Lately, I’ve noticed some people inside the forum and via email asking me about traffic sources that aren’t as popular or the default go-to, yet many affiliates manage to get profitable campaigns from it.
Clickadu is one of those traffic sources and I just realized I had not blogged about it yet, even if I ran campaigns with this traffic source since 2015 or 2016.
Let’s check it out!
Clickadu is an ad network founded in 2014 with 2.5B+ daily impressions. As usual, when I started working with them the only ad format available was popunder traffic and the platform had a simple dashboard but everything was managed.
Clickadu Ad Formats
However, since 2017 the SSP is accessible and they have slowly added more ad formats, including Push notifications, Instant messages, in-page push, video pre-rolls and skim traffic.
I have talked about popunder and push notification traffic many times in the last 2 years, so I’m sure most of you are familiar with it already, however, there are a couple of ad formats that aren’t as widely known.
Video Pre-rolls are video ads shown before being able to watch any content. Kind of like when you’re surfing Youtube and you get an ad just before a new video. Those can be skipped after a few seconds so you might want to catch the user attention fast.
Another format I haven’t seen available in most similar traffic sources is “instant text message“.
This looks like a notification from your phone, but in my opinion, it’s more like an interstitial message or something like that. The CTR can be quite high in this case as the user needs to interact with it before continuing.
Besides that, skim traffic seems to be traffic from links that publishers place on their websites, but I haven’t tested that one out yet and I can’t really comment on its performance or how targeted it is.
Finally, there’s this format called InPage push which I’ve mentioned before in a couple of ad networks, but the ad format is still pretty new and you can’t find it in many networks yet, so let’s talk about it.
InPage push is a native push message that appears while a user is browsing a website. The main difference between InPage and regular push is that the notifications aren’t tied to a browser subscription, which means the same users won’t see the same messages over and over again and you also it can be displayed in any OS, including iOS and apple devices.
InPage push in my opinion is more like a mix of Push Notifications and Interstitial ads, and it’s looking like it could be a great year for this new ad format.
Clickadu is currently at the final stage of releasing a new ad format – banner ads. It will be available very soon for both advertisers and publishers. So stay tuned!
Clickadu – Promo Code and dashboard
As usual, I’ve asked my manager if it’s possible to get a promo code for new advertisers and she has agreed.
This promo code is only for new users. During the sign-up process, write down the promo code Servando in this field to get an extra $20 in your first $100 deposit or 10% if you deposit more than $300.
The promo will be valid until February 12th. so hurry up and sign up while it lasts!
Once you’ve got an account the first thing you need to do is to add some funds before launching a campaign. Clickadu offers several ways to fund your account including:
- Credit card
- PayPal
- WebMoney
- Paxum
- Wire Transfers
After adding some funds, you’ll want to make sure your tracker is properly setup. If you want to send your postback data to the traffic source (i.e. for running SmartCPA campaigns), go to the tracking menu and select your tracker from the list to get your postback. If your tracker isn’t available choose “other” and you’ll need to customize the tokens based on what your tracker uses.
After that, you need to set up the dynamic tokens in your tracker to be able to optimize your campaigns. Considering Clickadu now offers different ad formats with different tokens, I recommend you to create multiple templates (one for each ad format) to make things easier and focus on the main variables you want to track.
For example, in case you’re working with PopUnder traffic, this is how I set up my tokens:
Another thing I found quite interesting is this Mass URL changer. In case one of your tracking domains gets flagged you can change all of the target URLs from your campaigns without having to edit one by one. A nice addition for sure!
OK, it’s time to create our first campaign. Assuming you’ve done your research beforehand and you know what you want to promote, keep in mind you can always check the volume of traffic available in each traffic source to make plans.
Here’s the traffic distribution from Clickadu by continent:
However, to get more exact numbers you can find in the left menu of your dashboard the Traffic inventory option, where you can filter the available daily traffic (based on the last 24 hours) by ad format, platform, OS, and country. Always try launching campaigns in the top 20 or top 30 geos of each ad format if you want to get enough volume and scale-up.
Creating your first campaign
Let’s create our first campaign and go over all of the settings. I’m going to create a popunder campaign in this example as it’s the fastest one (no banners), but all of the ad formats have a similar process except for the creatives and tracking tokens.
Once you push the “new campaign” button, the first thing you need to do is to fill in the general settings of your campaign. Here, you need to give your campaign a name (e.g. USA – Dating – Desktop) and select the ad format.
Also, you’ll need to select the feed and you can choose between mainstream traffic, adult traffic, or both. Also, select a vertical for your campaign and input the target URL from your tracker, then click “next step“.
Now you’ve got to set the pricing modem and bids. Here, you can choose between CPM, SmartCPM, and SmartCPA. For other ad formats, such as push notifications, you also have the CPC pricing model. Keep in mind if you’re running SmartCPA you need to set up your postback correctly from the tracker to the traffic source.
After that, select the country and bid (based on the traffic inventory research you did before) and finally set up a frequency cap. I like keeping it at 1-2 per day max. Then you need to set a daily campaign budget and you can add a total budget if you want as well, but I normally leave that in blank.
Now we’re moving to the 3rd tab, which is targeting. Here, you just need to include or exclude any filters you want to target such as connection type, OS, device, ISP, browsers, and cities. If you leave any of them untouched, it means all of the traffic will be included.
Don’t narrow down your targeting a lot or you’ll find a lack of volume unless you bid too high, especially if you’re just getting started and don’t have any previous data for your campaign.
Finally, you need to set up the Zones and campaign schedule. If this is a new campaign with no previous data, leave the zones alone. Come back later once you’ve got data to exclude the zones that aren’t converting or create a whitelist campaign including just the zones that are working for you.
Also, you can set up a campaign schedule (not recommended initially) and after that, you’ve got to select if you want to receive traffic from anti-Adblock zones and RTB sources. I prefer leaving RTB out initially and run my campaigns only on Clickadu’s direct publishers, but that’s up to you.
Save the campaign and it will be sent for approval. After that, you’ll need to wait a few hours to get it approved and start receiving traffic.
I recently launched a new RON campaign on Clickadu and so far it’s showing promising results (-40% ROI). Once you start getting the traffic you’ll be able to break down your data based on the tokens you’re tracking such as Zone IDs:
Or OS, device, carrier, city, etc:
Buy enough data and start blocking everything that doesn’t work for your funnel and eventually you’ll increase your ROI.
BTW, I also spoke with my manager and was provided with a whitelist (a bunch of Zone IDs with high performance) to run this campaign and it looks like it’s going to have positive ROI in the first 48 hours, which is something you can always do if you talk to your manager.
Ideally, you need to give them information about your campaign, such as the geo, the vertical, and perhaps what kind of conversion flow it will have, and they can provide you with some data to get started. That puts you in a better position than most people starting with RON traffic.
That’s it for this article. If you want to give Clickadu a test, remember you can use the coupon code Servando to get an additional 20$ in your first $100 deposit or 10% if you deposit $300 or more.
This coupon expires on February 12th. Hurry up!
Please leave any comments below if you have questions and I’ll talk to you in the next article!
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