Buying Traffic What’s Your Biggest Challenge with Paid Traffic Right Now?

[Ariel-ActiveRevenue]

Hey everyone, I wanted to start a discussion around paid traffic strategies. Whether you’re running campaigns on push, pop, native, or display ads—what’s the biggest challenge you’re facing right now? Is it scaling, conversion rates, traffic quality, or something else?

 

[T J Tutor]

Traffic quality is always at the top of my personal business. With both Google and with FB I have assigned account managers and without them helping I don't think I could be as precise with their traffic. Most of what I do is content marketing, but I do some CPA. The content marketing took a couple of years to be as accurate, predictable, and self generating as it is today. However, with CPA we are always having to refine the traffic quickly to fit funnels. Dialing in the demographics & colloquial copy in each CPA funnel plays a huge role in dialing in the traffic and it has to be done quickly. CPA funnels only get weeks of peek performance typically, but up to a couple of months sometimes. Scaling is a no brainer for the most part once you have a funnel dialed in.

 

[Olivia Thompson]

Hey everyone, I wanted to start a discussion around paid traffic strategies. Whether you’re running campaigns on push, pop, native, or display ads—what’s the biggest challenge you’re facing right now? Is it scaling, conversion rates, traffic quality, or something else?

Hey! Great topic for discussion. Personally, the biggest challenge I’ve been facing lately is definitely Traffic Quality. No matter how much I tweak the creatives or optimize the targeting, it seems like getting high-quality traffic consistently is a constant battle. Sometimes, you get great engagement, but those clicks don’t convert the way you'd expect.
Scaling’s tricky too, because once you start pushing more budget, it feels like you’re just buying low-quality traffic. I've had to be really strategic about managing that balance. Some networks do a better job of filtering, but there’s always that fine line between finding enough volume and keeping the quality high.
Anyone else dealing with this, or found ways to overcome it? Would love to hear some solutions or insights!

 

[Ariel-ActiveRevenue]

Traffic quality is always at the top of my personal business. With both Google and with FB I have assigned account managers and without them helping I don't think I could be as precise with their traffic. Most of what I do is content marketing, but I do some CPA. The content marketing took a couple of years to be as accurate, predictable, and self generating as it is today. However, with CPA we are always having to refine the traffic quickly to fit funnels. Dialing in the demographics & colloquial copy in each CPA funnel plays a huge role in dialing in the traffic and it has to be done quickly. CPA funnels only get weeks of peek performance typically, but up to a couple of months sometimes. Scaling is a no brainer for the most part once you have a funnel dialed in.

that’s a great breakdown, and I completely agree - dialing in traffic quickly for CPA funnels is a huge challenge, especially given how short their peak performance window is. its interesting to hear that you rely on assigned account managers for Google & FB, do you find they give you better insight into audience behavior or just help refine placements?
Also, with your CPA traffic, do you prioritize prequalifying leads on the funnel side, or are you filtering more on the traffic source level?

Scaling’s tricky too, because once you start pushing more budget, it feels like you’re just buying low-quality traffic. I've had to be really strategic about managing that balance. Some networks do a better job of filtering, but there’s always that fine line between finding enough volume and keeping the quality high.

I totally get what you mean - scaling while maintaining traffic quality is always a tricky balance. it’s frustrating when increasing budget starts pulling in lower-quality clicks, especially when engagement looks good but conversions don’t follow.
what I’ve seen work well is segmenting your traffic sources, like scaling more gradually across multiple networks instead of pushing all budget into one source at once. also some DSPs offer whitelisting of high-converting placements, which helps avoid the sudden drop in quality. Have you tried refining your campaign this way, or do you mainly rely on optimization within the same network?

 

[T J Tutor]

do you find they give you better insight into audience behavior or just help refine placements?

A bit of both actually. Their entire goal is to help you be as accomplished towards your goals as possible because they count on your metrics to convince you to spend more, scale more, and produce more. The two reps I have now are exceptional with guidance on emerging markets, something most reps in the past, and today, struggled to be great at. Those emerging markets can sometimes, not always, be very lucrative and especially in the Tier2 markets which have a developing middle income economy where their is a level of sophistication rising and growth is in a positive pattern. Those Tier2 countries have lower ad costs, lower competition, and economies in growth mode.

 

[T J Tutor]

with your CPA traffic, do you prioritize prequalifying leads on the funnel side, or are you filtering more on the traffic source level?

I always prequalify at every step. I learned long ago that every step of a funnel is meant to do two things, discourage non action takers and encourage action takers. As for filtering the traffic sources, this goes hand in hand with any funnel. We all need to be blocking certain traffic, learn to use day parting, and limit traffic from specific geos and demographics.

 

[Olivia Thompson]

that’s a great breakdown, and I completely agree - dialing in traffic quickly for CPA funnels is a huge challenge, especially given how short their peak performance window is. its interesting to hear that you rely on assigned account managers for Google & FB, do you find they give you better insight into audience behavior or just help refine placements?
Also, with your CPA traffic, do you prioritize prequalifying leads on the funnel side, or are you filtering more on the traffic source level?

I totally get what you mean - scaling while maintaining traffic quality is always a tricky balance. it’s frustrating when increasing budget starts pulling in lower-quality clicks, especially when engagement looks good but conversions don’t follow.
what I’ve seen work well is segmenting your traffic sources, like scaling more gradually across multiple networks instead of pushing all budget into one source at once. also some DSPs offer whitelisting of high-converting placements, which helps avoid the sudden drop in quality. Have you tried refining your campaign this way, or do you mainly rely on optimization within the same network?

Thanks for the advice! I’ve started segmenting traffic across multiple networks, but haven’t tried DSP whitelisting yet. It sounds like a smart way to maintain quality while scaling.

 

[Mileton]

Hey everyone, I wanted to start a discussion around paid traffic strategies. Whether you’re running campaigns on push, pop, native, or display ads—what’s the biggest challenge you’re facing right now? Is it scaling, conversion rates, traffic quality, or something else?

I use push notifications for my business.