Page 1 of 2

Have you tried KickTraq ads?

Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2014 5:21 pm
by sbriggman
I'd like to see if anyone has tried the KickTraq advertiser pilot. Did you find it to help/not help?

See: http://www.kicktraq.com/adbeta/

So far today: 79585 visits
Yesterday: 152063 visits
Saturday: 143414 visits


They are getting good traffic. Does it convert?

Re: Have you tried KickTraq ads?

Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2014 7:21 pm
by AkaNezumi
I'm very happy you asked this question.

I'm going to give my honest opinion as well as the results of clicks vrs conversions I've had with Kicktraq.

http://www.kicktraq.com/r/vy+

This is the status of my Kicktraq Ad.

As of right now I've gotten 379 Clicks. That may seem great and wonderful however out of all those clicks only five became backers.

http://puu.sh/aG1HQ/4caa2b0be2.png

This resulted in 91$

I spent 140$ for the ad for two weeks.

In my opinion it was not worth it. Some may see it as worth it but I do not. I feel as if the site gets a lot of traffic but majority of that traffic isn't interested in what you are offering therefore it's pointless to waste money on advertising there. I could be wrong but that's just my personal experience. The site is wonderful for tracking your progress and studying other projects but I'm going to have to say I would not advertise with them again when I launch my next campaign.

Now if I suddenly receive another 5 clicks from kicktraq and they total me over 140$ then I will withdraw my opinion.

Oh and I advertised on Top Web Comics for eight days. Spent 61$ and ended up with 7 backers that netted me 335.00$ in just 8 days. Top Web Comics was cheaper and had a WAY better result. I think it's important to advertise where your campaign is most likely to get support. If it's a comic, advertise on comic sites. If it's a manga style comic, advertise on manga/anime sites. If it's about girl power advertise on sites that speak of female empowerment. Advertising on Kicktraq is like advertising to EVERYONE in the whole world thus the audience is in no way targeted...

Okay I'll stop rambling now. I hope my input helped!

Re: Have you tried KickTraq ads?

Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2014 1:39 am
by SoDaptor
Good points on spending your money advertising where you're likely to see a better conversion, even if it's a smaller platform.

Are there any alternatives that kicktraq that people have had success with?

Re: Have you tried KickTraq ads?

Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2014 1:54 am
by AkaNezumi
SoDaptor wrote:Good points on spending your money advertising where you're likely to see a better conversion, even if it's a smaller platform.

Are there any alternatives that kicktraq that people have had success with?



Thanks. I really thinks that the best bet. Don't just advertise on a site because it receives a lot of views. I think this would go for site like KickSpy as well. It's easy to think these places will help/save your campaign but they don't do much of anything and in the end you won't break even.

Re: Have you tried KickTraq ads?

Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2014 3:42 am
by KodiBag
Thanks for sharing your stats @AkaNezumi! Yeah, I have not heard really any good feedback from Kickstarter promo-like pages. Not sure what else to call them... but I would think you are only reaching a bigger Kickstarter audience (people already on Kickstarter) which is definitely good.... but maybe not big enough. Although, 5 backers for me would make it worth it...

Re: Have you tried KickTraq ads?

Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2014 3:16 am
by Kicktraq
AkaNezumi wrote: It's easy to think these places will help/save your campaign but they don't do much of anything and in the end you won't break even.


Never... ever... buy advertising to "save" your campaign. If you're doing this, you're already in trouble. Think about cancelling your project and look at a relaunch in lieu of throwing money at a sinking ship OR just calm down and ride it out. Things may not be as bad as you imagine.

There are lots of issues with crowdfunding advertising that aren't easily solved given the tools provided by the platforms themselves. I covered some of the issues with referral vs domain tracking when chatting with Jamie Stegmaier on his blog. Unfortunately the referral tracking isn't the best on Kickstarter for a variety of reasons.

Here's an excerpt:
I’d like to take this moment to point out the absurd disparity in “direct traffic” vs all other sources. I’ve always argued this number is inflated for a variety of reasons (which are difficult to test for), but to have it be so disproportionate on a campaign where I know Jamie is really pushing his existing fan base highlights this even more.

