Top push ad networks

Push Ad Campaign

Anna Mardas
29 May 2024

In the bustling world of affiliate marketing, staying ahead of the curve with innovative advertising strategies is crucial. One such strategy that has gained significant traction among advertisers is running push ad campaign.

Let’s dive into push ad campaigns meaning, how they work, and why they might be the game-changers you need for your advertising efforts.

What is a Push Ad Campaign

A push ad campaign is a digital marketing strategy that utilizes push notifications to deliver promotional messages directly to users’ devices. These notifications can appear on smartphones, tablets, or desktops, even when the user is not actively browsing the internet.

Here’s a concise breakdown of what a push ad campaign involves:

Key elements of a push ad campaign:

  1. Opt-in requirement. Users must first consent to receive notifications, typically by subscribing through a website or app. This opt-in feature is crucial as it ensures that the audience is receptive to receiving such messages.
  2. Notification format. The ads are delivered in the form of a push notification, which might include text, images, and sometimes buttons that can direct users to a website or app. These notifications are brief, attention-grabbing, and designed to be immediately actionable.
  3. Direct delivery. Unlike other ads that require a user to be on a specific platform, push notifications are sent directly to the device, making them highly visible and effective for timely communications.

What are the Best Verticals for Setting Up Push Ad Campaigns

Running push ad campaigns is a useful way to cover a wide variety of verticals. The following verticals tend to have higher click-through and conversion rates than the other ones, which makes them more profitable for marketers.

The list of best verticals for push notifications:

  • Gambling;
  • Betting;
  • Sweepstakes;
  • Dating;
  • Health & Beauty;

 

  • Finance;
  • VPN and Utility;
  • Antiviruses;
  • E-commerce;
  • Games;

As some verticals, like Adult, Dating, Gambling, and Sweepstakes are prohibited in social networks, running push ads become almost the only appropriate solution for the promotion of such offers. Note that some restrictions may also be related to the laws of a particular country. For example, gambling or betting offers are forbidden for advertising in the United Arab Emirates.

Due to the adaptability of push notifications, it is impossible to say which vertical performs best, but it’s definitely worth focusing on not too-specific offers because of the lack of interest-based targeting. 

What are the Specifics of Push Ad Campaigns?

We’ll explain some technical aspects of push campaigns related to their setup, and then tell you how to get the most out of this knowledge.

Targeting options for push ads

The targeting options in both push and social media campaigns are very different. Unlike push campaigns, social networks offer more targeting options based on user personal data: age, gender, and interests. Moreover, users leave the data themselves, creating their personal accounts. 

While social media collect personal data, almost nothing is known about the browser users. Everything you can learn about the target audience comes down to device options, browser parameters and geolocations. 

Here are 4 conditional targeting categories in push ad campaigns:

  • GEO. Push ads are available in a great number of GEOs, which means marketers have the broadest possibilities to promote offers across many verticals;
  • Devices characteristics. They can include demographic targeting, device model, OS, connection type, browser and its language, as well as other options that allow advertisers to reach users based on device characteristics; 
  • Schedule. As push ads can be displayed around the world, affiliate marketers often have a question: which schedule to set? It’s essential to focus on time zones at first. However, it is equally important to take into account “happy hours” when users are really ready to see ads and interact with them;
  • Capping. It’s a tool that allows affiliates to set limitations on impressions, clicks, and even conversions. Frequency capping will be useful for making advertisements non-intrusive – a user won’t see the same ad too often.

Segmentation of push traffic

Even though push notifications are voluntary, not all users are equally interested in the notifications they subscribe to. Traffic segmentation helps to discover what audience group is the most effective. 

Push traffic can be divided into 2 groups, depending on the following factors:

  • User freshness. As a rule, new subscribers are more likely to click on ads compared to the rest.  User activity is supposed to be reduced in about 7 days;
  • Performance. It’s clear that some traffic sources convert better than others. The quality of traffic for a particular vertical or offer can be checked through A/B testing. Some ad platforms do this work for their clients, providing them with ready-made lists of traffic sources. These lists can be called in different ways, but primarily these are Premium and Standart subscribers lists.

By targeting premium sources, advertisers can maximize campaign results, while sources with standard or low performance can be used for further scaling.

Push ads pricing models

Most of the used cost models in push advertising are CPC and CPM. 

Let’s take a closer look at them:

CPCCPM
Stands for: Cost Per ClickStand for: Cost Per Mille (1K impressions)
Context: Advertisers pay for only user’s clicksContext: Advertisers pay for every 1K impressions
Best for: Generation of
conversion-centered campaigns
Best for: Broad audience marketing, in
particular increasing brand awareness

Advertisers often choose the CPC cost model because of knowing how many clicks they can get according to their campaign budget. And on this basis, the CPC model seems to be more simple and less risky, unlike CPM. 

