In the world of push notification advertising, success hinges on understanding the nuances of campaign optimization, creative testing, and data-driven decision-making.
In the second part of our interview, Pierre Bertin, the seasoned affiliate marketing expert from RollerAds, continues to share his insights on maximizing campaign performance.
Building on our previous conversation, this second part focuses on the tactical aspects that separate successful affiliates from those struggling to achieve profitability. From the critical importance of split-testing creatives to the emerging role of AI in campaign management, Pierre reveals the strategies that drive consistent results in today’s competitive landscape.
Whether you’re a seasoned affiliate marketer looking to refine your approach or a newcomer seeking proven methodologies, this interview offers practical advice regarding push notification advertising optimization that can transform your campaign performance.
Don’t overlook it. Here is the first part of our interview.
See the whole episode on our Spotify channel.
Q: Let’s talk about creatives. How vital is split testing for creatives in push notification advertising?
Pierre Bertin: Super important [Split testing]. That’s why we recommend affiliates upload up to 10 creatives per campaign so they can rotate and see which one performs better.
You may have inspiration one day and create something you think might be really good, but it turns out it’s not performing well.
You should upload 7 to 10 creatives per campaign, have them rotate, and review the data to determine what works and what doesn’t. Exclude the ones that don’t work.
When something is working, try to replicate it, tweak it a little bit in the creative itself, maybe change the color or whatever, but keep the same thing, upload, and test again.
With CPV Lab ad tracking software you can easily split test landing pages, offers, sources and even do multivariate testing for your landing page, with MV Lab.
Q: Are AI-created creatives better than manually created ones?
Pierre Bertin: I don’t really know if AI created creatives are better, to be honest.
I know some of our publishers are using AI to create new content, and it seems to be performing really well, especially with Google.
So I don’t see why it wouldn’t work for push notifications as well.
AI is acceptable as long as it remains within our company’s policy. I think it’s good, any little bit helps.
Q: What are the most important metrics affiliates should follow when optimizing push notification advertising?
Pierre Bertin:
Obviously, the first one is the number of conversions: how many conversions you got.
Then you should analyze the metrics in the following order: registrations and click-through rate (CTR). These are the main metrics you have to look at.
Look at the entire funnel of your campaign. You create a campaign, you use your creatives, and people see them.
- First, check if people are getting your ads. If they’re not getting your ads, maybe it’s because the bid is too low or the targeting is too narrow, your audience is too small.
- That’s something you need to look at the day after you create the campaign.
- Then look at the CTR: are people actually clicking if they receive it?
- Anything below 1%, there’s definitely improvement that needs to be done.
- Then look at how many registrations and conversions you got.
Q: Do your advertisers usually use a pre-lander or go directly to the offer?
Pierre Bertin: That depends on the offer. Some offers perform better with a pre-lander, especially antiviruses and casinos.
But if you have direct offers, especially extensions, e-commerce on mobile, and you have a CPI offer, it’s okay to bring them directly to the Google Play Store or iOS, depending on the app in question.
I would advise all affiliates to contact us or get in touch with their account manager or customer support, so we can answer these questions. If you tell us you have this offer and ask whether it would work with a pre-lander or directly, we’ll be able to help you out.
Q: How important is it for campaign optimization for affiliates to send conversion data back to the ad network? Like for RollerAds to get information about conversions, how important is that, and what does that mean for them?
Pierre Bertin: For us and all ad networks, it’s crucial [to get information about conversions] because that’s how we can help an advertiser or affiliate optimize their campaign.
If the person running the campaign doesn’t set up tracking, we are blind and cannot help you.
Some people don’t necessarily have a CRM or tracking system in place, they just do it on their own, and it works for them. The only way we could help them is if they provide us with reports on a regular basis—daily or weekly, so we can still identify which zones are performing better than others and which need to be excluded.
