facebook ads

SocialAdNinja vs Lots of Ads

January 29th, 2013
Affiliate Marketing, Facebook Ads, Reviews
7
3,981 views

In April of last year I reviewed a service called SocialAdNinja. Since posting that review I have gotten a lot of questions about SocialAdNinja (the review was read over 17,000 times!) and how it differs from it’s competitors. It’s no secret, there are plenty of tools out there to help you maximize your affiliate marketing potential, but as anyone who has visited WarriorForum or any affiliate marketing forum has found, not all of them are worth your money. Well, over the past nine months a lot has changed with SocialAdNinja and I thought it would be interesting to do a comparison between them and one of their biggest competitors, Lots of Ads.

Although Lots of Ads has been around awhile longer than SocialAdNinja, SocialAdNinja is quickly becoming a favorite among affiliate marketers advertising on Facebook so I thought it would be interesting to find out why.

What they both have…

Two things that neither SocialAdNinja (SAN) or Lots of Ads (LOA) are lacking in are features or data. Combined the two services have around 1,300,000 ads (400,000 on SAN and 900,000 on LOA) that are searchable by:

Age
Gender
Country
Martial Status
Ad Title
Ad Body
Ad URL
Days Ad Has Been Live

With each search you perform on both sites you are provided with the ads found on Facebook related to that search. The results will show the banner used with the ad title and body. Both services are pretty fast and have some great information you can use to setup your own profitable campaigns.

Another awesome thing both SocialAdNinja and Lots of Ads will do is they will add countries or specific profiles if a member requests it. They have quite a few profiles and countries to choose from, but there are certain demographics that you might want to try besides what is available. Support is fantastic on both sites and they are very responsive to making the changes needed for their members.

All that being said, here are things I like more about Lots of Ads.

What Lots of Ads has…

Lots of Ads is older than Social Ad Ninja so that is definitely an advantage in my mind. They have more experience in the market, but that does not always make you the best. They currently have more ads in their database than SocialAdNinja, but SAN is catching up pretty quickly.

Currently, Lots of Ads has ads for 33 different countries while Social Ad Ninja only has ads for 18 countries. This is obviously an advantage for Lots of Ads, but SocialAdNinja has been adding new countries just about every other week and they expect to pass Lots of Ads this year in both countries they have ads for and total ads in the database. LOA has about 500,000 more ads than SAN has, but they also count ads differently. If three profiles on Lots of Ads see an ad it counts as three ads in their system. With SocialAdNinja, if the same ad is seen by three different profiles then it is only counted as one ad (because really it is just one ad). As I’ll mention below, with SAN you can explore how the ads are connected to profiles, which is something Lots of Ads does not have. On average each ad is seen by at least 2.5 different profiles, so you could say that SocialAdNinja actually has 1,000,000 ads which means they have more than Lots of Ads has.

Lots of Ads allows you to mass download the creatives for the advertisements you find when searching and while SocialAdNinja does not have this feature, you can “bookmark” ads on SocialAdNinja within the member area which makes it easy to organize them.

Another cool feature that Lots of Ads has that SocialAdNinja does not have is the ability to automatically translate an ad. You can translate within Lots of Ads and while that is awesome, you could do the same thing yourself with Google Chrome or Google Translate.

What SocialAdNinja has and why it’s better…

Obviously I am a bit biased towards SocialAdNinja, but I am also a fan of innovation and a great user experience. SocialAdNinja has made great changes since I originally reviewed in nine months ago and the features speak for themselves.

One example of a feature I really like that SocialAdNinja has that Lots of Ads does not have is the ability to differentiate between ads that are linking to external URLs and those that are linking to pages within Facebook, which would be ads for Facebook Apps or Facebook Pages. I do a lot of Sponsored Stories campaigns linking to fan pages so it’s nice to be able to look and see what other people are doing with that type of advertising.

