Adsbalance

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a growth manager at a mostly cross-border e-commerce platform. Currently, we are changing things up by moving from cross-border to local merchants. The majority of our business happens via mobile devices. I handle all the external advertising partnerships. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Adsbalance?

We needed an agency to help us with social media marketing and hired Adsbalance for the task.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Adsbalance helps us with our marketing efforts on social media. We take care of Facebook and Google internally. Everything else is free to use including Snapchat, Twitter, and TikTok, but most partners use Instagram, which we count as a separate source. Adsbalance also uses a Russian social network called myTarget.

What is the team composition?

Their manager is our only point of contact.

How much have you invested in them?

We don’t usually invest in a collaboration like this because our model is very dynamic. If a partner works without fraud or anything suspicious in traffic patterns, we’re happy to work with them whether it is a win-win or not. We use a system in which we pay a share of the revenue generated, so we can pay $0.30 up to $3.00 and more, it just depends on the quality of the traffic. We just started working with Adsbalance and they’ve done quite a good job.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in June or July of 2017, and the collaboration is still ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

When it comes to quality, I can say that Adsbalance has somewhat of an unusual approach to problems. We have strict fraud rules and we don’t let anything suspicious come through our website. With Adsbalance, we worked with slightly different terms. When the traffic they sent us was a little doubtful, we just rejected the parts we didn’t need and were flagged as fraudulent by our external anti-fraud provider and paid for the ones that were clean.

We've worked with this model for a while where we just reject some of the installs. This has encouraged Adsbalance to actually test a lot and not be afraid of being switched off because of something like that. While it’s a little unusual, they insisted on it and we’ve been fine with this model of work because we just reject anything that we don't want to pay for.

Overall, it’s been easy working with Adsbalance thanks to the account manager they assigned to us. We have a similar point of view on different things. While their quality isn’t especially great, they’ve been collaborative in accepting the things we reject.

How did Adsbalance perform from a project management standpoint?

I don’t know much about project management because our way of working involves communicating with them once a month when we compare numbers on both sides. They issue the invoices and we pay them. However, I do enjoy working with our account manager, who I can only say good things about.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We have a lot of partners like Adsbalance—agencies that are running a service on our behalf. Adsbalance is one of the most well-known ones for us and there were good times for them back in 2018 when they were our strongest partner. Now, they’re smaller and are handling less work. They are good, but I cannot praise them a lot. We use them and we are fine with it.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Their quality has dropped quite a bit. They used to be a big company and I believe that traffic management can be improved. However, there may be some internal reasons like staff leaving the company that may have influenced their decline. We would be happier if they could handle a greater volume of work. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Playkot conceive, create and release successful mobile and social games: from a casual city-builder on social networks to a mid-core mobile fantasy RPG. These products are enjoyed by more than 70 million people. My role in the company is marketing manager.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Adsbalance?

Promote RPG mobie game Age of Magic developed by Playkot.

What were your goals for this project?

Drive paying users and players from different regions based on the rev-share business model.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

They reached out to us and offered us to try and show good performance in terms of volumes and user LTV.

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

They create a media buying strategy and follow the KPIs, producing brand-safe ad banners and videos, acquire traffic from Facebook Ads.

What was the team composition?

All the processes were managed by the business development manager assigned to us. Sometimes we make a call with the media buying team lead to sync our UA activities.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

They became the top agency in terms of volumes and LTV on Facebook after three months of collaboration.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Everything went smoothly, no PM tools or extra contacts needed.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They did a lot of different creatives and found fresh concepts.

Are there any areas for improvement?

Nothing crucial.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Mail.ru group, a leading Russian IT company in case of daily reach that offers digital products and services including games. Our sites and services reach approximately 93% of Russian Internet audience, and we have plenty of international products.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Adsbalance?

Promote various mobile apps developed my Mail.ru Group, i.e. games

What were your goals for this project?

Drive paying users and players from different regions optimizing the user acquisition costs

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

They reached out to us and offered us to try and show good performance in terms of user LTV

Describe the scope of their work in detail.

Create a media buying strategy and follow the KPIs, producing as many brand safe ad banners as possible using the approved sources

What was the team composition?

All the processes were managed by the business development manager assigned to us. He was the sole contact point for all operations and approvals.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

They managed to do great volumes without compromising the traffic quality

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Everything went smoothly — no PM tools or extra contacts needed.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The workflow was nice, they were always open to suggestions and new offers, as well as eager to try new approaches in order to boost our revenue.

Are there any areas for improvement?

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