With Bitcoin’s recent bounce back, cryptocurrencies have become a very popular vertical in affiliate marketing.  We wrote this guide to help you better understand this vertical and how to advertise it. In this guide, we will go over everything you need to know to run a successful crypto campaign with push ads.

About the industry

Crypto has been a red-hot topic since bitcoin’s late 2017 boom and a popular offer type among affiliates. Before we go over how to advertise it, it’s important to understand a little bit about cryptocurrencies and how they work.

Cryptocurrencies are virtual currencies that have become a popular alternative to standard currencies as a way to store value.  Their popularity has been due to a number of factors including the fact that is decentralized meaning that no one entity controls it meaning that it won’t depreciate or lose value based on the monetary actions of a government.  Another reason is that it’s very secure and transparent with a public ledger of all the transactions. The last reason is that the transaction fees with cryptocurrencies are very low compared to traditional bank fees making them more practical for business and trade. For more information about cryptocurrencies we recommend you check out this article on Investopedia.

The crypto niche stands out from the rest because of its huge payouts.  Most companies can make huge profits from clients which trickles down to affiliates as higher payouts. Although there can be a lot of money to be made with crypto, it is not the most beginner-friendly vertical and requires above-average testing budgets and good optimization.  

Key advantages of the Crypto niche:

• Incredibly high payouts
• Opportunities for large ROAS

Industry size and growth.

For the last couple of years, the crypto vertical has been popular among affiliates and grown a lot in the last few months.  At Pushground, around 7% of our campaigns are for crypto campaigns receiving on average a little less than 100 million bids every day. With this current bitcoin boom we expect the crypto vertical to continue to grow.

Target audience

The typical target audience for crypto offers is millennial men with dreams of living the rich life and money to invest. This vertical is most popular in tier 2 countries like  MX, BR, ZA, ES as well as some tier 1 countries like GB and DE.

Legal regulations

Crypto is an especially difficult vertical to promote regarding legal regulations and restrictions. Not only are there still some countries where cryptocurrencies are illegal but the number of countries with crypto ad restrictions is even more. In some countries, it is required to have legal disclosure in the ads. Furthermore, promoting cryptocurrency products or services is banned on platforms like Facebook and has tight restrictions on Google Ads. It is advisable that you look up the advertising policies regarding the promotion of cryptocurrencies in your target country before you start your campaign. Also don’t expect affiliate networks to always know the legal policies required for their offers.

About the offers

There is a variety of different types of crypto offers. The main types include driving leads and clients to cryptocurrency exchanges, Crypto gambling sites, ICOs (initial coin offerings), and Crypto investing training.

Tips to choosing the offers

The first thing to mention is that because crypto offers normally require larger test budgets, it is more important to do your research when looking for offers. Furthermore, there have been a lot of scams targeting inexperienced media buyers. Of these scams, the more common ones are misleading payout based on past crypto peaks and intentionally withholding commissions. When choosing a crypto offer, you should look for an offer with a clear and easy-to-understand message. One of the main reasons why people don’t convert is because it’s too complicated to understand.

Average payouts

As we mentioned before, Crypto offers often have some of the highest payouts in the industry. The average is normally a couple of hundred dollars but the highest can be over $1,000.

Popular affiliate networks

• Algo Affiliates
• Fox offers
• Primexbt
• Adcombo
• Olymptrade
• Olavivo
• Supremedia

How to advertise it

Crypto creatives

Just like any other push ad creative the main goal of crypto creatives is to pull in the attention of users. This is best done with images of bitcoin, cash, or wealth.  The text should always implement a wow factor while still being believable.

One common angle for crypto offers is stories of people who found a way to 10x their income with bitcoin secrets. This works well when the people in the stories appear to be just ordinary people giving the impression that anyone can do it.

Another popular angle is showing stories of successful people spilling their secrets to earning from cryptocurrencies. It is important to not use the names of celebrities or famous people to avoid legal issues or moderation problems. The idea here is to reassure the users that with the right information, making money with cryptocurrencies is easy.

Landing pages and pre-landers

For Crypto offers, pre-landers are a must. They need to persuade users of the potential of cryptocurrencies as well as simplify the process of getting started. Normally campaigns direct users to something like a news article scripted to urge them to act on the upcoming opportunity. It is also helpful to extend your funnel by collecting email subscribers on your landing pages to retarget them with content.

Optimization

Unlike most other verticals, crypto campaigns normally have to spend much more before seeing any conversions that mean the advertiser needs to know how to optimize well.  Cutting a supply too soon could mean that its testing budget was for nothing while waiting too long could lead to unnecessary ad spend. Because crypto normally has a lower than average conversion rate, it is good to find other ways to optimize your targeting before waiting for a conversion to happen. For this vertical, it’s a good idea to optimize based on things like on-page behavior and pre-lander performance before waiting for conversion.

Bid and Budget

Most crypto offers require large testing budgets, normally starting around $1,000. Crypto campaigns also often have some of the highest average CPCs allowing the to target the most premium traffic. Although they require a sizable investment, an optimized crypto campaign can generate huge profits and ROAS.

Tips from the crypto experts

To bring even more insight, we reached out to a couple of our friends and partners in the crypto niche and asked them to give you their top tips for running crypto offers. Let’s see what they have to say!

Attila with Supremedia

Our first featured guest is Supremedia who had one of their top affiliates and gurus, Attila O’dree give his 5 biggest tips when running crypto.

#1 – Run What’s Already Working, Don’t Reinvent The Wheel

Ask your rep at Supreme Media WHICH GEOS work best on PUSH. They KNOW, so start there. Pick 3. Mix it tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3.

#2 – SPY And Find The Creatives That Are PROVEN To Work

One of the biggest tricks to making crypto work is using the right angle, by angle we mean FAMOUS PERSON or SOB STORY. No joke, but this can make or break your entire campaign.

#3 – Borrow the Authority of Others

Getting those Lead to FTD Ratios up is all about being seen as trustworthy by the visitor. If they see your website is utter crap, from some random page with bunch of numbers in it, or a weird looking domain they will be freaked and run away. Use authority to your advantage!

#4 – Don’t run RON (Run of Network) Use WHITELISTS!

Your rep has to be cool (if not ask for another rep!) and they should be able to check, where do crypto offers convert the best. Once you get the whitelist, start there. I recommend splitting each zone/target into its own campaign and again splitting that further into Desktop / Mobile / Tablet, stuff just works differently for each placement.

#5 – SCALE IT with YOUR WINNERS, CANCEL THE REST!

When you find a winner, scale it by making variants of your ads. The lander doesn’t’ need much work, it’s all about refreshing the creatives.

Algo Affiliates

We also reached out to our friends at Algo Affilaites to provide their best advice to those advertising crypto offers.

• It is important to see where exactly you are going to send your traffic.
• Make sure to do the client journey by yourself from A to Z and make sure it is simple and not difficult. The more difficult it will be, the less you earn.
• Make sure to use a quality traffic source.
• Make sure to set up the campaign with a proper planning, plan the bids, plan the audience interest.
• Check and be sure that the landing page looks great on various devices.
• Always retarget your traffic where possible.
• Always perform A/B testing.
• If possible, create separate campaigns for mobile and desktop.
• Pay attention to the optimization of devices – mobile/desktop.
• Check that the language you are using in your ads fits the target audience language.
• Set up timing and schedule – people are often to be more active after working hours but during isolation they are active the whole day, so make your tests.
• Set up impressions/click limits in your campaigns – you don’t want the same user seeing the same ad several times a day.
• Always use a tracker and track the dynamic parameters.

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