009 - SEARCH ARB: CLAWBACKS, IS IT OVER NOW? (Q&A with Oded)

Oded Gendler has been buying traffic since 2008. We had a chat about the ups and downs, and the future of the industry. Turn on, tune in and find out!

0:43 Oded’s background
4:09 Oded finds Search Arb 
5:10 How much Oded made with TikTok
5:49 Feed provider freaking out because of hard scaling
7:17 Google is getting stricter
8:38 When to start worrying about clawbacks
10:29 Oded is neither the pope or a saint
11:05 The Jobs Vertical - are we actually providing value?
13:10 The biggest clawbacks of TheChopShop
14:20 Example of clawback worthy traffic
16:11 Could this be over soon?
17:10 State of TT vs Meta currently
19:30 Fluctuating RPCs on Meta
20:50 Worst day of the week for Arb
21:40 How to deal with not instantly knowing your ROI
22:12 Keyword Optimisation 
25:54 Monetiser data difficult to compare directly
28:40 Oded’s monetisation platform mix
32:30 Buying traffic via GDN?
33:30 AFS vs RSOC
35:49 How hard to scale a certain vertical
37:15 How to think of new verticals to run
41:30 Split of US vs International traffic

Transcript

Martin: 0:00

For the viewer's benefit, we met at a at the search ARB session at Affiliate Summit in Barcelona.

Oded: 0:08

You go to these conferences, you talk to a hundred people out of them, maybe one or two, you'll have

Martin: 0:12

Yeah, it was immediately like, okay, this is fun.

Oded: 0:16

I'll do my best to refrain from all the jokes we made when

Martin: 0:19

Yeah, it was bad enough for a German dude to leave the conversation.

Oded: 0:25

Yeah, I remember they weren't used to that.

Martin: 0:30

Yeah. So I don't know exactly the details about your journey, would you mind giving a little The background on how your journey began and

Oded: 0:42

sure. Standard affiliate journey,

Martin: 0:44

yeah,

Oded: 0:46

started, I think like 2008, nine, whatever. It was even running, fake reports on Google AdWords when it was still allowed.

Martin: 0:55

We started at the same time, then two, two senior guys here in the business.

Oded: 1:01

But you start with search hub or you did everything on the way?

Martin: 1:04

Never affiliates directly. Search.

Oded: 1:06

Okay. So I started affiliate, call on cleansing what was working in the old days, so you're a newbie affiliate, don't have any money for anything, not to pay content writers, anything had to learn HTML, Photoshop, everything. So did everything, learned HTML, launched my first site. I think the first offer I launched was like a 80 cents lead submit. But like baby stuff on a Zoogle, like the old network. It was like the first rebuild network. Launched it on AdWords, was doing very well. Reached like the a hundred dollars a day, then decided to scale to, a credit card sale offer. Did my first like site, the column reports or something. Awesome domain, doctors, amazing. Started scaling, reached like the first 1k. And then of course the Google Slack. And yeah,

Martin: 1:58

How bad was it? Did you lose money in the end? Yes.

Oded: 2:01

You go from doing like 1k, you think like you're the king of the world, you're like the richest man ever, you're doing everything from home, like my first goal was to do 100 a day, like 3k a month, and I thought yeah, that's it. It's amazing

Martin: 2:11

that was the same. That was the same. As soon as I made a hundred bucks a day, didn't I thought, now I can quit my job. This is all I need.

Oded: 2:21

like when I launched on the, and I saw the first conversion, I thought, that's it. It's amazing. I made money on the internet

Martin: 2:27

yeah, it's a rush, huh?

Oded: 2:29

for sure. And then, you reach 100 and then 1k was like, Oh my God. And then you get the slap and then, okay, you get depressed a bit for a day, two, you drink a little and then, okay, let's get it again. And then yeah, you reach another goal, but then another slap. And then I remember Facebook just started. So it was doing again, like there were, they were paying like good money on on Facebook game installs. So you start, just taking screenshots of the game itself. Instead of doing CPC, you do CPM and you make like insane money. Cause the CPC is so low and you get like insane CTR that was doing well. But again, with a field marketing, like whatever is super profitable, it's not sustainable. There, there are no gap in the market.

Martin: 3:15

the slaps, they after a while you get numb to them,

Oded: 3:19

Yeah, I get none of it, A lot of it, it wears you down. Because so many people in the game they're one hit wonders. They're 22, 23, doing like a million a year, And then, wow, I buy my Ferraris, whatever, and then they understand next year I'm back to zero.

Martin: 3:32

Yeah, that's definitely, it's a rollercoaster. In the beginning at least.

Oded: 3:36

For sure. I did everything Seriously, everything. Dating, the natives was very well. Did some other stuff. Then I decided to take a break for three years from this entire online, decided to do some offline stuff. And then my it was good, it's like you said, it's addictive, like this insane ROI and you're pretty much gambling every day. But,

Martin: 3:58

A bit more intelligent gambling, yeah. At least

Oded: 4:01

yeah, for sure. But there's still the gambling element to that. You never know.