But without tracking in place, RollerAds is blind and cannot assist the affiliate in optimizing their campaign. That’s why we always insist and push for them to set up the postback before starting a campaign, so we can actually help them out.
Q: What happens if affiliates don’t send conversion data back to the ad network?
Pierre Bertin: Not setting up tracking is like buying traffic that you don’t know is going to perform or not. So if you have a huge budget and you don’t really care, no problem. Just spend money. And don’t get me wrong, we still have some companies that are like this. There are loads of them at Google; it’s incredible.
This usually happens with big companies with big budgets, and they’re just not that interested in performance, just spending.
But for us, for the affiliate world industry, it doesn’t work that way.
For every 1 dollar that we spend, we want $2 back so that we can live. It’s performance-based, really.
So tracking is really important. It helps the affiliate know what he’s buying and, therefore, makes sure that he’s buying traffic that actually converts for his offer. Simple as that.
Q: What’s your perspective on trends coming up for ad formats? What trends do you see in the space of traffic?
Pierre Bertin: Well, in the push notification industry, there is an ongoing concern that is currently growing around push notifications.
Is push notification going to be there forever? Are they going to die? And the short answer is, yes, absolutely it’s going to be there. It’s never going to die. It’s a technology that is developed by Google and by other browsers. It’s a browser-based technology.
We don’t have the technology. We don’t create push notifications. We monetize push notifications. We just add onto the framework, onto the push itself, the text and the picture. That’s all we do.
It’s there and it’s there to stay. All the Gmail, all the LinkedIn, all the apps, they have push notifications. So that will never die. It will always be there, and it will always perform.
Now it’s getting a bit more difficult to actually grab the audience because Google constantly changes the rules. They always try to make it complicated for people to subscribe or unsubscribe. So we have to adapt. There are ups and downs in terms of audience, the size of the audience goes up and down. But ultimately, it’s still there and it’s still working and it’s still growing. So there is no problem with that.
When it comes to other ad formats, I think for any ad network, it’s important to diversify, and the same for affiliates and media buyers, it’s important to diversify traffic sources. For them, they can buy from RollerAds, and they can buy from Google, Pinterest, and Facebook.
For us, I think it’s essential to offer various ad formats to affiliates, allowing them to test different ad formats for their offers and determine what works best. At the moment, it’s only push, pop, and direct click.
Native is coming very soon, and I’m really curious to see how it performs against push notifications. That’s something that will be really interesting to see.
Q: That sounds like an interesting test. You said you have a media buying team. Are they testing these kinds of differences, or how do they work?
Pierre Bertin: I don’t really have feedback from them, unfortunately. I know that for some offers, we’ve recently tried Snapchat. But it’s very recent. And for now, the performance is not perfect. It’s native, and the performance for the antivirus offer that we tested did not perform as well as we expected.
But it’s still in the testing phase, we still have to try again with different creatives and basically find the right tune to make it work. But there is definitely potential. We will see in the near future how we can make it work.
My media buying team is excited about testing various ad formats for offers. Facebook native formats or display formats are performing really well for some of our offers.
However, we have been using those formats for the past few years, as they were among the first traffic sources our team utilized. So they know now how to make it work. We will likely need some time to test various traffic sources and ad formats in order to develop effective suggestions and recommendations.
Q: Do you have any insight on whether there will be a minimum budget to try the native traffic on your side? I don’t think I asked if for push traffic there’s a minimum budget the advertiser needs.
Pierre Bertin: No, there is no minimum except the amount required by the payment provider, the payment processor. If it’s by card, for instance, it’s Stripe, and they require a minimum amount of $50 to process the payment. So that’s the minimum you have to put on the platform. But after that, there is really no minimum.
Q: Do you think it would be like that for native as well?
Pierre Bertin: We’re going to start the same way with native, of course. We work on prepayments. So it’s going to be more or less the same at the beginning. However, as we grow and this format evolves, we’ll likely revise the recommendation and develop a more effective and robust package for affiliates and advertisers.
