CPA is an advertising model where publishers are paid every time customers make a certain action. This may involve filling out a form, signing in, downloading an app, buying a product, or taking any other action. This way, CPA marketing differs from standard affiliate marketing in that publishers may not need to make a sale. In CPA marketing, traffic is very important as more traffic theoretically means increased profits for publishers. But there are many nuances when choosing the right source. Publishers need to pick out traffic sources that perfectly match the target audience.
Recently, mobile CPA marketing is gaining more and more popularity. The share of mobile traffic in the world reaches 60%, and users are practically not protected by ad blockers. As for mobile CPA marketing, there are a few types of traffic sources best suited for such an advertising model. In this article, we will explore some of the top mobile CPA traffic sources and advertising formats that will significantly increase conversions.
How Mobile CPA Marketing Works?
CPA marketing works great for the sale of goods and services in almost every niche: health and care, gaming, mobile apps, insurance, loans, technology, etc. It is an appropriate model if the product is aimed at a B2C audience, it has wide geography, and the price is competitive.
Generally, CPA marketing involves three parties:
- The advertiser, who wants to increase sales of his product or service. The advertiser creates an offer to promote;
- The CPA network connects the advertiser and publisher on its platform;
- The publisher promotes the product with the purpose of driving quality traffic.
The essence of CPA marketing is that the advertiser pays the publisher only after the client performs the target action. In fact, the publisher takes a lot of risks, because he depends on advertising to provide a high conversion rate. CPA networks pay only for those targeted actions that are guaranteed to generate income. The amount can vary, from a few dollars to hundreds of dollars per user. For example, referring one customer to a casino can bring you up to $200.
As with any pricing model, mobile CPA marketing has its pros and cons. Pros include:
- In contrast to affiliate marketing, marketers get money for any target action, not just sales;
- Publishers can get quite high payments for a lead of up to a few hundred dollars;
- There are CPA offers in almost all niches.
Cons of CPA Marketing:
- For novices, it is challenging to get accepted to the best CPA mobile traffic networks;
- This is a very competitive area, so publishers need to be original to launch profitable CPA campaigns.
What is a CPA Traffic Source?
So, what is a mobile CPA traffic source? Simply put, it is a means by which users discover the product or service that the company offers. For media buyers whose purpose is to advertise a certain product, it means a certain platform where they can buy traffic.
Actually, there are 2 types of traffic sources:
- Free traffic. This means that traffic is generated almost for free. The most proven sources are considered organic traffic from search and social media marketing. Attracting free traffic for mobile CPA marketing requires so much time, and the process can take years;
- Paid traffic that originates from paid ads. This is usually a faster way of getting traffic, but it is obvious that this traffic is entailed with a higher risk. Numerous targeting options give an opportunity to show ads only to those users who are interested in buying a product. Paid traffic is divided into a few categories depending on the type of advertising, bidding model, and other parameters.
The benefits of free traffic sources are clear, but getting to the point where you can make a good profit is quite tricky. Therefore, paid traffic sources are considered preferred for affiliate marketers who promote mobile CPA offers. This is because paid traffic sources will drive targeted audiences that are interested in the product and are likely to buy it. This way the marketer will get better results, which means more sales of affiliate products. What is more, the marketer is unlikely to attract mobile CPA free traffic for Clickbank offers. At the same time, paid advertising means high risk. Almost all sources of paid traffic such as search engines or social networks are very competitive and expensive.
Best Mobile CPA Traffic Sources in 2021
There exist a lot of mobile traffic sources today that are suitable to promote CPA offers. But if you want to launch successful and profitable advertising campaigns, you need only high-grade traffic. So Let’s take a look at the best mobile CPA traffic sources that you can use to attract people.
Search Traffic
Of course, search traffic is the top traffic source with respect to efficiency. Paid ads are displayed when a user enters certain keywords. This type of advertising has a high conversion rate that often reaches 30% because users are looking for a service and they are ready to spend money. Another way to promote products is organic traffic that comes directly from the search engine. Although in many cases it has a higher conversion than paid ads, it takes a long time and requires a lot of content.
As many people would expect, Google is the undisputed leader when it comes to mobile sources of traffic. According to the latest data, it drives as many as 96% of mobile search traffic. Also, there are such sources as Yahoo, Bing, Yandex and some others.
Social Advertising
Social media bring together a huge number of people of different age and consumer categories. Using various targeting options, marketers have a large number of options for arranging an effective advertising campaign. In fact, most of these platforms are appropriate for the free promotion of goods and services. But for affiliate marketers, contextual paid advertising is more appealing, and social media are considered a great source of paid traffic to promote mobile CPA offers.
Almost all social networks are suitable for promoting CPA mobile offers. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Reddit are the main sources of CPA mobile traffic. All of them get a huge chunk of daily traffic. But it should be noted that each social network has its own characteristics and limitations. For example, Facebook Ads is very often used to advertise expensive products that cost at least several hundred dollars.
Messengers
Ads in messengers are gradually replacing text messages and are becoming more popular. But now, affiliates rarely focus on this type of advertising. In most cases, messenger ads are an addition to the main mobile CPA campaign. There are a few best mobile traffic sources: Viber, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and others.
Mobile Native Advertising
Mobile native ads almost completely match the appearance and logic of the format in which they come out. While most ads are displayed as a banner, these ads appear in the content itself. This way, they match the layout and look like a part of the publication flow. Unlike most other formats, native ads can remain effective and successful over the long term as they develop along with the apps and websites they display on.
This format is very well suited for the promotion of CPA offers. It delivers CTR rates up to five times higher than display ads, as well as increased sales. This is due to the fact that users find them more reliable and pay more attention to them. There are different native CPA networks such as MGID, Taboola, AdNow, and others.