Martin: 4:04

Yeah. Yeah.

Oded: 4:06

And then I remember it was Dubai last year, which my ex partner told me, Hey, you're going. I said, yeah, you know what, why not? I haven't seen all the people for a while. And there I heard of Sertrab. Dubai, I think, was in February last year. There was already

Martin: 4:20

thing?

Oded: 4:21

No, not no, not the gig out. It's a affiliate word in Dubai. So then I, I heard about search up the funny thing. Like I tried search up with can I say the name? Like it was before they became who they are today. They were like team internet.

Martin: 4:37

Yeah.

Oded: 4:38

we tried search up, we sent like a one, two K and okay. Didn't make it work. It was, I think it was 2017 or something or 16.

Martin: 4:45

Was it on parking crew or

Oded: 4:47

Yes. Parking crew. Okay. Gave a bit, never put any focus on that. And then, yeah, last year I saw everyone are just search up. It was exploding. So yeah, it started in, I think in April, more or less, we start like end of April, we started pushing the first traffic start with tick tock.

Martin: 5:06

Yeah.

Oded: 5:08

and yeah, we, we grew like insane, like in April we did like maybe 500 in May. We only grew like to the low six figures. And then when in Barcelona itself, yeah, Sorry, not daily, sorry. And monthly not daily, but we started pushing I don't know, like the five figures a day. And then in Barcelona, because the thing we search out, which is, it's still on my mind all the time because you're floating so much cash. It's not like an affiliate network that pays you once a week, or, if you're doing volume, even twice a week, you're pretty much floating cash. Like we get paid like net 15, so you're still floating a whole month plus an extra 10, 15 days of the next month. So we were really scaling. And I remember I met one of the feeds in Barcelona. And I said yeah, how are you? Yeah. What's the company name? Oh, wow. You scaled too fast. Be careful. Google doesn't like it. If if they close your account, there's nothing we can do. So I'm like, what the that's what you're telling me right now. So I already I already told my media bar like, okay let's pause it down. Let's shut it down until we get paid. Cause we were playing like, I don't half a million. And I was, it was, and it was before we even got a credit line. So it was pretty much If we get fucked like it's money out but then I talked to some other people. Then I met you and I remember you told me like, you wish you would have pushed it harder because instead of, so everything was okay at the end, it was like two weeks of like nerve wracking just to get paid. And then we continued. So that, which brings us to the part like I hit you up because end of the year, like all the feeds sent an email, Google are now actively monitoring ads and everything. So all the feeds sold us that and, search up was always there. It was always under the radar, but now that it's so have become mainstream. There are so many people in the game and, if it's, they don't care they will use, they will abuse it as much as possible, whatever, and the creator I saw people even cloning celebrity voices, doing insane stuff. That's why I reached out, because in December, like, all the feeds said okay, guys, we know what's going on, it's a Wild West, but now Google are gonna become more strict. So that's why I wanted to get like your opinion about that because you've been doing it for so long. And for me, like there is, okay, worst case, like they, they block your domain. So you don't show any ads. Cool. So you get a slap, but at least you get paid. The main thing is like if they do a huge clawback, because, we just started, I think already in June or July, they already did like globally from what I understand, like a 3 percent clawback. Then the next month, an extra two and a half out of revenue. Which hurts when you're doing volume. It's out of revenue.

Martin: 7:41

That was, yeah,

Oded: 7:43

So

Martin: 7:45

That was a new a new move. That they apply a global clawback for everybody. Yeah. But hey, yeah, you're dealing with a monopoly. What are you going to do? I, yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot. Thank you for sharing your journey. It's super interesting to hear. And I think we can have a, quite an interesting conversation because You're a veteran, but you're the search orb field is still relatively fresh, right? So there's I had a Q and a with with a guy recently on, on this channel and it turned into a, quite a nice conversation. But he has a different profile. He hasn't been doing this in the same way as you and not as long and not in these volumes. So I think it's going to be an interesting conversation. So yeah, I think like this, like you know if you're if you are in the risk zone, like in your heart of hearts, like how aggressive have you been? And if you haven't been. If you haven't been going too hard, say lying, saying things that are not true, then I feel you don't have much to be worried about. And the matter with scaling, yes, half a million is a lot of money, but To Google it's very small. It depends if you go from zero to half a million short and it's but if you scale with proper, like with content that isn't across the line. In, in in a reasonable fashion, I see like why not, right? There's people that push much more than that. And in the channel. So I don't think that like someone that in mountain views and, oh my God, he's this guy generating half a million, so I think you can, or I shouldn't say, I think you can be relaxed. Cause I don't know how your creatives. are and how aggressive exactly you are. Of course, the further you deviate from the truth, the more you trick the system, the higher the risk is going to be. And ultimately you want to be just sending almost plain vanilla ads and still make a buck cause then you have the longevity. That to me is the highest. Art form, right? Anybody can do like a fake, like a deep fake video is a celebrity endorsing something and then getting clicks. That's not so difficult. It's difficult to be compliant and to run traffic at scale, but it's possible. It