I only wish KS had a true referral tracking system. It’d help project owners know where their traffic is actually coming from and which sources are truly the most effective.

...

As far as I’m aware, IGG’s system is better simply because it’s persistent.

On KS, if a backer comes in through Kicktraq or BGG or whatever, then changes their pledge later, they get put in the direct bucket and pulled out of the Kicktraq bucket (at least last time I tested it).

The same goes for favorites. If a person comes in through Kicktraq, clicks the favorite button, then comes back later, it gets counted as a favorites reminder.

I don’t think it’s difficult programatically to persist the referral during the pledge, I just don’t think KS has a reason to do this. Tracking separate referral codes would be a little more difficult, but I think it’d be a robust tool in the hands of the project owner. Think if you could meter all of your marketing outlets separately and even A/B test on the same site. You could run 3 different ads on a site to see which ones convert the best. Currently you can’t do that on KS or even on IGG as IGG referral codes are user-based.


Here's a link to the full article/comments: http://stonemaiergames.com/statistics-f ... r-project/

Lastly, here's an excerpt from an interview I recently gave covering ads on KT that may help clarify and help you determine if ads are right for you. I will always always always encourage people to find niche sites to promote their projects. You will have infinitely higher performance on a remote control car forum if your product is a revolutionary new remote control car controller than you ever will on any generic advertising platform **with one caveat**, your project has to actually be engaging. No amount of advertising will ever help a boring project.

Here's the excerpt:
Does advertising on your platform make projects more successful? Why should a project owner advertise on Kicktraq?

This is a common question we get, and I'll give you a surprising answer. Projects are only as successful as the appeal they have to backers. No advertising platform, be it Google, Facebook, Kicktraq, or whatever will ever MAKE a project fund. All they can do is provide additional channels to inform people of your project. We like to call these "eyeballs" for short. All any advertiser can do is provide eyeballs - so if you have an extremely limited budget, invest in things like video production or a little graphic design, or even just more of your time researching to help create an immediately engaging page and video. Getting eyeballs on your project without an engaging page or video is like bringing diners to a restaurant without any food to serve.

Project owners should only use advertising as a supplemental tool in addition to those initial efforts, not as a crutch or something that you think will save your project when things start going south. If things start going south, you should figure out why people aren't engaging, not throwing money around to get more people to look at an un-engaging project.

That being said, four things are unique to advertising with Kicktraq vs. other advertising channels. First, we provide a very specific set of eyeballs for projects, and a lot of them. We have tens of thousands of people who use Kicktraq every day, and we share how many people use the site every day on our advertiser page so project owners can see how many people potentially will see their ad. Also, people who are using Kicktraq are already comfortable with crowdfunding and engaged in the community in some way, so the advertising is hyper-specific to folks who you don't have to sell on the idea of backing a project. Those potential backers are already researching, and are probably excited about another project. That's why they are on Kicktraq in the first place.

Second, compared to generic advertising platforms, we recognize that a project may need to change during or after their campaign in order to fund. Failing or restarting a project isn't a bad thing. It's an educational means that many projects have used to be successful, and we don't want project owners to be worried about losing their advertising investment if they fail initially or choose to cancel and re-launch. The project owner community supports us and we want to support them, so we have a re-launch guarantee where if a project advertiser isn't successful or needs to cancel, we will re-run their ad when they re-launch, completely free. We don't just give them the time they had remaining, we re-run their entire advertising slot for free. It's one less thing for project owners to worry about, so they can focus on learning from their campaign and ultimately being successful. Facebook and Google aren't going to do that for you.

Third, we only advertise active crowdfunding campaigns so our advertisers never have to compete with weird, non-related ads. We value and respect the folks who use our tools, so project owners never have to compete with outlandish animated "click the monkey" viagra ads and potential backers know they don't have to suffer through those types of ads, so they stay more engaged with the sponsorships they do see on our platform.

Lastly, we recognize that the majority of the project owners aren't looking for hundreds of thousands of dollars, let alone millions in funding. Most project owners have small budgets, especially before their project has even secured funding. For that reason, even though we could charge quite a bit more for our ad space, our general rotation ads average out to $10/day for the 14-day rotation. While those prices may vary over time, our price point is set with the little guys in mind because we really, really want the lady who is building a sustainable farm cheese cave 1,000 miles from us to succeed just as much as we want to see a book in the hands of every child.


source: Part 1 | Part 2

Re: Have you tried KickTraq ads?

Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2014 3:57 am
by AkaNezumi
Kicktraq wrote:
AkaNezumi wrote: It's easy to think these places will help/save your campaign but they don't do much of anything and in the end you won't break even.


Never... ever... buy advertising to "save" your campaign. If you're doing this, you're already in trouble. Think about cancelling your project and look at a relaunch in lieu of throwing money at a sinking ship OR just calm down and ride it out. Things may not be as bad as you imagine.

There are lots of issues with crowdfunding advertising that aren't easily solved given the tools provided by the platforms themselves. I covered some of the issues with referral vs domain tracking when chatting with Jamie Stegmaier on his blog. Unfortunately the referral tracking isn't the best on Kickstarter for a variety of reasons.

Here's an excerpt:
I’d like to take this moment to point out the absurd disparity in “direct traffic” vs all other sources. I’ve always argued this number is inflated for a variety of reasons (which are difficult to test for), but to have it be so disproportionate on a campaign where I know Jamie is really pushing his existing fan base highlights this even more.

I only wish KS had a true referral tracking system. It’d help project owners know where their traffic is actually coming from and which sources are truly the most effective.

...

As far as I’m aware, IGG’s system is better simply because it’s persistent.

On KS, if a backer comes in through Kicktraq or BGG or whatever, then changes their pledge later, they get put in the direct bucket and pulled out of the Kicktraq bucket (at least last time I tested it).

The same goes for favorites. If a person comes in through Kicktraq, clicks the favorite button, then comes back later, it gets counted as a favorites reminder.

I don’t think it’s difficult programatically to persist the referral during the pledge, I just don’t think KS has a reason to do this. Tracking separate referral codes would be a little more difficult, but I think it’d be a robust tool in the hands of the project owner. Think if you could meter all of your marketing outlets separately and even A/B test on the same site. You could run 3 different ads on a site to see which ones convert the best. Currently you can’t do that on KS or even on IGG as IGG referral codes are user-based.


Here's a link to the full article/comments: http://stonemaiergames.com/statistics-f ... r-project/

Lastly, here's an excerpt from an interview I recently gave covering ads on KT that may help clarify and help you determine if ads are right for you. I will always always always encourage people to find niche sites to promote their projects. You will have infinitely higher performance on a remote control car forum if your product is a revolutionary new remote control car controller than you ever will on any generic advertising platform **with one caveat**, your project has to actually be engaging. No amount of advertising will ever help a boring project.

Here's the excerpt:
Does advertising on your platform make projects more successful? Why should a project owner advertise on Kicktraq?

This is a common question we get, and I'll give you a surprising answer. Projects are only as successful as the appeal they have to backers. No advertising platform, be it Google, Facebook, Kicktraq, or whatever will ever MAKE a project fund. All they can do is provide additional channels to inform people of your project. We like to call these "eyeballs" for short. All any advertiser can do is provide eyeballs - so if you have an extremely limited budget, invest in things like video production or a little graphic design, or even just more of your time researching to help create an immediately engaging page and video. Getting eyeballs on your project without an engaging page or video is like bringing diners to a restaurant without any food to serve.

Project owners should only use advertising as a supplemental tool in addition to those initial efforts, not as a crutch or something that you think will save your project when things start going south. If things start going south, you should figure out why people aren't engaging, not throwing money around to get more people to look at an un-engaging project.

That being said, four things are unique to advertising with Kicktraq vs. other advertising channels. First, we provide a very specific set of eyeballs for projects, and a lot of them. We have tens of thousands of people who use Kicktraq every day, and we share how many people use the site every day on our advertiser page so project owners can see how many people potentially will see their ad. Also, people who are using Kicktraq are already comfortable with crowdfunding and engaged in the community in some way, so the advertising is hyper-specific to folks who you don't have to sell on the idea of backing a project. Those potential backers are already researching, and are probably excited about another project. That's why they are on Kicktraq in the first place.

