Module6 Mediabuyingblitz

Chad Hamzehs
Traffic BlackBook
Direct to Site Banner Buys - Both Small & Large Sites
Today’s Agenda
- Discuss how to find relevant sites to approach for banner
buys
- One of the ways to approach these sites
- Determining how much you should pay
- Common pitfalls and some mistakes I made early on

What is Going Direct?
For small sites, you are basically approaching web
masters to purchase advertising space, typically on a flat
monthly rate.
On larger sites, you will contact their advertising

department and negotiate a buy.
I will cover both in detail today.

Definitely ask questions
as we go today...
Advantages of Going Direct (Lots!)
- Rarely will you encounter restrictions
- Less competition than most platforms
- Most things are negotiable (price, placement, term)
- An almost unlimited number of sites and volume
- You can get very cheap traffic done properly
- Sometimes works best direct linking
- You will usually have your own rep for support (on larger sites)
- With good credit terms, you can do larger buys with relatively
little risk
- If you have a proven placement on GCN or PPV, or proven
demographics from Facebook, it becomes very scalable
- Uninformed web masters! (similar to uninformed Youtube vid/channel owners)
Advantages of Going Direct (Lots!)
- In my opinion, it is more straight forward than other systems
we have covered (no keywords, no QS, limited ad disapprovals,
limited competition)
- Almost full transparency
- Potential to build up a very long term portfolio
- Reduced pricing often if you buy lots of inventory or months
in advance
- Whether with flat rate or CPM, the more clicks you get, the
cheaper your clicks will be
- Easy to create custom creatives specific to each site this way
Disadvantages of Going Direct
- Larger sites usually have larger minimums (3k-5k, but again it is
negotiable)
- Many reps at larger sites work 9-5, Monday to Friday. Quite the
departure from our self serve systems (main reason I still do initial testing on
self serve, I’m impatient and really I need to get over that)
- Web masters on smaller sites won’t usually respond when you

contact them initially. Maybe 15% will respond (good news is when you deal
with a good one they are typically more responsive than reps at some larger sites)
- Prosper202 not as effective. But you get a much better option.
- If your CTR are too low, you could end up paying too much
for clicks. Avg. CTR seem to be 0.35-0.55% but this can vary
wildly.
Why This Route and Not Large
Display Networks?
- Larger networks such as Value Click and Tribal Fusion can be
great since you can hit a whole network of sites with your
budget, but your transparency is limited, and testing typically
costs more to be done properly
- With the direct method, you can learn how to do proper
research and media plans
- Again, we are building a proof of concept. Building our own
“network of websites” to get a good profile of what kind of
sites our offers are working on. Once we have that data, going
to a network with a good rep is a lot easier since we know the
kinds of sites we are succeeding with, and can buy targeted
traffic then
Why This Route and Not Large
Display Networks?
- Costs less to build data
- Lower potential for big losses
- You will have full control of optimizing

Buying from Small Sites
At a Glance:
- Looking for flat rate buys
- Budgets of usually under $1k, and typically under $500
- I usually get $150-200/mth
- My best consistent ROI (300%) is typically from these

sites
- We will be choosing the offer first, but of course if you

can connect the dots you can start with the traffic source
and find offers that fit its demographics
- We will look to find very targeted sites to purchase from

Step 1: Choosing an Offer
- As before, talk to your affiliate manager and ask for the
top 3 offers in your vertical of choice
- Ask what is working for display traffic if they have that

data
- Since we are buying on a flat rate, feel free to test a

couple verticals at once
- As we did with PPV, find the demographics of the offer. If

possible, cross reference with MSN Ad Labs, Google Ad
Planner, and Alexa for accuracy
Step 2: Finding Sites
- We want to find 20 - 30 potential target sites that fit our
offer demographics. Obviously you can find less but many
small web masters will not get back to you
- Look for sites getting less than 20k-30k uniques per day
if possible. One of my best small buys had 2500 US
uniques per day.
- You can use many of these methods for larger sites as

well, just with different volume requirements
Let’s look at how to find these sites...

