Crypto-offers Insights

Do you remember the time when the crypto just appeared out of the blue? Back then no one believed in its worth in a big mass. Despite the lack of trust, bitcoin value has hit the ceiling in 2017.
The success of this event engaged a lot of companies to develop innovative "side-products" such as crypto-exchanges, crypto-wallets, crypto-casinos, and other stuff.

Thousands of digital marketers involved in crypto projects boosted up the ad feeds and filled them with a full stack of offers.

Approaches that are so last year

How did it look from the start? Well, they never did things small as ad activities included celebrities and well-known people who "invested/promoted/advocated" for cryptocurrencies to gain more credibility in the eyes of common folk.

DOZENS of different approaches were applied depending on the niche, exact crypto-offer, and audience behind the screen. Ads feature celebrities starting from the world's richest businesspersons to famous TV show stars and rap singers.

* surely you know the guys on the screenshot, but we cannot use their images and names

The other approach for crypto-offers promotion was a "Success story" that started with celebs and fake news as well but then transferred to just fancy outfits, cars, cash stacks, etc.

The destination URL of these ads led to the crypto investments or trading offers and didn't require any landing pages at all – just a direct link to the platform or its registration page.

Meanwhile, the crypto market offer-wise developed in many different directions.

Crypto-exchanges and crypto-wallets are also a great way to engage users:

These crypto offer verticals are more for next-level users in order to attract them to new services.

Why doesn't it work anymore?

According to the fact that cryptocurrency hype has caused a lot of scam offers / businesses most ad networks just had to follow the FTC recommendations and banned all the creatives that were copyrighted by third parties, including using celebrities and other personal attributes without permission for an exploitative purpose.

Such an impact has reduced the CR rate rough and closed the whole approach line.

However, markets never surrender to such obstacles, and here are some insights for crypto advertisers to run their offers with our traffic.

Approaches and creative components insights

No matter all the landmines, the crypto is still there and rocks the market out. Do these 'so last year approaches' work? Let's dive in and open up for something new.

Let's start with the ad format of choice for crypto offers: popunder, push, and video.

Pop's (popup/popunder)

Let's start with the champ of Crypto advertising, the popunder. How to work this out? Considering that it is not an intentional click, therefore the "surprise" is the main key driver here.

Landing pages are your creatives

The simplest approach that did not become obsolete is to push promising earnings, success stories, and fake news.

Note: Consider the advertising network policy of 'non-celeb' ads. In fact, blurring their faces / names / brands does work. Power up your Landing Page credibility with "close to real" signatures, names, and personalization.

Example:

Hint #1: - add some testimonials and proofs there (transaction and/or trading operations screenshots), expose more benefits of your particular platform/offer by adding a value key for it.

Hint #2: In-text links or big registration buttons can increase your CR.

Once you've got your LP ready you can easily run different offers within and do A/B/C testing.

Pricing models & fundings:

Available pricing models for Pops are CPM, SmartCPM, or SmartCPA.

With CPM – you set 1$ bid, you pay 1$, with SmartCPM – if your competitor sets 0.5$ and you set 1$ bid, you pay only 0.5+20% to outbid him.

SmartCPA is a completely different story. If you can target CPL flow for your offer and after a test – collect a funnel, you should use SmartCPA. More info you can find in our FAQ section.

Another approaches?

Well, you can skip the LP stuff and use a direct link to the offer registration or main page (but according to our stats this approach is less effective).

So, you set things up. What's next? Collect meta after launching the campaign and do some optimization homework to squeeze more profits.

Video

Video ad format provides a deeper way to get users informed about the entire offer.

Creatives:

Video creatives for Crypto offer usually display a "better life" of a happy investor, faithful wife earning while doing the household, or a guide on how-to-use product/service, beginner's manual.

Example:

Hint #1: The video sample should be informative and catchy. If you have a larger video-presentation, then rip out the best part.

Landing pages:

You can use the full version of your video as a landing page or create a full-fledged landing page, where this video is implemented.
In contrast to popunder, you can even drive leads directly to an offer page.

Is there anything else to sweeten your performance? I guess not. Let's head to the other advertising format.

Pricing models & fundings:

You can use video ads with flat CPM, CPC or SmartCPM pricing models. In case you're running a proven creative with a high CTR you can use CPM/SCPM. CPC is best for testing different approaches and guided by the CTR.

