How to choose the right source
Your conversion rates, and by implication your profit, rely heavily on the quality of the traffic you buy. That’s why you have to make sure that you select the right traffic source.
As your conversion rates and your profits will heavily depend on the quality of the traffic you buy, you need to make sure that you’ve selected the right source. Try to find a traffic source that offers:
1. Low prices and high volumes
This one is rather obvious. Most traffic sources have some sort of calculator or estimator that can tell you how much traffic you can expect with a given targeting criteria.
2. Various targeting options for maximized optimization
We will talk about targeting some more, but generally speaking, the more options you have, the more precise your targeting can be. Which may result in lower costs and higher conversion rates.
3. Reasonable initial deposit
Traffic sources are paid using a similar mechanism as pre-paid phones: you top-up your account with a selected sum of money and traffic sources will use that balance to pay for traffic. If you run out of money, your campaigns will stop.
Most traffic sources have a threshold on the minimal initial deposit. If you are on a tight budget, you may want to look for traffic sources that allow for smaller deposits.
4. Regulations that match your needs (and offers)
Each traffic source has their own set of rules called something like “Ad requirements” or “Advertising rules”. They specify what kind of advertising techniques and angles are allowed on a given platform. For example, some sources don’t allow adult offers. Others forbid you to use text on your ads. Many of the big ones don’t allow landing page rotations. You have to be familiar with traffic source requirements in order to not get banned.
Prices and cost models
Now you need to understand how traffic sources charge you for. There are several cost models for how you pay for traffic. The typical ones are:
CPC is the cost per click on your ad. The most logical and easy to understand.
CPM/CPV is a cost model where you pay per ad view. The difference between them is in the number of views. In the CPM model, you pay for 1,000 views, while in the CPV model you pay per single ad view.
CPI/CPA is a cost model where you pay for each user action (in the CPI model this action is an app install).
Revshare is a cost model where you pay a percentage of your payout.
Targeting options
The more targeting options you have at your disposal, the more optimization magic you can do. It’s like having a camera with good optics: instead of shooting panoramas, you can focus on smaller image segments.
Usually, traffic sources give you the following targeting options:
Device Type
Device OS
ISP/Carrier
Country
Language
Time of day
This is the bare minimum. Additional targeting options include technical details, such as browser type and version, carrier, demographic data such as language, region and city, and behavioral data, such as purchase intent, recently searched topics, social group membership and so on.
The more precise your targeting is, the smaller volume you get. During your work you will have to balance your audience profile and size to hit the right spot.