Basic Steps to Create a Push Ad Campaign 

The steps we outline below are a basis for any network. 

  • Select the GEO. It’s the main parameter of the push campaign. Each country is characterized by different traffic volumes and levels of bids. Use hints from ad account or ask your manager for advice on what country to choose for your offer;
  • Specify cost model options. Most often CPC model on the go. It seems to be more profitable to pay for clicks instead of impressions, although both models can be winning for advertisers. Rely on in-house analytics to set optimal bids. These may be hints in UI or insights on each GEO in the relevant section of the advertising account;
  • Choose device options. These are basic targeting settings that allow getting crucial information about users. Remember about the creation of separate campaigns for mobiles and desktops and set the wide settings to get as much data as possible about your target audience; 
  • Setup conversions tracking. You can’t do without a tracker if you are gonna optimize your campaign. Many ad networks are integrated with tracking solutions and suggest adding postback URL when setting up a campaign. If they also provide account users with step-by-step manuals, setup tracking becomes a piece of cake;
  • Specify traffic sources. Not all networks have the option of splitting traffic into groups, nevertheless, it’s an effective way to find a devoted audience unless you want to test all available traffic. Launch your first campaign on premium sources and scale it on less-performing ones. Besides, sources can be divided into other groups, and the only right strategy is to test;
  • Choose your budget. You can define a push campaign budget limit per day to avoid overspending or unplanned costs. Pay attention to other functions, such as ASAP and EVEN, if traffic distribution matters;
  • Set up capping. Ads displayed on the screen of the same user several times per day look intrusively, but it’s even worse when this user starts clicking on your ad without any purpose. To avoid this, specify the following settings: 1 click or impression/per day/per 1 user;
  • Add creatives. Learn about the requirements of an ad network and make creatives aligned with its guidelines. The number of creatives may be unlimited up to 8-10. Use all attempts to understand what creatives ad recipients most often click on;
  • Set a schedule. Specify local time, start and end dates of the campaign. If you are running a campaign at first, try to use a 24/7 schedule for learning what time performs best for your offer. 

Where Advertisers Can Run Their Push Ad Campaigns

To promote their offers, advertisers need publishers who have their own websites. Publishers or site owners, in turn, are interested in collaboration with advertisers because their purpose is to monetize existing traffic. Obviously, publishers can create an opt-in form for collecting subscriptions through a special plugin, but this way takes much time and reach only website visitors. 

The most effective way to monetize or buy traffic is cooperation with push ad agencies that meet the needs of both sides:

  • Publishers who have their own traffic and want to monetize it;
  • Affiliate marketers who want to get a portion of the revenue made from a promoted offer.

Push ads networks aggregate many site owners in one place, giving access to a great amount of traffic for advertisers. 

How do ad networks work

Subscribers lists are the largest traffic source in any ad platform. Each list can include several publishers. And accordingly, each publisher can have either one site or multiple ones.

What are subscribers list

5 Hot Tips on Boosting Campaign Performance

Setting up push campaigns doesn’t imply as many targeting options as social media advertising accounts have. However, push technology provides large volumes of traffic compared to social networks. If a campaign is launched in some ad platform, there are also more opportunities for affiliates to optimize it. Thus, the success of a campaign depends on its proper setup. 

Here, we’ll share the secrets of high-performance-based campaigns.

Learn best performing GEOs for your offer 

When choosing GEO, advertisers should consider that each country has its level  of economic development, needs, culture and laws – all these factors influence on advertiser’s profit. 

As GEOs are categorized in a tier system, you can focus on a particular group: 

  • Tier-1. Countries that have the most solvent audience (Finland, Norway, Spain, Portugal, Poland);
  • Tier-2. Competition of these countries group is lower than in Tier-1 one (Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania);
  • Tier 3. Tier-3 countries are the poorest sectors of the world population, but the traffic cost is very cheap (Egypt, the Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Gabon, Georgia).

If you choose GEO from the Tier-1 group, you have a chance to get the largest payouts for offers, but the cost of this traffic will be high. Also, you can profit from the high traffic volumes of Tier-3 countries at a low price. The selection of GEO from the Tier-2 group is an alternative to mentioned options.

Choosing GEO impacts the potential amount of traffic that you can get. Affiliates can cover all countries while creating campaigns, provided that they have enough budget and time for testing and this strategy is appropriate. 

