How to Cut Placements Using Rules of Thumb
Some of you may have used this placement analysis tool here:
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread.php?23560-How-to-Cut-Placements-Landers-and-Banners-Part-2
From the accuracy standpoint, it’s a fantastic tool (if I do say so myself :)).
However, in exchange for the high level of accuracy, efficiency is sacrificed. It takes quite a bit of time to collect enough data to arrive at a “verdict”.
Especially when running pop traffic – with the typical shorter life-span of pop camps, being able to cut placements faster can be more beneficial than being able to cut with more accuracy.
So I made another tool to cut placements using rules of thumb.
What It Can Do
You can set one or more of the following cutting rules, and the tool will tell you which placements to cut:
Rule 1: Cut Placements with CTR < Certain %
Rule 2: Cut Placements with CTR > Certain %
Placements with overly high or low CTR are often associated with a high percentage of bot traffic. You can specify “cut-off” CTRs , and the spreadsheet will list all the placements below the minimum CTR and above the maximum CTR you specify.
You will need to specify a minimum number of Visits/Impressions. Of course the higher this number, the more accurate your CTR will be. Caurmen suggests that 30-50 impressions should be enough when running the bot test. Although we’re not running a bot test here, 30-50 impressions should be a sufficient sample size to reflect an accurate CTR.
Moreover, the spreadsheet will actually recommend to you the cut-off CTRs! The tool will tell you that if you had cut all placements with less than X% CTR or greater than Y% CTR, you would have made the maximum amount of profits based on current data.
Rule 3: Cut Placements in Loss by X Payouts
This is my personal favorite! I just did this a couple of days ago for one of my camps by cutting all placements in loss by 2x the payout, and it’s been doing twice the CR (and would have done a lot more profits than before the cut, if I hadn’t accidentally let my balance run out on that traffic source!)
You can set the “X” to anything you like, depending on the particular situation. I’ve been seeing good results by setting it to 2 or 3. If you’re getting a ton of traffic volume and want to get green faster, you could even set X to 1 or even 0.50 to cut very aggressively so that you can test offers/landers at lower cost. (When your camp gets green though, it’s recommended to retest the blacklisted placements.)
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