Method 1: Google Search
- Simply go to one of the Big 3 engines, preferably Google, and search for very
targeted terms to your vertical. Take a look at the sites in the organic search
results. >>
- Check traffic levels in Compete.com, Google Ad Planner, Alexa, Statbrain &

Quantcast. Find common thread.
- You can also search for “related terms” as we did with Facebook interests.
Both methods have given me success.
- Look up demographics and cross reference with Google Ad Planner, MSN,

Quantcast if available
- Try to be as targeted as possible here
- If you have converting keywords from PPC campaigns, easiest method is to go

after sites that rank high for those converting keywords. This goes for converting
GCN placements as well. Approach them privately and cut out the middle man.
Method 2: Google Ad Planner & Quantcast Planner
- If possible use Google Ad Planner for this, I find it gives me deeper and more
varied results. Also search by categories for deeper results (less volume) >>
- If needed you can use the Quantcast planner here >>
Check traffic levels in Compete.com, Google Ad Planner, Alexa, Statbrain &

Quantcast. Find common thread.
Method 2: Google Ad Planner & Quantcast Planner
Method 3: Affinity and Related Sites
- When looking at Google Ad Planner or Quantcast Planner, take a look at the
affinity sections to get more site ideas >>
Method 4: Alexa Keyword or Category Search >>
Method 5: Forums
- Go to Big-Boards.com >>
Step 3: Contacting Sites
- Contacting small sites can be a challenge
- First obvious step is to look at the navigation or scroll down to

the bottom and see if there is an “advertise” link
- If there is no advertise link, is there a “contact” link?
- If there is neither of these, use your favourite “whois” lookup

for that domain and see if there is some contact info there
- For forums, if none of the above work and you really want to
get on there, post in the forum on how to get a hold of an admin
or the site owner. I’ve had to do this before for a forum in GCN
that was converting great for me and I wanted to cut out
Google.
Step 3: Contacting Sites
Sample Script: This is typically how I e-mail smaller sites...
“Hi there (if there is no contact name)
I was wondering if I could get some info for banner advertising

on your site __________.com
I’d like to do a test buy as soon as possible.
Thanks very much,
Chad Hamzeh
DSV2 Media
This is a template I pretty much copy and paste since we are
contacting so many sites. Sometimes I don’t even put their URL in the e-mail. This is a numbers
game.You could even outsource this if the person knows how to select good targets.
Step 4: Deciding What to Pay
Like I said, the majority won’t contact you. If you like, you can e-
mail them several times. If you get a response, a lot of times it
will be vague, and sometimes they will want you to name a price.
For smaller sites, I will typically then ask how many impressions
my ad will see in the month. Tell them you want to buy the entire
ad slot for the month, and not be rotated with other advertisers.
Cross reference their impression number with the total page
views number in Google Ad Planner (if available) assuming you
purchased 100% impressions.
Also, keep in mind that if you are promoting CPA offers, they will
only be eligible for certain countries, take this into account when
measuring traffic levels. This is extremely important.
If we have previously targeted this URL on GCN, or we decide
to do so now, we can get an idea of what to pay to maintain
profitability. For example...
“I normally don't offer banner advertising outside of Adsense because I

don't want to deal with the maintenance and upkeep of client accounts,
billing, and all that.
That being said, I am willing to replace the

Adsense ads on 50% of the page views, with your banner ads, for $400 a
month.
Currently I receive 130,000 unique visitors a month and over

225,000 pageviews. I will rotate a couple banners if you wish. I can cloak
the links if you want, can link to you with whatever URLs you want, and
will include tracking code if you wish....”
This was the response from a site that was

very profitable for me on GCN

don't want to deal with the maintenance and upkeep of client accounts,
billing, and all that. Calculate the Proposed CPM
That being said, I am willing to replace the Campaign Cost/page views x 1000 = CPM
$400/112500 x 1000 = CPM
month.
$3.55 = CPM
225,000 pageviews. I will rotate a couple banners if you wish. I can cloak http://www.clickz.com/cpm_calculator


don't want to deal with the maintenance and upkeep of client accounts, Calculate Your Max CPM
Payout x 1000 x CTR x Conv. Rate = Max CPM
That being said, I am willing to replace the $40 x 1000 x 0.004 x .01 = Max CPM
Adsense ads on 50% of the page views, with your banner ads, for $400 a $40 x 1000 x 0.004 x .01 = $1.60 CPM
month.

If I had previous data from GCN for this
will include tracking code if you wish....” site, I could run a “placement report” and
calculate a more accurate metric, which is
my eCPM, which I will cover later.

don't want to deal with the maintenance and upkeep of client accounts, Calculate Max Cost
Max CPM/1000 x Impressions = Max Cost
That being said, I am willing to replace the $1.60/1000 x 112500 = $180
month. http://www.clickz.com/cpm_calculator


When you want to scale you should know this number to tell reps
Calculate Cost Per Acquistion

don't want to deal with the maintenance and upkeep of client accounts, http://www.clickz.com/cpa_calculator
That being said, I am willing to replace the

month.

