Test — is a trial advertising campaign launched with a small budget to determine whether it's worth investing more money. Everyone who buys advertising does this: companies, marketers and advertising agencies.
Testing in traffic arbitrage
In traffic arbitrage, every campaign setup starts with a test. A campaign setup is a combination of a product, an advertisement and the platform where it's displayed. An affiliate marketer doesn't invest a large amount immediately but first looks at the numbers: how much a click costs, how many people submit a lead and whether the advertising is profitable.
For example, you've chosen an offer (a product or service that an affiliate network pays you to promote) and created three ad creatives, meaning three versions of an advertisement. You spend $50 on testing and see which version generates leads at a lower cost.
The most commonly tested elements are:
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ad creatives: images, videos and text;
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audiences: who sees the ads based on age, gender and interests;
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countries;
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platforms where advertising is purchased;
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offers and landing pages that the ads lead to.
Test vs. split test — what's the difference?
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Test — checking whether an option works at all.
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Split test — comparing several options against each other: traffic is divided equally to see which performs better.
The term test is also used for a test lead submitted to check whether the tracking link and statistics in the affiliate network are working correctly.
Important: some money spent on testing will always result in losses, and that's normal. That's why you should only test with money you're prepared to lose.
