Does anyone actually get a payout bump for asking, or is it purely volume

Nineteen rows from PMs you can't verify. That's not a dataset, that's a diary with contributors.

Correct. Which is why I asked for yours.

Three rows, APAC, two networks.

Asked twice on flat volume, both no. Asked once about six weeks into a period where volume had roughly tripled, got +$5 within two days and an unprompted +$2 a month later.

The caveat I'd add to everyone's data: rate changes and cap changes get conflated constantly. Twice I've been told I got a bump and what actually happened was my daily cap went up, which is worth more but is a completely different decision inside the network. Check which one moved before you log it.

reading all this and im just gonna ask lol

ok so following up on my +5 because i said it worked and it needs a correction.

it got reversed at the end of march. AM said it was applied as a promotional rate for the launch period and the launch period ended, which is not what she said at the time or i wouldn't have scaled into it. so i spent six weeks buying traffic against a number that was temporary.

not a bump. lesson learned i guess!

told you in post six

I've sat on this for a few weeks and I still don't accept the reading, so I'll say why rather than let it stand.

Your flat-volume row is 1 of 8. Mine is 2 of 5 over four years, and the difference isn't luck, it's that I don't ask on flat volume unless something else has changed - a new geo opening, a competitor dropping off, the advertiser running a push. Every one of your flat-volume asks is a cold ask, and cold asks failing tells you cold asks fail. It doesn't tell you asking fails.

What would separate the two is a column your table doesn't have: was there a reason attached to the ask. I'd bet the eight cold ones had none.

I don't expect to convince you and I'm aware I'm describing my own behaviour as the variable, which is exactly the thing you'd object to. But 'volume does all the work' and 'nobody in my sample asked well' produce the same table.

A small point that is adjacent to the argument rather than in it.

If you are on a rate that was raised mid-period, check how the network applies it to conversions that fired before the change. I have seen all three behaviours: retroactive to the start of the month, effective from the change date, and effective from the start of the next full cycle. On a $5 change and a few hundred conversions that is a real number, and it is almost never written down anywhere you can find it.

Ask which one they do at the same time you ask for the increase; it costs nothing and it is much harder to ask afterwards.

Nobody has ever asked that question and nobody ever will.

Sorry to come in this late and I know I'm the least experienced person in this thread by a distance.

I tried Marta_K's version pretty much word for word last month. Volume had gone up maybe 60% over three weeks on one offer, and I sent one message saying I could add roughly another half on top if the economics worked, and nothing else. No number named.

They came back in two days with +$2, which is small but I'm small. What I noticed is that the reply quoted my own sentence back at me, which I think is the thing Marta_K meant about giving them something to forward.

One case, and I'd have probably got it anyway on that volume. Just reporting it since people asked for rows.

Final update from me, four months and thirty-one rows in. Adding the column Marta_K asked for, which I've had to score by hand from what people wrote, so treat it as soft.

Ask type	n	Moved
No ask, rising volume	7	5
No ask, flat volume	4	1
Cold ask, flat volume	11	1
Ask with a stated reason, flat volume	5	3
Ask with a stated reason, rising volume	4	4

The reason column is doing something. 3 of 5 against 1 of 11 on flat volume is not nothing, and I said I'd follow the numbers wherever they went.

What I'd still argue is that 'stated reason' is not the same as 'asking' and the thread has been using them interchangeably for four months. A reason means something changed. If something changed, the budget moved, and we're back to my original position with better manners.

So: volume and circumstance move rates. Asking determines whether you're in the room when they do. That's as close to agreeing with Marta_K as the data lets me get, and I don't think either of us has moved much.

Best data on this board in a year and it still doesn't settle the question. That's honest, at least.

Bumping because someone started a fourth thread on this yesterday and I'd rather point at this one.

Six months on, the table above still matches what I see. The only thing I'd add is that the 'stated reason' effect has got stronger this year, not weaker, and I think that's the AM churn I mentioned in February. A new AM three weeks into the job will approve almost anything with a justification attached because they don't know what the ceiling is yet.

Which is a horrible piece of advice to act on deliberately. But if your AM changes, ask that week.

Does the AM-change window hold if the volume belongs to a client rather than to you, and the new AM can see the account history but not who is behind it?

Asking about one account, not generally.

they can see the history. that's the whole account. ask anyway, worst case is no