jonte
Active Member
I've been doing push ads since notifications were first introduced by Google. It was a goldmine at the start but as we all know, it's tougher these days. Competition has increased, users are less likely to click push ads, etc. I accept all of that and adapt as all good affiliate marketers do on almost a daily basis.
I've noticed a recent worrying trend when buying push traffic which I'm almost positive others have noticed or at least had it happen to them without realising. I'm always testing new push sources, many are junk and I move on from them pretty quickly. However many are promising right off the bat. The traffic sources that belong to the latter group are what I'm going to talk about. So here's the walkthrough: I launch a campaign, let it run for a while and then check my stats. Oh wow! Only $25 spent and already a few conversions putting me at 200%+ ROI (cc submit). Very nice. Ok let's scale it up, increase budget, cut a few sources with 100+ clicks but 0% LP CTR. Ok let it run some more. Hmmm ok now it's spent $100 and gotten no new conversions. Whatever, it's normal - let it do it's thing. Wake up in the morning, $400 spent and still the only conversions are those from the first $25 spend. Ok this sucks, let me pause it and do a deep-dive to blacklist bad sources, pubs, ISPs, browsers, creatives, etc.. OK it's looking good now, I even increased my bid on the sources that gave me the original conversions. Another $100 spent, nothing, another $200 nothing. Pause it.
As a once-off anomaly it's no big deal - it's the nature of paid traffic. However there are a number of sources, about 8 or 9+ now that I've personally tested, where this exact same scenario happens. You get quick conversions at the very start of your campaign but as soon as you scale up you get nothing. I kept convincing myself it was just a coincidence but the more sources I test the more I see the same pattern of events play out. On one particular source where this happened, I actually made a new account and launched the exact same campaign with the exact same settings and whaddayaknow - in the first hour of it being live I got 4 conversions.
It seems these traffic sources are sending good traffic to new campaigns/new accounts almost as bait to get you to increase spending. As soon as you do that, the system starts giving you trash traffic - quite possibly even pop/redirect traffic masquerading as push traffic. I have no concrete proof of these tactics however I'm almost positive at this point that there is definitely something shady going on in a growing number of traffic sources that sell push traffic. I'm not going to name and shame because of the minuscule chance it is just the biggest coincidence ever. Of course there are many good push sources out there which I continue to use and I see consistent performance on the very same campaigns I test on the shady sources.
Anyone else noticed this? What are your thoughts?
I've noticed a recent worrying trend when buying push traffic which I'm almost positive others have noticed or at least had it happen to them without realising. I'm always testing new push sources, many are junk and I move on from them pretty quickly. However many are promising right off the bat. The traffic sources that belong to the latter group are what I'm going to talk about. So here's the walkthrough: I launch a campaign, let it run for a while and then check my stats. Oh wow! Only $25 spent and already a few conversions putting me at 200%+ ROI (cc submit). Very nice. Ok let's scale it up, increase budget, cut a few sources with 100+ clicks but 0% LP CTR. Ok let it run some more. Hmmm ok now it's spent $100 and gotten no new conversions. Whatever, it's normal - let it do it's thing. Wake up in the morning, $400 spent and still the only conversions are those from the first $25 spend. Ok this sucks, let me pause it and do a deep-dive to blacklist bad sources, pubs, ISPs, browsers, creatives, etc.. OK it's looking good now, I even increased my bid on the sources that gave me the original conversions. Another $100 spent, nothing, another $200 nothing. Pause it.
As a once-off anomaly it's no big deal - it's the nature of paid traffic. However there are a number of sources, about 8 or 9+ now that I've personally tested, where this exact same scenario happens. You get quick conversions at the very start of your campaign but as soon as you scale up you get nothing. I kept convincing myself it was just a coincidence but the more sources I test the more I see the same pattern of events play out. On one particular source where this happened, I actually made a new account and launched the exact same campaign with the exact same settings and whaddayaknow - in the first hour of it being live I got 4 conversions.
It seems these traffic sources are sending good traffic to new campaigns/new accounts almost as bait to get you to increase spending. As soon as you do that, the system starts giving you trash traffic - quite possibly even pop/redirect traffic masquerading as push traffic. I have no concrete proof of these tactics however I'm almost positive at this point that there is definitely something shady going on in a growing number of traffic sources that sell push traffic. I'm not going to name and shame because of the minuscule chance it is just the biggest coincidence ever. Of course there are many good push sources out there which I continue to use and I see consistent performance on the very same campaigns I test on the shady sources.
Anyone else noticed this? What are your thoughts?
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