Although $3.55/$400 was too much in this case, depending on what I was
paying on GCN, I might be able to go over my calculated max CPM and
remain profitable, but it’s not advisable. In many cases you won’t have CPM
data from a GCN campaign, so stick to your thresholds.
So in that example I had the luxury of knowing my previous placement data from GCN.
When I don’t have that data, I will calculate a theoretical maximum CPM based on page view
data, a lower CTR of 0.25%, and a conversion rate from the click of 1% when using a lander, and
of course my offer payout. I can use a higher conversion rate for offers not requiring a credit
card. But again this is simply giving us an estimate. Also take in mind direct linking vs. landing
pages.
I will also use CubeStat.com for a rough estimate of the sites revenue if I don’t have a better
option for estimating.
And finally, sometimes I will simply throw out a low figure for these small sites, something like
$50-100 for the month and see the web masters reaction. Worst they can say is no.
As a guideline, I am usually looking to pay what would equate to under $1 CPM, ideally 50 cents
or under. But of course this can vary.
If you’re a bit nervous about one of these buys, they can usually
be negotiated for a term of 1-2 weeks as well to test.
Don’t only take the web masters word on traffic volume and
demographics, do your due diligence and make sure you keep
geographic restrictions in mind.
Negotiate to buy all impressions during your term. Meaning, your

banner will not be rotated with other advertisers.You want to
make sure you are getting all the impressions purchased.
Step 5: Create Your Banners/Landers
I won’t go into too much detail here as it is the same process as
before. Sell the click, start the story, and intrigue visitors.
For whichever banner sizes you are purchasing, create 3 very

different banner styles per offer. Since you’re paying a flat rate,
creating 5 banners per size is a good idea to build a proof of
concept for which banners will work when you go to a CPM deal
later. Try shocking styles and blended styles.
Try to get a 300 x 250 slot above the fold if available. Followed
by a 336 x 280, 160 x 600, and 120 x 600. Testing is the only way
to know for sure, but I have noticed higher CTR on average from
300 x 250 than any other.
Since we’re paying flat rate, test going direct to the offer and
landing page. Test different factors in this low risk environment.
Step 6: Tracking Small Direct Buys
Tracking can be done in couple ways for small direct buys and I
have done both:
1) Prosper202
2) An Ad Server
When using Prosper202 for small direct buys, each banner you give to the web master will need
it’s own destination URL associated with the correct banner, so you can see which banner is
converting and which are not. Then it is simply a matter of getting the web master to pull the
non-converters. This works well if you are testing and paying for multiple placements, so that you
can focus your funds only on the converting placements.
I will cover what an ad server is and how to use it for tracking

later. If you don’t know what an ad server is, it’s like having your
own private Adwords dashboard.... sort of.
The downsides of small direct buys is that you need to research
just as much as a large direct buy for the most part, but web
masters might not get back to you. However, they can be great
long term money makers in your portfolio.
Go extremely targeted if possible, understand the websites

audience, and you’ll do well. I’ve had some running for months
without any tweaking.
Buying from Larger
Sites
At a Glance:
- The step by step process is similar but not exact
- Almost always CPM based bidding
- Budgets of over 1K typically. Minimums of 3k+ are more

likely but again everything is negotiable and it doesn’t hurt
to ask
- Although 1K is usually the bare minimum, we want to

shoot for full credit terms if possible
- We want to target a very specific demographic for

our first strategy.You won’t always be able to find
demographics + interests to match for large volume sites,
so we’ll focus on demographics
At a Glance:
- You will be optimizing the campaign, not your rep
- Going direct to site, we will want to test their remnant

inventory first
At a Glance:

inventory first
Remnant Inventory is a sites excess inventory. Meaning, it’s ad space that hasn’t been sold. This is
the type of ad space that is usually occupied by ad networks. When doing Google Content
Network, your ads typically show up as a sites remnant inventory.Your impressions might show a
slight variance from day to day with remnant. This is normal.
The other type of inventory is premium inventory. With premium inventory you are usually given
the option to target a specific demographic, genders, ages, or even categories on the site. Premium
inventory is great if you already know your cost per acquisition (http://www.clickz.com/
cpa_calculator) and eCPM, and want to buy from a larger site with broader demographics. This way
you can specify the exact demographics you need.
However, since we are going after sites that already have a specific demographic (75% women
between the ages of 18-24 for example), then we already know that traffic fits our demographic.
And in many cases, remnant traffic will be 2-4x cheaper than buying premium.
At a Glance:

inventory first
Buying remnant first is the cheapest way to test a sites traffic quality. Of course you can test
premium first if you like, but really you will save yourself a good amount of money testing remnant
traffic first.
Taking advantage of remnant traffic first is important when testing new traffic sources. Our goal
here is to calculate our eCPM (effective cost per thousand) for that traffic source. In simple terms
this tells us how well that traffic converts for us. Basically, it tells you the most can & should pay per
1000 impressions. Once we have this number after a test run, we can look to renegotiate with
confidence, and many times you can get cheaper traffic by buying inventory in advance. Keep in
mind, we will want to know eCPM per offer, ad, etc., if possible for that traffic source. You will be
looking for the offer and ad with the highest eCPM.
http://www.csgnetwork.com/ecpmcalc.html
At a Glance:

inventory first
eCPM is kind of an odd metric for advertisers. Typically most definitions and calculators are tailored
to publishers (site owners) It tells them basically how much they are making per thousand
impressions for that ad, etc. The reason we want the ads and offers that bring the highest eCPM, is
because we basically have more room to negotiate since it’s bringing in lots of revenue. Make sense?
If you are hitting an eCPM of $2 on remnant traffic then that is much better than an ad bringing an
eCPM of $0.50. If $0.50 is the max cpm you can pay for that traffic, it is going to be tough unless
you have an extremely cheap traffic source.
http://www.csgnetwork.com/ecpmcalc.html
At a Glance:

inventory first
One obvious downside of remnant inventory is you can’t really specify placements such as above
the fold, or a specific ad slot. If you could, then it’s not truly remnant.You could try of course, but
then expect the CPM rate to be much higher.
The other possible downside is if there is someone buying that sites premium inventory, then it’s
possible you could be left with the demographic you didn’t want. That’s why it’s important to find a
site that has a really dominant demographic for this first strategy.
I will also be explaining a strategy for broader demographic sites, but that takes more experience
than what we’re doing here.
At a Glance:

inventory first
One obvious downside of remnant inventory is you can’t really specify placements such as above
the fold, or a specific ad slot. If you could, then it’s not truly remnant.You could try of course, but
then expect the CPM rate to be much higher.
The other possible downside is if there is someone buying that sites premium inventory, then it’s
possible you could be left with the demographic you didn’t want. That’s why it’s important to find a
site that has a really dominant demographic for this first strategy.
I will also be explaining a strategy for broader demographic sites, but that takes more experience
than what we’re doing here.
Our first strategy will involve choosing 1 vertical and 1 high converting offer.
Again, ask your AM for display data if it’s available. Have 2-3 offers to
rotate if available and budget permits.
I’ll skip past how to select an offer for
this. Same rules apply as before.
I like offers with a $10+ payout, and in

the niches I’ve mentioned before
(weight loss, money, debt). Things with
$1+ EPC potential.
The key here is to get an offer with

demographics being strong in one
direction.
Finding Sites for Large Buys
- Simply want sites that our demographic frequents.
Interest specific can be tough with large sites.
- Want sites that can provide at least 400K impressions/day
- Google Ad Planner Top 1000 >>
- Alexa Top 5000 >>
- Quant Cast Top 1 Million Page (Use Top 5000) >>

Contacting Larger Sites
The majority of these larger sites have easy to reach
advertising departments. The way I approach these sites is
different than the smaller sites:
Many times, these larger publishers
Hi Paul, will have the name and contact
My name is Chad Hamzeh, project manager at DSV2
information of the exact person we need
Media in Calgary, Canada. to speak to, and often times split up by
geography for international
We are a direct response advertising agency and would companies.
like to scale a campaign of ours by testing your
inventory directly. We'd like to do a test buy as soon as
possible. This is an actual e-mail I sent to one of
the publishers I previously worked with.
Iʼd like to discuss further with you today if youʼre
available. Is there a time thatʼs good to call you?
I will ask for the phone call in the first e-
Thanks for your time, mail. When dealing with reps, get them on
the phone early and often if needed.
Chad Hamzeh
DSV2 Media
Ph: xxx xxx xxxx E-mail tends to cause delays.
Fax: xxx xxx xxxx
On the phone & negotiation
This was a tough part for me in the beginning. One of the

cool things to many people about affiliate marketing is that
you can be a lone ranger, always in the shadows and make
good money.
Dealing with reps is essential, however. Being a good talker,

knowing the lingo, and asking for certain price points can
save you a lot of money. If you’re a tough negotiator, you’re
ahead of the pack. This is something I am still working on,
my wife says I’m push-over sometimes. =)
Know one thing about reps though. At first I thought

