We work with MediaTrust and are starting to develop a great relationship with them. Evan is a blast to work with.
MediaTrust's new PerformanceExchange CPC Platform is tailored specifically towards mailers. Its actually the only channel they are allowing at this time on the new platform. Looking forward to running a split test between them and Adknowledge adstation...it really all comes down to how much $ I am making, just like every other affiliate out there!
I'm always leary about working with unestablished networks even if the initial feedback is positive...but I'm also open to various new opportunities.
I've run MediaTrust and liked my initial tests with them, right now my only concern (and I'll allow them to retort), is: 1. Offers seem to have a very fast shelf life, and you need to be prepared to stop an offer same day as it's already going out in the queues; 2. The interface is confusing... I see over 100 offers but only some can be deployed. Which? The ones with the $1 beside them? Is that the current CPC? Why do some offers show as being live, but have no CPC amount next to them? If you guys can clear this up, I'd be interested in trying again, as I think there's a lot of great potential here and some solid stuff.
Hi All! Good to connect and thank you very much for starting this MediaTrust thread. I am looking forward to helping answer questions or help in any way regarding the PerformanceExchange . We have a ton of tools, technology and new ad campaign types/catagoriescatagories in the pipeline. We are building a deep email marketing channel for email marketers, newsletter publishers, listmanager and auto-responders. The MTPX is the next generation of real-time cpc bid exchanges and is built to empower our partners. SO please give us feed back, insights into the industry, mtpx etc regarding what works, doesnt work or can how it can be done better. We like to solve problems for our publishing partners.. ping me or any of the partnership team members 24/7 all the best and look forward to contributing to the forum Peter B
founded in 2004 we are have been in the affiliate marketing industry since 2004 and started as the Advaliant affiliate network. we evolved from a network to the MediaTrust performance marketing platform and spent the last year developing the platform into the PerformanceExchange... hope that helps you feel less leary
Peter can you please respond to the gauntlet thrown at you aka what Roundabout specifically had asked, so we can get those questions resolved and I can sign up perhaps this year? :flute:
info requested Sorry for the delay. i wanted to check with our product team first . The aspects you brought up will be evolving rapidly as we continue to deploy the new releases. You will be seeing the MTPX evolve rapidly and many new tools, functions, reports etc . Everyones feed back , insights and questions are very important to us. Please be patient as we are not perfect ( and never will be. We want to develop to solve problems and create a better exchange for our partners. So please keep the info coming. i cant guarantee everything will make it into the MTPX product development. Your insights will make a difference in the MTPX. 1. We launched testing traffic on feeds before moving publishing partners over to the MTPX. the short life span is due to the quality testing phase. we just did a new release that eliminates the testing phase life span. The MTPX cpc roi for partners is driven by quality metrics to protect & increase the value of the publishers sending quality traffic. many publishers have expressed frustration with other platforms in always having their high converting traffic lumped into others lower quality traffic. Or that they were told they either had "good" or "bad" traffic, and not given transparency to understand what that means. Or have tools to better understand their traffic so they can focus on sending more quality and increase their cpc roi. We have developed a system that focuses on "right pricing" . all traffic has a value. its not just good or bad. 2. The current interface has 2 types of campaigns. MTPX campaigns (new platform), and feed ads (old platform). this is about to change and you will see MTPX offers along with a new much more dynamic interface. your dashboard will evolve to include real-time conversion analytics, transparency tools. Hope thats helpful info and not to long winded
Thanks Peter, top notch response. I've found the intial batch of offers you guys had last month did really well compared to the latest which are more specialized and as such, get less clicks. The problem is the CPC is still $1-$1.50 for these offers, and you may want to consider ramping them up?
