Popunder ads are like vinyl records. For years, people have been saying that this format is dead, but it has remained a staple of the industry due to its unmatched quality.

Also known as onClick ads, popunders are extremely effective and they are suitable for affiliates of all levels. That said, this format is known for being beginner-friendly, making it a great entry point for rookie affiliates.

[FREE PDF] Popunder Traffic: Benchmarks & Market Trends 2021

At PropellerAds, one of our specialties is pop traffic, so we have a pretty good grip on how this veteran format is currently performing. And, although it’s a good fit for newbies, you still need to pay attention to key elements that can make or break your campaigns.

Below, we’ll go over a few tips to help beginners get started with this format.


Why Are Popunders Still Popular?

Although the rumors surrounding popunders come around every year, this format is doing much better than just fine.

  • More than 1 billion users employ popunders
  • Advertisers, publishers, and affiliates are seeing good ROI with popunders
  • Affiliates don’t need exceptional skills or prior experience to launch these campaigns

Is Popunder a Good Format for Beginners?

Popunders are an outstanding choice for beginner affiliates for a variety of reasons. Logic suggests that the best campaigns come from experienced affiliates – and that may be true to some extent – but popunders have a short learning curve.

New affiliates don’t require much (or sometimes any) practice to create a profitable campaign because it’s a relatively simple process that involves a format that consumers are used to.

In addition, you won’t need to create banners, ad copy, or any creative as long as you have a landing page – which is usually provided in the offer. Bidding models are also extremely friendly and straightforward. Plus, we also provide in-house tracking and other additional features, so you don’t have to worry about getting a ton of extra tools.


How Does PropellerAds Guarantee Quality Pop Traffic?

For naysayers, quality has always been a big minus when working with pop traffic. And, in some cases, traffic providers don’t take the necessary steps to protect their affiliates.

Our team works relentlessly to protect our members and we have a variety of protocols in place that help:

  • Prevent bot traffic through innovative anti-fraud features
  • Ensure quality traffic by avoiding partnerships with unreliable websites
  • Regular review and cleaning processes, including the elimination of proxy and XML traffic as well as monitoring of the sites we work with

The Rookie Playbook: Tips to Help New Affiliates Get Started

Below, we’ve put together a series of essential tips for beginner affiliates.


Vertical and CPA Offer

The key for new affiliates is to focus on offers and verticals that have an easy conversion flow. This will allow you to practice, plus this strategy tends to be budget-friendly, which will help you garner more experience. Additionally, remember to focus on tier-3 countries that are also more affordable and go for higher-tier locations once you understand what works and what doesn’t.

Some of the hottest verticals for pop traffic in 2020 include:

  • iGaming
  • Utilities (perfect for beginners)
  • Mobile Subscriptions (perfect for beginners)
  • Finance
  • Sweepstakes (perfect for beginners)

Hot details

According to our statistics, here are the verticals and GEOs that are super hot on popunder right now. You can find a great many offers in Zeydoo CPA Network.

Sweepstakes

Device 
Mobile – Android
GEOsUS TH IT DE ES

Utilities

Device 
Mobile – iOS
GEOsUS SA BR TH GB

Mobile subscriptions

Device 
Mobile – Android
GEOsPH EG AE ID SA

Bidding Model

The next step is to choose a bidding model. The best option will depend on your expertise level, so:

Total Beginners – CPA Goal Bidding

If you are simply buying traffic, don’t know how to optimize, but still want to get conversions at a certain price, you should choose CPA Goal. Just remember that:

  • You have to know the conversion price, which is the same as your CPA offer payout
  • Depending on your targeting settings, the campaigns may exceed your budget by 20%. To compensate for this, set your CPA goal 20% lower than your actual goal

Watch our FREE webinar on how to set up a CPA Goal 2.0 campaign

✈️ Medium-Level Affiliates – SmartCPM

If you don’t know how to set the right bids or want to find zones for whitelisting and blacklisting, you should use SmartCPM bidding. Through SmartCPM, you can set a fixed bid for each placement, which allows you to get more traffic. But, you won’t be able to access all of the potential traffic.

Experienced Affiliates – CPM

Affiliates that want to scale their campaigns, get all the available traffic, know how to optimize, and are familiar with techniques to set the right bid can work with CPM bidding. 


Creatives

Choosing and creating the creative elements for popunders is relatively simple.

You can choose to use a pre-lander, but this is optional. If it’s your first campaign ever, you may be better off sticking with the landing page provided on the offer.

If you’re getting genuinely good results with the offer, you can dedicate time to creating different pre-landers and testing them out to find the best combination. And, the good news is that your popunder creatives don’t need to be changed very often.


Features, Testing, and Insights

You also have access to a variety of features you can use to improve your results. These include:

  • Viewability: This is one of our in-house features designed to track and measure the REAL impact of your campaigns: how many interested users reached your ad, which in turn can help you get more accurate data (where those interested leads are coming from – exact zone) and improve your optimization process
  • Audiences 2.0: It’s a good idea to run a retargeting campaign and make money from users who you’ve already converted, clicked, viewed, or interacted with your landing page. Through our Audiences 2.0 feature, you can create custom retargeting audiences to get better results

Interested in learning more about launching popunder campaigns? Join our Telegram chat and subscribe to our blog newsletter 🙂

Author

While working as a writer and marketing consultant for the past 9 years, Tom has also developed a passion for the world of affiliate marketing. With first-hand experience and a solid background in online marketing, he has a deep understanding of the different ad formats, offers, and other elements that affect the performance of an affiliate campaign. Tom also loves backpacking around tropical countries, listening to the boom-bap sound of old school hip-hop, and playing amateur rugby with his local team.