In the previous article “Downsides of buying traffic directly”, a lot has been said about why you should refrain from committing to buying website advertising spots. While it is not a good idea for many, it might be just a perfect opportunity for some people whose business is well suited for such a challenging path.
In reality of the market economy, every company is naturally moving towards a monopoly and the digital advertising industry is not an exception — the traffic is being consolidated under a few big players and it is getting increasingly difficult to compete with their resources, safety margin, and ambitions. The market is also getting more mature, transparent, and even regulated in a way. More and more people become somehow related to digital advertising, but it will be increasingly uncommon for them to buy a spot on the website in the same way as it is uncommon for people to buy an iron ore by the businesses dealing with iron. Following this analogy, the iron ore however is being bought under certain circumstances. Let’s list some scenarios when buying spots directly is a good idea.
Niche spot
Spots buying is a very common practice for adult web products. In the context of the advertising ecosystem, adult — is just a narrow niche that nevertheless generates a humongous amount of traffic. Whenever you enter the adult website you will see similar banners because it is very hard nowadays to come with something new. Neither products nor the user's demand has changed since the inception of the adult affiliate industry. Most of the promo materials in the adult vertical are at best the incarnation of the former marketing call-to-actions with a refreshed design. It means fewer chances for your banners to burn out. But it does not end with banners or prerolls. The products are also very similar in essence as well as landing pages so it is easy to rotate it all making it look fresh for users every time they happen to visit the website.
It is even better if you buy a spot at the niche adult website for a corresponding niche adult product. The more narrow is the niche the more appropriate it is to buy the whole spot for your product. For some reason, it is much less annoying to see the same banner with the same adult toy several times, when you are at the website devoted to such a toy.
No other choice
Traffic is not just users who visit your website — it is the revenue they bring. The internet has an immense amount of websites and obviously, some websites generate better traffic than others. This is the case due to many reasons starting from relevance and content quality to the simple amount of bots created with the innocent goal to improve the website metrics. Normally under “good traffic” we mean traffic that converts good for us, not necessarily for others. The more narrow niche you are in, the more it is possible that this traffic is equally good for you and all your competitors.
Sometimes it is just impossible to enter that network interface, create a campaign, and receive traffic from a certain domain available at the network. It always seemed such a mystery why networks with very convenient and efficient RTB platforms sell some spots as a flat deal only and lose a part of the potential revenue. These networks would certainly earn more if they would use the old good auction system and would accept the highest bids instead of locking the spot to the one person who would prolong the deal indefinitely. There are many reasons why networks do that, starting from the special publisher's terms to the special buyers’ terms for this deal to happen, but what is important is that such things happen and sometimes we have no other choice but to buy a whole spot.
If you are after such quality traffic you have to locate the spot and try to find a way to buy it directly. Rest assured the efforts will be paid off handsomely.
A small portion of a spot
If you are offered by a publisher to buy just a portion of the spot, especially a highly targeted portion (like the traffic with a low-frequency cap or traffic from a certain country) - it is almost certainly a good idea to buy it. Not only because of the available targeting but basically because of the signal the publisher sends you. He is willing to play with the traffic he possesses, optimize it, check it and sell it at the more or less market price. At the same time, it is not a public marketplace where everybody sees this inventory. No matter how big and famous the publisher, his buyer's outreach will be limited compared to the biggest networks exposure. All this makes buying a part of the spot a potentially good deal for you. At the same time, you can make a quality test without burning your budget by sharing your spots with other buyers and avoiding your banners from being burnt.
Necessary technical setup
Buying a spot directly is a rather advanced process that requires an advanced technical setup. Clearly, you must have a nice piece of software allowing you to serve your banners on a third-party inventory. You must be able not to lose traffic to ad blockers, cut off the fraud and confirm to the publisher that you received what you paid for. What is not that obvious is that you must have a technical ability to sell what is not working for you for whatever reason. You should be able to sell impressions — not clicks because nowadays you do not want to sell redirect traffic. The market is not appreciating redirects because normally such a format entails different sorts of problems. Whether it means that the traffic is not yours or you want to hide something so it is much more reasonable to implement a third-party piece of code and serve their banners.
Adding custom spot
This one requires creativity, but if you can negotiate a custom spot it is almost always a good idea to test it. There is virtually no limit to the number of advertising spots you can put on the website. Normally website owners rely on common sense and metrics while adding new spots to their website, but if you can offer them adding a simple spot that supposedly will not hurt their CPM— they will likely agree to it. It might be a new custom section of the website, false testimonials, or anything — once you approach the publisher with such an offer it will be difficult for them to calculate a CPM rate since the spot is new. This will increase your chances of publishers agreeing to your price.
