Push notifications are the latest way to push your message out to potential customers. It’s a proven and effective tool, but it’s not for everyone. If you intend to use push notification ads for your business or promoting affiliate offers, this article can help you understand more about this ad type.

Push notifications are small messages that appear on the screen in real-time even when users aren’t using an app or website.

Let’s talk about push notifications, specifically how it all started, different types available now, verticals where it can be used, and how to choose the right push notification ads network.

When push notification ads became a viable option for advertisers, many push traffic networks were born to cater to this new form of advertising. After all, it would be difficult for advertisers to search the internet for people or companies that sell or rent their subscribers list and buy from them directly. As such, push ad networks’ main purpose is to act as a middleman between publishers and advertisers.

In essence, the flow of traffic moves in the following (simplified) manner:

The user opt in to receive push notifications from the Publisher. The Publisher sells the subscription to the Ad network, the Ad Network sells the “add space” to the Advertiser, who will then create ads to show to the User.

The Advertiser pays to Ad Network, and the Ad Network pays to the Publisher. It’s easy enough to understand, right?

There is a unified method by which push ads networks bill their advertisers — Cost per Click (CPC). With CPC, any advertiser only pays for every click that they receive, no matter how many times ads were displayed to different users.

This is also the reason why the CTR or Click-Through-Rate is an important metric for both Advertisers and Push ads networks. If your ad was delivered to thousands of users, but your CTR is low, it means the network had to waste precious ad space on you since you are not paying for these impressions. So keep in mind that your creatives have a high CTR or else your campaign may be paused.

There is a multitude of reasons why working with the best push service you find can be advantageous. Here are some of them:

• Eliminates the need to manually search for sources

Push ad networks were born out of the need for someone to bridge the gap between publisher and advertiser. You won’t have to waste your time searching for traffic sources or even building your own subscribers list: a network solves that for you.

• Wider Reach

What if today you are focusing on one country, the next, you want to shift to a different one? Just as traffic volume is important, so is reach. And we’re not just talking about geolocations, but also device types, traffic types (adult and mainstream), and more.

• Provides Advertisers the ability to choose sources

Since advertisers can monitor the performance of their ads, they can also determine which traffic sources perform adequately or poorly.

You can then use the data you gathered to do one of the following:

1. Blacklist or prevent ads from showing up on specific supply groups, publishers, or websites;
2. Whitelist or create a campaign focussing solely on chosen supply groups, publishers, or websites.

Advertisers will have complete control over where their ads will appear, allowing them to optimize their ad spend and improve their conversion rates.

Advertisers will not own the push subscribers

One major disadvantage of working with a push notification network is that you won’t actually have subscribers of your own. You are only “renting” the ad space and would have to continue paying per click or per view.

In reality, you can join multiple push ad networks and run campaigns on several of them; there is no restriction saying you can't work with more than one. However, if you have a limited budget, then you must choose the best push ad network based on your preference and focus your energy (and money) into understanding your traffic source deeply.