“these guys just want to screw me and take my money!”
That’s not entirely true.Yes, there are some sketchy guys,
so it’s important to have your budgets and risk tolerance in
place and don’t get sold. Most direct to site reps, however,
are trying to lock in their inventory to a good advertiser,
so the more you succeed, the more they do.
If you already have an idea of the CPM you need to be

profitable after optimizing, let them know that. For direct
sites, many times your rep won’t be doing much more than
setting up your insertion order (contract of sorts) and
requesting that traffic be turned on and off by the
trafficker (assuming they have one).
Common points of discussion on the first call:
- They’ll usually ask a bit about your company, where you’re from, small talk stuff. My buddies say I
lack in this area. ;)
- They’ll ask about your product, your campaign, even your offer brand name. In my experience
with direct sites, this isn’t because they are going to disapprove it because it’s a re-bill or
whatever, it’s because they don’t want your product to compete with an in house product or with
another advertiser sometimes. I’ve never run into an issue here.
- You will want to ask questions. Remember just because you have them on the phone doesn’t
mean you must buy from them. Find out if they have experience with direct response advertisers,
and how other direct response advertisers in your niche have done. Do they have any live case
studies they can show? (this is rare, but a bonus if they will show you)
- Let them know you want to test the smallest minimum they have. Like I said, minimums will
usually be in the 3-5K range. But you get what you negotiate for, and I have been given a 1k
minimum just for asking, from sites that stated they had a 3k minimum. Which leads me to....
- They’ll usually ask you what your monthly budget is going forward. I always say that I have an
unlimited budget assuming the traffic converts to my offer, and that if the initial test looks good
we’ll look at locking in more inventory. This can help your rates going forward. This is especially
important if you deal with networks later on.
Common points of discussion on the first call:
- Negotiate the lowest possible rate. If you don’t know what that is, it can’t hurt to straight out
ask what the lowest bidder is paying. Obviously they can tell you whatever they want at this point.
- Ignore the prices in their media kit. If you downloaded their media kit before contacting them,
you could see some crazy numbers. I had one buy where the media kit said $27 CPM! I was able
to almost immediately get them down to $9 CPM, which still was too high. (probably why I got
them there so easy). These days I look for a max of $2 CPM, and preferably lower.
- One thing a few guys have said is that there are 2 rates, one for brand advertisers and one for
direct response advertisers. Brand advertisers are usually massive companies not really looking to
generate profit necessarily, but looking to get their brand and name out. This can be effective if
you have your own product of course, but requires a budget. Let them know you are a direct
response advertising agency and you’ll be tracking ROI closely, and that you need a minimum rate
test to establish your eCPM, and if that’s successful, you’ll consider buying much more inventory
afterwards, maybe even premium inventory if it makes sense. As mentioned above with the media
kits, I’ve found this “2 rate” phenomenon to be true.
Insertion Orders
The insertion order is basically a document which specifies the details of the advertising campaign.
Below is a sample IO. Usually provided by the publisher but you can also provide your own.
Duration Additional notes