Second, compared to generic advertising platforms, we recognize that a project may need to change during or after their campaign in order to fund. Failing or restarting a project isn't a bad thing. It's an educational means that many projects have used to be successful, and we don't want project owners to be worried about losing their advertising investment if they fail initially or choose to cancel and re-launch. The project owner community supports us and we want to support them, so we have a re-launch guarantee where if a project advertiser isn't successful or needs to cancel, we will re-run their ad when they re-launch, completely free. We don't just give them the time they had remaining, we re-run their entire advertising slot for free. It's one less thing for project owners to worry about, so they can focus on learning from their campaign and ultimately being successful. Facebook and Google aren't going to do that for you.

Third, we only advertise active crowdfunding campaigns so our advertisers never have to compete with weird, non-related ads. We value and respect the folks who use our tools, so project owners never have to compete with outlandish animated "click the monkey" viagra ads and potential backers know they don't have to suffer through those types of ads, so they stay more engaged with the sponsorships they do see on our platform.

Lastly, we recognize that the majority of the project owners aren't looking for hundreds of thousands of dollars, let alone millions in funding. Most project owners have small budgets, especially before their project has even secured funding. For that reason, even though we could charge quite a bit more for our ad space, our general rotation ads average out to $10/day for the 14-day rotation. While those prices may vary over time, our price point is set with the little guys in mind because we really, really want the lady who is building a sustainable farm cheese cave 1,000 miles from us to succeed just as much as we want to see a book in the hands of every child.


source: Part 1 | Part 2


Wow...

I find it amazingly shocking, that you actually somehow found this post about your advertisement services and then made a account to comment! I'm not really too sure what to say, but it's clear you care about the reputation of your website. :)

I was merely answering the question that was asked.

Have you used Kicktraq ads?

Since I have used Kicktraq ads I gave my result and my opinion based on my results. When I said don't buy ads to save your campaign that was my own tip to others. Regardless I still stand by my opinion of Kicktraq.

As a whole the site has not gather much of any results and it is best to advertise on a site that carters to your campaigns topic not on a site that carters to the 'world'.

Re: Have you tried KickTraq ads?

Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2014 5:04 am
by Kicktraq
AkaNezumi wrote:I was merely answering the question that was asked. Have you used Kicktraq ads?


Oh absolutely, you're fine. Maybe my tone didn't come across well. I wasn't specifically targeting your response in regard to your advertising with us (I'm sorry that didn't work out as well as you'd hoped), more that I think people are sometimes surprised when my go-to advice is to not advertise with us if they are trying to "save their project" (or really any generic advertiser).

You absolutely did the right thing sourcing that niche marketing outlet. I always advise taking the time find a niche place to target potential backers. The only thing that sets us apart after that are the eyeballs we provide are already backers, so it's (generally) an easier conversion, and we provide a sponsorship guarantee so the advertising is risk-free if you have any concerns with re-launching.

AkaNezumi wrote:Since I have used Kicktraq ads I gave my result and my opinion based on my results. When I said don't buy ads to save your campaign that was my own tip to others. Regardless I still stand by my opinion of Kicktraq.


And you should! Who am I to say anything about your experience? Comics, unfortunately, are one of those types of projects that target a very specific audience, so sometimes they work in a generic setting and sometimes they don't. We've had them go both ways. Unfortunately, your experience wasn't so good. No reason you shouldn't share that with people.

AkaNezumi wrote:As a whole the site has not gather much of any results and it is best to advertise on a site that carters to your campaigns topic not on a site that carters to the 'world'.


This. It's exactly what I was saying above. If you (a) have limited budget and (b) are a super niche product, generic advertising probably isn't your best bet. Project owners should always take the time to do a little legwork and find those niche locations -- they'll pay off in spades. You did exactly that, nice work!

Re: Have you tried KickTraq ads?

Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2014 5:55 pm
by piggy
Thanks all for sharing, after reading this I got good ideas about where to promote my project.

Re: Have you tried KickTraq ads?

Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2014 10:47 pm
by coolinvent
Have used KickTraq on a couple of our KS projects and I like the tracking information that you get from them that you really don't get from KS. Haven't tried the ads for all the reasons above. Also, it provides a good source for bloggers in your niche etc. Good posts though.