Marketers tend to distinguish five main types of ads:
display
push
native
social
search
However, the distinctions between them are not as clear as you’d think.
In-page push ads look like regular push, but they are in fact a banner ad. Pop-under is not actually an ad but a landing page that opens in the background. Social are sometimes treated as a sub-type of native ads and very often a separate category of mobile ads and so on.
Luckily, terminology is not so important here. You just need to know what options you have and what formats can be the best for you as a beginner. This is why we want to show you a few pros and cons for the three most popular affiliate ad formats: display, push and native.
1. Pop ads
The first choice of many beginners. The main reason why everyone is advised to start with pop ads is that they are good teaching material. Other types of ads may be harder to master, may require more content and generally, more awareness of how everything works. Pop ads are simple and you don’t need a landing page to run pop campaigns. You can take your visitor straight to your offer.
Types of Pop Ads:
Pop-over
Pop-under
Banners
Interstitial
The common denominator is that they simply pop in front of visitors’ eyes while they browse the web.
Pros ✅
Pops are cheap so you can run them even with a small budget.
Pops are easy. You don’t need a landing page; flashy and eye-catching creatives should be enough.
Cons ❌
Banner blindness. As you’ve probably observed, the time of pops’ prevalence has passed. Visitors, especially in Tier 1 countries, tend to get irritated or simply ignore pops.
Pop ads are still good for Tier 3 countries, but the payouts are, well,… also Tier 3.
2. Push ads
Push ads are generally closer to native ads than to pop ads, because you need to provide more content for a visitor, and you definitely need to set up a landing page. If you feel confident that you can write a piece of convincing text on a landing page, you can try push.
Push are visible only for visitors that have already given their consent for showing notifications. This filters uninterested parties, window shoppers and tire-kickers from the visitors actually interested in the subject.
The alerting form of push grabs our pre-qualified visitors’ attention more than semi-random pops. The downside? A push ad is just an icon with a few words of text. It has to lead to more high-quality content in order to be successful. A good landing page is a must.
Types of push ads:
Push – regular push notifications, generated by mobile apps or web browsers.
In-page push – banner ads that resemble push notifications. they are generated by a web page itself, not by a browser, and therefore can bypass browser settings. The downside is that they are not displayed on a lock screen.
Pros ✅
Push ads feel more personal. The original visitor’s consent required for displaying push means that these ads are kind of expected and welcomed.
Immediate, personalized notifications encourage users to take or finish an action instead of irritating them, like pops often do.
Push traffic is relatively cheap.
With push ads you don’t need to worry about the ad blockers.
Cons ❌
Push requires investing more effort and more time in the design of your campaign funnels. You cannot create a successful campaign in minutes, it takes time.
Push are more regulated than pop. The adult vertical is a no-no for many push platforms. The same goes for brand logos.
The volume of traffic may fluctuate significantly. Sometimes all it takes is one publisher’s site going down and you experience a sudden drop in traffic.
3. Native ads
Unlike traditional, native advertising is designed to match the look and feel of a media source and provide a better user experience for web users. As they don’t disrupt the user’s experience, they appear less intrusive or jarring. As a result, native ads can have up to 4x higher CTR than non-native
But nothing comes for free. Native ads do require a more creative approach. But…
If you know your audience… (you can research it),
If you know what attracts them… (you can A/B test it),
If you know what works… (you can learn from others),
…then go with native. If you’re ready to put in some more effort and a higher budget, native will definitely be worth the hassle.
Pros ✅
Native ads offer high payouts – even ten times more than what you can expect from pops or push.
Native ads are not disruptive. As a result, they bring more views, increased click-through rates, and greater conversions than almost any display ad.
Natives attract visitors that are more likely to convert. Since they are shown alongside similar content, web users tend to have a real interest in whatever you’re advertising.
Cons of ❌
You need a large amount of work and time to get conversions. Sometimes a landing page has to look like a legitimate news portal – full of categories, subsections, and widgets.
Native ads require higher budgets.
You may have already guessed that there isn’t one formula for all. You just need to choose a format based on your capabilities and try to master it.