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  • Is it possible to run campaigns created by Artificial Intelligence profitably? Affiliate’s Experiment
    21.2.2023
    Reading Time: 7 minutes

    Wanted to try AI services, but decided not to risk your budget? We did it for you! 

    One media buyer agreed to take part in an experiment and launch a real ad campaigns using the pics and texts generated by neural networks. 

    He shared all the results in detail. In the end, he finally answered the question – is it possible to run profitable ad campaigns using artificial intelligence? (spoiler: the result may seem surprising).

    We’re also going to tell you about all the pitfalls and features of AI services in this article.

    Well, let’s pass the word to our affiliate!

    Campaign’s info: 

    Period: 1 week

    Offer: 34461 Duston Gel – CO

    GEO: Colombia

    Vertical: Health

    Traffic source: push ads.

    Let’s briefly overview some fitting neural networks, and then select the best neural network to work with.

    Step one: Choosing the neural network. A brief overview with pros and cons

    To begin with, I want to note that I’ve picked the services from this post’s list

    Writing AI services

    📝RYTR

    https://rytr.me/ – Good neural network for text creation. It will help you write text for a specific task. It understands many languages, considers the tone of voice, and uses a large number of templates. 

    Expectedly, some bugs and repetitions may occur. Thus, you have to manually remove weirdly constructed sentences.

    ✅ Pros:

    • Quick sign-up via Google accounts
    • Simple and clear interface
    • Understands multiple languages
    • Good customization for specific purposes
    • Choice of TOV and level of AI creativity
    • Unlimited characters with a paid subscription
    • Limitations are easily circumvented with creating multiple google accounts.

    ❎ Cons:

    • The free version provides you with 10K characters per month. The paid version costs $290 per year
    • The limit is restored only after one month
    • The same sentences often appear again 
    • Text suggestions may be sometimes a bit cliche and straightforward (Especially if you’re limited by a certain number of lines).

    📝 Jasper

    https://www.jasper.ai/ – Another good neural network for writing texts. Thanks to GPT-3, it generates content in multiple ways and can be used for different purposes and at any scale. 

    It understands up to 30 languages. There are a large number of templates and a built-in system to detect plagiarism in the text. I found more disadvantages in its trial version, as the creators have eliminated many features.

    ✅ Pros:

    • Up to 30 languages
    • Good customization for specific purposes
    • Flexible-price policy.

    ❎ Cons:

    • You need to add your credit card to get started
    • Free trial for 5 days (instead of previous 7), then $590 per year
    • Disappeared Starter Pack. Now, only Boss Mode is available, which costs $5 9for 50K / month
    • No option for choosing unlimited characters.

    📝ChatGPT

    https://chat.openai.com/ is the leader among all neural networks at the moment. It has managed to gain a huge audience in a short period of time. The most curious thing about it is the versatility and flexibility of the system. They allow you to perform a wide range of actions in a few seconds. There is no trivial “request-response” interaction. The neural network can answer questions itself, give a summary of information, and even write code.

    ✅ Pros:

    • Flexibility
    • API 
    • Answers to any questions
    • Chatting and answering difficult questions.

    ❎ Cons:

    • The phone number (is required to sign up) has become more difficult to pick, as ChatGPT has created a database of suspicious numbers.
    • Instant access for premium users only, the rest are placed on the waiting list.

    Out of all the given neural networks, I deemed RYTR the most convenient and suitable due to the features available.  It’s simple, handy, and laconic. 

    However, there are some disadvantages. You have to work with the limitation of 30-65 characters, which affects the network’s performance. The generated texts for ad campaigns seemed too directly. Especially in Spanish, since most of Spanish words are quite long. So, I had to stay within the limit by reducing the number of words. 

    The neural network is fine for generation of long texts. Anyway, one still needs to check the text and edit it.

    AI services for generating pictures

    📝 DALL-E 2

    https://labs.openai.com/ is a neural network by the creators of ChatGPT, which create pics in different styles according to requests (prompts).