Make attractive creatives and test them

Users’ attention is one of the most valuable commodities nowadays so push creatives are designed to attract it. Look at a few tips on how to make eye-catching creatives: 

  • Icon 
Best practices for icons in push advertising

Icon should be simple and coupled with the main image. So, complex graphics or over-detailed icon isn’t the best option.

  • Main image
Best practices for main images in push advertising

It is preferable to choose a catchy main image that will convey the sense of the offer. The idea of the image must be clear at the first sight. The best practices for image plots are happy people and before-after pictures;

  • Title and description

A successful title is short and meaningful at the same time, as well as the description. The format of push notifications is limited to several words, so start with the most important message of your offer.

Use various creatives for your campaigns and change them from time to time. Even the most ordinary creative can come off. Regular updates ensure your ads stay relevant and continuously capture audience attention.

Use traffic sources groups

If an ad network divides all available traffic into groups, offering sources of different performance levels, it’s better to seize this opportunity. By choosing premium sources, it is possible to increase CR and reduce CPA when testing only part of traffic. The rule that works here is: “Quantity does not equal quality”. Sources with lower performance and lists of new subscribers can be used for campaign scaling. 

Create separate campaigns for desktop and mobile

Campaigns should be separated for different devices because mobiles and desktops differ only by traffic features. It is definitely worth doing because separation makes optimization easier. To separate campaigns, you need only duplicate the created campaign and replace device settings. The process of creating separate campaigns for devices may be slightly different for diverse ad networks. 

Use optimization tools

Optimization is the power of push format, and it may have an even greater impact on conversion results when its options are would be used to the fullest. For example, you can set up Automated Rules that allow making changes based on the conditions users choose. If you set rules, all low-converting sources can be blacklisted at once. It’s more convenient than excluding each source one by one manually. 

Likewise, you can use other optimization features to achieve the best campaign performance. Ways of optimization are numerous, so use any opportunity to improve your campaign and reach the target audience more precisely. Experimenting with different targeting options, ad scheduling, and bid adjustments can further refine your strategy and enhance results.

Related Articles:

Anna Mardas
Anna Mardas brought together her background as a copywriter in digital marketing. Now, she's got a solid grasp on affiliate marketing, especially when it comes to understanding the following niches: Gambling, Adult, Dating, Sweepstakes and Crypto. Anna stands out for her thorough research and insightful reviews of ad networks, offering her readers valuable knowledge.

In the bustling world of affiliate marketing, staying ahead of the curve with innovative advertising strategies is crucial. One such strategy that has gained significant traction among advertisers is running push ad campaign.

Let’s dive into push ad campaigns meaning, how they work, and why they might be the game-changers you need for your advertising efforts.

What is a Push Ad Campaign

A push ad campaign is a digital marketing strategy that utilizes push notifications to deliver promotional messages directly to users’ devices. These notifications can appear on smartphones, tablets, or desktops, even when the user is not actively browsing the internet.

Here’s a concise breakdown of what a push ad campaign involves:

Key elements of a push ad campaign:

  1. Opt-in requirement. Users must first consent to receive notifications, typically by subscribing through a website or app. This opt-in feature is crucial as it ensures that the audience is receptive to receiving such messages.
  2. Notification format. The ads are delivered in the form of a push notification, which might include text, images, and sometimes buttons that can direct users to a website or app. These notifications are brief, attention-grabbing, and designed to be immediately actionable.
  3. Direct delivery. Unlike other ads that require a user to be on a specific platform, push notifications are sent directly to the device, making them highly visible and effective for timely communications.

What are the Best Verticals for Setting Up Push Ad Campaigns

Running push ad campaigns is a useful way to cover a wide variety of verticals. The following verticals tend to have higher click-through and conversion rates than the other ones, which makes them more profitable for marketers.

The list of best verticals for push notifications:

  • Gambling;
  • Betting;
  • Sweepstakes;
  • Dating;
  • Health & Beauty;

 

  • Finance;
  • VPN and Utility;
  • Antiviruses;
  • E-commerce;
  • Games;

As some verticals, like Adult, Dating, Gambling, and Sweepstakes are prohibited in social networks, running push ads become almost the only appropriate solution for the promotion of such offers. Note that some restrictions may also be related to the laws of a particular country. For example, gambling or betting offers are forbidden for advertising in the United Arab Emirates.

Due to the adaptability of push notifications, it is impossible to say which vertical performs best, but it’s definitely worth focusing on not too-specific offers because of the lack of interest-based targeting. 

What are the Specifics of Push Ad Campaigns?

We’ll explain some technical aspects of push campaigns related to their setup, and then tell you how to get the most out of this knowledge.

