The problems with Facebook ads

For us, like affiliates, they are not only social networks but also a source of income. They have huge amounts of quality traffic in every country.

“Then why not every Facebook media buyer is not a millionaire.” you will ask. “Buy traffic, send it to your funnel, make money!”

Well, the answer is very simple! Because is not so easy to make money with Facebook paid ads.

Why Facebook doesn’t work with CPA marketing

Let's start from the beginning:

What we promote like CPA affiliates? CPA offers from different verticals: dating(adult and mainstream), nutra (weight loss, ED), and sweepstakes offers.

Do you know what all these offers have in common? In 9 out 10 cases you will never meet a sexy girl who is next to you and you will never lose weight only with some magical formula without entering the gym.

You know it, I know it, and unfortunately, Facebook also knows it. This is the first thing why it's so hard to promote CPA offers on Facebook - because in most cases they are shady.

I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's hard especially for new affiliates. You will need a good cloaker, credit cards, domains, some technical knowledge, and in the end, despite everything, you will still be banned from Facebook's AI.

But let’s suggest you will find a good "white" lead generation offer in US GEO and you will run it without problems on Facebook. You will face fierce competition like some brands (Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Samsung) or famous media buying agencies with big budgets and already optimized pixels, landing pages, and creatives. Facebook is a traffic beast and your budget like a new affiliate will be blown away especially in the most competitive GEOs. 

I'm sure you already got it - it is not so easy for new affiliates to run CPA campaigns on Facebook like some gurus pretend to it is. 

Then how you will run your campaign and start making good money? 

Fortunately, there are other traffic types which are not so strict and expensive.

The affiliate friendly alternatives to Facebook ads 

Push traffic. 

In the past few years push traffic has been making good money and many new media buyers started their affiliate journey with it.

Push traffic comes from Push Notifications Ads - a small notification window that appears on your mobile device or your laptop.

Examples of push ads

Sweepstake creative:

Another sweepstake creative for Playstation 5: 

Weight loss creative: 

 A typical dating creative:

As you can see they have one small image (icon) and one big image. Also, you have a title and below some text. And that is it – very simple but effective format.

Pros of push notification ads:

- Very easy to create them and start your campaign even for new affiliates

- Low price – some GEOs you will pay 0.001$ per click

- High CTR

- You can advertise everything (if it is not against the network’s rules)

- Good for lead generation offers, especially SOI offers.

Cons of Push notifications ads:

- User needs to opt-in first

- Advertisers need to change creatives often

- Not great for direct linking and high-payout offers

- Moderate competition

Pro tip:

Please be sure your title and text from the push creatives match with your landing page’s headlines. This will increase your conversion rate for sure. Also do not test more than 7 creatives at once.

You can start with 6 creatives and 3 angles – 2 different images per angle and split test them.

Pop traffic

The Second traffic type which is very comfortable for new affiliates is pop traffic.

Pop-ups are new windows that “pop up” over the top of the webpage you are browsing now. They can be very annoying but also they can be a gold mine for a media buyer.

Pros of pop-up traffic:

- very cheap traffic

- you have one less step to optimize it

- there is no “banner blindness”

- easy to start your campaigns

- huge traffic volumes

- you can use pop-ups even for adult dating

Cons of Pop-traffic: 

- A lot of bot traffic. You should know how to create black and white lists and filter your traffic

- Internet visitors hate pop-up traffic and use ad-blockers to block them

- low quality

- your landing pages need to be optimized for very fast loading

My pro tips for pop-up traffic:

Ask manager or network’s support for blacklist before you start your campaign and block the sources that they will give you. This will save you money from the beginning.

It’s also really important to optimize your landing pages for speed – this will increase your conversion rate and increases your ROI.

Last but not least, don’t run your first campaign in tier 1 GEO like US or UK for example because there is a lot of competition there. Better choose Tier 2 or tier 3 countries and test offers from these GEOs!

Native traffic

The next major traffic type is native traffic. 

Native advertising is the use of paid ads that match the look, feel, and function of the media format in which they appear. You can often see native ads as recommended content on a web page.

In recent years native ads on mobile almost doubled their presence and in 2025 the whole native advertising sector is predicted to grow to $400 billion. It is a huge traffic source for every affiliate.

Examples of native ads

Of course, here we also have pros and cons:

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Pros of native traffic: 

- Huge traffic volumes

- Medium quality traffic

- Native ads can hold a lot of trust when they are shown on some premium news sites

- High CTR

- Site visitors prefer native ads compared to banner ads

- They are not as strict as social media ads platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest

Cons of Native traffic: 

- It’s more expensive than push and pop-up traffic

- You will need a big budget to test and optimize your creatives

- Accidental clicks because site visitors think it is a site content

- Very high competition especially in tier 1 countries

- Not recommended for new affiliates. 

Extra tips for native traffic:

First, if you are on a tight budget don’t even think about starting with native – you will most likely lose your money fast. Second – when you decide on what vertical to run speak with your manager in the traffic source and ask for some help – good and bad placements, creatives, and what times of day convert the best.

Don’t run native campaigns without a tracker and landing page – this is a mistake that a lot of new media buyers make in their first days. If you are running a tracker on a self-hosted server, make sure your server can handle the amount of traffic without any lag.

Recommended Native Traffic Source: 

1. Taboola – this is a premium native advertising network. They claim to have over 1 billion users every month so you have enough traffic to test and scale once you find your winning combo. Here you need to start your campaign with a minimum of one hundred dollars. 

2. Outbrain – this is another good place to start with native traffic. They also have a lot of traffic and placements so you will need to find and block the sources which don’t make you money. The Minimum budget for a single campaign is $10/day or $300/month and the minimum CPC is 0.03$ 

Good luck with your native campaigns!

SEO traffic.

SEO means Seach Engine Optimization. In simple terms, it means the process of improving your site to increase its visibility for relevant searches in search engines like Google and Bing.

The better visibility your pages have in these searches, the more likely you are to garner attention and attract visitors to your affiliate site.

Some people consider it for “free” traffic type but I think it’s not right because in SEO you invest your time and if you are doing it by the rules you need to wait weeks and months for some money in your bank account. Plus if you don’t have writing skills you need to hire a writer who will create content for you.

Pros of SEO traffic:

- An ideal case you invest time not money

- You can promote everything not only CPA offers

- You own the traffic

- High-quality traffic

Cons of SEO traffic: 

- SEO will take a long time to see good results

- Unless you are an SEO specialist you will need time and to learn SEO

- You need to follow strictly Google rules because over 90 % of SEO traffic comes from big G

- You need to have some technical skills

- Your site always can be hit by new Google algorithm updates and ruin your efforts in one night

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Neil Patel’s blog is a good place where you can start learning the SEO basics and affiliate marketing at all. Strongly recommended for all affiliate marketers! Here you will find his free SEO tool. Check it out.

Conclusion

If you are new to media-buying and the affiliate world, the best traffic types you can start with are push or pop-up traffic.

If you are a more experienced affiliate and have trust in your skills and knowledge or have a big budget you can always try native advertising.

For new affiliates who have no money but a lot of time SEO traffic is the logical choice.

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