Probably More than You Want to Know About Popunder: Webinar Questions Answered

Two weeks ago we hosted our very first webinar, which was dedicated to converting Popunder ads traffic. We would like to take time and thank you all once again for attending; you were a dream audience! [Watch it again here]

So once the webinar was over, we were left with dozens of unexpected and puzzling questions we didn’t have time to answer during the event. However, as we promised, we will address these questions now, in this post.

We have invited two of our traffic experts, to help us out with these questions, and explain in detail how it all works.

Meet Konstantin Volkov, Head of Affiliate Management Team, and Eugene Bezrodny, Business Development Manager at Affiliate Management Team.

Please note that we have kept the authors’ punctuation and spelling intact.

#1 GOOGLE’S NEW POLICY AND POPUNDER TRAFFIC VOLUMES

Robert Głowacki: What is the future of popunder traffic? I’m asking about Chrome Adblock. Did you notice any volume drop?

Konstantin: This question was asked multiple times, so perhaps it’s really of a big concern for affiliates and those advertisers that stick to Popunder ads.

Let’s start with the fact that we did not notice ANY volume drop, and it shouldn’t be surprising. First of all, we were thoroughly technically prepared for this Google update – our IT team did their utmost to meet this change head-on. We upgraded our ad formats and ad policy, and we can state that now our publishers are successfully passing all Google’s checks.

In addition, keep in mind that Google’s adblock is capable of blocking only about 17% of ads (if not less), just like in Shakespeare’s play “Much ado about nothing.”

In other words, Popunder remains one of the top formats with the biggest traffic volumes and one of the best performance benchmarks.

#2 TRACKING TOOLS AND “STEALING” CAMPAIGNS

Robert-Jan Keizer: Any free Voluum alternative for getting started with popunder traffic?

Konstantin: Not really, at least we don’t know any free one that can be compared performance-wise to the paid alternatives. Though, if you know any, please, feel free to add a comment below.

As well, we are closely working with trackers to provide our clients with special offers and discounts. You can check what’s going on in “Special offers” tab on your Advertiser’s dashboard.

Mohamed Mustafa: Do you steal affiliates’ campaigns if they activate conversion tracking in PropellerAds and their campaigns are doing good?

Konstantin: Well, we would definitely do that if we wanted to destroy our business for good 🙂

So why don’t we do that? There are several reasons: tens of thousands of campaigns are launched daily, and we can’t dedicate a separate department to copy/paste campaigns – it’s just a meaningless job that would require a LOT of company’s resources. You see? It’s quite complicated technically.

Let’s continue. Our main goal is customers’ success. It may sound pathetic, but in reality, we can’t kill the business of our clients by copying their campaigns – sooner or later they would leave us. We can’t afford to lose skilled affiliates, who know how to convert traffic and efficiently work with CPA networks.

If no one can convert the traffic, publishers and advertisers would simply look for a different traffic supplier.

#3 VERTICALS AND GEOS

Wallace Amos: What are the best verticals for Propeller Ads that convert?

Eugene: Talking about Popunder, I would say that the best verticals are:

• Sweepstakes
• Pin submits
• Mobile apps
• Finance (Forex, Crypto)
• Gambling

We also received tons of questions regarding the top GEOs. Here are the leaders in traffic volume:

• India
• Indonesia
• United States
• Brazil
• Philippines

#4 ALL ABOUT SMARTCPM

Edgar Zakaryan: It happens a lot with my campaigns when I have a profitable campaign in SmartCPM model, but when want to get more traffic from profitable placements by creating fixed CPM whitelist camp with a high bid, the conversion rate drops even though I’m paying more for same placement. What could cause this?

Konstantin: Actually, many factors could cause this, so I really recommend you to contact us directly in a chat or via email, because we have to review campaigns to be able to determine the reasons behind poor performance.

Oliver Krohne: What is the reason to use CPM over SmartCPM if we set a high CPM with SmartCPM?

Konstantin: SmartCPM is, primarily, a testing tool, allowing you to gauge the traffic quality and estimate the current rates for various traffic zones. Once you have a whitelist in place, CPM campaigns would become more beneficial for you in terms of ROI and traffic volumes.

Michele Forte: Why SmartCPM does not allow a lower bid than 0.50 if then in practice bids will somehow be lower for Tier 3 GEOs?

Eugene: This is a maximum bid, yet you will always pay the real price (can be lower) no matter how high you initial bid was. Here’s some additional information on how SmartCPM works.

#5 CPA, SmartCPA, AND CONVERSIONS

Leong Ying Hsien: How often should I re-create/duplicate my SmartCPA campaigns in order to get nice volume all the time?

Konstantin: It depends on the number of competitors on a certain traffic slice and the frequency they are launching new campaigns. So let’s say you are targeting a very narrow traffic slice (GEO + Platform) in Tanzania; very likely the performance of your SmartCPA campaign wouldn’t change much over time. But if we take a Tier-1, highly-competitive market – you would be outbidden pretty fast. If your competitor is better at optimization, and bids higher – he would get all the traffic.