answers and more Glad i can be helpful... i think the first drops you did were on the feed offers which are very broad, and you can certainly mail more of those vs PerformanceExchange (MTPX) or both . The PerformanceExchange offers seem specialized because it just ramping and we are methodically building out new verticals and campaigns. As well also new campaign types and formats that no one has done before in an email cpc exchange. The MTPX cpc rates are moving up and move up based on quality volume. MTPX core focus is connecting quality clicks to conversions. the more quality volume the higher the bids move up. The MTPX is currently generating 7-13% conversion rates in edu, finance, insurance. which is very strong performance. You will see a minimum of 2 new campaigns a week go live vs. fill it up with mediocre feed based ads that go to sub standard landers. A KEY ATTRIBUTE TO YOUR QUESTION : The MTPX rates are very stable and consistent. you dont have $2.00 and then have it drop to $.20 and not be able to find out the "what" or "why". That's one of the number one complaints and problems we wanted to look at addressing for our email publisher AND advertiser partners. There is a significant amount of new technology that will be released to help solve problems and create tools to help mailers better understand how to increase roi using transparent reporting and conversion analytics.. I will ad a segment to the MediaTrust forum section to update everyone on releases as well as get your insights on how we can improve the MTPX. Lastly.. you can always ask your publisher partner team member any question and they will give you as much feed back and data as possible to help you optimize conversion roi. Our company culture is based on " when our partners succeed then we succeed" So we like to have as much proactive collaboration as possible. its the best way to be a better exchange and partner. cheers! and sorry for the long winded answer
This is my .02, now I can say that after this experience I haven't run any more traffic for them but I still have a lot of respect for Peter and his crew. With that said, here's what happened to me: I started runnig CPC traffic for them through Bardon Advisors (when they were still a seperate entity but had already been purchased by MT and the roll over was in progress) and BA was using the DT tracking platform. While I don't know too many people who like DT, it seemed to work fine for this model as my numbers and BA's reported numbers were always very close. They did not scrub as hard as we're all used to seeing ADK do so for me it was a no brainer and I ran a lot of offers for them. Then it happened. The rollover to the new MT platform and the wheels came off. Scrub rates went through the roof to the point of absolutely rediculous. I stopped running and moved traffic back to ADK, the lesser of two evils at this point. I talked with my rep and he assured me that everything was fine. I picked up an offer and saw the same results. I even picked up their offers through other networks to do a little side by side comparrison and it always came back horrible. I partially put this on MT's very open and public policy on affiliate click fraud. To this, it was my contention that this policy had been taken a little too seriously in the name of advertiser protection and it was hurting publisher relations. This was somewhat confirmed when I found out I wasn't the only one that saw this happen and who moved traffic because of it, I heard it from other networks who pulled offers because of this. While I can fully appreciate MT taking a stance on click/affiliate fraud to protect its advertisers, there is clearly a point where it has gone too far. Now with all of this said, and with the knowledge that a huge roll out like MTPX requires a lot of testing and evaluating and evolution this is something that with time will most certainly work itself out. Knowing Peter takes these things very seriously gives me encouragement that one of these days I can pick thiings back up with them as they'll be a solid CPC network. As I said, I respect Peter, MT and the whole crew. This is just my two cents in the spirit of talking openly and freely about any and all networks. After all, while a network might not be much without advertisers, they're nothing without publishers.
PushSend, you bring up a lot of great points. I share many of them with you, and have definitely run into these problems with other networks out there several times in the past. Its probably one of the biggest annoyances of mine in the affiliate marketing industry to have networks scrub me. Personally, I have never run campaigns through MediaTrust's CPA network, but I can definitely say this isn't a MediaTrust specific problem. However, I do plan on sending in a publisher application to MediaTrust to split test my email traffic amongst them and AdKnowledge's Adstation, which also has recently seen a drop in conversions for me.
If MT can get some more offers, I think all will be good. At least mailer offers. When I last checked, there were less than 10, Maybe that's changed (hopefully)... but you need a lot of offers, as any mailer will tell you, for CPC to work, so they can be rotated and not saturated too quickly to keep that ol' CPC up.
We haven't had too much success with them as far as mailing, but Evan is one of the best people in the biz as far as I'm concerned, from way back when he was with Emarketmakers, nothing but solid advice.
