Push Notifications Ads Strategy: Create a Push Campaign That Will Convert
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PropellerAds was the first advertising platform in the market to introduce Push Notifications ads. Now we deliver more than 7,000,000,000 push notification impressions: our push subscribers database has almost 1 billion active subscribers.
So, it means you might be just one campaign away from your share of this enormous profit source.
But not just any campaign. You need the one that will get your offer the attention it deserves — and get full control over the visibility, delivery, and CTRs of your push ad.
How to create such a campaign — and combine it with other formats?
Here is your guide on working at PropellerAds, the first push ads network.
The article was first published on September 29, 2021, and was updated for accuracy reasons.
7-Step Push Notification Strategy
Setting up your first Push Notification campaign and buy Push Notification traffic is easy, but there are some pitfalls to avoid (of course!). To help you get off to a flying start, we have put together a list of 7 steps you should take to succeed.
1. Define Your Objectives
Any strategy usually starts with defining your goals. These goals will determine your campaign’s target audience, the creative you will use, and, of course, your budget.
What do you want to achieve with Push traffic?
- Brand awareness
- Lead generation
- Customer Acquisition
- User Retention
- App installs
- Boosting some content
The answer will give ideas for your creatives, campaign settings, and targeting options.
2. Manage your ad frequency
Feeling the urge to remind users of your offer all the time? Not the best idea. Have you heard of ‘alert fatigue’ and ‘notification overkill’? That’s what you risk to suffer from if you don’t set your ad frequency right.
“But with so many apps and services out there demanding attention, users are starting to reach a point of notification fatigue,” AdWeek writes.
So how do you avoid it? The solution isn’t overly complicated: reduce the frequency of your push notifications and focus on content that will catch users’ attention. Or, if you really don’t know what the right frequency is, follow our recommendations:
- Frequency/ Capping by Clicks – 1 click per user in 24 hours.
- Frequency/ Capping by Impressions – 3 views per client in 24 hours.
Note: The feature is available for CPC, SmartCPC, and CPM. With the CPM Pricing Model, you can even set your frequency by the number of clicks one visitor leaves on your ad or just by the number of impressions.
3. Target The Right Audience
A question of utmost importance is targeting the right audience. Don’t try to appeal to everyone; define who your most relevant user is — and aim them precisely.
With PropellerAds, you have the ability to target specific audiences with unprecedented accuracy. Just keep these parameters in mind:
User Activity
Our smart algorithms separate users into three categories by their activity. High User Activity is the audience with the freshest users who just subscribed to push notifications — and it’s the best targeting option for testing new offers. Medium and Low are the categories that include people who have been subscribed for some time — and can convert less actively but bring profit thanks to the traffic volumes and lower prices.
GEOs & Bidding Model
You can select your desired conversion price depending on the GEO you target. Some GEOs, like Tier 3, are cheaper than others — so we recommend creating separate campaigns for different GEOs or at least Tiers.
Pro-tip: Depending on the bidding model you choose, you can benefit from PropellerAds automation tools that help you control your budget. Here is how it works:
-CPC, SmartCPC, CPM: You can use customized recommended rates for specific GEOs. Simply choose regions or particular countries you want to target, and our algorithm will set the optimal bid for your choice.
–CPA Goal: Choose the country or region you need and indicate a desired price for conversion. Thanks to CPA Goal algorithms, you won’t spend more than this fixed price.
Smart Optimization Tools
Don’t have all the experience or time to optimize your campaigns? Just decide what is the ideal price you’re willing to pay for conversion, and the platform will do all the work for you, optimizing everything until you reach your target price.
In addition, you can also set a test budget, either automatically or manually.
The feature is available for SmartCPC, CPM, and CPC — and goes by default for CPA Goal.
Technology
Pick the right OS/Platform, browser, browser language, connection type, and mobile ISP.
These parameters are especially significant when you promote an app or software that has some specific tech specifications. For example, there is no use in targeting Android owners when running an iOS app ad.
Besides, you can exclude all proxy traffic or, on the contrary, target it specifically.
Zones and Collected Audiences
You can include or exclude zones or subzones. This way, you will switch off slices of traffic that don’t bring you profit and go with only the most converting traffic sources.
Besides, PropellerAds allows you to collect your audiences for retargeting — and you can include these audiences in your campaign.
Everything you need to know about retargeting strategies
Interest & Demographics Audiences
Don’t have your own audiences? PropellerAds has some ready ones for you. Our smart algorithms, based on machine learning, separate users into custom audiences by interests, gender, and age.
4. Add In-Page Push for a More In-Depth Reach
This format is especially handy when targeting iOS users. The trick is that In-Page Push ads look as natively as classical push notifications — but users don’t need to subscribe to receive them.
Look at one of such push ads examples.
Isn’t this nice?
5. Schedule Your Campaign
The general rule of thumb is to contact users only if you really have something to say. So, schedule the right time (in EST format) and date for your push notifications to remain unintrusive and relevant.
Just one graph to show you why it is important: the most common unsubscribe reasons from Push Notifications by verticals. Definitely, something to learn!