Placement Specification Serving off my ad server Total test buy cost CPM
Insertion Orders
We want to test small for the most part. These are the important terms to have in your IO:
- Out clause. Your out clause is the amount of time the publisher has to cancel the impressions and
the IO. Really work to negotiate a 24 hour out clause. Talk like you expect it. This way even if you sign
a large IO, you can get the traffic stopped within 24 hours of your request. Never go longer than 72
hours here. I’ve only done 72 hours once, otherwise it is 24 hours. When exercised, tell them to pause
the traffic immediately. Even if your out clause is longer, often times they will pause immediately if you
ask and have specified this in the IO.
- Bill of your ad server. This is very important. In most cases with large publishers you will need
an IAB compliant ad server to be allowed to bill off your own numbers. I’ll talk about ad servers more
later, but it’s important to bill off your own numbers. Many won’t allow more than a 10% variance, but
I haven’t noticed much more variance than that yet.
- Even delivery. Again, very important. This ensures that impressions are delivered evenly over the
term of your buy (30 days, 60 days, etc.) Without this, they are fully capable of dumping the remainder
of your impressions if you exercise an out clause. Another point about even delivery. If your term is
for 30 days, and for whatever reason you need to pause the campaign, let’s say for a week or so, when
you return to the campaign, your 30 days doesn’t get extended by a week. So, what will happen is since
their server needs to deliver the set amount of impressions within 30 days, it will try to make up for
the week the campaign was paused. This happened to me, I was spending on average $100 per day and
had to get it paused for a week, when we returned we were spending much more!
Insertion Orders
- Pause Immediately. Many people don’t know that you can pause traffic in a media buy. Like
anything else it needs to be negotiated and placed in the IO. This is a good one to have in case you
need to pause traffic for an urgent reason.
- Daily Cap. In my experience, they usually can’t hit this exactly but often you’ll get very close. This
is good to have in place especially for the first few days to see how things are coming along. Usually
termed as an daily impression cap.
- Extended Flight Dates. First off, if possible, specify the exact dates of the buy. Now, extended
flight dates isn’t really a term, it’s just another point you can negotiate on. Some sites will tell you their
minimum is $5k per month. However, many publishers will only specify a $5K minimum. It doesn’t hurt
to ask that the minimum be spread over an extended flight date of 60 or even 90 days. I’ve noticed
this to be more beneficial when I have credit terms and I’m not carrying a debt on my credit card.
Structured right, you could be buying traffic from a major site for only $100 per day. That said, at
$50-100/day it will take you longer to get your data, but yes I understand it “seems” safer for
beginners. Start your campaigns early in the week in case something goes wrong!
- Refund unused impressions. If you aren’t getting credit terms and you are paying up front,
make sure it is specified in the IO that all unused spend on impressions is refunded. This is pretty
much an assumption for most reputable sites but it’s good to specify this. Keep in mind refunds can
take a while to get, so get credit terms if possible!
Insertion Orders
- Remnant Traffic. If we’re starting with remnant traffic, specify this and ensure that the agreed
upon CPM is there as well.
- Frequency Cap. With these larger sites I like to test a 1/24 frequency cap, which will limit your
volume at first but we’re not too worried about volume right away. Specify this in your IO. If your test
is successful you can increase the cap which should increase your traffic quite a bit.
- Specify Country. This is so important.You don’t want to end up finding out later that the
majority of your impressions were for countries not eligible for your offer. Sometimes you will need
to speak to a different rep for a different country. If you have your own product, or Clickbank, it’s up
to you to decide where to market. Keep in mind that you should be able to negotiate a cheaper price
for traffic outside of the US.
Insertion Orders
Media Buys really aren’t that risky once you have the right
insertion order in place. Remember, everything is negotiable
and if you have something else you want to add, it can’t hurt
to ask.
Insertion Orders
The risk is really minimized when you get credit terms, so

let’s talk about that now...
Credit Terms
Getting $5000 On
Credit VS. Paying $3000
Upfront
Credit Terms
VS.
X
Getting $3000 On Paying $3000
Credit Upfront
Credit Terms
- When buying traffic in general, if you can get long credit terms
and short payment terms from your networks or payment
processors, it puts you in a great position to avoid a spending
bottle neck
- With PPC engines, your options are limited. I’ve been in situations
where I was spending $1000+/day on Adwords and didn’t get paid
for 2 weeks, so I had to split the balances between 2 credit cards .
Once I started receiving payments twice a week, this was no
longer an issue.
- With large banner buys, you have a couple options. If you can get
credit terms this is best, but you need to know how to control
your spending and have your IO terms in place. Credit terms are
typically 30 days, but you can even negotiate 60 days!
Credit Terms - Approval
You’re usually going to be asked the following to get credit terms:
- Company name, years in business, number of employees
- Bank reference; checking number, bank manager contact info, and

possibly balance. They’ll want to verify funds with the bank.
- Your mortgage company/landlord info
- Trade references; previous publishers or networks which have

granted you credit before (let the publisher know first)
- They will also check into the D&B (Dun & Bradstreet) database
Credit Terms - Considerations
A few things to keep in mind in regards to credit terms:
This is not to be used if you don’t have funds. DO NOT attempt

this to leverage when you don’t have the funds to back it up in case
something goes wrong. I only recommend to use this to leverage
larger pools of traffic with a proven winning campaign, NOT to
test.
Awesome! I got 10k in my account, that means
I can hit up 5 different networks and publishers
to each grant me 5k credit, which MEANS I could
be working with 25k on credit to test! I RULE!
This is not to be used if you don’t have funds. DO NOT attempt

this to leverage when you don’t have the funds to back it up in case
something goes wrong. I only recommend to use this to leverage
larger pools of traffic with a proven winning campaign, NOT to
test.
X
Formula for failure

The way in which I use credit terms for a test would be to have a budget in mind for the campaign, for
example $1,000, which I could easily pay for upfront if needed. However, since most networks and
publishers can take a LONG time to issue a refund if needed, I’d rather use their money instead of
mine, and just post pay. Unless you are a experienced and are working with a proven traffic source for
your exact campaign, I don’t recommend leveraging, even with a proper IO in place. It’s too easy for
some to look at a huge credit line and start dreaming and blowing through it.
X
Formula for failure

