In the previous lesson, I showed you how to set up an affiliate campaign in BeMob. If you’ve followed along, you should now have your Campaign URL ready. This is the key link we’ll use in this lesson.
Now, I’ll guide you through setting up a campaign on PropellerAds. Not just the technical steps—I’ll also share some practical thinking, tips, and testing strategies that are especially useful for beginners.
In this example, we’ll be working with PropellerAds + BeMob + Golden Goose. If you’re using a different tracker or affiliate network, the overall process is still very similar.
Creating a Campaign on PropellerAds
Now that you have your campaign URL from BeMob, let’s move to PropellerAds and set up a Popunder campaign.
First, go to Create Campaign in PropellerAds:
In the Campaign Name field, use the same name as in BeMob. This makes it much easier to manage later:
You can skip the Add to Folder option for now:
Next, in Ad Format, select Onclick (Popunder):
In the Website section, choose CPA Goal:
Note: The Add to Folder feature becomes useful when you’re running campaigns across multiple affiliate networks. It helps you organize campaigns into folders. But for this demo, you don’t need it yet.
Now, copy your campaign URL from BeMob and paste it into the Target URL field:
Then, turn off Anti-Adblock. This means you won’t show ads to users who have Adblock enabled. During the testing phase, this helps you focus on higher-quality traffic:
Next, choose your GEO. In this example, we’ll use Philippines:
For this offer, the payout is $0.33. Since we’re testing two offers, each one effectively gets about $0.16. Think of it as splitting the traffic evenly—if it works, both win; if not, both share the loss. Fair and simple.
Now let’s set the Budget:
- Daily Budget: your daily spending limit
- Total Budget: your overall campaign budget
You’ll need to enter at least $10/day, since that’s required by PropellerAds. However, in reality, you can stop the test early—usually after spending around $2–$5—once you have enough data to evaluate.
If the campaign doesn’t look promising, just turn it off. There’s no need to spend the full budget.
Note: For formats like In-Page Push, you can set a lower total budget (around $2–$5). Once the budget is spent, the campaign will stop automatically.
Top 3 CPA Goal Bidding Strategies I Use
PropellerAds is a very strong traffic platform when it comes to CPA Goal optimization. Recently, based on my own testing and discussions on forums like Afflift, it’s clear that PropellerAds is pushing CPA Goal traffic quite aggressively.
In most cases, testing campaigns with CPA Goal is more cost-efficient and easier to win compared to other bidding models.
Here are the three strategies I personally use:
Strategy 1: Set CPA Goal = 0.5x Payout
This is the safest and most beginner-friendly approach. For example, if your offer pays $1 per conversion, you can set your CPA Goal at $0.5.
This gives you a buffer for profit while still allowing the system to optimize effectively.
Strategy 2: Set CPA Goal = $0.01
This is the lowest possible CPA Goal allowed on PropellerAds. Even if your offer pays $0.5, you can still set it to $0.01.
Why do this?
Because with such a low CPA Goal, PropellerAds will aggressively filter out unprofitable Zone IDs.
At the beginning, the system tends to send high-quality traffic to test performance. After spending around 3x the payout, the campaign will usually stop automatically.
At that point, you review the results:
- If it’s profitable → gradually increase your CPA Goal step by step
- If it’s not → kill the campaign immediately
Strategy 3: Set CPA Goal = 1x Payout
This is a high-level strategy often used by experienced affiliates.
To use this effectively, you need:
- A proven profitable offer
- A strong, well-optimized landing page
For example, if your payout is $1, you set CPA Goal = $1.
At this level, PropellerAds will spend aggressively and quickly identify the best-performing Zone IDs.
Then, you take those winning zones and move them into a separate whitelist campaign.
However, this method is risky—it can burn money very fast. Only use it when you’re confident in your setup.
If you’re a beginner, stick with Strategy 1 or 2.
Advanced Targeting Setup on PropellerAds
After pasting your BeMob campaign URL into PropellerAds, the next step is Targeting—this is where things start to really matter. Your targeting setup can directly determine whether your campaign has a chance to be profitable or not.
Device and Operating System
In the Platform section, choose Mobile:
For OS, select Android:
The reason is simple—Android usually has a much higher conversion rate (CR) compared to iOS, especially for offers like PIN Submit or Sweepstakes. iOS mainly performs well with specific niches like VPN, but for most other offers, the CR tends to be lower.
As for options like OS Version, GPU, or Device Model, you can skip them during the testing phase. These are only useful when you start optimizing at a deeper level.
