Good day! 

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Dear media buyers, 

Today’s material is about one of my all-time favorite ad formats - the almighty pop traffic. 

Year after year we read “Pop traffic is dead” or “it’s very hard with pop traffic these days”, or “I can’t make a profit with pops”. 

The truth is that Pop Ads are still alive. And yes, there are new ad formats, but still every affiliate can make good money with this traffic. 

Before anything, let me explain what pop traffic consists of. There are 2 types of pop traffic:

- Pop-up traffic: these are windows or tabs that open after you visit a page. The visitor sees it over the page that they visited, and, for this reason, many people say pop-traffic is aggressive or annoying, or that it ruins the user’s experience. 

- Pop-under traffic: the only difference is that pop-under appears underneath the page that visitors see at the moment and the ad is visible after the user closes this page. It’s a little less aggressive ad format, but still can be very efficient. 

Of course, like every traffic type, pop-ups and pop-unders have their pros and cons. 

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Pros of pop-up traffic

- It’s very difficult to miss it out. Users can only block these ads if they use an ad blocker, but the network is constantly improving their code so, sometimes, even ad blockers can’t help against pop-up windows. 

- There’s a lot of traffic - and you can find it easily! There are a lot of networks that sell pop-ups and pop-unders.

- It’s cheap - yes, pop traffic is cheap. Even cheaper than push notifications. 

- Because it’s cheap, you can use it for brand awareness - some years ago, the first adult cam sites bought a lot of pop for this reason. 

- Pop-traffic is like a punch in the face - directly to the point. 

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Cons of pop-up traffic 

- They often don’t have the best quality - it gets mixed with some bot traffic and users hate it, because it ruins their interaction with the page they’re seeing at the moment.

- Many site owners don’t like pop-ups because their bounce rate increases

- Sometimes it gets hard to optimize pop-up traffic - in some GEO, the traffic volumes are huge and you’ll need to aggressively cut all bad performing sources, which will take you time and money (in order to identify them)

- Pop-ads are blocked by default in the Chrome browser - it’s a cat-mouse game between Google and traffic sources.

- Using pop-ups may also affect your website ranking on Google, so be warned if you want to promote your e-commerce site with pop traffic. 

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Pros of pop-unders

- They are less invasive than pop-ups 

- They are better for the user experience

- Traffic quality is higher 

- The visitor actually has a choice - they can see the pop-under or close it

- They are also good for brand awareness

Cons of pop-unders

- You can find bot traffic in this format as well

- It gets harder for mobile users to see them

- The user can’t see the ad immediately 

- They are a bit more expensive than pop-up ads, especially if you buy from premium sites

Tired of all these pros and cons and explanations? You just want to start your pop campaigns, right? 

Ok then, let me explain what to do and not to do when you’re running pop campaigns: 

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1. Don’t run a RON campaign. If your network has premium inventory, you should start to run from it. I’m not saying you will have a positive ROI from the beginning if you follow this advice, but you’ll have bigger chances of seeing a profit.

2. Before starting to buy pop ads, ask your Account Manager for whitelists and blacklists. You can also test the traffic and make your own, based on your experience. Pro-tip: start promoting offers with low payouts - just a few cents are enough. For example, you can promote push subscription offers. If a source doesn’t convert, and you spend 3x your offer’s payout, you can add it to your blacklist. 

3. Don’t start a pop campaign without landing pages - if you’re lucky, there’s a chance you’ll make some money with pop and direct traffic, but in most cases you’ll just burn it. 

4. Always use a tracker! This is important, and the tracker will help you optimize your data in the fastest and easiest way. Pro-tip: if you use a cloud-hosted tracker, please check that your paid plan corresponds to the volume you’ll run, otherwise at the end of the month you’ll be paying extra money. You can also use a self-hosted solution - then, be sure your VPS can handle all the traffic. 

5. Set up a bot trap - some trackers nowadays have their internal system to detect bot traffic, but you can always double check. Learn more here about the bot trap. 

6. Find IP ranges on Facebook, Google, Twitter, other social media and search engines, and block them on the source level before starting your campaign. You can apply the same strategy with data centers such as Ocean Digital, Vultr, OVH, etc. 

7. Learn how to set up automatic rules. 

Let’s say your offer has 1€ payout, then you could set up something like:

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Those are only examples, they can vary and depend on how your network works. Some trackers also have similar auto-optimization rules, just read the documentation or talk with the tracker’s support team. 

- Don’t be a lazy affiliate - make different campaigns for desktop and mobile, OS and ISP/Wi-Fi - segment your campaigns, and you’ll have better results.

- Try using an alert box code on your landing page - this should increase the visitor’s curiosity. 

- Try being risky and use scripts other than “back button” script or mobile vibrate script.

And, what offers can you promote with pop traffic?

I’d start with something easy - SOI offers or 1 or 2 click pin submits. Good verticals to start working with pops are adult, antivirus, utilities and sweepstakes. It depends a lot on the origin of the visitors.

To finish, I’ll tell you why pop traffic is still one of the best choices to start with media buying in 2022: 

1. At the moment there is no competition like there was 3-4 years ago - now there is more format diversification. 

2. Less competition means lower traffic prices

3. Big volumes 

4. Easy to scale 

5. By using pop ads, you skip one step from the affiliate funnel - the ad creative. 

6. Users will see your landing page immediately. 

That’s all for today! 

See you next week!  💪🏼