So, I would say, benchmark yourself against your biggest competitors and monitor the performance. As soon as you notice that the results are dropping – go ahead and optimize your campaigns.

Adrian Soh: Will SmartCPA drain all our budget if no conversion is recorded?

Eugene: No, in most of the cases the campaign will stop automatically once a certain threshold is reached. Let me give you an example, if the total budget of your campaign is $200, and you are not getting any conversions at $100 mark, the system will stop your campaign.

The algorithm is designed in a way to minimize your testing spend and avoid “draining” your budget.

Losid Berberi: What is your suggested campaign test budget when testing new campaigns? Let’s say we have two CPA offer with $1.5 payout, where we split-test 3 landers on Tier 1 or Tier 2.

Eugene: I would recommend at least $150 for Tier 1 and $100 for Tier 2. It’s a good idea to go through our post: What is a Tier of Traffic and What Tier Should You Choose?

Peter Bennett: How do you calculate effective slice limit for SmartCPA campaigns?

Konstantin: Based on our experience, we would suggest the following: 3000 for Tier 1 and 2000-3000 for Tier 2.

#6 CREATIVES AND OPTIMIZATION

Robert-Jan Keizer: Best way to A/B test and is it just changing slightly a thing or just a whole site?

Konstantin: Even the slightest change can impact the result. Try moving from general to specific. Test several landing pages, and define which one shows the best performance. Once you have a leader, start optimizing details: CTAs, colors, registration forms, and creatives. Here are some helpful tips on choosing a landing page builder.

Andrea Cardelli: What is the best destination for Popunder? Website or a landing page?

Konstantin: Without a doubt, it’s easier to convert traffic, if you have a landing page. While I’m aware of some cases where the companies send traffic exclusively to their homepage (a big, reputable broker), I’m not sure this approach can work for the majority of advertisers and affiliates.

In other words, we recommend using a special landing page or even a pre-lander for your Popunder campaigns: it should contain a clear offer and nothing that can distract a user from completing the target action.

Oliver Krohne: Does it make a difference to buy traffic from many countries in one campaign vs. having one campaign for each country? Any preference to win the bid for the impression?

Konstantin:  It would depend on the pricing model you select. While mixing GEOs is a common practice for CPM campaigns, we don’t usually recommend to combine multiple geo-targets within the same CPA campaign as it would seriously complicate the optimization process.

The rule of thumb for CPA campaigns is picking just one GEO per campaign. This way you can build a smarter and more cost-effective campaign – evaluate your segmentation and have a clear idea of where to move next. Maybe you would find that certain GEOs just don’t live up to your expectations, or that, for example, Android is outperforming iOS?

To put it another way, you are getting invaluable insights into what works, and what and how you can improve.

#7 TRAFFIC AND CPA NETWORKS

Ivan Krokas: Do you resell traffic from other networks?

Konstantin: Yes, we are integrated with the majority of the largest networks. Our cooperation is based on RTB (real-time bidding), which is in the very interest of our clients as they get guaranteed access to the most varied traffic streams.

Miloš Crnadak: How much traffic do you keep for your managed campaigns?

Eugene: Well, we don’t keep anything. In terms of traffic availability, there is completely no difference between managed campaigns and SSP campaigns. The system doesn’t differentiate between the account managers and Self-Serve clients and distributes traffic according to bids and campaign settings.

Vladimir Oreshkin:  How can an average CPA marketer compete with CPA networks that have much higher payout rates on their offers?

Konstantin: First of all, you should understand that CPA networks need you as they have to diversify the audience. Secondly, if you are delivering the volume, you can always negotiate the payouts with your CPA networks. Usually, they are ready to meet the high-performing clients halfway, meaning you can get a 20-30% increase.

And another aspect, which is quite obvious in my opinion, is simply stop being an “average” CPA marketer: produce better creatives and learn to optimize.

Hector Egas: Is it possible to arrange a deal to buy traffic exclusively and how does it work?

Eugene: No, we have moved away from this practice.

Abdel Fatah Elamy Hodhod: How do you overcome advertisers bidding way too high, increasing their daily cap which makes all bids below useless. That almost always affects my campaigns negatively if not kill it actually.

Konstantin: Higher bids mean more profit for our publishers, and that’s exactly what keeps them working with us. And there is also a business aspect to that. It’s impossible to develop as a company, invest in new technologies if we are not making a sustainable profit.

There’s a simple, self-evident interconnection between technological progress and a profit of all stakeholders involved. In other words, we see high bids as a positive indicator for the industry.

We hope that we answered all your questions about Popunder, but just in case you came up with the new ones – you are always welcome to ask us in the comment section below, or contact our support if you have specific questions regarding your campaign performance.