Hello everyone! Today our guest is Alexey, CEO of the Octoclick advertising network.

In this interview, we learned all about the rebranding and the company’s future plans, discussed the prospects for nutra teaser networks in 2024, sorted out popular mistakes and received some useful tips on traffic driving.

And at the end of the article, you will find a cool bonus from Alexey. Enjoy!

1. Good afternoon! Please, tell us a little bit about yourself, how you came to affiliate marketing and why you stayed?

Hello!

I was brought into this area by one of the founders of the BigClick project. Back then it all seemed kind of crazy to me, but it was very interesting to try myself in something new. I quickly got involved and fell in love with affiliate marketing, because it was completely different from other areas of business. Most of my friends still don’t understand what we do. Even those who have their own business.

2. BigClick (and now Octoclick) has been around for 7 years and the company is well known to many. How did you come to rebrand? What influenced this?

The reason for the rebranding was the creation of a completely new product, which was totally different from the old BigClick.

Of course, all the good things that were there have not gone away, but have either remained unchanged (for example, consistently high-quality traffic, and yes, this is self-promotion

:D), or have been improved many times.

At the very least, our brand concept has completely changed to something more memorable now.

We have greatly succeeded not only in improving technical aspects related to the functionality necessary to obtain a good result, but we also thought about the users themselves, how convenient it is for them to work in our network.

The usability, interface, and logic of information presentation have undergone many changes. In 2023, the focus was fundamentally shifted in this direction too. We hear feedback from users that it was difficult for some to get used to the new changes, while others immediately got involved and supported this. New functionality and other features are also regularly released in updates. We’re trying our best.

Let’s not hide the fact that the concept of “teaser networks” is strongly attached to BigClick. But this has not been the case for a long time. We have many formats that are also performing well. But the “teaser network” was firmly established, and, in general, it simply ceased to suit us.

As a result, everyone is now asking, “Why octopus?”

Let’s leave it an intrigue 🙂

3. How has the staff changed? How big is Octoclick’s team now?

Over the past year, our team has doubled in size, but has remained relatively small. We strive not to overstaff, but to expand the team with professionals and like-minded people.

I am confident that our team consists of brilliant people, from the development team to the moderation department.

Of course, the staff is expanding, but such a small team allows each of us to reveal ourselves not only within the framework of our own responsibilities.

Absolutely every member of our team wholeheartedly supports the project, offers ideas, and is interested in the results of related departments. Anyone can have a worthwhile creative thought. And it is always considered at the highest level.

And we all have warm friendly relations, no matter how corny it may sound. We joke, have fun, go to official corporate parties, or we can just play pinball in the office until 5 am. And that’s cool.

4. Fuckups happen to everyone. Tell us about the most memorable situation at work?

The main fuckup, which will forever remain in my memory, occurred on March 10, 2021. On this day, the OVH data center caught fire, and it, at that time, housed almost all of our infrastructure. In the morning we woke up to a million angry messages from customers that the service did not work, and neither did advertising. When we read the news, we realized the seriousness of what was happening. For more than a day without sleep or food, our programmers restored BigClick piece by piece and, as always, did their job flawlessly. This day definitely brought us a couple of gray hairs 🙂

5. Let’s return to the project. Tell us what advertising formats you work with?

At the moment, we are working closely with such formats as native (teaser ads that have not gone anywhere), popunder, in-page push ads.

Teaser ads have always been with us, there’s nothing to say here.

Popunder/clickunder ads are some of the most profitable formats on the network, polished to a squeaky shine.

We launched the IPP in 2023, and it is still gaining momentum.

But I can say with confidence that ours is the most technologically advanced; I have not seen such an implementation in other networks.

For maximum convenience and customization at the launch stage, we have an extensive library of creative templates.

Each of them was invented and drawn by our designers; we studied the needs of users and started from there. Now there are templates that can cover the needs of almost any vertical. So, anyone, even with the most minimal ad creative development skills, can simply upload their own pictures, choose colors, write the ad copy they need, and their creative will look cool and will be guaranteed a good CTR.

6. How promising are teaser ads for nutra now? And is it worth it for beginners to go into this niche?

Teaser ads, in my opinion, are the most suitable format for beginners. This includes cheap traffic, large volumes, and ease of launch. And nutra itself, as a separate vertical, is very good to newcomers. Many manage to get off to a relatively successful start and then maintain a stable income.

Of course, nutra, like the adult vertical, for example, is a vertical that covers basic human needs. Everyone wants to be healthy and beautiful. There are enough offers here, and no one is complaining about demand either.

Teaser ads, as a source for nutra, show themselves quite well. Each of us has clicked on these strange, incredible calls to find out how to lose extra pounds with the help of ginger root, or use it to improve men’s health. The selling points in teaser ads are incredible, but continue to work flawlessly.

Aren’t you interested in how to cure diabetes with a boiled sock?

If you stick to the basic rules when setting up a teaser ad and try a little more, success is guaranteed, even for a beginner. Even more so with nutra.

7. What are your most popular GEOs? How are things going in Europe and the USA?

At the moment, we have occupied most of the CIS adult market. This is a niche in which we managed to achieve success, but we are not going to stop there.

We work less with Europe, but it is still present. There is a lot of traffic from the Baltic countries, if you are interested in France, Germany, Poland – you’re welcome. In the USA, we have about 400k impressions per day, so we can safely launch.

