Choosing a partner for purchasing traffic
Choosing a partner for purchasing traffic is one of the fundamental decisions in arbitrage, directly affecting the profitability of the entire bundle. This issue is especially acute in the mobile segment, where competition and technological nuances reach their peak. In order not to waste your budget at the start and lay a solid foundation for future campaigns, you need to approach the selection process consciously. If you already have a specific project and are looking for an expert opinion on the selection of sources, you can always Write to the manager and get advice based on practical experience. This article will help systematize knowledge and provide a clear algorithm of actions for analyzing and choosing the optimal platform.
A correctly selected advertising network for mobile traffic becomes not just a click supplier, but a strategic partner. The wrong choice, on the contrary, leads to working with the wrong audience, fraud and, as a result, to a negative ROI. Therefore, an arbitrageur needs to develop the skill of analyzing networks not by their marketing promises, but by a set of objective technical and business criteria.
Key criteria for choosing an advertising network for mobile traffic
During the initial analysis of the advertising network market, it is easy to get lost in the variety of offers. Each platform claims high quality of its traffic and unique technologies. The task of an arbitrageur is to separate the marketing component from the real opportunities. To do this, it is necessary to evaluate each potential partner by several key parameters.
Payment models and their compliance with the goals
The payment model determines what action the advertiser pays money for. This is the first and most important filter in the selection. An incorrectly chosen model can make even the highest quality traffic unprofitable for your specific offer. The main models offered by almost any modern advertising network for mobile traffic include:
CPA (Cost Per Action) - payment for a target action. This can be registration, making a deposit, filling out an application or a purchase. The model is ideal for most offers in arbitrage, as it is directly tied to the result that the advertiser pays for. Working on CPA, you minimize the risks associated with non-converting traffic.
CPI (Cost Per Install) - payment for installing an application. The main model for promoting mobile applications and games. It is important to understand that the installation itself is not the end goal. The goal is an active user who makes in-game purchases or watches ads. Therefore, when working on CPI, further analysis of the user's LTV (Lifetime Value) plays a key role. A high-quality advertising network for mobile traffic should provide tools for optimizing campaigns specifically for post-install events.
CPC (Cost Per Click) - payment per click. A classic model that is less commonly used today in pure performance marketing. It can be effective if you have a high CR (conversion rate) on the landing page and you know exactly how much you are willing to pay for the transition. Often used to test new hypotheses and creatives.
CPM (Cost Per Mille) — payment per thousand impressions. Model for outreach and branding campaigns, where the main goal is not instant conversion, but increasing brand awareness. Rarely used in arbitrage, as it poorly correlates with direct monetization.
The choice of model is directly dictated by your offer. For gambling or finance, CPA will be optimal, for utility promotion — CPI. A universal advertising network for mobile traffic will offer several options, which gives the arbitrageur flexibility.
Geo and verticals
There are no networks that would be equally strong in all countries and in all niches. Each platform has its own historically established expertise. One network can work with the Asian market for years and have huge volumes of quality traffic to nutra offers in Thailand, but be absolutely useless for dating in Latin America.
Before starting work, be sure to check with the manager which verticals and geos are their core business. Ask them to provide case studies or statistics on the volume of available traffic in the geo-vertical combination you are interested in. This will help avoid a situation where you set up a campaign and then it turns out that the network cannot provide the required volume or quality. The right choice of advertising network for mobile traffic is largely a matter of choosing a partner with relevant experience.
Types and formats of advertising ads
Mobile traffic is heterogeneous. It includes many formats, each of which has its own characteristics, cost and effectiveness for different tasks.
Push Notifications. Aggressive, but often very converting format. Great for gambling, betting, sweepstakes - verticals that require quick and impulsive action from the user.
In-App (Advertising within applications). Considered one of the highest quality sources. The user is already involved in using the application, and the advertising is perceived more natively. Suitable for promoting other applications, games, e-commerce products.
Pop-Up / Pop-Under. A classic format that opens an advertising page in a new or background window. Efficiency depends heavily on the offer and the quality of the sites, but it still generates huge amounts of traffic.
