Promotion tool

Canva banners and short videos

Canva is a design tool. You use it to make a banner or a short video when an offer has no creative of its own. It is a separate product from a separate company. Maxlead does not own Canva. Canva does not host your CPA offer, it does not track the click, and it does not pay an approved conversion. Maxlead is the CPA performance network. The file you export from Canva is only the picture or the clip the traffic source will show. The claim on that file has to match the page the visitor will actually reach. You do not invent a bonus or a payout to make the file more tempting. When you change the creative, you give it a new sub id so the report can tell the old file from the new one.

Publishers reach for a design tool on the days the offer’s creative library is empty, or when the sizes they were given do not fit the placement. That is a normal problem. It is also how bad claims sneak into an otherwise clean campaign. This guide is how to make the asset without lying, how to attach it to a tracking link, a worked placement, the mistakes that ruin the sub id, and how to read EPC and CVR on Maxlead before you scale the file that looks best in the ad account.

What Canva is

Canva is where you lay out type, images, and simple motion, then export a file. A native placement might need a still image. A social placement might need a short video. You can resize a single idea into the dimensions the source asks for. You can duplicate a file and change one line. None of that is tracking. The export does not know your publisher id. It does not know whether the person who saw the banner later completed an action. If you judge the creative inside Canva, you are judging whether you like the layout. The campaign is judged later, on the network, by approved results.

Because the tool will let you type any sentence onto a rectangle, the constraint has to come from the offer. The sentence on the banner must be a sentence you could also put on the landing page, and a sentence the advertiser page will not contradict. If the offer has a landing page you control, the banner and that page match. If the ad clicks straight through the tracking link to the advertiser, the banner matches the advertiser page. Matching means the same action, not a rhyme and not a vibe. A banner about a signup matches a page about a signup. A banner about a cash gift does not match a page about a signup, even if the colors are the ones you used last time.

Maxlead has operated as a CPA performance network since 2015. You need an approved publisher account. Public offers can be taken after that. Offers that require approval wait until an admin accepts your request. The tracking link is issued on the offer and already includes your publisher id. You add s1 through s8. Use them for the source and for the creative. Those values are stored on the click and shown on the conversion report and the performance report. A global postback covers the account. An offer postback covers one offer and replaces the global URL for that offer. The postback goes out for approved and rejected conversions. It does not go out for a conversion that is still pending. Approved earnings are paid every week. Pending and rejected conversions are not paid as though they were approved.

The dashboard shows clicks, conversions, earnings, EPC, and CVR. Earnings are approved payout only. CVR is approved conversions divided by clicks. EPC is earnings per click. Canva has no column for any of those. A file that previews well can still be the worst EPC in the account, because the claim pulled the wrong people or because the claim did not match the page and the advertiser rejected them.

Who it is for

Canva is for the publisher who is allowed to run the offer and does not have a usable creative. The offer page on Maxlead is the first place to look. If the advertiser supplied banners or a clip, start there. Their file already matches their page, and you are less likely to invent a claim. If that library is empty, or if every file is the wrong size for the placement you are allowed to buy, you make your own in Canva and you stay inside the claims the offer actually supports.

It is not for inventing a better offer. You are not the advertiser. You cannot add a bonus the advertiser did not publish, a discount they did not publish, or a payout figure that describes what you hope to earn. The visitor does not earn your CPA. Painting a number on a banner because it would raise the click-through rate is how you collect rejections. It is also not a tracker. After you export, the file still needs a click URL. That URL is the Maxlead tracking link, or it is a tracker campaign that uses the Maxlead tracking link as its offer. It is never the advertiser preview URL.

If you are unsure the offer allows the placement you are designing for, stop before you export. A beautiful native image is useless on an offer that forbids native. An account manager on Maxlead can confirm the source. Design after the answer, not before.

How to use it with a CPA offer

Read the offer and, with the preview control, read the page the visitor will see after the tracking link. Write one sentence that names the action. That sentence is the only claim you are allowed to design around. If you cannot say it in one line, the banner should use a shorter true slice of it, not a different product. Open Canva and put that slice on the file. Supporting lines may repeat a condition that is real, such as who the offer is for, if the offer says so. They may not add urgency, money, or gifts you made up.