The plans for this year are to significantly increase the volume of foreign traffic. We plan to focus on the EU, since we have managed to study this market well during our work.

8. How important is it to create black and white lists? Or can you do without them?

Of course, this is important.

And I immediately want to clarify that at the time of launching ad campaigns we do not provide black and white lists. I’ll explain why:

Since all our traffic now comes from direct publishers, most low-quality sources are eliminated at the moderation stage. Ours is quite meticulous. We always require access to site statistics.

We also regularly monitor and analyze resources that are most often included in blacklists. Such sites are automatically subject to re-moderation to find out the reasons for the massive refusal of traffic.

We recommend that each advertiser compile a black/white list based on their own analytics and never look at these lists on the Internet. Each offer and even each landing page is individual. If the dating vertical doesn’t bring you conversions on some resources, this doesn’t mean that nutra will bring the same results on these sites. I repeat, we do not host bad sites.

9. What are the most common mistakes that beginners (and even experienced guys) make in teaser networks?

First of all, I would highlight the wrong choice of offer here.

Not all offers are truly suitable for teaser networks. Yes, this drives a large amount of traffic, and it’s pretty cheap, but selling products or services that are not in wide demand is a mistake.

Products of mass demand are good for teaser ads are household appliances, clothing, common consumer goods, weight loss products, dietary supplements, etc.

Another reason for failure is insufficient analytics. You should monitor many user parameters and study your target audience as much and as often as possible. By delving into this analysis, many important and useful conclusions can be drawn regarding their behavioral factors.

The wrong approach to compiling blacklists can also become a problem. Adding many platforms without deep analytics can greatly reduce your potentially converting audience.

But you shouldn’t neglect compiling blacklists either.

In addition, many users ignore support services’ advice or are simply embarrassed to contact them. There is no reason to be shy; this is why support exists – to help you improve the effectiveness of your ad campaigns. This is also important and interesting to us.

Refusal to experiment also does not bode well.

Just because a creative performs well doesn’t mean its effectiveness will remain the same forever.

Experiment more, choose a separate approach for each offer, do not take other people’s creatives.

Go a little deeper and try harder.

10. What is important for successful work with teaser networks?

It is important to choose an offer that really suits the format. You can come up with a successful creative that will attract attention and be clicked on, but if the product or service is actually interesting only to a narrow audience, then it is unlikely that you will be able to achieve a good conversion rate.

Of course, you also need to work on your presentation. The teaser ad should be attractive and intriguing. We recommend creating several dozen teaser approaches, conducting split testing for them and leaving 5-10 of the most successful ones, and then starting this process again.

You should clearly understand your target audience, and you need to learn it not only before launching. It should be studied constantly.

Don’t forget about analytics and experiments. If a campaign approach works stably over a period of time, this does not mean that it is a pill for all your troubles.

11.​​What are the current requirements and restrictions for the teasers themselves?

One of the main advantages of teaser networks is relative freedom of action. We don’t have strict restrictions. Advertisers have no need for virtual cards, anti-detect browsers and other cloaking services. You can forget about these headaches, which take up most of your time. You simply design a creative, use the most selling tools, and drive traffic. It’s 5 minutes from signing up to launching the ad.

12. Share your life hack for creating a 100% converting creative.

If you want a succinct and concise life hack, then just take our template from the library :))

But seriously, each vertical, as we understand, values a creative with its own special features. And it won’t do without experiments.

I would advise any affiliate marketer to segment their audience and take into account the characteristics of this segment when developing a creative.

I’ll tell you about dating, for example, since this is one of the most popular areas in our country.

For pictures, I would recommend taking photos of people closer to the average user. If a person wants to meet someone, then they should see a person who could potentially be interested in them, in your creative, someone as real and lively as possible. Maintain a balance between real and beautiful.

It never hurts to indicate the distance between the user and the person in the picture. Macros allow you to specify the user’s location.

Incoming message icons, which are implemented in many of our templates, also have great success; they visually resemble a regular messenger.

There is simply no universal advice for designing a creative that will consistently convert everywhere. I can tell you how to create a USP, emphasize that the offer is limited and call to action, but I think that this can already be learned from every second source of search results.

13. What do you like about your job? What gives you a boost of motivation?

What motivates me most is the team. When everyone’s eyes light up and everyone is interested in the process, it makes you take action.

I really like our market and everything that happens inside it.

This is a separate planet, completely different from the others.

For example, this is one of the few industries where competitors can be partners.

We are close friends and cooperate with most of our direct competitors.

They are open to dialogue, not afraid to share their thoughts and experiences, and we always reciprocate.

14. What are your current development plans and what to expect in the near future?

This year we decided to focus on “polishing” the existing functionality and our formats.

We will soon release new JS, which will give a big increase in targeting capabilities.

We plan to actively scale up in the foreign geo direction.

We are currently testing SSP for purchasing traffic, with the main emphasis on quality.

We have developed a unique three-stage anti-fraud system that will allow you to buy only the cream of the crop.

The nearest plans include a very large expansion of functionality for optimizing campaigns and auto-bidding.

And all this is just a small part of what we will release to the market this year. Subscribe to our Telegram channel, it will be fun! 🙂

15. What advice would you give to those who read the article to the end?

If you are reading this, it means you are very diligent, attentive and will definitely achieve success, which means you don’t need my advice, it’s better to take a bonus for your first deposit using the “WEBVORK” promo code!