It isn’t necessarily easy to get credit terms from publishers and especially networks. If you are declined
for credit, I don’t recommend being slick on the phone and trying to convince them you know what
you’re doing when you don’t. What I do recommend is pre-paying at this point and building a long
term relationship with the publishers. If you’re successful on a traffic source and have been pre-paying
and the campaigns are going well and you have a good relationship with them, you can re-negotiate
when the term is up to buy more inventory in advance and THEN request credit terms again.
It isn’t necessarily easy to get credit terms from publishers and especially networks. If you are declined
for credit, I don’t recommend being slick on the phone and trying to convince them you know what
you’re doing when you don’t. What I do recommend is pre-paying at this point and building a long
term relationship with the publishers. If you’re successful on a traffic source and have been pre-paying
and the campaigns are going well and you have a good relationship with them, you can re-negotiate
when the term is up to buy more inventory in advance and THEN request credit terms again.
If you need to pre-pay, usually you will do so

by credit card. If you have a low interest
credit card, feel free to carry a balance, but
again I don’t recommend this.You should be
able to pay off what you’re borrowing
especially in the beginning with this. Don’t
gamble with money you can’t cover. Keep
your budgets and thresholds in place, and
don’t let emotion run your campaigns.
Whew! Back to the Campaign...
Once the campaign terms are actually agreed upon, it’s time to start the
campaign. For large buys you will be using an ad server. It will be your new
best friend. To actually get the campaign started, you’ll send over ad server
“tags” to your rep. These are typically iframe tags that the site will place in
ad spots which will allow you to externally control ad rotating while getting
stats in real time.
I like to make 3 banners per banner size. I make them very different so I can
see which direction to go in. Again, I will want to send 100 clicks or more
to each ad/offer/landing page before deciding what to keep and what to
modify all based on what’s getting the highest eCPM. If an element isn’t
converting I will resort to my desired CPA numbers to decide.
Optimizing is pretty simple at this point. The Ad server uses pixel based
tracking so you’ll be able to see in black and white which ads are giving you
the highest eCPM, which are getting the highest CTR, which offers are
converting best, etc.You will optimize just like the sculptor metaphor in our
GCN campaigns. Getting rid of what isn’t working and keeping what is.
Another Strategy
As I mentioned, our 1st strategy is pretty similar to what we’ve done
before. Find a suggested high performer, target those demographics, test it
out. This next strategy is for broader demographic sites, some social sites,
and works great for direct linking. This is one of my favourite but can take
more money to get enough data to make decisions.
Another Strategy
Here we are basically finding large traffic sources and testing different ways
to monetize their traffic. This is similar to how some do placement
targeting campaigns in GCN, and PPV campaigns.
This strategy is basically
about throwing a lot of
mud at a wall and seeing
what sticks. It can cost
more since we are going
to be testing more
variables, but when it
works it can be scaled
quite well.
Mud Slinging: Overview
- Instead of testing 1 vertical with a couple offers, we are now going to test
several verticals at once with multiple offers.
- You will be testing several banners at one time. I like 3 banners per size per
offer. If we have 6 offers, that becomes 18 banners just for one size. See how this
could take more budget to get enough data?
- We want to do this with offers that can be direct linked. Since we have so many
offers/ads to test, we don’t want to add another element (landing page) to get
data for since it will increase our budget more so.You would need a high
conversion rate to get a good enough ROI.
- We want publishers that have the capability to deliver lots of volume, more than
300,000 impressions per day and preferably 750,000+ per day.Verify the number
with your rep based on your CPM, and not just trusting 3rd party sites like
Google Ad Planner.
- I liked to get a CPM of $1 and under. Price isn’t the be all end all factor, but I
find getting traffic under $1 CPM is a bit more forgiving for the types of offers I’ll
be using for this.
Mud Slinging: Overview
Wide demographic offers for wide demographic sites:
- Credit score offers
- Ringtone offers (believe it or not)
- Quiz offers
- Education and continuing education
- Debt offers of all kinds
- Insurance based offers
- Entertainment such as Netflix, Blockbuster, & Pushplay
- Make money and weight loss that have strong pre-sell
landers of their own
- Loan and loan modification
**We will again want to consult our affiliate managers and get the highest
EPC offers in 4-5 of these verticals.You are free to test more verticals/
offers but that means more budget **
Mud Slinging: Step by Step
Step 1: Find a large website with a good broad range of

demographics. Easy to find sites like this when you go after really
large ones. Check out Quant Cast Top 1,000,000 list, Google Ad
Planner, and Alexa’s Top 5000
Step 2: Contact the website and negotiate as before. Again, we

want to test their remnant traffic on the cheapest buy/rate we can
get. We are trying to find out the eCPM for that traffic source.
Step 3: Create all your banners. Feel free to use some of the
network creatives as well since you need to make so many. Load up
your ad server with your offers and creatives, place your ad server
pixel on all your offers, and send off the ad server tags to your rep.
Step 4: Launch and wait for data!

