Interview with Ad Networks: Meet Ksen Rock from Galaksion

Besides, we are talking a lot about the mVAS market and we are interested in hearing advertising networks’ opinion: what they think about this industry, what share it occupies in their traffic, what restrictions novice webmasters may face when promoting mVAS offers.

Ksen Rock

In this interview, we sit down with the visionary CMO of Galaksion, a leading ad network, as she shares her insights on the latest trends and strategies in digital advertising.

CMO at Galaksion

• 5+years experience
• Digital marketing guru
• Increases brand awareness

• Hi, thank you for agreeing to the interview.
  Tell us a little about yourself, about the company, when it was started, how many people are there in your team, some key milestones and achievements, etc.
• Hello everyone, my name is Ksenia, I am the marketing director (CMO) in the Galaksion network. I ended up in affiliate marketing 4 years ago, like, I think, many of my colleagues, quite by accident. And now I can’t imagine myself in another field. At the time I started working, I was the only marketer in the company, and now we already have a cool team of professionals of 5 people.

  Our area of responsibility is PR and marketing. We increase company awareness and customer loyalty. Our main task is to tell the target audience in different ways what kind of product Galaksion makes and why they need this product. We are working to be heard about in social networks, forums, conferences, etc.

  Galaksion company itself appeared more than 7 years ago. At that time, there were several options for how to develop in the market. It was possible to buy traffic from other advertising networks and sell it further, adding resell and so on. This way we would be able to grow very quickly in terms of volumes and advertiser spendings, but the quality of such traffic and its potential of conversions to leads really bothered us. Therefore, we have chosen a different strategy: we sell traffic ONLY from our trusted website owners. We have never regretted it yet.

  One of the company’s main achievements by now is, perhaps, a full-value CPA pricing model on our Self-Service platform. We are practically the only ones in the affiliate market so confident about our traffic quality that we are ready to offer payment not for impressions or clicks, but only for conversions. In my opinion, it is extremely profitable. Bought for conversions — sold for conversions. Net profit.

• What type of traffic do you offer and which one do you think is the most popular? What geos are currently in your network?
• If we look at the volumes, high-quality push and pop traffic is still on top. Yes, push is still pretty alive, no matter what people say. Now this format just has to be well adapted to certain verticals and geos. Recently, in another interview, we mentioned that with push and pops on e-commerce verticals, you can safely gain 250% ROI.

  Most of our traffic today is Asian: ID, IN, SG, TH, MY, VN, etc. These geos are quite new for our market, so in social networks we tell in detail how to drive traffic to Asia profitably, so it’s really worth a try. Moreover, our managers literally lead everyone by the hand to first conversions.

  And the profit, where is it from? Asian countries are rapidly developing territories with a growing economy, purchasing power, low delivery costs (if we are talking about e-commerce) and, most importantly, low rates. It is now golden days for Asian traffic — something we all enjoyed with Tier 1 a few years ago. The same applies to Arabic geos (AE, SA, KW, EG, PK), and Latam (BR, MX, AR), CIS (RU, UA, KZ), ZA + NG. And no one cancels Tier1 either.

• Tell us, if it’s not a secret, which verticals are the most popular in your network and for which of them do you think your traffic is most suitable?
• In general, on the top geos I just told you about, almost any mainstream offers bring conversions. But still among the most profitable I can name e-commerce, especially during sales. Sales are not only about 11.11, as many people think. They take place almost every month in fact, and there is always good potential in launching campaigns.

  What else? Various utilities, VPNs, antiviruses, mobile subscriptions, extensions, apps, sweepstakes, dating, gambling, music, movies and even finance go great as well. Also, when choosing a vertical, we advise affiliates to watch the information field: sports events, film premieres, etc.

• What is the share of mVAS offers among advertisers now? Maybe you can share some figures and volumes?
• Now it is 7% of the total traffic in all formats. And this is quite a large figure, taking into account the total number of offers and verticals. At the same time, of course, there is potential for growth and we plan to further increase the volume of such offers. There can never be too much demand.

