Progressive Optimisation

When looking at conversion rate statistics for a new traffic source it is important to use progressive optimisation to block non-converting sources as early and efficiently as possible.

The first step is to work out what conversion rate is required and then put a progressive funnel in place to build up to it. So if a zone only has 5000 impressions it’s hard to tell if it’ll be good or not, if it has 50,000 then you have a much clearer picture.

Here is some example progressive optimisation code that can be used in an automation environment.

if (impressions > 50000) {
  if (cvr < 0.028) { badZones.push(zone); }
} else if (impressions > 40000) {
  if (cvr < 0.025) { badZones.push(zone); }
} else if (impressions > 30000) {
  if (cvr < 0.02) { badZones.push(zone); }
} else if (impressions > 20000) {
  if (cvr < 0.015) { badZones.push(zone); }
} else if (impressions > 10000) {
  if (cvr < 0.01) { badZones.push(zone); }
} else if (impressions > 5000) {
  if (cvr < 0.005) { badZones.push(zone); }
}

The variable cvr is the conversion rate.

This is written in javascript and builds an array of badZones to block. You could do this manually, the main idea is to build up to a specific conversion rate but still block out the sites that have bot traffic etc early.

This will save money and wasted impressions while testing and shouldn’t give too many false negatives on your zone black lists.