Push Notifications

Push Notification is quite a soft ad format that actually walks the user through the steps from the very push creative to the final targeted action.

Creative:

The creative is half the battle. True handymen run clickbait creatives with an 'opportunity to get rich', a way to 'invest your funds', success stories, or even flat brand promo.

As a clickbait approach, you can use – "Grab your bonus here", "Psss, free investment course here…" or you can question your audience - "Struggling to pay debts?", "Wanna get right", "Wanna earn?"

Opportunity to get rich can work for some countries and have completely opposite outcomes for others – "Find the best way to get rich!", "Small investment – huge outcomes", "Be a king today".

Ways to invest can be different – "Invest in bitcoin today!"", "Don't let inflation eat your savings! – Invest today"

Success stories have several approaches – "John invested just 20$... Read his story", "Rich getting richer – learn how", "Cars, houses, cash… She just bought a bitcoin"

Landing Page:

The patterns of after-click actions should contain the overall trend. If you have used specific push creative, you should follow with similar content on your landing page.

All the other campaign settings are Pricing and Targeting – set it according to your targets and budgets. Keep in mind that higher user activity is very competitive cost-wise, so bid higher to get more volume.

For push and inpage push ad formats, you can use CPC bidding or the SmartCPA option.

SmartCPA allows to run a conversion-based flow for a test. System will "learn" and optimize automatically according to the campaign's performance. In order to analyze the entire funnel, try to set as simple flow as possible – CPL SOI/DOI. Learn more about SmartCPA here.

Data analysis and campaign's optimization

The surest way to analyze your data is by creating a funnel from click/impression to the targeted action. Your broker or CPA network can help you with that as well.

In order to understand which ad format or creative setup works better – you should choose those offers which have multiple tracking variations (lead (SOI/DOI registration) –> first deposit –> next deposits) and open stat interface. The testing process is a vital part you should fully understand, as well as how much of a budget you'll set into it.

First Step

Whitelist (include) the most performing sources (zones) within the first tests. Also, you're gonna be able to analyze performance targeting-wise (if you haven't any split here and user RON traffic).

Second Step

The second step is targeting analysis. What OS, OS versions, browsers and its versions or languages (etc) provide the best results. You need to find out those performing targeting variates during the first tests. For example, Facebook gives a wide range of audience targeting (but will not push your campaigns in the "white way"), so here you can only trust the tech side data.

Third Step

Creative approach diversity. Each traffic source performs in a number of ways, so you can either trust your approach and scale it elsewhere, or test several creative setups or different ad formats.
Also, keep in mind that high pay ability index countries have users with completely different sets of mind than low pay ability once. So if you set creativity in "get rich with crypto" for Scandinavian countries, where people are reasonably fund-sufficient, it might just not work the same way as for LATAM.

Bidding

There are several approaches to it:

1. Go flat min rates on multi geo campaigns (set the very possible minimum bid and get as much data as possible for 10-20-50 different geo campaigns);
2. Go high rates on direct and exclusive placements or whitelists. Ask a manager to provide relevant sources out of all stack and bid high on it straight away;
3. Set average bids to start with and after optimization – try to take all the traffic from most converting sources.

Budgets

This one really depends on what flow you're working with (leads, FTD’s or RS). Also you need to understand the traffic capacity for each geo you want to set campaigns for. Example: our VN have about 45M daily pop's, therefore, without any whitelist, you need 2-3K$ a day to test out that traffic volume. Finland – 40K pop's a day need not more than 100-200$ to get all of that.

Summarizing

We all know that celebs are working best to convert. Therefore, you can go with blurring faces here or hard cloaking. Second option can lead you to a permanent ban in most of the ad networks. So it's up to you. Crypto is a highly competitive, difficult and risky vertical. It needs a lot of budgets, tech parts and a team to assist you (domains, creatives and data analysis). If you are a solo media buyer or affiliate – you're probably a legend! New to crypto? Try to find and work with an offer, which has short flow (CPL) in order to get results faster and then build your budgets and scale. Work with your manager/support in order to get white/black lists for your offers or feedback on needed data. Don't forget to use Traffic inventory for basic bids or managers for more narrow settings.