In-App advertising
According to statistics, smartphone users spend more than 80% of their time in apps, making them one of the most compelling mobile CPA traffic sources. Since smartphones and tablets are mostly used by only one person, apps are closely related to the personal life of only their owner. It provides an opportunity to move away from ineffective and generalized ads and start focusing on messages for their ideal audience. Another benefit of in-app ads is that they can tell worthy parameters such as gender and age. This makes it much easier to accurately reach the ideal audience. Advertisers can use geographic location data to provide access to users at the right time and in the right place.
There are plenty of CPA mobile traffic networks that work across in-app channels including Zeydoo, Affilight, ClickDealer, PayV, and others.
In-game Advertising
In-game advertising is another way to attract mobile CPA traffic. Almost 43% of smartphone use is spent on games, and this figure is only increasing. There are many different types of advertising formats, such as rewarded video, offerwall, and interstitial ads.
In-game advertising is commonly used to promote new products. Also, it is very popular with e-commerce companies because they can find mobile games associated with their own product. This gives them instant access to the target audience, which increases the efficiency of CPA campaigns.
Mobile Push Notifications
Push notifications are becoming one of the most preferred choices for mobile CPA marketing. These are messages that are sent to the browser even when it is closed. Mobile push notifications are mainly used for personalized offers or news.
The most suitable verticals for push traffic include travel, mobile apps, dating, health. The advantage of push notifications is that users have agreed to receive such messages, so they may be interested in the content. Another advantage is that it is a very cheap form of promotion that can be compared to teaser ads. At the same time, CTR and CR are several times higher. Marketers have different targeting options: geolocation, interests, frequency, etc.
Some of the most popular sources of push notifications are such networks as Propeller Ads, Zeropark, Richpush.
Pop Traffic
Pop traffic includes various types of windows that appear while users are browsing a website. There can be pop-ups, pop-under, and others. Although pop traffic can irritate some users, it is very effective for generating subscribers and promoting specific content.
Placing CPA offers on Pop traffic can be highly profitable. Because it is one of the cheapest types of traffic, it can be used to promote almost all types of products and services.
There are hundreds of CPA networks that provide pop traffic. The most popular traffic sources include PopAds, PopCash, and PropellerAds.
Mobile Adult Traffic
An estimated 30% of all internet traffic is adult traffic, so nobody would deny that this is a powerful traffic type for promoting mobile CPA offers. Nowadays, many marketers use adult traffic to promote dating offers, adult offers, webcams, and bookmakers. However, these summits can be used to drive traffic to any other product or service.
According to the latest research, adult traffic sources have huge potential for CPA marketing in 2021. This industry is constantly growing, and many experts point out that it is much easier to attract traffic here. The big benefit of promoting on Adult is the fact that there aren’t a lot of restrictions as to what offers are promoting. However, there are several cons to adult traffic. For beginner marketers, it is quite tough to enter the market. In addition, the traffic quality is much lower here.
Now there are dozens of popular adult CPA traffic sources that include PlugRush, Traffic Junky, ExoClick, Ero Advertising, and others.
How to Choose a Mobile CPA Traffic Source?
Marketers can face a number of problems when choosing a traffic source and advertising CPA offers. This can be the wrong allocation of the budget, ignoring the restrictions, the wrong choice of the target audience, and more. Thus, when choosing a mobile CPA traffic source, publishers need to pay attention to some factors.
Audience
The choice of the target audience is the most important factor when setting up a mobile CPA campaign. For example, if you need to launch a CPA campaign to advertise a CRM system, then the target audience is businessmen and managers, and you do not need to target ads to a wide audience. Thus, ads should only be shown to those who are truly interested in the product.
Cost of Traffic
Paid mobile traffic sources differ in price. It all depends on the source, ad format, and geotargeting. In addition, the more and more developed a country is, the higher the budget required to launch CPA campaigns.
Among paid traffic sources, pop traffic is considered the least expensive option. Native ads are slightly more expensive. The cost can vary depending on the platform where the ad is hosted but usually costs around $3 CPM.
The social media traffic is getting more expensive. Facebook, as the most popular social network, has an average CPM of around $7. In addition, it is generally often used to sell expensive products.
Restrictions
Basically, any traffic source has its own characteristics. In order to maximize your profit, it is important to consider the limitations that CPA networks impose. For instance, marketers may be limited to particular geographical locations or platforms to promote the CPA offer.
Traffic quality
It’s no secret that traffic can be both good and bad quality. To find the best mobile traffic for CPA, marketers should pay attention to the source and the conversion ability. Thus, if the conversion is poor, then earnings will be very low. Traffic can also be generated by bots. Bots will never take targeted action, so this traffic is useless to promote CPA offers.
Targeting options
Properly set targeting is the key to success in CPA marketing. Some of the most important parameters are interests, geolocation, behavior, age, gender. These options will help to target the ads only to the correct audience by offering them relevant products or services.
Conclusion
The main feature of mobile CPA marketing is that the advertiser pays when the user makes a target action. This can be not only buying a product, but also registering, downloading an application, or any other action. But to attract users, the publisher needs to use various mobile traffic sources. It can be search traffic, social media advertising, Push Notifications, or other types of traffic.
The choice of mobile traffic source for CPA offers depends on many factors. It is highly dependent on the niche and the audience. While free traffic sources require a lot of time, they are generally not suitable for promoting CPA offers.
Paid traffic sources involve a higher risk but provide various targeting options. For beginner marketers, it is better to start generating cheap mobile traffic through popular affiliate networks or mainstream social media.
About the Author
Daniel Dustin is a social media and digital marketing expert with over 15 years of experience. He started studying Internet marketing when he was 18 years old. These days, Daniel puts his extensive experience as a marketing consultant at Leadbit company, the company that specializes in digital marketing and leads its own CPA marketing programs.
