Voluum, Events Limit and Popup Traffic (except ZP)

[ppcnewbie]

Hi.

I have a question. I didn't think about it much till today, when I decided to signup with Voluum.

I just realized that 1 million events might not be as much as it sounds when running pop traffic, except ZeroPark.

So, if I got this right, and Event is considered visit, click and conversion.

So, basically, if I run a campaign on a domain redirect/popup traffic source, won't I run though the events too fast, since each time my link is popped up or redirected, an Event will be counted.

And 1million/month means avg 33k/day which for popup traffic isn't much at all.

Am I missing something here?

Thanks

 

[Stephen ThriveTracker]

@ppcnewbie that's right, they are pretty expensive for pops.

With Thrive, we don't count landing page clicks and conversions as events, and our pricing is a lot less expensive (almost 50% less at high volumes)

We are also the tracker of choice for pops. Here's an article that Attila wrote recommending Thrive for high volume pops:
Say hello to Thrive – The tracker of choice for guys doing MASSIVE VOLUME! | iAmAttila

You can pass in cost via a cost token, and we also support some traffic sources that pass in CPM so you can divide the CPM by 1000 to get a close cost value for your pops.

Highly recommend our Cloud Service if you're planning on running high volume.

 

[newlxx]

Hi.

I have a question. I didn't think about it much till today, when I decided to signup with Voluum.

I just realized that 1 million events might not be as much as it sounds when running pop traffic, except ZeroPark.

So, if I got this right, and Event is considered visit, click and conversion.

So, basically, if I run a campaign on a domain redirect/popup traffic source, won't I run though the events too fast, since each time my link is popped up or redirected, an Event will be counted.

And 1million/month means avg 33k/day which for popup traffic isn't much at all.

Am I missing something here?

Thanks

Yeah exactly. One of the reason I switched over to thrive.
Most of my traffic is from pop and redirect. 1M events get used up pretty quick.

 

[ppcnewbie]

Thanks, Tom.

When I'll get to the level where I'll run such big campaigns, I will consider using Thrive (I watched some videos and your tool looks one of the top, plus all these recommendations from guys like Attila makes is even nicer).

Currently, since I'm just beginning, your managed service is too much for me at $299/mo. Also, I don't want to bother with using a self-hosted tool as of yet, I'd rather focus my time and money on running campaigns instead of spending time and money on VPS, for example.

Your free trial is nice, but considering I don't plan on switching the tracker every 30 days, I plan to start with a tracker and stick to it long enough to master it as well.

It's good to know your pricing model regarding pop traffic. Definitely seems a good option when running huge traffic campaigns.

Since I'm just starting, I plan to start small, but even with a small budget, it's easy to get 33k views/day on your lander (unless I understood this all pop-traffic+lander wrong, but I assume I got it right: let's say you have a $0.003 cost per view on a 3rd tier country. This means, for each time the popup with my lander loads, the Voluum URL is loaded with the appropriate redirects, and that counts as an Event, right? Well, at $0.003, it costs about $100/day to get to the limit which is a bit over what I consider spending, but I'm sure I can get cheaper views on some 3rd tier countries).

This pretty much forces Voluum user to either scale their campaigns to ZP or at least upgrade their plan on Voluum.

This puts me in the loop a little. I've heard many top affiliates recommending beginners to start with pop traffic, because it's cheaper, you don't have to deal with banners, but at least with banners only the click will register as Event

I'll need to sleep on it and maybe wait some replies for other guys as well and make the decision tomorrow

Thanks again for your reply

PS: looks like once I'll get some positive ROIs, I might chose Attila's way, using Voluum for display and Thrive for pops

 

[Stephen ThriveTracker]

@ppcnewbie please email our support: support[at]ipyxel.com

Just let them know your traffic needs, and we'll see if we can do a custom plan for you that works for your current needs and so you can use us going forward. Remember we only count initial visits, not additional "events".
Our Thrive users will tell you our product is world-class and so is our support, so please start a dialogue with us and we'll find something that works for you.

 

[ppcnewbie]

Thanks, I'll think about this.

But wait a second, you still count pop visits as events as well, right? Well, this represents the biggest part of the events for popup traffic, because the clicks on landers and conversions will represent a small % of this. So I'm worried about the events generated by lander views rather than the other events.

What's your events limit for the self-hosted package?

 

[Stephen ThriveTracker]

Yes, we only count initial visits. Any subsequent events are not counted.

There is no limit for the self-hosted package, but you are responsible for all server configuration, optimization, monitoring, scaling, etc. so server side issues are self-service.

If you want to try out the self-hosted package first, you can use our link for Liquid Web to get a $100 discount on a Storm VPS and you can ask them to install Thrive for you for free.