Mud Slinging: Optimizing
- Assume I am testing 5 offers
- I will turn off optimization so my ad server rotates ads evenly for
me until I have had more than 100 clicks per offer/ad. Ideally I will
have several conversions at this point as well so I can start seeing
the high eCPM offers.
- At this point, I will have optimization turned on in the ad server so
that I can start to see where offers are ranking vs. each other. I will
be looking for the ads and offers that have the highest eCPM.
- I’ll make the ad server show my highest eCPM profitable offer and
ad 80%-85% of the time, so 15%-20% of the impressions will be
used to test other offers and ads. The 2nd and 3rd highest eCPM
offers will be kept in mind if offer 1 gets pulled or gets stale.
Mud Slinging
Remember the list of social sites from Webinar 2? This is one

effective strategy to approach these social sites with. Hi5, for
example, has a rate of $0.75 CPM for US traffic and $0.50 for the
rest of the world. And that’s just the upfront price, so lot’s of
potential for cheap traffic here.
Direct to Site Scaling & ROI
So we find a successful campaign by testing small and optimizing,
and we want to now scale up. The easiest ways to do this are as
follows:
- Increase your daily frequency cap slowly. This will increase your
traffic but must be done carefully at first.
- Negotiate a quarterly IO at a lower rate. Propose to buy a chunk
of inventory in advance and ask for a discount. Request for a
20-30% discount in CPM. Don’t be afraid to ask, they will be happy
to sell you a lot in advance, it helps all parties.
- Continue optimizing strong ads to get higher CTR and better ROI
- In terms of ROI, if you’re doing CPA and are pushing volume, ask
for a payout bump from your network.
- See if they will do a CPA deal with you if it makes sense
That’s it for the very
powerful strategy of direct
to site buying...
Coming in the Next Video, I
Want to Talk About the
Largest Combined Traffic
Source in The World...

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Chad Hamzehs

- Determining how much you should pay

- Common pitfalls and some mistakes I made early on

On larger sites, you will contact their advertising

I will cover both in detail today.

- Web masters on smaller sites won’t usually respond when you

- Prosper202 not as effective. But you get a much better option.

- Lower potential for big losses

- You will have full control of optimizing

- Budgets of usually under $1k, and typically under $500

- I usually get $150-200/mth

- My best consistent ROI (300%) is typically from these

- We will be choosing the offer first, but of course if you

- We will look to find very targeted sites to purchase from

- Ask what is working for display traffic if they have that

- Since we are buying on a flat rate, feel free to test a

- As we did with PPV, find the demographics of the offer. If

- You can use many of these methods for larger sites as

Let’s look at how to find these sites...

- Check traffic levels in Compete.com, Google Ad Planner, Alexa, Statbrain &

- Look up demographics and cross reference with Google Ad Planner, MSN,

- Try to be as targeted as possible here

- If you have converting keywords from PPC campaigns, easiest method is to go

Check traffic levels in Compete.com, Google Ad Planner, Alexa, Statbrain &

- First obvious step is to look at the navigation or scroll down to

- If there is no advertise link, is there a “contact” link?

- If there is neither of these, use your favourite “whois” lookup

“Hi there (if there is no contact name)

I was wondering if I could get some info for banner advertising

I’d like to do a test buy as soon as possible.

Thanks very much,

“I normally don't offer banner advertising outside of Adsense because I

That being said, I am willing to replace the

Currently I receive 130,000 unique visitors a month and over

This was the response from a site that was

“I normally don't offer banner advertising outside of Adsense because I

This was the response from a site that was

“I normally don't offer banner advertising outside of Adsense because I

Currently I receive 130,000 unique visitors a month and over

“I normally don't offer banner advertising outside of Adsense because I

Currently I receive 130,000 unique visitors a month and over

This was the response from a site that was

Calculate Cost Per Acquistion

That being said, I am willing to replace the

Currently I receive 130,000 unique visitors a month and over

Negotiate to buy all impressions during your term. Meaning, your

For whichever banner sizes you are purchasing, create 3 very

I will cover what an ad server is and how to use it for tracking

Go extremely targeted if possible, understand the websites

- Almost always CPM based bidding

- Budgets of over 1K typically. Minimums of 3k+ are more

- Although 1K is usually the bare minimum, we want to

- We want to target a very specific demographic for

- Going direct to site, we will want to test their remnant

- Going direct to site, we will want to test their remnant

- Going direct to site, we will want to test their remnant

- Going direct to site, we will want to test their remnant

- Going direct to site, we will want to test their remnant