Oded: 10:21

no, for sure. For sure. I would say we're running like, okay. We're not the Pope. We're not saying for sure we are pushing the envelope as possible, but when, when you spy around and you see what other people are doing, like it's insane, so we are pretty good. When we got those emails from the feed, so like I told my guys okay, let's review everything, like hundreds of ads, make sure, for example, like the feeds right now, they don't like they never liked it, but, screenshots of the page, for example, of the actual keywords, they don't like that. Also, this, the swipe left mentioning exact numerical figures of if it's a course or whatever, or dental implants for sure. So we're not doing all that. Something that a lot of people are doing, for example, is the jobs angle. So that's something I remember I asked you in Barcelona I asked you so do you know who are those AdWords advertisers that, people actually click on their ads and who are paying and said and you said what do you care? Because I asked that question in like in terms like we have to provide value. Those AdWords advertisers have to get lead or they have to get calls to the call center or everything. So when you look at the jobs angle, like what makes sense is like the people who click are looking for a job while the actual advertiser is actually advertising the service itself.

Martin: 11:37

Can you specify a little bit more?

Oded: 11:39

for example, let's look at, a vertical like roofing. So it's basically, people want to change their roofs or like windows replacement. People want to change like and a lot of people are doing the jobs angle. So if you're looking to get a good paying job as a roofer or stuff like that.

Martin: 11:54

Yeah.

Oded: 11:55

in my head that's not what the AdWords advertiser are advertising about.

Martin: 12:01

So when you follow down the stream, then you see like an ad for a general jobs page, like indeed, or something like that.

Oded: 12:08

Yeah.

Martin: 12:09

Yeah. I think they can come like real value For the advertiser. And yeah, as, as long like in the optimal world, you're unlocking. People's intent, right? If there's someone roofing expert that is then maybe pissed with the boss and looking for a job and then like it pops up on install like, okay, this is what I want to do. And then they end up using the platform and maybe even find the roofing. A new roofing job. That's, that doesn't seem like impossible that could happen. But and these kind of slaps, like I haven't seen happen. Maybe it's better to talk about when did we, what kind of slaps have there been? And how how has what's been the history? Because there have been slaps, right?

Oded: 13:02

Yeah. From

Martin: 13:04

in Sire Charm.

Oded: 13:06

own

Martin: 13:06

I had them on it.

Oded: 13:07

yeah. It's did you ever get a slap, like a big clawback or something?

Martin: 13:15

not really. No, of course there's been clawbacks, but we've always been very aware of the rules and we've been thinking it's important not to. It's a nice thing. We don't want to, we don't want to burn it burn it to the ground. However, I have, I ran my own, I had my own monetization platform in the past. So we had customers and then I could see what people are doing. And of course they got slapped if they did it. Did it wrong. And then it comes back to one of the first ones. So we just had our monetization service was a guy, some Greek guy. He went from zero to 40, 000 in a day. A example of that's the bad scaling. That's that raises the alarm bell, right? And then the source, I, it's so long ago, I forgot what it was, but it was definitely not proper. And and caused a bunch of. Then slaps have been handed out for say incense traffic when, you get like an in game artifact if you then click on, on, on the link and so on. That's a good example of something that's absolutely, it shows zero good intent and it's no, honestly, there's not even the chance that someone can convert those kinds of examples. They'll.

Oded: 14:37

Yeah.

Martin: 14:39

They don't have to, but you're definitely not going to have longevity in, in this game. And you basically, I find it's a waste of time because you will for sure have to do something else soon. You will have to put in the hours to learn something different because that's not good. But yeah, there's always a bunch of gray zone activity. Going on system wide and sometimes when it gets out of hand, then then the channel as a whole needs then a slap to, to stop, like to shape up and you might definitely be right that now it's time for a slap soon again for all

Oded: 15:16

mhm.

Martin: 15:17

The luck seekers that have come in and take shortcuts and then, yeah, for sure. But in the end, it's not so difficult, when you do something that is

Oded: 15:29

Yeah, for

Martin: 15:30

over, over the line, if you can plausibly argue that you provide value honestly, you should be fine. You should be fine. Of course you need to read the some rules are not super intuitive. Always not showing the park page. Like I don't think it, it doesn't show that you have evil intent if you show the park page. It's just like one step too far

Oded: 15:52

Yeah.