Probably my favorite thing about Social Ad Ninja is the amazing user interface. They have made a bunch of great changes over the past few months to keep the interface fluid and easy to use. The search is simple, the results are pretty, and filtering is fantastic. Here is a sample of some results I found with a search for mature:

Looks pretty right? The filtering on the left makes it really easy to break down results and find just what you are looking for. Another awesome feature is if you click on any of the ads within the results you can see the different profiles that single ad is showing up for. So, not only do you have a database of ads, but you also have all the profiles those ads are connected to. If the same ad is showing for several demographic profiles then you get a better idea of how exactly that advertiser is targeting. Here is an example:

Obviously, that ad is getting quite a bit of exposure to single males 20-55 that live in Germany. It could be being shown to people younger than 20 and older than 55, but we know for sure that it’s being displayed to the 20-55 range because of the different profiles that have seen it. With Lots of Ads you can not get this data without manually going through them all and finding identical ads. With SocialAdNinja you can also go to each user profile and see other ads that the user is being shown:

So, while SocialAdNinja is not quite as big as Lots of Ads yet, they are growing daily (adding 2,000+ every day) and have some fantastic features that Lots of Ads just does not have. They also have a nicer interface with an overall better user experience.

Okay, I’m sold, but what is it going to cost me?

I think you are doing yourself a favor if you decide to use either Lots of Ads or SocialAdNinja. Obviously, I am favoring SocialAdNinja, but either one should help you build more successful campaigns quicker. So, the final major factor should be the price.

Lots of Ads is going to cost you lots of money. The monthly subscription plan for all countries is $500. I like the service and I’d love to tell you it is well worth it, but SocialAdNinja is much cheaper.

Social Ad Ninja is just $147 per month. That’s less than a third of the price of Lots of Ads. Over the next few months I expect them to have more ads and all of the features that Lots of Ads has, so I am sticking with SocialAdNinja.

BUT WAIT! IT GETS BETTER!

Not to sound like an infomercial, but I do have a pretty good deal for my readers. If you decide you want to give SocialAdNinja a try you can sign up and use the coupon LUKE15 and get 15% off your monthly subscription.

SocialAdNinja Coupon Code: LUKE15

I would love to hear what you think of the two services and which one you prefer. I’m hoping to do another Facebook case study soon and I’ll definitely be using SocialAdNinja to help in my research. Let me know if you have any questions and let’s make some money!

PeerFly Offer Restrictions and Allowed Marketing

November 29th, 2012
Affiliate Marketing, PeerFly FAQ
49
18,185 views

If you do not want to get your account suspended it is important to know what you can and cannot do when promoting the offers at PeerFly. PeerFly has over a thousand affiliate offers, but they all have basically the same traffic methods that are allowed or restricted.

There are some traffic methods that are restricted across all offers and there are some that have a few more restrictions than the others. Below is a complete list of each method, how that method works, and what traffic is allowed and restricted. Follow it closely so you can make the most money possible and keep that money! If you have any questions after going through this list feel free to post them in the comments or contact your affiliate manager.

PeerFly Marketing Methods

Search PPC, Social PPC, Banner Display, PPV, and Contextual traffic are the primary ways you are allowed to promote PeerFly affiliate offers. Email marketing is a little more strict as well as most free methods. Incentive and classified ads traffic is not allowed at all. Here is a breakdown of each of those methods and how you can use them to promote PeerFly offers!

Search PPC

Search PPC traffic comes, simply enough, from paid search ads. A few of the major search ppc networks are:

Google AdWords
Bing Ads (formally Adcenter)
7Search
adMarketplace
LookSmart

You create your text ad, bid on keywords, and when someone searches for your keywords your ad will show up next to their search results. Organic SEO traffic is not considered Search PPC traffic. SEO traffic is fine on any offer that is not specifically for one traffic source (ex: Email Only).

Social PPC

Social PPC is specifically talking about paid ads on social networks. PeerFly does not allow it’s publishers to direct link offers on Facebook, Twitter, or any other social network as the social networks consider this spam. The main Social PPC networks are:

Facebook Ads
Twitter Ads
SponsoredTweets
Plenty of Fish

Plenty of Fish is in a grey area between social traffic and banner display because it is a mix of both. You can promote any PeerFly offer that allows Social PPC or Banner Display on POF.

