How to choose an advertising network to increase sales and grow your business
How to choose an advertising network to increase sales and grow your business
Choosing a platform for purchasing traffic is a fundamental decision that directly affects the return on investment and the achievement of commercial goals. The market offers hundreds of options, each with its own characteristics, and a mistake at this stage can cost not only your budget, but also your time. If you have already encountered difficulties in analyzing available platforms, you can get an initial consultation to save resources - for this, it is enough to Write to the manager and outline your tasks. A correctly selected advertising network for increasing sales becomes not just a channel for attracting customers, but a strategic partner for scaling your business.
In this article, we will systematically analyze the key aspects that you need to pay attention to when choosing an advertising network so that your marketing efforts bring maximum results. We will not consider trivial advice, but will focus on the factors that really determine the effectiveness of advertising campaigns in the long term.
Key criteria for evaluating advertising networks
Before investing money, it is necessary to conduct a thorough audit of a potential partner. The evaluation should be comprehensive and cover both financial and technological aspects. A superficial analysis based only on promises of low prices often leads to low-quality traffic and a drain on the budget. An effective advertising network for increasing sales is always transparent in its metrics and conditions.
Payment models and their impact on the budget
The pricing model determines what action you will pay for. The choice depends on the goals of your advertising campaign.
CPM (Cost Per Mille). Payment for a thousand impressions. This model is suitable for campaigns aimed at increasing brand awareness. You pay for your ad to be seen by as many people as possible, but without a guarantee of clicks or actions. This is a risky model for direct sales if you do not have polished creatives with a high CTR.
CPC (Cost Per Click). Payment for each click on an ad. The most common model that allows you to control the costs of attracting an interested audience to your website or landing page. Here, it is important to analyze not only the cost of a click, but also its final conversion into a target action. A high-quality advertising network for increasing sales will offer tools for optimizing CPC.
CPA (Cost Per Action). Payment for a specific target action: purchase, registration, installation of an application, filling out a form. This is the safest model for the advertiser, since payment occurs upon receipt of the result. However, not all networks work on CPA, and those that do have strict requirements for the offer and can set high rates.
RevShare (Revenue Share). You share part of the income received from the attracted client with the advertising network. The model is popular in gambling, betting and other verticals with a high client LTV.
When choosing a platform, make sure it supports a payment model that suits your business goals. A flexible advertising network for increasing sales often offers several options to choose from.
Traffic quality and sources
This is the most important and at the same time the most difficult parameter to evaluate. Cheap traffic often turns out to be bot or unmotivated, which leads to zero conversion.
What you need to analyze:
Sources. Find out where the network gets its traffic from. These are direct publishers (website and app owners), other advertising networks (broker traffic), or its own user base (for example, in push notification networks). Direct traffic from publishers is usually of higher quality and predictable. A reliable advertising network for increasing sales does not hide its sources.
Anti-fraud systems. Ask the manager what tools the platform uses to combat fraudulent traffic. Having your own developments or integration with market leaders (e.g. FraudScore, Protected Media) is a good sign. The lack of a clear answer to this question is a warning sign.
Transparency. Can you see the IDs of the sites from which clicks are coming in the statistics? The ability to create blacklists and whitelists of sources is a must-have feature for any serious platform. Without it, campaign optimization is impossible.
Low-quality traffic not only wastes your budget, it distorts statistics and prevents you from making the right optimization decisions. Therefore, choosing an advertising network to increase sales should begin with an audit of the quality of its traffic.
Technological capabilities and tools of the platform
Modern traffic arbitrage is working with data and technologies. The platform should provide convenient and powerful tools for campaign management.
Evaluate the following capabilities:
Targeting. How detailed can you customize your target audience? Basic options are GEO, device, operating system, browser. Advanced networks offer targeting by provider, IP ranges, interests and time of day. The more precisely you can set up your targeting, the higher your ROI will be.
Optimization tools. The presence of automatic rules (auto-rules) allows you to set conditions under which sites or creatives will be automatically disabled or change bids. This saves a lot of time and helps optimize campaigns 24/7.
Tracking and analytics. Does the network support integration with popular trackers (Binom, Keitaro) via S2S (server-to-server) postback? This is critical for accurate conversion tracking and performance analysis. Statistics within the network should be detailed and updated in real time.
Evaluating the technological component of the platform may seem complicated. If you want to clearly see how advanced targeting and optimization tools work in action, it is best to request a demo. You can Write to the manager to schedule a demonstration of the interface and functionality of the platform. This will help you make an informed decision based on facts, not on advertising promises. It is the technological advancement that distinguishes a good advertising network for increasing sales from a mediocre one.
Types of advertising networks and their specifics
There is no universal advertising network that is ideal for everyone. The choice largely depends on your product, target audience and vertical. Let's consider the main types of networks.
Native advertising networks
Specialize in placing ads that are organically integrated into the site content and look like part of it (recommendation blocks, articles). This format overcomes "banner blindness" and inspires more trust in users. Ideal for nutra, product offers, finance and infobusiness, where it is important to warm up the audience before selling. Such an advertising network for increasing sales requires high-quality creatives and well-thought-out pre-landers.
Push networks
Deliver ads in the form of push notifications to the devices of users who have previously given their consent. The format is characterized by a high level of visibility and engagement. Effective for gambling, betting, dating, sweepstakes and app downloads. The competition here may be lower than in more traditional channels, which makes push networks an attractive option.
Popunder and Popup networks
These are networks that work with aggressive advertising formats. Popunder opens a new tab with your landing page under the active browser window, and Popup - above it. The main advantage is huge volumes of traffic at a very low cost (CPM). However, the quality of this traffic often leaves much to be desired. This format is suitable for mass offers with simple conversion and requires careful filtering of sources. It is not always the best ad network for increasing sales of premium products.
Mobile advertising networks
Specialize exclusively in traffic from mobile devices. They offer formats adapted for smartphones and tablets: in-app banners, full-screen Interstitial, rewarded video. Given that the share of mobile traffic continues to grow, having a mobile strategy is a must for most businesses. Such an ad network for increasing sales is a key tool for promoting mobile applications and services.
When choosing a network type, start from the specifics of your product and the behavior of the target audience.
Testing and scaling process
The choice is made, what's next? You should not immediately pour your entire budget into one campaign. The process should be iterative.
Start with a test budget. Allocate a small amount (for example, $ 100-500), enough to collect initial statistics. Your task at this stage is not to make money, but to test hypotheses and evaluate the quality of traffic.
Prepare several creatives. Run A/B testing of different approaches: different images, headlines, texts. This will allow you to quickly determine what resonates with the audience of a given network.
Analyze the first data. After receiving the first 1000-2000 clicks, analyze the CTR (clickability), CR (conversion rate) and EPC (revenue per click) for different creatives and traffic sources (site IDs).
Optimize. Based on the collected data, create a blacklist - a list of sites that spend the budget but do not bring conversions. Create a whitelist from the most profitable sources. Increase rates on effective sites and disable ineffective ones. It is constant optimization that turns any platform into a profitable advertising network for increasing sales. - Scale. When you have found a working combination (offer + creative + source), start gradually increasing the budget, expanding the GEO or launching similar campaigns.
Remember that the ideal advertising network for increasing sales is the one you have learned to work with effectively.
Try it in practice
Theoriesical knowledge is important, but only practical application of tools brings real results and profit. To move from study to action, you can test the functionality of our platform and evaluate the quality of traffic within the framework of your business tasks. Write to the manager - he will help you choose the optimal settings for the start, will conduct a demonstration of the interface and explain how our traffic sources can become an effective channel for sales growth and scaling.