Martin: 15:53

for the for Google to display that. It's not necessary. So yeah, so I would say. There's, this, the feeling that you described in other words is Oh, could this be over soon? Is it sustainable? That feeling has been with me since I started. And that's what I meant with, Oh, I regret that I didn't scale harder because there was always this nagging voice in the background Oh, maybe it will be turned off. And back then it was much more hush that you shouldn't talk about it. And it wasn't like a hundred percent certain that it's okay, but now it's a different world.

Oded: 16:32

Yeah, I

Martin: 16:33

And and it's fine. And yeah, there's a lot of people coming in, but the majority of them will, they'll probably, yeah, not devote enough time or they will take shortcuts and then we get dinged. So I wouldn't worry too much about it either. It's like in any other field, if you can provide value and if you can do it better than the other people, then you're most likely to have success. And when you have success in this field, it's very scalable and reliable.

Oded: 17:00

Yeah, pretty much everything is open to you. Every vertical you can imagine is there pretty much.

Martin: 17:05

Yeah. Yeah exactly. Are you running TikTok exclusively or are you running other

Oded: 17:10

No we, so we started with TikTok, it was doing well, but like in the last few months, TikTok has become so unstable, like CPA is, you can have something doing super nice ROIs, then it crashes, after two weeks, it goes up again, it's super unstable. So when you compare it to Facebook, Facebook is like clockwork, you can see, it's pretty much the same all the time. The thing that fluctuates is, the RPCs, which you don't really have control over. But yeah, TikTok right now, it's a mess. Like we actually, I think decreased it so much, but now it's a new year. So we're going to restart again and see how it goes. But yeah, for sure, TikTok was totally unstable. Yeah,

Martin: 17:48

Yeah. So with the wave of people coming in to search our, there's also, I find lately. It was more bullish in the summer in Barcelona when we met. If you go to a show now, you will probably hear a lot of people moaning about it. Oh, third job is not that good, or it's over, and so on. I think it's much due to that many of the people that came in, maybe they were buying mainly TikTok, and you're totally right. It became much more difficult. It became saturated. It followed the same story as most channels in the beginning. You have a honeymoon phase, you make insane ROIs, you don't have to put in so much effort and everything is great. But of course, every window will close, or at least it will become more difficult. And that's definitely what has happened in TikTok, but it doesn't mean that other avenues are equally as Difficult. I personally, I would also prefer right now to buy on Facebook rather than TikTok. But it's also, it comes down to the skill set that you have. Maybe for some people out there are great at running that kind of traffic. So it depends on who you are and what you enjoy a lot more, but for sure the difficulty has gone up since last year

Oded: 19:08

But it's a cycle, it reaches a critical mass, everyone are stopping and then there's the opportunity again because everyone stops. So if you come back there, so then again, it can make money.

Martin: 19:18

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

Oded: 19:21

All right. There's another thing I wanted to ask you. Like we said, like with Facebook, like the traffic side, like the buying side is pretty steady. Is changing, like I would say, like per vertical are actually the RPCs. They change immensely. It's also you can start the month, the RPCs are low, and then like at the middle of the month, second week, they suddenly jump again, and then go down again. So like, how do you see like the fluctuating RPCs and like affecting the ROI on a specific vertical? If you look globally, okay, but if you look like on vertical wise

Martin: 19:50

I find, yes, there's several different trends going on and repeating trends going on. You have the day of week, of course, affects how good RPCs you're getting. You mentioned what time of the month is it often in the beginning of the month? So like the shift of the month is when it gets the most volatile when you can have really disappointing days in some verticals I feel Or i've seen that the end of the month can be great It feels like they need to burn up some budgets quickly before the month is over So there's there will be recurring patterns that you see, and then you can either adapt to it or you just run the campaign in such a way that you're like, okay, I just run it in a steady way. And then on the bad days, I accept that the ROI is going down a bit.

Oded: 20:39

Yeah. That's what we're doing. That's what we're doing. We even see for example, like Sunday globally is just a bad day. Like on most verticals, it's like the worst day of the week for us. And yeah, we just we try to look on like at least like a 30 percent ROI I would say on a weekly or even more now that we have more statistic, we try to look at the vertical like on a month basis. So yeah that's something we're actually considering like developing a sort of a tool that can give you like analysis per vertical and try to spot like monthly trade trends.

Martin: 21:09

Yeah. And then of course some verticals have they have seasonality.

Oded: 21:15

Yeah.

Martin: 21:15

them, just the way they are, if it's something tax related, for instance, people are going to be more interested at some some points of the year, if we talk about American taxes or if it's some benefits or something that's that people can apply to but yeah, I got a similar question not too long ago how I, yeah. How I deal with that, that I don't see it. I think I got it from a person from the affiliate space or e com. And then of course you're used to that. You see directly what ROI you're getting, but here you just have to accept or befriend the fact that you're running in the dark for until the. The next update and need enough safety margin for it, not to punish you too hard. And maybe that's the reason why most people are saying that they aim for 30%. Because then I feel you have a good buffer for when things turn down. How active are you with keyword optimization?