• If we talk about the traffic that is in the greatest demand for mac offers, then which formats are these mainly and which geo?
• The most popular formats now are Popunder, Mobile Push-Up and Push-Notification. As for geos, the top ones by volume are ZA, FR,ID, EG, UAE, TH, MY, RU, IQ, SA.

• Are there any restrictions when working with mVAS offers?
• Restrictions come mainly from Russian mobile operators. For example, Megafon prohibits any non-teaser formats, and we cannot use popunder. Operators also sometimes complain about creatives and prelanding pages that can allegedly mislead the user. Our advertisers and we have to reduce the ads aggressiveness, and hence campaigns effectiveness.

• Since our interview will be read by many novice affiliates, maybe you could tell us the right way to start working in your network? How can beginners avoid the most common mistakes?
• Our platform is very convenient and easy to use, so even a beginner will be able to figure it out without any problems. Also, unlike giants like FB, we are interested in the successful result of each partner, so we never cheap out on advice:

  1. Try more different geos, group them by similar rates.

  2. Test the frequency settings. Most often, the purchase is made after 2-3 impressions, so this really affects conversions

  3. Try the maximum number of creatives and combinations. On our platform you can create one campaign and test up to 10 different creatives in it

  4. Visit our creatives base. Everything there is tested by geos, formats and verticals. And it’s free.

  5. And the most one-size-fits-all advice: more traffic means more conversions. Works every time!

  And if these tips are not enough, we have wonderful managers who will explain everything quickly, and your campaign will start converting just like you want it to.

• One of the most popular formats for working with mVAS has always been Push and Pop traffic. Maybe there are some recommendations when launching campaigns with this type of traffic?
• Everything is always much easier with pops than with any creative format. And for Push, we recommend using short texts in the audience’s native language and simple schematic icons.

• What advice would you give to an affiliate who has just registered in your network and wants to launch mVAS offers? Where to start and how to act so as not to throw the budget away?
• When you are hunting for operator traffic, it is very difficult to waste the budget, since there is not much traffic itself. To avoid suffering for a long time, it is better to request top geos, recommended bids and effective creatives from your manager right away. We provide all this.

  After the first good launch, one should perform standard optimization by sources and providers, divide campaigns by targets and adjust bids. We also help with this.

• As you probably know, advertisers with mVAS offers put high demands on the quality of traffic. How do you control the quality of traffic provided by publishers to your network? How not to get adult stuff on MENA offers with mainstream traffic and not to face bot traffic?
• It is a well-established process. Before we start cooperating with a website owner, we check the website content and statistics very carefully. We do not work with adult sites and do not let such offers be displayed.

  We try to make sure that the policy of trust and mutual respect worked both for both publishers and advertisers. At the same time, our managers inspect each site manually. At the slightest suspicion of bot traffic, the zone is immediately banned.

  If the offer does not show itself very well in a particular zone, this is a different situation. It means the product is just not interesting for a specific audience. In this case, we recommend using blacklists.

• In 2022, which advertising formats do you think will grow in popularity, and which, on the contrary, will become a thing of the past?
• Popunder will definitely be among the leaders in terms of volume and profit. Push-up and Interstitial will be right behind them. Push and On-Page Notification should not be discounted either: with proper adaptation of approaches to a specific offer, the payback for these formats will remain at a good level even in 2022.

• In your opinion, will the mVAS vertical grow with your traffic next year? Perhaps you will be able to offer special solutions for it next year?
• No doubt it will grow because we are doing everything for this. Just the other day, the Interstitial format was added to the platform — you can already test it! There are also a lot of releases planned for next year, watch us.

• At the end of our interview, can we also make a top-up bonus for our blog readers?
• Of course! Dear readers, enter the promo code GGAGENCY20 to register on our platform. We will add 20% to the first top-up for everyone.

• Thank you for your time, it was nice talking to you!
• Same for me! Thank you very much for the interview. See you at AWA in Dubai!