents, they don’t show anything. So if you have 3 campaigns, all 3 of your campaigns could show up at once. Simple.
Markus says three is the secret number to get extra traffic.
Branding – Say What?
It took me a while to come to terms with this word. Now this is not exclusive to POF, but it was brought to my attention by POF. A little bird told me that one of things that POF consistently see through the advertising they do is, that for every person that clicks our ads, three times as many more saw the ad and will visit our site at a later date. This really only applies to people using IAB ads plus their own landers. But as an experiment, try having your lander URL somewhere prominent on your creative. You will be able to tell which conversions came from branding since they would have directly typed in your URL, not gone through a subid.
One Penny Tip – It still works.
Quite frankly I’m disappointed here. I tried my best to help the masses with a decent bidding strategy, but it hasn’t stuck. Reports from the POF lighthouse say that masses are still heavily bidding on five cent increments. At the moment you are bidding against a tonne of people in comparison to what you would have been if you were hitting those penny increments. Take a hint!!!
Targeting Strategies – Go tiny or go large.
There is a killing to be made by going super targeted. I’m talking zip codes, provinces, and single ages. If you’re too lazy to go with that strategy, go large. I’m not allowed to go in depth here sorry.
Hi Lorenzo,
Great post and tips, but one thing I don't understand – you mentioned the session depth parameter but the variable in the tip was the frequency cap(3 against 5-10), not the session depth. Am I missing something here?
Haha thanks for pointing it out. Fixed. That's why I should'nt be writing posts at 3am…
No problem.
By the way, since I mentioned it – do you have any useful tips about the session depth parameter?
I recommend only start using session depth once you have got the rest of your targeting sorted. Which session depth option you should use varies based on your campaign. There are no "secrets" just test 1-3, 4-8, 9-15, 20-30, 31+ then drill down deeper as you start seeing results.
Awesome, I'll do that. Thanks!
Awesome! I'll be bookmarking this and going over it again soon
Myself and a few affiliates have struggled with POF traffic. I think I should test a few other niches and give it another crack, especially since I bought some magical tool.
Great blog!
Btw, can you possibly make the rss feed to full again instead of summary only ?
It's easier on iPhone
and you can even put ads if it's full article.
Changed!
Thanks so much! I was going to ask this too, I always use NewsRack so that I can read your new posts and soon as you write them
Thx a lot!
voted for POF Kim.. i think… that slinkset voting site is confusing the shit out of me
also – i see some success using the lander URL in my small FB style ads too, not just the larger banners. You need a good short domain though, and you lose some tracking.
LOLOL Ahhh what a great way to start my day. Thanks Lorenzo! In all seriousness though, fantastic post with epic hints for your fellow affiliates. Great job!
I just checked with Kim and 150 votes or not, with enough beverages, I think we can whip something up.
Haha perfect! Video cameras will be on the ready for Benyonce's debut!
At first I thought Benyonce was a typo, but then I realized the brilliance. Pics or it didn't happen!
Lorenzo has also agreed to be a backup dancer given enough beverages! Before all is said and done we might end up with an entire ensemble!
I'm only in if Markus comes to cut a few shapes!
@BENyonce –
as long as something is being whipped up, and not being whipped out…
Shoot some vids plz. or it didn't happen.
Extremely weird. I was listening to that GaGa "Telephone" video (in the background) while surfing my fsv Feeds, and popped on here to see a screen cap from it at the top of this post! LOL
Always great to see a well done Photoshop masterfully crafted into the gist of a post. Well done.
And thanks also for this and the previous POF tips. I'll be advertising there soon myself – not dating, but something I think will get their attention.
Good stuff!
[...] I was just reading Mr. Green’s latest post on it and this line popped out at me: “Although only around 30% of impressions are served to [...]
Hahaha wow that is great!
POF is gonna get swarmed with idiots very soon…
big guru product launch this month starring using POF ads
There go the bid prices then…
Thanks for the insight. I read it twice as I haven't tried POF yet. Ryan has a point. You're going to draw the masses into POF driving up bid prices. I think I might be one of them.
Mr. Brown,
I don't think Ryan was talking about Mr. Green as the guru, he was talking about another big launch where the guru is launching a product about "his new super secret traffic source".
Hi Mr Green,
I am kinda confused by what you say about "The way the POF system works right now is if you create 3 campaigns, your traffic will increase by a factor of 6-9."
Can you or others elaborate on this?
thanks,
Henry
It means that if you had one campaign for example you would only get 6 impressions. If you made three identical campaigns you would get an extra 3 impressions that you wouldn't of got with just one campaign.
Okie, i kinda get it. This is really something new that i do not know of.
Let me just summarize here – for any offer, we should always create 3 identical campaigns, with the same demo targeting, the only difference between the campaigns are the creatives used.
Am i right?
No you don't need to make a difference between the campaigns, they can be exactly identical. This technique is for getting more traffic for your campaigns, for testing you don't really need to that. I would focus on maybe test identical campaigns with different cpms
Ah….lightbulb moment.
thanks Lorenzo! By the way, your POF uploader save me a ton of time. thanks!
Interesting post. It would be nice to know what ad niches work in POF… meaning what industry/products work and what don't work.
I just joined pof, I'll be keeping your tips in mind.
Thanks!
Could you please please give the abreviation in laymen terms in some reference place. Or is there a dictionary of terms somewhere where we can refer to thank you
Woody
IAB = Internet Advertising Board-Standard Ad Sizes (large banner ads 300×250 etc)
POF = Plentyoffish.com
ROI = Return on investment
CPM = Cost per thousand impressions
is it true that they allowed 300X250 banner in their advertising space?
Yes.
Okay you got me thinking about the adfish uploader but not sure if I can spend the $100 right now but I also tried to vote and the link is no longer available but thank you for the insightful information.
have you tried advertising on http://www.pofusers.com since pof removed their own forums somebody setup a seperate site, i'm getting good conversions for my dating site traffic from pofusers as they are all ex pof posters.
Lorenzo,
Are there any programs our there specifically for POF marketing that you would recommend?
Later
Working on something. Will update soon.
Hey Lonzo,
if making 3 identical campaigns can increase impressions by a factor of 6-9, would creating more campaigns increase impressions by more? for example, what if you made 30 identical campaigns? how would that effect volume?