Oded: 22:13

So yeah that's interesting thing with keywords. Okay, you choose a vertical, you start with a batch of, let's say five keywords. And then I noticed okay, so that's an interesting question because, you use the keyword planner, Google Keyword Planner, and whatever CPCs you see there are irrelevant. You can see 15, 20 click, whatever you're getting at the end is it's totally different. So what I've noticed, we are playing with keywords and it's not like you're going to find you're getting like whatever, 1 RPCs, and then you're going to find this golden keyword that's going to give you 5. My theory, and it is a theory at the end I don't think I have enough data, it's like a vertical wise the different keywords it's not gonna boost you, it's more like vertical wise, the CPCs are irrelevant, what I look for, at least in the keyword plan I just look for high competition, that's something I care about more than the CPCs.

Martin: 23:00

Interesting. Okay. Our take on it is. Of course the optimal keyword would have high competition, high volume and high CPC and a nice semantic meaning, but you almost, those keywords you almost never get. What I mean with high semantics, like a good semantic meaning is that it's like a, it sounds like the keyword sells itself. It sounds attractive, say like the cheapest dental implants in my area is of course more interesting to click than just dental implants. So because we're not only like more important than the RPC is actually the RPM, right? You want like per person that visits the page, how much money do you make? And if the keywords are more interesting, your RPM will likely be higher. I have. It's interesting. I have a little bit different experience with with keyword optimization. It could of course be that you do it and then you see, okay, it doesn't do that much, but I've also had cases when like the performance has gone up by a hundred percent. It's possible when you hit the right, yeah, when you hit the right keyword. Or combination of keywords. So I would not rule it out, but I would also say what effects how the keywords are shown, like just because you input that I would like these keywords to be displayed, it doesn't mean that they actually are displayed, but a factor that will increase your chance. Of having this keyword displayed is the ad title that you. That you're sending along, if that also contains the keyword that you want displayed, the ad title definitely affects how likely it is that the user will actually see the keyword, then you should of course be compliant and add it into

Oded: 24:56

Of course. That's an interesting test because, let's assume you're passing like five keywords and you can start, it's, each feed is a bit different. For example I'll for us, for example, we test, like when we start two feeds, like the same keyword, just sending to two feeds, and I can see that there are two, two feed providers who always have like the best conversion rate. If the others are converting at whatever, 40%, they're converting at 46, 47. Even though the RPCs are actually lower. The even though the conversion is high, but the RPCs are lower. They're tracking more conversions, but they're paying less. Again I'm not sure about the theory. You can say maybe it's the layout the colors, because they have, they all have different colors or whatever. I don't know. I don't know what's going on there.

Martin: 25:42

I'm very happy that you brought up this. And this is something that I wanted to get deeper into in one of the sessions I do with my, my, my co founder. you mentioned that the keyword planner data that is basically fairy dust. Yes. But also the data that you get from the monetizer, don't read it. Like it's the absolute truth behind the scenes of a monetizer. You get all like you get so many requests. There's so many bots hitting up the domains, fake clicks galore. And then the monetizer has to decide what's my limit. What's a real visitor and what's a real click. And they will of course have them different different limits. And depending on that, you will see a different conversion rate. You will see. As you say, a different RPC, and that makes it that you can't compare it, apples to apples, what happens in Sedo versus in System1 and so on. All you can compare is how much money do you get from the monetizer. That's the only real hard fact number. So I would argue when you do the comparison between. Monetizers create your own metric. We call it effective RPM so that we take how many clicks, how many visitors have we sent to this monetizer and how much money did we get back, then you have a number that you can compare between different platforms because otherwise. Otherwise you'll be totally in the dark and you draw wrong conclusions. And of course, as a monetizer, some monetizers then play with that because for less sophisticated users, then they're very happy. Oh, look, I got a 20 click. This is the best monetization platform out there. So there's an incentive to report less clicks and then of course a higher RPC. So take it with a big grain of salt there. But it seems like you're on the right path

Oded: 27:44

Affiliate work in there. If it's an affiliate network, it would just, they just shave. That's what affiliate networks do

Martin: 27:49

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And yeah, we don't know what they do, right? They could happen that they shave as well on the monetization platform. The temptation is there.

Oded: 28:00

I'm not sure even, I'm not even sure if the account managers actually know what's going on there. Like it's such a black box. So yeah. What do you say about Revshare? Like how much do you think the feeds are actually playing with the Revshare they're giving you? Yeah.

Martin: 28:15

course. And all this, oh, you get this percentage rev share. It's yeah. Rev share of what? Because often than it's like there's a service fee and whatever fees also the rev share. Come on again. It's like the only true thing is how much money lands in your bank account from that monetizer. That's the one thing you can be sure of. How many monetizers do you run with?