Do not put a payout on the creative. The payout on the offer is what you can earn on an approved conversion. It is not a benefit for the person who sees the ad. Publishing it is misleading, and this guide will not give you a number to publish, because a number on a banner becomes a promise. Do not put a bonus on the creative unless the advertiser page you just previewed states that bonus in plain words. “Designers add bonuses all the time” is not a term of the offer. If the page does not say it, the file does not say it.

Export the file in the size the placement needs. Name the file so you can tell it from the next version without opening it. Then attach the click. In the traffic source, the destination of the ad is the Maxlead tracking link with your publisher id. sub1 names the source and the country if you need both in one label. sub2 names this creative. The first version might be banner-v1 or video-v1. The string is your choice. The rule is that it is unique to this file. If a landing page you own sits between the ad and the offer, the ad can point at that page, the page’s button is the tracking link, and the same sub2 still has to arrive on the link. A creative test that dies before Maxlead is not a creative test. Check one live click in Activity. The sub2 on the click should be the name of the file you just exported.

When you change the creative, change the sub id. A new headline, a new first frame, a new offer of urgency, or a new crop that changes what the picture implies is a new creative. Give it a new s2. Leave the old s2 in the report so you can see what the old file did. Do not edit the Canva file, export over the same name, and keep buying traffic on the old sub id. From that moment the row is two files, and EPC is a blend you cannot scale with a straight face. If you only fixed a typo that did not change the claim, say so in your notes, but if you have to argue about whether the claim changed, take a new sub id. Sub ids are free. Contaminated rows are not.

You have s1 through s8, so the creative does not have to share a field with the source or with a tracker click id. If a tracker sits in front of the ad click, reserve another sub id for that tracker’s click id and return it on the postback. Canva is not involved in that wiring. The postback, if you use one, is global or specific on Maxlead. Include {status} and the sub id tokens you need a tracker to store. Count approved. Do not count rejected. A pending conversion has not fired, so the creative is not a winner just because a tracker shows a lead you marked by hand.

Match the file to the page one more time after export. Play the video with the sound off, because many placements mute it. If the muted video implies a different action than the page, fix the frames. Look at the banner at the actual size, not zoomed in on your laptop. A claim that only appears in small type the placement will shrink is not a claim the visitor received. What they received is the big text. The big text has to be the true action.

A worked example

A publisher wants to run native traffic to an offer that accepts Spain. The offer allows that native source. The account is approved and the offer is approved. The creative area on the offer is empty. They are not going to wait for a file that may never arrive, and they are not going to borrow a banner from a different offer because the colors looked close.

They open the preview, read the advertiser page, and write down the action in one sentence. In Canva they make a still banner. The large text is a short version of that same sentence. There is no bonus line, no percentage off, and no payout. They export it and name the concept in the sub id, not only in the file name. The native campaign points at the Maxlead tracking link. sub1 is es-mgid, for Spain on MGID. sub2 is banner-v1. They do not point the native ad at the preview URL. A test click from Spain shows es-mgid and banner-v1 in Activity.

After a few days they decide the still image is easy to ignore and they cut a short video in Canva. The spoken line and the on-screen text repeat the same action. They do not add a gift in the last second to lift the thumb-stop. The new ad uses the same sub1, because the source did not change, and sub2 banner-v2 even though it is a video, or a clearer label such as video-v1 if they would rather the name describe the format. The important part is that it is not banner-v1. The old banner can keep running or it can stop. Either way, its clicks stay on banner-v1. The new clip’s clicks start a clean row. If they later change the clip’s first line, that newer file gets another sub2. They never “update v1 in place” and keep spending.

They compare the two rows on Maxlead, not in Canva’s preview and not by which file their friends preferred. Approved conversions on banner-v1 and on the new sub2 are what can become earnings. A rejected conversion, if a postback is in use, comes back with status rejected and is not in the weekly payout. The file they scale is the one with the better EPC on a click count they trust, and only while its claim still matches the page. If the video wins inside the native account on cheap clicks and loses on Maxlead because the opens do not approve, they do not scale the video. Cheap attention to the wrong sentence is not a creative win.