Specific Experience with MT My experience with and assessment of MT is nearly identical, though I only started once they migrated to their new system. It is my impression that MT does not fully appreciate the concerns of email publishers and perhaps does not even have anyone on staff who ever mailed. I have requested reports and explanations about their click fraud policies and based on the data and explanations they provided did not get a sense it is anything but random scrub. The most annoying thing however is incredible amount of hoops you have to jump through to run anything. Have to ask to "unlock" every offer. Heaven forbid you run too many clicks before they can make up their mind if they like your traffic (there is no excuse to not do that automatically). If you are a newly approved mailer you cannot run more than 2 offers (I first thought it was a joke). The best part offers regularly disappear without warning, as little as an email to publishers mailing it. With AdStation I know I can grab any creative anytime, it will be valid and I will be paid something for it. With MT you have to request it during business hours. I get it, MT thinks they are going to provide "super-premium" traffic to advertisers. Guess what, there is no way it is going to happen because they won't have any publishers interested in delivering it.
i, and we, at Mediatrust really appreciate everything that you have said and laid out. i really really like how this forum is very proactive in making constructive honest comments vs others where its completely the opposite. THANK YOU this is a much more productive way to communicate so we can get better at serving you. our email marketing partner community. Thats our job at MT. We are definitely far from perfect and its been a challenge in cutting over off Direct Track (which was eye opening based on the discrepancies we saw due to their tracking be fairly inaccurate. no new news there). Plus merging the MT affiliate marketing platform into the MTPX... We are in the final phases of completing the consolidation of all 3 platforms in to the single MTPX, and have installed some very interesting new features that will be driven by the next gen data architecture we installed. i think everyone will be very happy with the end result when you see the data visualization and conversion analytics we will be rolling out. tools and campaigns to power you all up with There are a lot of new tools, features and large offer pipeline coming and we are fine tuning all the technology to help generate high roi for publisher and advertising partners... we are expanding and just announced today the hiring of Trevor Thomas as our CRO , and Barbara Mayo whos joining Evan and Brian on the PUB Partnership team. Trevor has extensive experience in the industry and working with brand advertisers and publishers. you are going to see a tremendous amount of info, product releases and campaigns coming out over the next 3 months. Please keep the feed back coming (good and bad so we can continuously improve the PerformanceExchange to be a better tool for you to build your business. The more feed back the better and the faster we can evolve the MTPX ... all good things come in time ! thank you for your feed back and patience. i promise we will not disappoint you. please contact myself or anyone on the PUB partnership team to get any info.
MT update i, and we, at Mediatrust really appreciate everything that you have said and laid out. i really really like how this forum is very proactive in making constructive honest comments vs others where its completely the opposite. THANK YOU this is a much more productive way to communicate so we can get better at serving you. our email marketing partner community. Thats our job at MT. We are definitely far from perfect and its been a challenge in cutting over off Direct Track (which was eye opening based on the discrepancies we saw due to their tracking be fairly inaccurate. no new news there). Plus merging the MT affiliate marketing platform into the MTPX... We are in the final phases of completing the consolidation of all 3 platforms in to the single MTPX, and have installed some very interesting new features that will be driven by the next gen data architecture we installed. i think everyone will be very happy with the end result when you see the data visualization and conversion analytics we will be rolling out. tools and campaigns to power you all up with There are a lot of new tools, features and large offer pipeline coming and we are fine tuning all the technology to help generate high roi for publisher and advertising partners... we are expanding and just announced today the hiring of Trevor Thomas as our CRO , and Barbara Mayo whos joining Evan and Brian on the PUB Partnership team. Trevor has extensive experience in the industry and working with brand advertisers and publishers. you are going to see a tremendous amount of info, product releases and campaigns coming out over the next 3 months. Please keep the feed back coming (good and bad so we can continuously improve the PerformanceExchange to be a better tool for you to build your business. The more feed back the better and the faster we can evolve the MTPX ... all good things come in time ! thank you for your feed back and patience. i promise we will not disappoint you. please contact myself or anyone on the PUB partnership team to get any info.
offers are rolling out definitely will see many new offers and categories rolling out. they have been a bit slow to get out the door because we have been focusing on EDU, and theres a ton of new compliance in that channel. we have launched several new categories and have many many more in the pipeline... i will create and update post that i we can keep updated for all.