Browser
You can leave this on default to receive traffic from all browsers, but that often spreads your traffic too thin.
From my experience, when starting out, you should focus only on the browsers with the highest CR:
- Android WebView
- Facebook Browser
These two typically convert very well and are more likely to bring early profits.
The downside is that their traffic volume is limited. So if you notice that your campaign isn’t getting enough traffic, you can add Chrome as well.
Note: If you’re running campaigns in the US, X Browser (Twitter’s browser) can also perform quite well.
Connection Type and Carrier
In the Connection Type section, you choose the type of internet connection your users are using. This depends entirely on the offer requirements.
If the offer requires WiFi traffic, select WiFi. If it requires 3G/4G, then choose mobile data:
If the offer allows both WiFi and mobile data, it’s better to split them into two separate campaigns for testing.
However, in most cases—especially with Mobile Content offers—mobile data (3G/4G) tends to convert better than WiFi.
So a good approach is to start with 3G/4G first. If it’s profitable, you can later expand to WiFi.
The reason is simple: users on mobile data are often more engaged and more likely to convert compared to those on WiFi (for this type of offer).
Mobile ISP (Carrier)
In this example (Philippines), there are several carriers, but we’ll target Smart:
Keep in mind that each GEO has different carrier performance. You must match the correct carrier based on the offer requirements. If you choose the wrong one, users may not even be able to access the offer page.
Zone Limitation
This is where you manage Zone IDs (placements).
After running campaigns, you’ll build a list of non-profitable zones (your blacklist).
In this section, simply choose Exclude and block those zones right from the start of your campaign. This helps improve performance and increase your chances of winning.
Campaign Schedule
Here, you can control when your campaign runs during the day.
However, for mobile campaigns, I usually recommend running ads 24/7 instead of restricting time slots.
You may notice that some hours perform better than others. But in my experience, a truly winning offer tends to be profitable across most time periods.
That said, if you want more control, you can still use the Campaign Schedule feature.
Auto Start After Approval
There is an option called “Automatically start campaign after moderation”.
If you enable it, your campaign will start running immediately after approval.
For beginners, I recommend turning this off.
Why? Because some mobile campaigns (especially pop traffic) can spend money very quickly.
Instead, keep the campaign paused after approval. When you have time, manually start it and monitor closely—especially during the first few hours.
At the beginning, traffic usually comes in fast. I often use this period to quickly identify and blacklist non-performing placements to reduce costs.
Submitting Your Campaign for PropellerAds Moderation
After completing all the setup steps, the final step is to submit your campaign for moderation.
Scroll down to the bottom of the page and check the box:
“I declare and warrant that my campaign meets the quality guidelines”:
This simply means you confirm that your campaign complies with PropellerAds policies.
In general, PropellerAds is quite flexible with Pop/Onclick ads, but there are a few important rules to keep in mind:
- You must not deceive users (for example, fake popups or messages like “You’ve won 100% guaranteed” are not allowed)
- However, softer wording like “You may win a prize” is acceptable
- Most mainstream offers (sweepstakes, app installs, mobile subscriptions, etc.) are allowed
- Adult content is not permitted on PropellerAds
Once you’ve checked the box, click Start Campaign to submit it:
Your campaign will now enter Moderation status. You can refresh the page to check the progress.
One of the advantages of PropellerAds is their fast approval time:
- Sometimes it takes only 2–5 minutes
- Usually around 15–30 minutes
- In some cases, up to 1 hour (depending on their moderation team’s workload or shift timing)
Tip:
If you’re only available in the evenings, it’s better to keep auto-start turned off. This way, once the campaign is approved, you can manually start it when you’re ready and monitor it closely.
Conclusion
Alright, that’s it.
In this lesson, I showed you how to build a complete campaign from start to finish: creating a campaign in BeMob to generate your tracking link, then using that link to set up your ads in PropellerAds. At this point, you already understand the basic framework needed to start testing.
Let me quickly recap:
- This is just a test campaign. The goal is not immediate profit, but to understand how everything connects
- You’ve learned how to choose an offer, create a campaign in BeMob, add a traffic source, set payouts, and launch a campaign in PropellerAds with basic targeting
- For budget, you can set $30/day to meet platform requirements, but in reality, spending around $5 is often enough to gather data and decide whether to continue or stop
At this stage, you can take a moment to appreciate the progress—you’ve completed your first full setup cycle.
That said, this is only the beginning.
Running a test campaign is like taking your first steps. You may not make money right away, but now you know how the system works. From here, the next phase is optimization—this is where real profit is made.