 

[trackingdesk]

Hi.

I have a question. I didn't think about it much till today, when I decided to signup with Voluum.

I just realized that 1 million events might not be as much as it sounds when running pop traffic, except ZeroPark.

So, if I got this right, and Event is considered visit, click and conversion.

So, basically, if I run a campaign on a domain redirect/popup traffic source, won't I run though the events too fast, since each time my link is popped up or redirected, an Event will be counted.

And 1million/month means avg 33k/day which for popup traffic isn't much at all.

Am I missing something here?

Thanks

Hi - Please have a look at our platform (trackingdesk) which covers everything you need and more. While our pricing isn't public yet, it will beat thrive and voluum, and if/when necessary we can build custom pricing.

PM me for details.

 

[ppcnewbie]

Thanks.

While I like finding more about other alternatives, I didn't start this thread to be pitched with other tracking tools, at least without a simple explanation why this would be better than Voluum, like Tom did.

Anyway, I was mostly looking for some answers to my questions, rather than finding about other trackers, which I knew about anyway.

 

[trackingdesk]

This puts me in the loop a little. I've heard many top affiliates recommending beginners to start with pop traffic, because it's cheaper, you don't have to deal with banners, but at least with banners only the click will register as Event

Well, that's not entirely accurate and let me explain why.
1. It's indeed very hard to optimize a display banner if you don't have the ability to rotate banners and this is one of the reasons affiliates are more keen to go to popup traffic.
2. A display ad server charges for impressions as opposed to clicks. So you pay a cpm price as an ad serving fee, on top of your campaign cpm cost.
3. Since click through rate are extremely low - you should be very happy to get a 0.5% CTR on a display campaign

Those factors are discouraging many affiliates as it's a big number's game and one would have to spend several thousands dollars in order to get some stats which can then be optimized.

As opposed do display, popup traffic provides quickly lots of traffic that can be used for fast and effective optimization.

Here is an google sheet with comparisons between ad serving and tracking server cost, break down of ctr/cost/numbers etc.. It's quite basic, but will allow to play with the numbers and make some assumptions and / or forecasts.

While I like finding more about other alternatives, I didn't start this thread to be pitched with other tracking tools, at least without a simple explanation why this would be better than Voluum, like Tom did.

Fair enough! You're not missing a thing. If you break down the tracking software monthly price into a CPM price, you'll realize that it can be costly.

Good luck
Laurent

 

[ppcnewbie]

Thanks for your reply.

Though, I have to admit you kinda lost me here. I guess you missed the fact that I'm new to this thing

You said "A display ad server charges for impressions as opposed to clicks. So you pay a cpm price as an ad serving fee, on top of your campaign cpm cost."

I have no idea what you meant by this. The way I understand it, you say there are 2 costs involved?

• cpm price as an ad serving fee
• campaign cpm cost

I don't know what this means. For display traffic, won't I just pay a certain CPM or CPC? What's the "campaign cpm cost"?

------------------

Regarding CTRs on display, I know they are low. And as I said previously, this is one of the reasons pop traffic would be better to start with, because at least I'll get more visits to my lander or directly to the offer and see how it performs. True, the traffic won't be targeted, but at least I gather data initially.

"one would have to spend several thousands dollars in order to get some stats which can then be optimized"

probably you're exaggerating a bit here, even with display ads you still can gather some decent stats with a few hundred $ (assuming you're not testing from the start 5 banners and 5 landers, which will spread the data too thin).

-------------------

Regarding your excel sheet, I don't understand what Tracking Server column is for. Also, what's the "campaign cost CPM"? again, why are there 2 costs involved?

I think I'm either too sleepy to understand this, or I too new to this thing

 

[trackingdesk]

You said "A display ad server charges for impressions as opposed to clicks. So you pay a cpm price as an ad serving fee, on top of your campaign cpm cost."

I have no idea what you meant by this. The way I understand it, you say there are 2 costs involved?

• cpm price as an ad serving fee
• campaign cpm cost

I don't know what this means. For display traffic, won't I just pay a certain CPM or CPC? What's the "campaign cpm cost"?

What i mean is that both a tracking server (trackingdesk/voluum etc...) or a display ad server (epom, doubleclick, openx) charge for the traffic that goes through their system. Obviously, these costs are to be added to the campaign costs.

So the 2 columns in the sheet are a very elementary comparison between a popup and display cost breakdown.

My intention was to explain why pop traffic was more popular among affiliates and I think we are on the same page here.

While it probably doesn't directly answer your initial question, i hope it gives you the heads up on what you might experience during your journey as an affiliate.
Good luck!