Targeting options for push ads

The targeting options in both push and social media campaigns are very different. Unlike push campaigns, social networks offer more targeting options based on user personal data: age, gender, and interests. Moreover, users leave the data themselves, creating their personal accounts. 

While social media collect personal data, almost nothing is known about the browser users. Everything you can learn about the target audience comes down to device options, browser parameters and geolocations. 

Here are 4 conditional targeting categories in push ad campaigns:

  • GEO. Push ads are available in a great number of GEOs, which means marketers have the broadest possibilities to promote offers across many verticals;
  • Devices characteristics. They can include demographic targeting, device model, OS, connection type, browser and its language, as well as other options that allow advertisers to reach users based on device characteristics; 
  • Schedule. As push ads can be displayed around the world, affiliate marketers often have a question: which schedule to set? It’s essential to focus on time zones at first. However, it is equally important to take into account “happy hours” when users are really ready to see ads and interact with them;
  • Capping. It’s a tool that allows affiliates to set limitations on impressions, clicks, and even conversions. Frequency capping will be useful for making advertisements non-intrusive – a user won’t see the same ad too often.

Segmentation of push traffic

Even though push notifications are voluntary, not all users are equally interested in the notifications they subscribe to. Traffic segmentation helps to discover what audience group is the most effective. 

Push traffic can be divided into 2 groups, depending on the following factors:

  • User freshness. As a rule, new subscribers are more likely to click on ads compared to the rest.  User activity is supposed to be reduced in about 7 days;
  • Performance. It’s clear that some traffic sources convert better than others. The quality of traffic for a particular vertical or offer can be checked through A/B testing. Some ad platforms do this work for their clients, providing them with ready-made lists of traffic sources. These lists can be called in different ways, but primarily these are Premium and Standart subscribers lists.

By targeting premium sources, advertisers can maximize campaign results, while sources with standard or low performance can be used for further scaling.

Push ads pricing models

Most of the used cost models in push advertising are CPC and CPM. 

Let’s take a closer look at them:

CPCCPM
Stands for: Cost Per ClickStand for: Cost Per Mille (1K impressions)
Context: Advertisers pay for only user’s clicksContext: Advertisers pay for every 1K impressions
Best for: Generation of
conversion-centered campaigns
Best for: Broad audience marketing, in
particular increasing brand awareness

Advertisers often choose the CPC cost model because of knowing how many clicks they can get according to their campaign budget. And on this basis, the CPC model seems to be more simple and less risky, unlike CPM. 

Basic Steps to Create a Push Ad Campaign 

The steps we outline below are a basis for any network. 

  • Select the GEO. It’s the main parameter of the push campaign. Each country is characterized by different traffic volumes and levels of bids. Use hints from ad account or ask your manager for advice on what country to choose for your offer;
  • Specify cost model options. Most often CPC model on the go. It seems to be more profitable to pay for clicks instead of impressions, although both models can be winning for advertisers. Rely on in-house analytics to set optimal bids. These may be hints in UI or insights on each GEO in the relevant section of the advertising account;
  • Choose device options. These are basic targeting settings that allow getting crucial information about users. Remember about the creation of separate campaigns for mobiles and desktops and set the wide settings to get as much data as possible about your target audience; 
  • Setup conversions tracking. You can’t do without a tracker if you are gonna optimize your campaign. Many ad networks are integrated with tracking solutions and suggest adding postback URL when setting up a campaign. If they also provide account users with step-by-step manuals, setup tracking becomes a piece of cake;
  • Specify traffic sources. Not all networks have the option of splitting traffic into groups, nevertheless, it’s an effective way to find a devoted audience unless you want to test all available traffic. Launch your first campaign on premium sources and scale it on less-performing ones. Besides, sources can be divided into other groups, and the only right strategy is to test;
  • Choose your budget. You can define a push campaign budget limit per day to avoid overspending or unplanned costs. Pay attention to other functions, such as ASAP and EVEN, if traffic distribution matters;
  • Set up capping. Ads displayed on the screen of the same user several times per day look intrusively, but it’s even worse when this user starts clicking on your ad without any purpose. To avoid this, specify the following settings: 1 click or impression/per day/per 1 user;
  • Add creatives. Learn about the requirements of an ad network and make creatives aligned with its guidelines. The number of creatives may be unlimited up to 8-10. Use all attempts to understand what creatives ad recipients most often click on;
  • Set a schedule. Specify local time, start and end dates of the campaign. If you are running a campaign at first, try to use a 24/7 schedule for learning what time performs best for your offer. 