The principles formulated above will not save you from buying bad traffic. You still should make your research, study the products that are being promoted on a particular spot, check the available website metrics, and so on. Now you will be able to better approach the whole process of direct buying and to define whether you even need to start.
In reality of the market economy, every company is naturally moving towards a monopoly and the digital advertising industry is not an exception — the traffic is being consolidated under a few big players and it is getting increasingly difficult to compete with their resources, safety margin, and ambitions. The market is also getting more mature, transparent, and even regulated in a way. More and more people become somehow related to digital advertising, but it will be increasingly uncommon for them to buy a spot on the website in the same way as it is uncommon for people to buy an iron ore by the businesses dealing with iron. Following this analogy, the iron ore however is being bought under certain circumstances. Let’s list some scenarios when buying spots directly is a good idea.
Niche spot
Spots buying is a very common practice for adult web products. In the context of the advertising ecosystem, adult — is just a narrow niche that nevertheless generates a humongous amount of traffic. Whenever you enter the adult website you will see similar banners because it is very hard nowadays to come with something new. Neither products nor the user's demand has changed since the inception of the adult affiliate industry. Most of the promo materials in the adult vertical are at best the incarnation of the former marketing call-to-actions with a refreshed design. It means fewer chances for your banners to burn out. But it does not end with banners or prerolls. The products are also very similar in essence as well as landing pages so it is easy to rotate it all making it look fresh for users every time they happen to visit the website.
It is even better if you buy a spot at the niche adult website for a corresponding niche adult product. The more narrow is the niche the more appropriate it is to buy the whole spot for your product. For some reason, it is much less annoying to see the same banner with the same adult toy several times, when you are at the website devoted to such a toy.
No other choice
Traffic is not just users who visit your website — it is the revenue they bring. The internet has an immense amount of websites and obviously, some websites generate better traffic than others. This is the case due to many reasons starting from relevance and content quality to the simple amount of bots created with the innocent goal to improve the website metrics. Normally under “good traffic” we mean traffic that converts good for us, not necessarily for others. The more narrow niche you are in, the more it is possible that this traffic is equally good for you and all your competitors.
Sometimes it is just impossible to enter that network interface, create a campaign, and receive traffic from a certain domain available at the network. It always seemed such a mystery why networks with very convenient and efficient RTB platforms sell some spots as a flat deal only and lose a part of the potential revenue. These networks would certainly earn more if they would use the old good auction system and would accept the highest bids instead of locking the spot to the one person who would prolong the deal indefinitely. There are many reasons why networks do that, starting from the special publisher's terms to the special buyers’ terms for this deal to happen, but what is important is that such things happen and sometimes we have no other choice but to buy a whole spot.
If you are after such quality traffic you have to locate the spot and try to find a way to buy it directly. Rest assured the efforts will be paid off handsomely.
A small portion of a spot
If you are offered by a publisher to buy just a portion of the spot, especially a highly targeted portion (like the traffic with a low-frequency cap or traffic from a certain country) - it is almost certainly a good idea to buy it. Not only because of the available targeting but basically because of the signal the publisher sends you. He is willing to play with the traffic he possesses, optimize it, check it and sell it at the more or less market price. At the same time, it is not a public marketplace where everybody sees this inventory. No matter how big and famous the publisher, his buyer's outreach will be limited compared to the biggest networks exposure. All this makes buying a part of the spot a potentially good deal for you. At the same time, you can make a quality test without burning your budget by sharing your spots with other buyers and avoiding your banners from being burnt.
Necessary technical setup
Buying a spot directly is a rather advanced process that requires an advanced technical setup. Clearly, you must have a nice piece of software allowing you to serve your banners on a third-party inventory. You must be able not to lose traffic to ad blockers, cut off the fraud and confirm to the publisher that you received what you paid for. What is not that obvious is that you must have a technical ability to sell what is not working for you for whatever reason. You should be able to sell impressions — not clicks because nowadays you do not want to sell redirect traffic. The market is not appreciating redirects because normally such a format entails different sorts of problems. Whether it means that the traffic is not yours or you want to hide something so it is much more reasonable to implement a third-party piece of code and serve their banners.
Adding custom spot
This one requires creativity, but if you can negotiate a custom spot it is almost always a good idea to test it. There is virtually no limit to the number of advertising spots you can put on the website. Normally website owners rely on common sense and metrics while adding new spots to their website, but if you can offer them adding a simple spot that supposedly will not hurt their CPM— they will likely agree to it. It might be a new custom section of the website, false testimonials, or anything — once you approach the publisher with such an offer it will be difficult for them to calculate a CPM rate since the spot is new. This will increase your chances of publishers agreeing to your price.
The principles formulated above will not save you from buying bad traffic. You still should make your research, study the products that are being promoted on a particular spot, check the available website metrics, and so on. Now you will be able to better approach the whole process of direct buying and to define whether you even need to start.
