The Beginner’s Guide to Popunder Traffic + Real Offers Inside
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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 or Pop Ads, Popunders are extremely effective, and they are suitable for media buyers of all levels. That said, this format is known for being beginner-friendly, making it a great entry point for rookie affiliates.
At PropellerAds, one of our specialties is Popunder ads, so we have a pretty good grip on how this veteran format is currently performing. 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 review a few tips to help beginners get started.
This article was first published on September 16, 2020, and was updated for accuracy reasons.
What is Popunder? (Briefly)
We have a detailed Popunder guide here:
In short, Popunder (or Onclick) is an ad that is displayed under a user’s active tab. In very simple words, it is when your landing page appears in a new tab behind the one a user is viewing at the moment.
Why Are Pop Up Ads Still Popular?
Although the rumors surrounding Popunders come around yearly, this format is doing much better than just fine.
- More than 1 billion users employ popunders
- Media buyers don’t need exceptional skills or prior experience to launch these campaigns
- Affiliate marketers and media buyers see good ROI with popunders — and here is a piece of proof:
Is Popunder a Good Format for Beginners?
Logic suggests that the best campaigns come from experienced affiliates – which 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.
And some additional beginner perks:
- 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 extremely friendly and straightforward — read on to learn more about them
- It is compatible with most verticals, including iGaming, Sweepstakes, Social, and any other format, including Push ads, Survey Exit, and Interstitials
- PropellerAds provides you with in-house tracking and extra tools for better convenience
How Does PropellerAds Guarantee Quality Popunder 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 thoroughly checking supply partners’ inventory
- 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 [With Real Offers]
The key for new media buyers is to focus on offers and verticals with 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 2023-2024 include:
And, the bonus part: thanks to Max Stan, marketing manager of ZeyDoo, who shared the best available offers you can try out to practice your Popunder campaigns skills.
Mobile Offers: Social, Utilities, Finance:
| 11332 | IH Dating App Android Prelander | ТОP GEO: CD, NG, EG, ML, EC, CI, TH, BR, IN, ID |
| 11330 | Shorts VT Android Prelander | ТОP GEO: BR, US, MY, NG, ML, PK, GB, VN |
| 6883 | Dating SweetMeet Android Prelander | ТОP GEO: BR, IN, MX, ID, TH, SA, CO, EG, IQ, TZ, PH, IT, JP, ZM, MZ, RO, PL, CM, TR, AR, GH |
| 11570 | Crypto Simulator Android Prelander | ТОP GEO: IN, NG, PK, ZA, GH, PH, MY, TH |
Sweepstakes:
| 10118 | Rewardis Multigeo Samsung A53 (Android) | TOP GEO: PH, BR, NG | Exclusive Sweepstakes offer from Zeydoo. A user needs to complete the survey and get a chance to win a Samsung Galaxy A53. |
Bidding Model
The next step is to choose a bidding model.
Remember: every model has its advantages. Seasoned media buyers master the art of combining them as each allows them to pick an extra piece of performing traffic for a particular offer.
However, we can loosely divide all bidding models into two categories:
| For beginners | CPA Goal, SmartCPM |
| For experienced Affiliates | CPA Goal, SmartCPM, CPM |
And here is a brief explanation of all three available bidding models:
CPA Goal
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
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.
CPM
Affiliate marketers who 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
As you already know, you don’t need any extra creatives: your users go directly to your offer’s landing page.
However, you can also use a pre-lander, an extra page that appears before your offer. This additional step of the flow might boost your conversions as they peel apart users who are not genuinely interested.
Here are some examples of good pre-lander creatives for VPNs:
Note: you don’t need to stick to a single option — A/B testing will help you find the best-converting prelander.
Extra Features
You also have access to a variety of features you can use to improve your results. These include:
Direct Click
Direct Click ads are a premium traffic format available for your Onclick campaigns. With Direct Click, you get the most engaged and active users from top-notch traffic sources.
To run a Direct Click campaign, just pick it in the Onclick Traffic Type settings:
A pro tip: Direct Click can be used as a whitelist of the top-performing sources on Onclick. It can be great for scaling, but make sure you set an increased bid from your regular Onclick campaign.
Targeting
OS, browser, GEO, browser language, connection type, proxy, zones, subzones, and audiences. All of this is easily set up on your PropellerAds self-service platform:
Retargeting (Audiences 2.0)
Collecting audiences for retargeting. Just tick the ‘Collect audiences’ when setting a campaign — and later, you can create a campaign for earning from users who you’ve already converted, clicked, viewed, or interacted with your landing page!
Campaign Audience Reach for CPM — COMING SOON
In the near future, we will announce a new feature that will allow you to choose between two audience types:
- High Intent: the most engaged users
- Wide Reach: with bigger traffic volumes, perfect for scaling and repetitive communications
- High Intent + Wide Reach: 100% of Popunder traffic is available for your campaign.
How to Combine Popunder with Other Formats?
We mentioned that Popunder is compatible with other formats — and there are no hard rules for it. Your perfect combo depends on a particular offer or test results — so you don’t have any exact recipes.
However, we created the most common flows to show you how Onclick can be combined with Survey Exit, Interstitials, and Push:
| Combo | Purpose | Comment |
| Onclick + Survey Exit | A great combination of an extensive reach on Onclick and a highly engaged audience on Survey Exit. | This couple doesn’t require any creatives; all you need is a Landing page! So it’s very easy to set up and get great results quickly! |
| Onclick + Interstitials | A perfect tandem if you promote a Utility app like a VPN or if you work with extensions. | This format combo can also work only with your LP as your creative; you don’t need much to run a first test, yet Interstitial has six creative templates to choose from, so you can unleash your creativity! |
| Onclick + Push | A classic go-to in our network: it gives you massive reach since those formats have the most traffic volume among all formats. | Onclick gives you wide coverage in tons of visits at a moderate price, while Push provides engaged users who click on your ads, thus they’re already interested in your offer! Both formats perform great. Recommended duo! |
To Sum Up
No summary is needed — you are ready to go.
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