Banner Display

Banner Display traffic would be any traffic you generate using a banner advertisement. This includes advertising on blogs, doing media buys on other people’s websites, or basically advertising on any website using a banner. PeerFly provides banners for most of their offers, but you are welcome to create your own as long as it’s not specifically restricted.

PPV/CPV

PPV traffic is mainly pop up ads. If you are displaying an advertisement in an exit pop or modal (example: TrustJacker) then that would be considered PPV traffic too. The main PPV ad networks are:

LeadImpact
Mediatraffic
Trafficvance

I have an article on the top PPV networks that explains the differences between them that you may want to check out if you are interested in running PPV traffic.

Contextual

Mainly used with blogs and websites, contextual traffic is any text based advertisement. Some affiliate networks categorize PPV traffic as contextual, but obviously PeerFly has a specific category for PPV. If you are placing your own text ads within web content (example: article marketing) then the offer you are promoting needs to allow contextual traffic.

E-mail Lists

In order to promote PeerFly offers via email you will need to have your own managed double opt-in list and follow these guidelines:

Your list must be completely CAN-SPAM compliant.
You must host all creatives on your own server. If there are no banners for the offer you can create one and PeerFly will get it approved. You can also come up with a text and get that approved.
You must mask all links with your own domain.
You must add seed@peerfly.com as a subscriber.
Before sending out an email you must send it to seed@peerfly.com for approval.

If you need a plugin to mask your affiliate links I suggest using Pretty Link and my preferred email management company is AWeber.

Incent

PeerFly is 100% non incent, which means you cannot promote any PeerFly offers using incentive traffic. Incentive traffic would be any time you offer cash, points, or any sort of “gift” for completing an offer.

PeerFly is developing an incentive network which you can find at Incent.ly.

Classified Ads

You cannot promote any PeerFly offer using classified ads traffic. Craigslist, USFreeAds, and any other classified ads site would not be allowed. You cannot direct link nor use a landing page to promote offers on these sites.

Twitter

Unfortunately, Twitter spam ran rampant for awhile, so Twitter is no longer interested in allowing affiliates to promote affiliate products directly to their followers. You cannot promote any offer from PeerFly directly on Twitter. If you create your own landing page then you can promote it on Twitter as long as you are not spamming.

LIMITED Facebook Promotion

As long as an offer allows Social PPC you can promote it using Facebook Ads, but that is the only form of advertising that is allowed when promoting PeerFly offers on Facebook. You are not allowed to promote PeerFly offers on fan pages or to your friends on your feed by posting status updates with PeerFly links.

SMS

SMS messaging PeerFly offers is not allowed. Offers can be promoted on mobile ad networks, but not through text/SMS messaging.

Co-Registration

You are not allowed to promote PeerFly offers in a co-registration path.

Using Sponsored Stories to Generate Blog Traffic

November 15th, 2012
Affiliate Marketing, Facebook Ads, Traffic Sources
5
5,452 views

Facebook Ads are dead. That’s something I’ve been hearing from a few months now and while it may be getting harder and harder to get your affiliate campaigns approved, I have been seeing awesome results from Facebook Ad campaigns I have been running lately. You just need to be a little more creative and use the new features within Facebook Ads to your advantage.

One example of a Facebook feature within Facebook Ads that I have discussed before is Sponsored Stories. Sponsored Stories are special advertisements on Facebook you can use to promote your fan page or posts within a fan page. I am going to describe how you use Sponsored Stories to generate traffic to your blog. This will not only help you get cheap targeted traffic to your blog, but it can also help build up your fan base as well.

Create a Fan Page For Your Blog

In order to use Sponsored Stories you will need to create a fan page. If you are going to drive traffic to your blog I suggest creating a fan page for your blog. This is a good way to help build your brand and get free social media traffic.