Mistakes

Inventing a bonus is the mistake Canva makes frictionless. The text tool is sitting there. A line like “plus an extra reward” takes seconds, and the offer never said it. Visitors click expecting the reward. The advertiser page does not have it. Approvals suffer, or the clicks never become conversions at all. The same is true of a discount, a time limit, or a payout painted in the corner. If you did not read it on the offer and see it on the page, it does not go on the file. There is no harmless version of a fake number.

Mismatching a true claim to the wrong page is the next mistake. The banner tells the truth about a different offer than the one on the link, because you duplicated a Canva file and forgot to change the sentence when you changed the tracking link. Or the banner is true and the landing page you wrote is a softer story that never mentions the action. Match the file to the page this link opens. When the link changes to a new offer, the file changes too, and the sub2 changes with it.

Reusing the sub id is the reporting mistake. You export a new PNG, you upload it over the old ad, and s2 still says banner-v1. Two pictures now share a CVR. You cannot scale “the winner” because you cannot see it. Take a new sub2 at the moment the file changes. Pausing the old ad is not the same as separating the rows. The old clicks remain, and the new clicks must not join them.

Pointing the ad at the preview URL means the design never had a chance. The file can be honest and well sized, and Maxlead still records no click, because the publisher id was never on the destination. Set the destination to the tracking link and confirm it with Activity before the source spends. Do not design a placement the offer forbids and hope the creative quality will excuse the source. Do not stuff the payout, the source, and three tracker ids into one sub id because you were in a hurry. You have eight sub ids. Use them so each value stays one fact.

Do not scale a creative because the export looks sharp on a retina screen. The placement may show it tiny, cropped, or muted. Judge the version the visitor gets, then judge the sub id on the network. A sharp file with a false claim is worse than a plain file that matches the page.

How to read EPC and CVR before you scale

The creative you scale is a sub id, not a Canva project name. Open the performance report for the days the native ads ran. Keep the offer and sub1 fixed, so Spain on that source is the only traffic in the comparison. Read each sub2 as its own creative. banner-v1 is one file. The next sub2 is the other file. If you changed a file without changing sub2, do not scale that row. Split it first, even if that means the next days are the only clean days you have.

CVR is approved conversions divided by clicks on that sub id. A video can earn more clicks than a banner and still lose on CVR if the extra people do not complete the action, or if they complete it and get rejected. Rejected actions are not in the numerator. Pending actions are not in it either. A very high CVR on a short click count is not a reason to dump the rest of the budget into that file. One approval on a handful of clicks will look like a triumph and then vanish. This article is not setting a minimum sample, and Maxlead is not publishing a target CVR for native creatives here. Stay on the current spend until you would make the same choice if the next clicks did not convert.

EPC is approved earnings per click on that same row. It is the figure that already combines “did they approve” with “what did those approvals pay,” without you typing a payout onto the banner. Compare EPC across the creative sub ids. Scale the higher one when the click count is past the fluke stage, the claim still matches the page, the country is still allowed, and the offer is still approved for your account. If the higher EPC belongs to a file you have since edited, that EPC describes the old file. The new file has to earn its own sub id. Do not give the new file the old file’s budget on credit.

Use the conversion report to see which sub2 the approved rows carry. Use Activity if a new upload seems to be clicking through on the old sub id. That usually means the ad destination was duplicated and nobody changed s2. Fix the link, then judge the new row on its own. The weekly payout will include approved earnings from whichever file actually earned them. It will not include a pending spike you saw the hour you exported the video, and it will not include rejected clicks you talked yourself into counting because the video was expensive to make.

Where to start

Canva is how you make a banner or a short video when the offer did not give you one. Maxlead is how you track the click, with your publisher id and a sub id per creative, and how you see EPC and CVR before you scale. Match the claim to the page. Do not invent a bonus or a payout. Change the sub id when the file changes. Leave the preview URL out of the ad.

The tracking link comes from the offer on your account. Start at the Maxlead homepage.