6. Get creative!
To make your ads efficient, you must wow and entertain your audience. How exactly? With bright images, catchy copy, and a couple of other tricks, PropellerAds has to offer.
Here’s what you can play with:
- Icon or an image (192 x 192px – max 200KB)
- Image (360×240 – max 720KB)
- Catchy title (up to 30 characters)
- Short description (up to 40 characters)
- Button with Custom Text (up to 15 characters)
- Push badges: small additional icons. Choose one or rely on the auto-badge selection
7. Think About Finances
Budgeting is a tricky field when it comes to media buying. Should you go “all-in” with one ad? Should you try and A/B test a couple of creatives? Or even diversify your campaign with various ad formats? These are the questions you must ask yourself before launching a new campaign.
To simplify your life, we have created the Traffic Estimator tool. With it, you can check approximate ad campaign outcomes (impressions, bids) based on the format and your pricing model, targeting, and budget.
The tool is available on the Self-Serve Platform in the Create Campaign area:
Bonus: Ready Checklist for Your Push Traffic Strategy
So, you defined your goal and learned what tools you can use at PropellerAds. How to do it wisely, though?
Together with Alex Shovkun, PropellerAds Account Strategist, we prepared a quick sheet for you:
Push Ads + Other Formats: Combining Strategies
So now you know how to set a flawless push campaign based on your goals. But nobody limits you with Push Notifications, by the way. Being a very converting format by itself, Push can also make a perfect match with Popunder and Interstitials — and also come along with your social media advertising campaigns.
So, how does the format mix work?
Maximum Push Notifications + Popunder
Finding the right way to promote your product is challenging. OnClick Popunder ads are possibly one of the best ways to get the word out, as the cost-per-visit rates of Popunder campaigns are relatively low. This way, you’ll manage to increase brand awareness in no time.
However, you may want to reach more engaged users, and Push Notifications are a better fit as they require users to click on an ad before they are taken to the offer. So, mixing both formats will create maximum reach and perfect click-through rates.
PropellerAds’ analytics team has been monitoring these “complex” cases. They searched for the optimal ad solution and found that Push Notifications are almost universal for any type of offer or product. Especially those that tend to struggle with OnClick.
We’ve checked the results of the top-performing verticals for Push ads and Popunder. For this, we analyzed the percentage of the generated impressions by top-performing verticals over the span of a month:
As you can see, the top-performing vertical for Push is Utilities & Software, followed by Finance and then Sweepstakes. Utilities & Softwares is a clear leader in performance for Popunder as well, being responsible for 27.31% of the total impressions. The following verticals for this format are iGaming and News & Media.
However, as with anything in advertising, you should take the time to test and find the best option for your product.
Higher CTR: Push Ads + Interstitials
Interstitials are the best pick for media buyers and affiliate marketers who want to get in the user’s face with short, memorable text and bright, interactive designs. They can be set to appear or close after a certain amount of time or even during transitions or breaks in user activity.
Push ads, on the other hand, can be displayed at any time to complement the content you’re viewing. If you have something scarce, urgent, or exclusive, this is the best format to use. People will react to your offer almost instantly and can even go down the funnel more easily.
Using these two formats together will greatly benefit your campaigns. As a strategy, you can target your users with Interstitials and then retarget your collected audience with Push to improve your CTR. This will help you achieve great campaign results in terms of CR and ROI.
Of course, we had to check the volume of interstitial advertising impressions compared to Push Notifications, as we did for Popunders, and the results are amazing! Check it out for yourself:
Utilities & Software take the lead for Interstitials as well. Making up for almost 40% of the entire Interstitial traffic, this vertical is followed by Finance and iGaming. Not bad at all! Combine these two formats, and you’ll have a sure chance to succeed.
Use this information to create a solid strategy, knowing that your best shot for a successful campaign from the start is proper testing, in-depth data analysis, and optimization.
Push Notifications Ads vs Social Media Advertising: What to Pick?
Push Notifications and Social Media advertising are two of the main advertising channels for media buyers and affiliate marketers.
But are there any differences or reasons why you’d want to choose Push Notifications over Social Media ads? Let’s take a closer look:
- Cost-effectiveness – If you’re looking to save money, the fastest way to do it is by not spending unnecessarily. PropellerAds’ Push Notifications come in handy, as its Tier 1 CPC is much lower compared to the average CPC of the most popular social networks.
- Higher viewability – Given the volume of social media posts and ads alike, along with the ever-increasing ad blindness recorded in the rows of Social Media Ads, we cannot be sure the user would even see the ad. No matter how big your budget is.
- High engagement rates – Unlike Social Media ads, Push Notifications are delivered directly to the user’s device (be it a phone or desktop). Therefore, they get all the attention. Also, since they appear as system notifications, they create a sense of urgency, inviting the user to engage with them immediately.
- Instant delivery – Got a time-sensitive offer? Well, here’s another advantage Push Notifications have. In less than a minute, you can send over a million messages and promote offers, campaigns, events – whatever you can imagine!
To Sum Up
With the right approach, push traffic can be a big win for any advertiser willing to stay in close touch with its clients.
And now launching a Push Notifications campaign becomes even simpler as you can access it on the PropellerAds Self-Serve Platform!
Time to test?