Oded: 28:40

So we run We actually send revenue to right now free, but it's 70 percent or 60 percent goes to one and then we're playing with the other two.

Martin: 28:52

Yeah. It's often like that. There's one. That's one that works the best, but it's different people, which one works the

Oded: 29:00

Totally Some people will say they are the best RPCs and what the fuck what are you talking about? It doesn't make sense to me.

Martin: 29:06

yes, exactly. Exactly. That depends on, yeah, your style or maybe there's some random factor there as well, but a lot also who's your account manager and how good is your relationship with the account manager?

Oded: 29:21

Yeah, totally We even ran a test running the same, to the same feed, same keywords, just different domain, like we bought a different domain, plugged it in, and the RPCs were different. And

Martin: 29:33

definitely black box factor. It's goes as far. We acquired a monetize monetization platform many years ago. So then for a while we ran two with exactly the same template. 50 percent going to one, 50 percent to the other, everything is the same, yet there was this one huge domain that generated a lot of money. We just couldn't make it work. We wanted to move everything to one system, but it was so much better on the old system, despite everything. So there is an element of randomness in this whole thing as well. So that's why I say it definitely pays off to, to work with several monetizers. So you say you work with three. It's perfect. It's good. And it can also, of course it can change over time too.

Oded: 30:20

Yeah.

Martin: 30:21

it's how active are you with the lesser performing monetization platform? So you in touch with the account reps

Oded: 30:28

I am in touch with them. There's one platform I just dislike, personally, which I just don't want to work with. I think we talked about it in Barcelona. I just I just don't like them. It's

Martin: 30:39

Yeah. To name names if you wanna.

Oded: 30:43

I don't like,

Martin: 30:45

Really?

Oded: 30:46

I don't like them. It's with everyone We got like easy payment trails, like net 15 with them. It's just it's a headache.

Martin: 30:54

yeah, huh, yeah,

Oded: 30:56

What, but again, I talked to other people and say, wow, they're the best, but for us, just no can I tell you? People like them. They got like the easiest interface and all that, but I don't care. Like we, we have our tools. So for us, it's meaningless. Just

Martin: 31:10

I see, yeah, that's interesting it's different

Oded: 31:13

you told me like your best or system one.

Martin: 31:18

No. I would say we, we actually we send quite a bit to

Oded: 31:23

Really?

Martin: 31:24

Yeah. Yeah.

Oded: 31:27

I don't know. Like

Martin: 31:28

But I

Oded: 31:29

We started sending a bit more, but it's not like they're blowing everyone out of the water. Sometimes they're a bit winning, but It's not worth the headache yeah, you can censor that part if you want. We don't want to, we don't want to say, we don't want to say bad things about anyone. We have to, be friends with everyone at the end.

Martin: 31:46

But maybe they watch this. I know that they watch this and maybe they're like, shit, we need to win that back here. Could be.

Oded: 31:55

don't know. They're the biggest, I think, so they have the most And everything.

Martin: 31:59

the big, yeah, no, but not and I don't want to throw a shade on I think they knowledge wise, they're really good. They know a lot and the interface I think is really good for our purposes. So every, I find every platform has like a potential advantage.

Oded: 32:19

yeah,

Martin: 32:20

And obviously it fits for some people.

Oded: 32:23

Yeah. Everyone finds their own

Martin: 32:25

clever buy in. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Oded: 32:27

What do you say about GDN buying traffic from GDN itself?

Martin: 32:32

think that's a good idea to look into that.

Oded: 32:35

Because I know

Martin: 32:36

could be big.

Oded: 32:37

The actual feeds are buying from GDN. If you spy, you can see their sites there, with their actually, the ad block with their content sites and you can even spy and see the ads that they're running, which are super vanilla, but I guess they're making okay money with that.

Martin: 32:50

Yes. You say feeds, so you've seen several feeds that do that, or just one?

Oded: 32:55

I saw two,

Martin: 32:57

Aha, okay. Okay.

Oded: 32:59

one of them, one of them, you can find all their domains pretty easy. Like they have a pretty heavy footprint.

Martin: 33:06

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, system, it's no secret that system one is big on,

Oded: 33:10

Yeah. And now with the transparency with AdWords, you can, just put their company name and you will see like all their ads.

Martin: 33:17

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Oded: 33:20

and so that, that actually brings me to my question to so are they writing? Because I got confused. So AFD, okay. We know what AFD is. I got confused between AFS and RSOC.

Martin: 33:30

Aha, okay. Yeah, I'm happy to shed some light on that. RSOC, like if I explain it in the simplest possible way, is that you have a part page, but with there's content around it. It's there's a keyword block in an article. So you get if I would try to sell it, it would be like the best of both worlds from running through a content page or interstitial and directly to part page. So that's RSOC, and that's quite limited still. Not a lot of people have access to it. And it is limited also in the way that it was only really viable on, on desktop traffic. That supposedly changed now. So what you get by a tonic currently or like plastic seeder, basically, yeah, all of them, unless you have a good hookup will be AFS. Yes.