Native Ads. Advertising units that mimic the main content of a site or application. Provide high CTR and audience loyalty, but require more careful development of creatives.
When choosing an advertising network for mobile traffic, make sure that it supports exactly the formats that are best suited for your project. Working with multiple formats within one platform simplifies testing and scaling.
Project specifics as a determining factor
General criteria are good, but the final decision should always be made taking into account the unique features of your project. Let's consider how campaign goals affect the choice of a partner.
Mobile app promotion
If your task is to drive traffic to a mobile app using the CPI model, the focus shifts to the technical aspects of integration. The key element here is tracking. The selected advertising network for mobile traffic should integrate seamlessly with the main mobile trackers: AppsFlyer, Adjust, Branch and others.
Make sure that the platform supports the transmission of postback notifications about events within the app (registration, level achievement, purchase). Without this data, you will not be able to optimize campaigns and will purchase "empty" installs. An advanced advertising network for mobile traffic will offer automatic optimization algorithms that will automatically disable ineffective sources (sub-id) based on data about internal events.
Arbitrage on CPA offers
For classic arbitrage on lead generation (finance, gambling, dating), the quality of traffic and the network's ability to work with conversions come to the fore. Here, working with black- and whitelists of sites is critically important. At the start of a campaign, you receive traffic from all available sources. By analyzing statistics, you identify sites that generate conversions and add them to the whitelist, and junk ones to the blacklist.
It is important that the platform allows you to easily manage these lists. Targeting is also important for CPA campaigns. The more targeting parameters an advertising network offers for mobile traffic (OS version, operator, connection type, device manufacturer), the more accurately you can set up a campaign for the target audience and increase conversion. Setting up complex campaigns with optimization by many parameters can be difficult. If you encounter a problem when setting up conversion transfer or audience segmentation, it is better to seek help from a specialist. You can Write to the manager for advice on technical integration and optimization.
Traffic quality and antifraud
Fraud (fraudulent traffic) is the main headache of any arbitrageur. Bots, fake clicks and installs can eat up your entire budget without bringing in a single real conversion. Therefore, having an ad network's own anti-fraud system is not an advantage, but a must.
Find out what methods the platform uses to combat fraud. These can be either internal algorithms that analyze behavioral factors or integrations with third-party services like FraudScore. A reliable ad network for mobile traffic is always transparent in this matter and is ready to provide reports on traffic quality. Don't hesitate to ask direct questions about how they identify and filter fraud and how refunds for low-quality traffic are processed.
Technical component and support
Even the best network in terms of traffic volume and quality can be inconvenient to work with if its technical implementation leaves much to be desired.
Platform and tools
The self-service interface should be intuitive and functional. Rate how easy it is to create and edit campaigns, view statistics, manage lists of sites. The presence of an API for work automation is a huge plus for teams and experienced arbitrageurs who work with large volumes.
Statistics should be detailed and updated in close to real time. You need a breakdown by the maximum number of parameters: country, OS, device, site, creative. Without deep analytics, any optimization turns into fortune telling on tea leaves. Therefore, the functionality of the platform is an important aspect when choosing an advertising network for mobile traffic.
Competence of the support service
A personal manager is not just a person who answers tickets. In a good advertising network, a manager is your partner. He should be interested in your success, since his income depends on your profit.
A competent manager will help with the initialy setup, will suggest working "offer-geo" links, will share relevant whitelists for your vertical, will help with creatives. He should be in touch and promptly solve problems that arise. Before starting work, try to communicate with support or a future manager to assess their level of involvement and expertise. This is one of the most important intangible assets that an advertising network for mobile traffic can provide.
Try it in practice
Theoretical knowledge is important, but in traffic arbitrage, practice and testing decide everything. Choosing an advertising network is no exception. To understand how well the platform suits your tasks, you need to launch a test campaign. If you want to not just read about the selection criteria, but apply them in practice on a proven platform, you can contact our specialist. Write to the manager to discuss your project, get access to the tools and launch your first campaign under the guidance of an experienced professional who will help you avoid typical mistakes of beginners and use your budget effectively.