We are bringing you a case study from Artem, a media buyer from a team that specialized in generating mobile subscriptions through TikTok and Facebook. In this article, Artem shows how he was able to re-strategize his Facebook ads to promote Pin Submit offers.
Campaign Details
- Vertical: operator subscriptions
- Affiliate network: Applink.network
- Source: Facebook
- Period: 17.05. 2022 - 04.06.2022
- Ad spend: $6 399
- Revenue: $9 828
- Net profit: $3 429
- Geo: MENA countries
- Applications: "iOS Launcher", "101 Games Collection"
- ROI: 54%
TikTok has tightened moderation since the beginning of the year, which led to several business center bans, the inability to launch on familiar applications, and ultimately a decrease in traffic volumes. In such conditions, it was decided to pay attention to a partly forgotten traffic source for operator subscriptions — Facebook.
Artem launched offers from the Applink affiliate program. We have been working with the guys for a long time, they have great affiliate managers, fast payouts, their own in-built tools, and many other advantages gained over the years.
Target Settings and Creative Selection
Two applications were selected for launch that performed well with TikTok: an iOS launcher for Android, and a collection of games. Artem and his team had no experience working with Facebook for Pins in recent days, so they chose a quite standard and conservative strategy for testing creatives.
- Inexpensive GEOs (EG, IQ);
- 1 campaign — 3 adsets;
- Each adset contained 1 creative.
The budget was chosen within $10-$15 and was set for each ad group. Therefore, it quickly became clear which creatives show the best results and which ones should be put aside. The screenshot below shows an example of a test campaign.
On the first day, they launched the campaign with 3 different creatives and it immediately became clear which creatives could scale further.
For creatives, we used the same ones as in TikTok — showing the result of using the application. Video format only. The best results in the Arab countries were shown by videos with a voice-over describing how cool the application can be downloaded right now.
Examples of Сreatives Used:
For further scaling, the following strategy was used:
- 1 campaign — 1 GEO;
- Each company has 3 adsets;
- Each adset contains 1 identical creative that showed the best results at the testing stage.
The budget was also not big, within $15-$20 for each group. The same creative can often show opposite results in different ad sets. In general, this is normal practice, if adsets show a minus at the start, Artem would just turn them off in time.
According to the bidding strategy, automatic bidding was used, as well as "manual bidding".
In the first case, you can get the volume faster, while manual bidding can give a smaller volume at the training stage (plus time to choose the required rate), but at the same time, it will give more stable results day after day.
Artem made different copies of campaigns for several inexpensive Arabic GEOs (EG, IQ, JO, PS, TN). All these countries are accepted in the "811" offer in Applink, which saved us from the need to create a separate stream for each campaign and allowed them to scale quickly.
An important note: Not all creatives that went to inexpensive GEOs are more likely to go to GEOs: SA, AE, KW, BH, OM, and QA. In this group of countries, it is better to run separate tests of creatives and scale them according to the above scheme.
Adsmanager Account with iOS Launcher App:
Ads Manager Cabinet with 101 Games Application:
And Statistics from the Affiliate Program:
In general, the transition from TikTok to Facebook makes a positive impression: no bans for the ad itself, more GEOs, and most importantly, stable traffic. To confirm, here are a couple of screenshots, which show that for several days Facebook gives registrations at plus or minus the same price.
Average registration price by GEO — Iraq. It can be seen that after the 1st day the price dropped sharply and further the cost per registration indicators only improved.
Average registration price by GEO — Egypt. Here, the average price for 14 days was around $0.18, which gave about 50% ROI.
Results
In the first week, only iOS Launcher was running, taking into account the initial tests of creatives and GEO, the following results were obtained:
- Ad spend: $2 417
- Revenue: $3 460
- Profit: $1 043
- ROI: 43.1%.
In the second week, it became clear which creatives enter the Arab countries, and tests for European GEOs were added. The results for the iOS Launcher app are as follows:
- Ad spend: $2 204
- Revenue: $3 231
- Profit: $1 027
- ROI: 47%
At the same time, they began to promote on the 101 Games application. And in just a week, the offer showed good results:
- Ad spend: $1 778
- Revenue: $3 137
- Profit: $1 359
- ROI: 76.4%
Conclusion
Promoting with Facebook, despite all the difficulties it comes with now, still works well. Especially on such a vertical as pins — the numbers above confirm this. With an expense of $6 399, Artem managed to earn $3 429 in net profit from just two applications, even though this was the first experience of running pin offers on Facebook.