Oded: 34:29

So it's basically just, so you got the content page, you got the keyword ad block. And then you click on that and you order, and the second page is already advertisers? Yeah, I got it. Yeah, I think we got

Martin: 34:42

Or it will look like a SERP right after you click on that. On the keyword block, then you have a SERP and supposedly then you'll have a broader advertiser base there, better, better RPCs. So RSOC will definitely, I expect that we'll hear a lot more about RSOC in this year and then we'll become much more broad.

Oded: 35:03

And there's more testing when there's more wiggle with them because you can play with the headline and maybe the layout. So yeah.

Martin: 35:09

Definitely. Which then also increases the complexity. I find, like, when I observe people that, that are new in the space, and there's so many levers that you can pull, and the task is to figure out which levers really matter, because you can also get lost in the weeds, right? It's difficult. There's some details you shouldn't pay too much attention to, and some details that you should, because you need the speed also.

Oded: 35:35

Yeah. It's a 2080. It's the 2080 where you're going to

Martin: 35:39

hundred percent.

Oded: 35:40

yeah.

Martin: 35:42

Hundred percent.

Oded: 35:43

A question on the head. So basically like how much do you decide to scale a vertical, like how much you said, okay, I'm going to scale the spend on that till, it starts till it starts breaking, like it said, okay, whatever I launch a vertical, it does whatever 60 percent ROI, and then you start scaling and, it's better to do, to spend half and do 60 percent and spend double and do 30%. In the end, you're making the same amount of money.

Martin: 36:09

Yeah, I would I would always aim for that 30 percent ROI because it's an unknown as long as you have 60, you don't know how far can I take it. And it's a task to figure out where is the limit, right? I would definitely try to scale it up. And yeah you found something that works. And then it, I think then it makes sense to explore like how far can you take it? You can also then explore what happens if you change the keyword order or what happens if you send it to different monetizer. And so on, then definitely I think a lot of missed opportunities out there are people that find the winner and that are then like, yes, now I have a 50 percent ROI. Let's not touch it. Let's not mess it up.

Oded: 36:58

Not totally

Martin: 36:59

maybe you could have made 10 times more.

Oded: 37:01

for sure. Oh, the 30 percent is a good, we always try 30 percent is like the lucky number.

Martin: 37:06

Yeah,

Oded: 37:07

okay. So the most interesting question, okay. So we all spy, see what's trending, whatever. How do think about new verticals to come up with?

Martin: 37:17

I wouldn't advise doing that, but you can instead, of course you can do it, but it will, I'm just thinking like speeds of the essence, right? You want, they want to test a lot and unless you've tested. Everything that you see out there, like, why would you then try to reinvent the wheel? That I find is a super common error when we hire new campaign managers, that they come oh, I had this idea, or I read this article, or now there's this trend, and I'm like, oh, I don't do it. You'll have a much higher chance to succeed if you try something that that you see pop up, but you can still be creative. You should still be creative. You shouldn't just ripped the ads. I think you should, you can view yourself as like you, you combine several different things. If you get a signal that say roofing works, and then you could think okay, what other geos? Could this work?

Oded: 38:15

Yeah. Yeah.

Martin: 38:15

the keyword tool and then you're going to be very quick, a concept like a communicative concept and keyword set that works, then you can translate it and find then you've you've contributed, right? Or maybe if you see the ad and you think, okay, it could be done a little bit better or all the ads look in this way. And I have had success in similar verticals with a different approach than by all means. Just mix it all together and create your own thing. And and that's where I also see, even though that there's a lot of people getting into Search Harb and so most people, they will do it either not with enough thought or not with enough. Love. There's always going to be opportunities for someone that launches a campaign with like real thought, intelligent thought on it. You can you should think okay, what in the spy tool, that should be a benchmark. That should be the worst ad in your, And then how can you sharpen it? How can you push it a little bit further?

Oded: 39:23

Totally.

Martin: 39:23

with that, you win so much by something that you've seen in the SpyTool because then you also, you should also take note of the keywords that are displayed on the page. Granted that you're looking at a skilled player. Then There are players out there that then have a bunch of analysts that then are tools that look at all the keywords out there and that quickly test everything if you have such a chance, especially if you're a one man shop, you can't compete with that, but you can copy quickly elements you shouldn't rip straight away but heavily be heavily inspired by the info that's out there. I'm trying to think have I ever I'm trying to think Have I ever run something that I just thought of totally on my own? I don't know. Probably

Oded: 40:09

Yeah. The funny thing when we just started, so we, I think like TikTok gave us like a few verticals, like suggestions to run. And it was a whole new thing because we never did videos like we, as a field, there weren't like static images there. So that was like a big hurdle. Oh my God, videos. We never did that. But then, we hired some video editors, whatever. It wasn't that big a deal. But I remember the first creatives, like we did, yeah, we spied, but then we decided to be super creative, starting everything. Like it was a total failure. Are we talking about minus 90, 80 percent failure? It was

Martin: 40:41

it is.