Where Advertisers Can Run Their Push Ad Campaigns

To promote their offers, advertisers need publishers who have their own websites. Publishers or site owners, in turn, are interested in collaboration with advertisers because their purpose is to monetize existing traffic. Obviously, publishers can create an opt-in form for collecting subscriptions through a special plugin, but this way takes much time and reach only website visitors. 

The most effective way to monetize or buy traffic is cooperation with push ad agencies that meet the needs of both sides:

  • Publishers who have their own traffic and want to monetize it;
  • Affiliate marketers who want to get a portion of the revenue made from a promoted offer.

Push ads networks aggregate many site owners in one place, giving access to a great amount of traffic for advertisers. 

How do ad networks work

Subscribers lists are the largest traffic source in any ad platform. Each list can include several publishers. And accordingly, each publisher can have either one site or multiple ones.

What are subscribers list

5 Hot Tips on Boosting Campaign Performance

Setting up push campaigns doesn’t imply as many targeting options as social media advertising accounts have. However, push technology provides large volumes of traffic compared to social networks. If a campaign is launched in some ad platform, there are also more opportunities for affiliates to optimize it. Thus, the success of a campaign depends on its proper setup. 

Here, we’ll share the secrets of high-performance-based campaigns.

Learn best performing GEOs for your offer 

When choosing GEO, advertisers should consider that each country has its level  of economic development, needs, culture and laws – all these factors influence on advertiser’s profit. 

As GEOs are categorized in a tier system, you can focus on a particular group: 

  • Tier-1. Countries that have the most solvent audience (Finland, Norway, Spain, Portugal, Poland);
  • Tier-2. Competition of these countries group is lower than in Tier-1 one (Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania);
  • Tier 3. Tier-3 countries are the poorest sectors of the world population, but the traffic cost is very cheap (Egypt, the Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Gabon, Georgia).

If you choose GEO from the Tier-1 group, you have a chance to get the largest payouts for offers, but the cost of this traffic will be high. Also, you can profit from the high traffic volumes of Tier-3 countries at a low price. The selection of GEO from the Tier-2 group is an alternative to mentioned options.

Choosing GEO impacts the potential amount of traffic that you can get. Affiliates can cover all countries while creating campaigns, provided that they have enough budget and time for testing and this strategy is appropriate. 

Make attractive creatives and test them

Users’ attention is one of the most valuable commodities nowadays so push creatives are designed to attract it. Look at a few tips on how to make eye-catching creatives: 

  • Icon 
Best practices for icons in push advertising

Icon should be simple and coupled with the main image. So, complex graphics or over-detailed icon isn’t the best option.

  • Main image
Best practices for main images in push advertising

It is preferable to choose a catchy main image that will convey the sense of the offer. The idea of the image must be clear at the first sight. The best practices for image plots are happy people and before-after pictures;

  • Title and description

A successful title is short and meaningful at the same time, as well as the description. The format of push notifications is limited to several words, so start with the most important message of your offer.

Use various creatives for your campaigns and change them from time to time. Even the most ordinary creative can come off. Regular updates ensure your ads stay relevant and continuously capture audience attention.

Use traffic sources groups

If an ad network divides all available traffic into groups, offering sources of different performance levels, it’s better to seize this opportunity. By choosing premium sources, it is possible to increase CR and reduce CPA when testing only part of traffic. The rule that works here is: “Quantity does not equal quality”. Sources with lower performance and lists of new subscribers can be used for campaign scaling. 

Create separate campaigns for desktop and mobile

Campaigns should be separated for different devices because mobiles and desktops differ only by traffic features. It is definitely worth doing because separation makes optimization easier. To separate campaigns, you need only duplicate the created campaign and replace device settings. The process of creating separate campaigns for devices may be slightly different for diverse ad networks. 

Use optimization tools

Optimization is the power of push format, and it may have an even greater impact on conversion results when its options are would be used to the fullest. For example, you can set up Automated Rules that allow making changes based on the conditions users choose. If you set rules, all low-converting sources can be blacklisted at once. It’s more convenient than excluding each source one by one manually. 

Likewise, you can use other optimization features to achieve the best campaign performance. Ways of optimization are numerous, so use any opportunity to improve your campaign and reach the target audience more precisely. Experimenting with different targeting options, ad scheduling, and bid adjustments can further refine your strategy and enhance results.

Related Articles:

Anna Mardas
Anna Mardas brought together her background as a copywriter in digital marketing. Now, she's got a solid grasp on affiliate marketing, especially when it comes to understanding the following niches: Gambling, Adult, Dating, Sweepstakes and Crypto. Anna stands out for her thorough research and insightful reviews of ad networks, offering her readers valuable knowledge.