You can post the links to new articles on your fan page to keep your fans and readers engaged and up to date with the latest happenings on your blog. By using Sponsored Stories you can target your current fans and also build a new audience of users by targeting interests and demographics with your ads. Setting up the ad is easy.

Creating a Sponsored Story for your Most Recent Post

Setting up a Sponsored Story for your blog is pretty simple. You set it up just like you would a regular Sponsored Story, but obviously choose your blog fan page and after choosing the Promote Page Posts option (top arrow) you can select to keep your ad updated automatically with your most recent post (bottom arrow).

Whenever you make a new post on your fan page your Facebook ad will be automatically submitted to Facebook for review and once approved your Sponsored Story will start displaying again right away with an ad to your new post. Unlike most Facebook ads pending review, the Sponsored Stories automatically submitted seem to get approved pretty quickly.

By using Advanced Options and Google Analytics you can create a custom campaign and track how engaged the visitors from your Sponsored Stories ads are. This is a good way to make sure you are getting your money’s worth out of your campaign. If you have a Google AdWords retargeting campaign setup you can also build your audience list and retarget the user’s coming to your blog from your Sponsored Stories campaign. All that sounds great, but is it really worth it?

Traffic Source Waves

It seems that traffic sources work in waves. The first people on the wave make the most money and as times passes and more people use it, the wave begins to lower into the water. Two great examples of this are Google AdWords and Facebook Ads.

Believe it or not, there was a time when affiliate’s were welcomed and encouraged to run traffic on AdWords. An affiliate could setup a campaign on AdWords to an acai berry offer from their favorite affiliate network, spend $100 on AdWords and make $2,000 in sales. Google was much more lenient on their advertiser policies and traffic was dirt cheap. Many people made a lot of money. With time, Google figured out that affiliates may have been hurting their user experience and advertisers started competing more and driving up click costs. Eventually, you got to the AdWords we know and hate today.

Facebook Ads had a very similar wave. When it was first released you could basically get any ad for any offer approved. Not only that, but with little competition the price for traffic was super cheap. A lot of people made ton of money. So, will you be able to do the same thing with Facebook’s offsite ads? Probably.

Facebook Offsite Ads

If Facebook offsite ads are released then there will probably be a few differences between it and the traffic source waves I mentioned above. We may not see the same great results right off the bat because…

Facebook has learned a lot from it’s experience with Facebook Ads
Facebook already has a lot of compliance measures in place.
Everyone will have their eye on it anyway.

When Facebook ads was first released (Facebook Flyers) they had no idea what they were doing. Unfortunately, they have a pretty good idea now. So, if they release offsite ads they will probably have a lot of compliance measure in place and they may be just as strict with affiliates. Also, with the huge amount of advertisers they already have the market could get saturated pretty quickly with and that’ll essentially drive up prices. There is also a lot of attention being placed on it already because of the privacy issues. If I can display ads on my blog based on your interests on Facebook, is that an invasion of your privacy? Facebook’s privacy policy has a sketchy history so the media will have their eyes on this new feature if it’s launched.

Tons of Great Traffic

I can see a ton of potential as both an advertiser and a publisher with offsite Facebook ads whether they’re friendly with affiliates or not. As a publisher, I imagine the ads will be very intriguing for website visitors. There’s no such thing as banner blindness when you’ve never seen the banner. Click through rates should be awesome. As an advertiser, there should be huge potential as well. Currently, I have active campaigns for different fan pages I run using Facebook Ads. These campaigns are still doing really well because I am targeting a very specific interest group and I’m consistently paying less than $0.05/click. If I can transfer that campaign offsite to similar sites within the niche of my fan pages I bet I’ll be able to get extremely cheap traffic. Of course, I can funnel traffic from my fan page or build a list and monetize it similarly to how I am now.

If you’re going to ride the new traffic source wave you have to be ready the minute the wave is created. The first people to hop on will be the ones who make the most money. You can be sure I’ll be posting about it right after I setup my campaigns (:)) and I’ll definitely be keeping my exclusive subscribers up to date, but you should always keep your eye out for new traffic sources. Keep your eye out and let’s make some money!