Q: If you have one piece of advice for affiliates starting now in affiliate marketing, what would your top advice for affiliates be?
Pierre Bertin: Come and talk to me! :))
One piece of advice: I would say probably select an offer that is close to you, that means something to you. Don’t necessarily go for something that someone else is telling you generates a lot of money for them. Take something that you would be comfortable with so that you can be passionate about it, you can give it your very best, and you can test it the right way. If you’re not into gambling, for example, don’t necessarily start with gambling because people have told you, “Oh, you can make a lot of money with gambling.”
That probably would be my best advice. Find an offer that actually resonates with you.
Q: Do you think there is a problem in the affiliate marketing industry that you would like to solve?
Pierre Bertin: Yeah, absolutely. We are a performance industry, everything that we do is based on performance.
So I always want to increase the number of conversions and the volume of conversions for my clients. One way is to understand the audience they are targeting thoroughly. Now, some data is available, but with GDPR and a few other technical issues, it’s not as easy to gather an entire database for our audience and understand their true interests and preferences, as the timing factor is also crucial.
When you buy a house, you may want to buy it now, not yesterday or not in 10 years time. So if you’re looking for a house, you need to be targeted with house offers right away. And that’s data. We need to be able to find a way to actually gather that data. That’s something that we are currently doing at RollerAds. We have our own surveys. We’re sending out questionnaires for people to complete forms. We’ve tried to track them as well within the GDPR framework, obviously.
We are actively working to develop a detailed persona for our audience, which will help us understand how these individuals will engage with this type of offer and align it with affiliate offers. That’s something that we’re trying to change and work on. But it’s a long process.
Q: So you have already taken measures in that area. Are you using AI?
Pierre Bertin: We do a little now, but it will be bigger later.
We start with creatives right now—rotating creatives, identifying which ones are performing, and so on. That’s what our AI is currently doing.
Q: Where can people get in touch with you, because I’m sure people would want to talk with you or ask questions about RollerAds?
Pierre Bertin: Sure, they can find me on Telegram at Pierre Bertin or they can find me on LinkedIn as well. It’s pretty simple. So they can get in touch with me as soon as they want.
Ready to optimize your push notification advertising campaigns? Connect with Pierre Bertin on Telegram or LinkedIn to discuss your specific challenges and opportunities.
- Telegram: Pierre Bertin
- LinkedIn: Pierre Bertin
Conclusion
Pierre Bertin’s insights reveal that success in push notification advertising isn’t just about launching campaigns—it’s about building a systematic approach to optimization, testing, and data analysis. His emphasis on uploading 7–10 creatives per campaign, maintaining a CTR above 1%, and implementing proper conversion tracking underscores the performance-driven nature of affiliate marketing.
The future of push notifications remains bright, despite ongoing challenges with audience acquisition and changes in platform policies. As Pierre notes, push notification technology is browser-based and here to stay, supported by major platforms and integrated into our daily digital experiences.
Key takeaways from this conversation include
- Creative diversity is crucial: Test multiple creatives simultaneously to identify winning combinations
- Conversion tracking is non-negotiable: Without proper tracking, optimization becomes impossible
- Choose offers that resonate. Success comes more easily when you’re passionate about what you’re promoting
- Diversification matters: Multiple traffic sources and ad formats reduce risk and increase opportunities
As RollerAds continues to expand with native advertising formats and enhanced AI capabilities, the principles Pierre shares remain foundational: understand your audience, test relentlessly, and let data guide your decisions.
In CPV Lab and CPV One, RollerAds has its own template and can be setup in a few clicks. Here are the instructions!
For affiliates ready to elevate their push notification campaigns, the path forward is clear—implement these proven strategies, maintain consistent testing protocols, and never underestimate the power of proper tracking and optimization.
Don’t miss this interview; below you can find the entire video interview (and we encourage you to subscribe to Champions of Performance Marketing as well to keep in touch with the latest interviews!)