Oded: 40:43

And then we started saying, okay, that's what's working. You don't need to invent the wheel, maybe improve it a bit there and that. And yeah,

Martin: 40:50

Yes. But what I also like. Yeah, obviously there are various yield creators out there, but maybe you can borrow some elements. You don't need to throw out the whole concept, but I still think it's maybe that's also overlooked constantly, like the fact that this is a creative business and the creatives should have some creativity in them. But you don't have to go overboard. You can just like use, use what you've seen in the spy tool as a base and then just work from there, I would say.

Oded: 41:25

totally. Why do you say if you look at you guys so in terms of revenue, so like how much is like us and how much is like outside,

Martin: 41:34

QS is really big. I don't have the current,

Oded: 41:41

but it's not like 50,

Martin: 41:42

has always been the center. Yeah. Yeah. But with that said, the other markets, they are definitely, they're definitely important as well. It's, and I always try to think okay, if someone is viewing this conversation, listening to this conversation and is on their own, I would again, go back to them to think about what your own work and you contribute. The most where do you have, where's your edge, right? You're based in Poland, so you probably have an edge. Then it's possible to make good money with Polish traffic. If you don't understand the culture better, even if there's other people running traffic in Poland, they could very well be that they sit somewhere else, and they just AI translate everything. And then you, people will notice in the ads that it's not made perfectly. AI is not. That's great. Yet often there will be like some odd phrases and so on. Then maybe you can do it better. Yeah but just as a whole, of course, the U S is dominant as a geo in the search arm market. So I would definitely. Like you should definitely have it in your mix

Oded: 42:58

yeah. How are you doing like with automation? Do you have anything automated or it's pretty much hands on monitored and nothing is like automated rules and stuff like that.

Martin: 43:08

depends on the on the platform that you're buying from. And some it's more important than others. I find with TikTok, it's relatively important to have automations. But overall less than you'd think probably you can run you can run a lot with relatively little. And it's a topic that I've also like when people write and ask what they should do especially being said, I signed up for the optimizer and the loom and saying, you don't need that in the beginning, really just. Try to make money just as is. If you have a good concept and a good vertical, good ads, you don't need to automate. That you will see great ROIs directly. And that should be your basis. And then when it becomes so many verticals, so much that's difficult to keep track of, then I would explore that. Because it goes also back to the fact that we. We don't have perfect information. It's so delayed. What we have had on the second information, you could run much more with automations, but you're always going to have these blinds on that you don't know exactly how you're running right now.

Oded: 44:24

Yeah. It's something like, with the media buyers, like for all our years, like we always thought how quick we automate the process. But I found out that like a media buyer has to have a feel for the campaign. If he launches like 50 new or whatever, he doesn't have a feel, if you don't have a feel, you actually, I can ask you right now, what's the average RPC? What's the spend? And you don't actually know it. Then you just lose control because it's so dynamic and it's not it's not like a determinative thing. Like it's like you work in McDonald's, like the same input and the same output. Here you can do the same input, something changes on the traffic side and the traffic source size and the output will be totally different. So you always have to be like on your toes and new problems come and you have to solve them.

Martin: 45:03

Yeah, absolutely. But I think like later, like when you run a larger organization, there are a bunch of things that you can take care of for the media buyer and that you should take

Oded: 45:13

Oh, no, for sure. Like in, in terms of launching, like it's a linear process. So that's not a problem. Like it's the same, whatever. But in terms of actually managing a campaign, then yeah.

Martin: 45:24

Yeah. You need we still need. Someone that's really is looking at numbers and thinking about the campaign. That's, and that should be the core, right? The campaign manager should just manage the campaign optimally and then get fed the creatives, if it's a larger organization, or I would also say you could one thing that, that is probably good to automate is the keyword optimization. Because that I found, I often had to hunt campaign managers saying, when did you renew the keywords and make sure not to forget about it. That's a good one. I think you can still have a feeling for the campaign while automating. That side of the process. Yeah. Hey, it's been a joy, but I have to hop on another call in a few minutes only.

Oded: 46:17

Martin, thank you very much for your time. Censor whatever needs to be censored. So they don't they don't send bombs to my house.

Martin: 46:24

No. And hey, if you make it over to Berlin, let me know. It'd be fun to hang out.

Oded: 46:31

in touch. Let's stay in touch.

Martin: 46:32

Absolutely

Oded: 46:33

All right, thank you so much. Ciao. Bye bye.

Martin: 46:36

Ciao.