    Dall-E 2 is an “almost free” neural network. You get 50 credits after the sign-up. Then, you’ll be given 15 credits every month. Running out of credits? Buy one for $15 = 115 credits (the minimum plan).

    ✅ Pros:

    • A shared account with ChatGPT.
    • It generates images in a variety of styles.

    ❎ Cons:

    • Generates only 1024×1024 pictures 
    • Images of faces and portraits are quite blurry
    • One must be aware of special queries (prompts) for a particular style.

    📝 Midjourney

    https://www.midjourney.com/home/ can transform the text into incredible images even for ordinary prompts. With this neural network, you can create high-quality and detailed pics! 

    Nevertheless, difficulties arise at the very beginning. To use this neural network, you need a Discord account. It was quite difficult to understand the interface. Many users just send their pictures to a public chat with the caption “make me cool”. Of course, that doesn’t work this way. 

    The Midjourney discord server has a set of rules, and there are rooms for newcomers with 25 queries. Each generation is 1 query. There are also forbidden words like “sex,” “blood,” etc. If you want to generate a picture with a “blood pressure” prompt, you will get a warning message.

    The neural network can generate images of various styles. The basic plan starts at $8 per month for 200 pictures. Or $24 for 15 hours of generation and $48 for 30 hours.

    ✅ Pros:

    • Lots of styles available
    • 2 work modes: Imagine & Blend.

    ❎ Cons:

    • It’s hard to understand the interface for the first time.
    • You need to know what prompts to enter for a particular style
    • Short-period trial 
    • Images are too dark sometimes
    • Typical neural network errors. Extra hand, a face without eyes, etc.
    • Your query will be visible in the main chat. To hide them, you must either make your own discord server or pay for a professional plan.

    For images, I chose Midjourney. It has a good number of generations and also has a Blend mode. By the way, follow the rules of the neural network while selecting one of the generated images to avoid a ban. 

    So, we will work with RYTR (text) + Midjourney (picture).

    Step two: Creating text with RYTR

    RYTR is pretty good, but it is hard to create a short ad text of up to 65 characters. I had to use all 10K characters for one account (the limit) and then create another one to select more unique (not duplicated) texts.

    It’s worth noting that there were some very strange texts, such as: 

    “¡Consigue el dolor ahora mismo! La pomada ayudará!” (Get the pain right now! The ointment will help)

    “¡Las articulaciones no son necesarias!” (Joints are not needed!)

    “¡Calma el dolor articular! Pruebe el porro de [Nombre de la empresa]” (Soothes joint pain! Try a “joint” of [Company name])

    A funny feature of it: for ad texts, RYTR sometimes adds text with a non-existent discount and a promo code (JOINT20), as well as puts tags into the text, that are actually useful. 

    RYTR can generate images. They’re plain compared to MidJorney, but unusual. There are no image settings, you get just an output.

    Moving to practice.

    The text test aimed at running ad campaigns with the same image, but with different generated texts. 

    I encountered an interesting feature. Words in Spanish are long, consisting of many characters. Hence, the character limit was met by reducing the number of words in the sentence, so the texts were extremely straight.

    Yet despite the problem, some headings produced good results, especially this one – “¡Alivia tus dolores articulares!” (Reduce your joint pain!).

    Examples of texts: 

    Top creative’s performance: CR 0.22%.

    🟢 Better than the top creative

    🟡Same or slightly worse than the top creative

    🔴 The worst results compared to the top creative


    🔴 Usa esto para darle salud a tus articulaciones

          (Use this to make your joints healthy)

    $3.6, CTR 0.01%, CR 0.00%


    🔴 Articulaciones sanas en 7 días

          (Healthy joints in 7 days!)

         ¡Siente la alegría del movimiento! 

          (Feel the joy of movement!)

    $4.1, CTR 0.02%, CR 0.00%


    🔴 ¿Dolor articular?

