How To Track Multiple PPV Networks With A Single CPVLab Campaign

I always look for ways to optimize my workflow. Specifically when it comes to ppv marketing, a streamlined process for launching, optimizing and scaling your campaigns is critical.

In this post I will share with you a simple way to run multiple traffic sources within a single CPVLab campaign without loosing the ability to analyze and optimize by target & traffic source.

CPVLab is currently* my preferred solution for tracking and optimizing my affiliate campaigns.

Note: Its my current favourite. But…delayed release of the ppc/social module for cpvlab are increasingly frustrating. CPVLab is usable with Facebook and Plenty Of Fish, but such an additional module, free for existing users, would be very very welcome!

You will need version 2.11, and a couple of simple configuration steps. This method does the job for now, but its not perfect. At the end of this post Ive got a couple of suggestions which would make things even easier.

My PPV Workflow

My workflow goes something like this:

1. Pick related offers i like
2. Create 2 landing pages with different angles & setup the campaign in cpvlab (66% to 2 LP + 33% to DL)
3. Scrape targets
4. Run campaign in Trafficvance & optimize
5. Scale profitable targets to other networks

Currently you can run multiple landing pages and multiple offers in a single cpvlab campaign. But you cant run multiple traffic sources in a single campaign. Its also not possible to group campaigns into projects.

Why would you want to track multiple ppv traffic networks in a single CPVLab campaign?

Because it will give you a single view of the profitability of your campaigns, across multiple networks and traffic sources.

Secondly, the cpvlab campaign and stats summary screens can become rather cluttered if you have 20-50 campaigns live, each with several traffic sources.

The basic CPVLab setup

You will need cpvlab version 2.11 if you want to track multiple ppv traffic networks with cpvlab in a single campaign. If you havent upgraded, go and do it as this new version has got a whole bunch of enhancements.

This version of cpvlab comes with the option to track multiple variables (referred to as tokens) with your campaign url. The tracking data will then show those additional variables in the Stats screen for your campaign and how each target is performing against those variables.

To track multiple traffic sources, all you need to do is setup one additional variable and assign a new unique value to that variable in your campaign URL for each traffic source.

There are 4 steps to set this up:

• Setup a multiple traffic category under the network settings
• Setup your campaign variables
• Customize your campaign URLs on your traffic networks
• Analyze stats & Optimize

Create New Traffic Source in CPVLab

First of all, you will need to setup an additional CPV Network. Go to the Settings Menu and click on CPV Networks.

Then, under the Add Network section, fill out the form as per the screenshot below & save:

 

The Keyword Token can be anything you want it to be, as long as its the same as the name of the URL parameter in the Append Token field. These tokens are also known as Query strings.

Also, because each PPV Traffic Network has a different way of passing the target to your campaign URL, you will need to remember to change the value of the Append Token to the one relevant for the specific network:

• Traffic Vance: {KeyWord}
• Lead Impact: KEYWORD
• Direct CPV: {{keyword}}

Setup Campaign Variables

Next step is to create a new cpv campaign or edit one of your existing ones.

Set your predefined source as the “Multiple Network” option you just created, and estimate your average Cost Per View across the different networks and update the Stats CPV field.

Next, tick the “Capture Extra Tokens” option, or if your already using this feature, add an extra token. Configure it as per the screenshot below:

Its very similar to the Keyword Token and the URL Append Token. “Name” is the title for this token that you will see in your Stats screen. “URL Append” is the section you will need to add to your campaign URL, and “Parameter” is the name of the token/variable which needs to be as its included in the URL Append.

The Campaign URL field in CPVLab is not automatically updated when you add additional Tokens, which must be a bug. So when you configure your PPV Traffic Network you need to make sure you add the Append section to your URL.

Customise Campaign URLs

Now copy the campaign URL into a text document so that you can quickly edit it and create the relevant versions for each of your Networks. Make sure you add any of the extra tokens you created, including the one from the previous step.

It should look something like this:

http://tracker.com/base.php?c=147&key=ebf15b4ce5661c98b635b8d650ade6a7&nw=NETWORK&kw=KEYWORD

Now for each ppv traffic network that you are using for this campaign, edit the campaign URL and replace NETWORK with a unique name for the network, and KEYWORD with the value used by the network to pass the target.

For example, here are 3 campaign URLs for the main networks I use:

TrafficVance

Network ID: TV
Keyword Token: {KeyWord}

http://tracker.com/base.php?c=147&key=ebf15b4ce5661c98b635b8d650ade6a7&nw=TV&kw={KeyWord}

LeadImpact

Netword ID: LI
Keyword Token: KEYWORD

http://tracker.com/base.php?c=147&key=ebf15b4ce5661c98b635b8d650ade6a7&nw=LI&kw=KEYWORD

Direct CPV

Netword ID: DCPV
Keyword Token: {{keyword}}

http://tracker.com/base.php?c=147&key=ebf15b4ce5661c98b635b8d650ade6a7&nw=DCPV&kw={{keyword}}

Analyze & Optimize

The final step is to send traffic from the different networks, and then analyse your stats.

You will see that the additional tokens/variables are shown in the first table in your stats view, with the performance down by target.

All you need to do is look which targets are getting click throughs and conversions on each network, and ditch the ones that are not.

There are some limitations at the moment:

• You cant change the columns to exclude some or all of the custom tokens. You can just do this for the standard CPVLab column types.
• The tokens are not shown in the Landing Page Performance, Offer Performance, or Campaign Performance tables
• There is no table showing overall performance for each token

Wrapup

I hope this little tutorial helps you with understanding Additional Tokens feature in CPVLab 2.11 and maybe streamline some of your own workflow.

If you’ve got any questions about this, post a question below. I hope you enjoy this workaround.

However…

It remains a workaround. CPVLab should support this out of the box in my view.

Here are some improvements that I would like to see to make sure this work even better:

• As mentioned in my previous cpvlab post: support for 1) multiple traffic sources per campaign, and 2) grouping multiple campaigns as projects
• Fix the bug which stops the additional tokens being added to the Campaign URL at the bottom of the campaign setup screen
• Include / exclude custom variables for the stats tables
• Reflect custom variables in the Landing Page Performance, Offer Performance and Campaign Performance tables

Tagged as: cpv marketing, cpvlab, leadimpact, ppv networks, trafficvance