           (Pain in the joints?)

          NO TIENES QUE SUFRIR POR EL DOLOR ARTICULAR

           (STOP ENDURING THE PAIN IN YOUR JOINTS)

    $3.9, CTR 0.03%, CR 0.00%


    🔴 ¿Padeces de dolor articular?

          (Do you suffer from joint pain?)

          ¡Alivia el dolor articular ahora!

         (Take off the pain in your joints now!)

    $3.8, CTR 0.02%, CR 0.00%

    🔴 El alivio está a un clic de distancia

          (Relief is waiting for you in a single click)

         Consigue ya nuestra Crema para Articulaciones

          (Get our cream for joints right now!)

    $3.5, CTR 0.02%, CR 0.06%


    🟡¿Molestan las articulaciones?

          (Are your joints bothering you?)

          ¡Cura tus articulaciones correctamente!

           (Treat your joints properly!)

    $5.2, CTR 0.03%, CR 0.06%


     🟡 Esta crema para eliminar el dolor de cuello en 10 min

           (This cream will eliminate neck pain in 10 minutes)

    $5.6, CTR 0.02%, CR 0.06%

    🟢 ¿Te duelen las articulaciones?

           (Do your joints hurt?)

          ¡Calma tu dolor con ungüento ahora!

          (Soothe your pain with ointment now!)

    $7.8, CTR 0.05%, CR 0.13%


    🟢¡Alivia tus dolores articulares! 

          (Ease the pain in your joints!)

         Use nuestra crema para articulaciones hoy

         (Use our cream for joints today).

    $8.2, CTR 0.05%, CR 0.18%

    Step three: Creating pictures with Midjourney

    Midjourney is very colorful. When visit the server, every time you can be inspired by the images it generates! 

    However, 1 click costs 1 credit, so you can’t experiment for long.

    After comparing it to our top creative, we create a query for the neural network. I suggest you peek at other people’s queries to see what prompts they used.

    The picture is generated quite quickly. However, you should pay special attention to forming the query. Otherwise, the AI will just combine the words and produce an unwanted result.

    For example, the query: “Man’s joint x-ray next to a spoon with ointment” caused the following unexpected results: 



    The generated pictures also have problems with eyes, fingers, joints, and limbs. The “Uncanny valley” effect of these pics is frightening.

    The problem was that I requested a picture “in the daytime”, but the neural network ignored that, as you will see later. The images are a little dark.

    Here are the pictures used in ad campaigns:

    Summing up: Unfortunately, this test proved that the neural network was unable to surpass the performance of our top creative. The conversion price of all the generated images is much higher. Most likely, the reason is the cartoonishness and unrealistic nature of the generated images, as well as the lack of clear focus on the problem of would-be customers.


    Final Stage: Results of tests

    Ad campaigns with the texts generated by AI were almost profitable! Bad traffic sources spoiled the campaign’s performance. Source with quality traffic for the campaign could bring me money!

    Ad campaigns with the pics generated by AI wasted my ad budget.


    Conclusion

    In my opinion, neural networks aren’t a ready-made solution for various tasks.

    It’s better to use them more wisely, for example as a tool for discovering new approaches and ideas. Neural networks are still imperfect and require time for the selection and manual editing of created content.

    By working with neural networks, you can break the vicious cycle of repeating template ideas and provide a creative twist to mundane creative selection!


    Artificial intelligence is still far from fully taking over the creative tasks of affiliates. But we are closer to it than ever! 

    We thank our affiliate who agreed to take part in the experiment! 

    We wish you all profit! 

    Have you ever tried to introduce AI in your work routine? What were the results? Please share them with us in the comments!

4 Comments

  • Abir 22.02.23 at 3:34 pm

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  • Riyad 23.02.23 at 5:41 am

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  • Oliur Rahman 27.02.23 at 5:59 pm

    Nice products for all individuals

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