My experience with Propellerads as advertiser

honestIM said:

I was searching around this forum for the past few months and could not find a decent review on this traffic source despite asking experience media buyers like @Sephrata (did not receive a reply but I guess he must be too busy and overwhelm with PMs, he is a nice gentlemen).

So I decided to go ahead and test out this traffic source and runs it for CPA campaign.

$100 (initial deposit) - ROI = 0
$300 (a further $300 as I was advised by their support to use this amount for USA traffic SmartCPA) - ROI = 0
$100 = 2 conversions and make $16
$200 (targeting the site ID that gave me this conversion) ROI = 0

So my thought was to use a third party tracker to eliminate the bot traffic or at least detect them as I am bleeding money away. Below is the reply of their customer support when I asked how can I setup the tracker to identify bot traffic.

Quote"
We are one of the leaders in the market for popunder traffic volumes, we got a strong anti-bot, anti-cheat system in place some of our publishers can try to cheat. We do not provide such fraud traffic.


Kind regards,
William Carrington
PA Support Team
"UnQuote

Not very impressive as it seems they are reluctant to allow third party tracking bot traffic in my personal point of view.

My overall feedback:
Traffic on propellerads are just like spamming on social network or email spamming. The database are not focused and niche. Meaning you have to find a offer that is rather general by nature to get conversion.

Conversion is very unpredictable. The same site ID that gave you conversion would not be giving you any further conversion so scaling is really hard due to this unpredictable nature.

SmartCPA only works if you have an offer that is general and popular that easily gets conversion. Eventually you still need to pay for impression if your offer is not converting well.

Basically you are better off spending your time spamming to get conversion. As this traffic network is very expensive to get positive ROI. Propellerads is just a legal way to spam to get conversions.


I have also tried their in app messaging adverting (which they term as native ad). Promoting sports gaming. Cost me around $100 and my budget was fully used up in less than 30min. Zero conversion as well. Got many clicks but no conversion.

I am writing this review in the hope that it will benefit others on this forum but not as a rant to complain about Propellerads. I decided to try out the traffic so I am already prepared for this losses.

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sam.hunt0710 said:

Its better to use trackers like Volumm to avoid bot traffics .

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saaqib said:

iv used promolta for youtube traffic.. i later saw most referrals coming from those prize winning websites such as swag bucks..the traffic was garbage..although real humans but zero retention..i think for sales , adwords or FB ADS would do better

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Billy Batts said:

I love these case studies you are doing as CPA+PPC is something that holds my interest as well.

Unfortunately BHW don't have many experienced people in advanced CPA. It takes quite some times to master.

My advice is, stop targetting USA traffic. This GEO is where the big boys play and a couple of hundred dollars or even a couple K is nothing compared what they are spending.

Did you use any splittesting method?

@Sephrata I would like to hear your opinion about this ma8.

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Postercamp said:

So, we better sign as publisher. Make money rather than burning it out.

Nice share mate

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KHer0 said:

Your conclusion is absolutely right, and general knowledge in CPA market.

BHW isn't a good place for CPA, you need to find another source abd learn more

But there are people makin Huge money xxxx/day with those shitty traffic... However, its not easy like setup a landing page and send traffic

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KHer0 said:

Your conclusion is absolutely right, and general knowledge in CPA market.

BHW isn't a good place for CPA, you need to find another source abd learn more

But there are people makin Huge money xxxx/day with those shitty traffic... However, its not easy like setup a landing page and send traffic

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KHer0 said:

Your conclusion is absolutely right, and general knowledge in CPA market.

BHW isn't a good place for CPA, you need to find another source abd learn more

But there are people makin Huge money xxxx/day with those shitty traffic... However, its not easy like setup a landing page and send traffic

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Billy Batts said:

I agree. Mentioning other forums isn't allowed but she and I and I think you too already know which forum is better suited.

CPA comes in many forms but advance CPA/PPC is really a skill that takes a while to master. That's why there are so few really banking hard on it.

I'm currently reading and watching a lot from a couple super affiliates but not even starting it till I have a couple K to burn as I got many costs but getting real close.

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ancientaliens said:

Especially now that we have retargeting, stuff like propeller ads and other popunder traffic is a goldmine..

Propeller ads in 2018 shouldn't be used with the goal of getting conversions as that's wishful thinking. Firstly it's the most aggressive type of interruption marketing. It's akin to trying to seduce a woman that doesn't know you by jumping in front of her, screaming "SURPRISE", then continuously poking her hoping that she'll fall in love with you..

You come off as a creep, and extremely annoying. Not saying popunder traffic doesn't convert, as it does for some people. But this is only after they have tested a lot and identified sites that convert and is congruent with their offer..

An example of a site which has popunders that convert is flaticon.com. This site offers free graphic design icon assets. And each time an icon is about to be downloaded, a popunder leading to a highly contextual keyword triggered Shutterstock page opens. So if someone searched for football helmet icons, the free site has a limited amount of icons, but the popunder opens up shutterstock with a wider range and possibly more professional icons. Well they're doing affiliate to shutterstock which I don't think is the best offer to explain this, but at least it is congruent and well timed pop.

Why does this work?

Well this is a private popunder script so the site owner chooses which URL to pop, so it's not the same as running popunder campaigns on propeller ads where the publisher can't choose which url to pop as that's decided by the network's algorithm.

The popunder only opens when someone downloads an icon. If someone downloads a free icon, they are likely to buy some graphic design assets as they're most likely needing a lot of assets.

Also compared to popunder publisher sites which are mostly adult, hack or blackhat stuff, there aren't a million popunders popping at every click which is annoying and people are blind to. Like if you spend $300 which I guess shows your popunder to hundreds of thousands of people and you have 0 conversions, then something must be wrong with the whole system..

What should popunders be used for?

Traffic to retarget. Extremely cheap AF traffic. I haven't used much platforms, but most of them offer a lot of targeting options.

In terms of targeting options, I probably won't bother with topic or niche, but focus on device and location targeting buying traffic from porn sites. The reason for porn sites is most people don't use vpns or proxies for porn, compared to other sites you'd find on pop networks like streaming, movies etc and also most people use mobile devices, so the chance of getting bots or adblock is almost impossible I guess. Also everyone watches porn, so traffic is pretty much unlimited.
Target by location to retarget with location specific offers and device for the same.

Example scenario. I have an iphone related ecom site. I just simply go on plugrush or trafficjunky, target people using iPhone 5 on blah blah network in california and buy 100,000 visitors for £50 or something. Obviously the more variables, the less potential traffic. I don't send them to my store but just a random site with my retargeting pixel.

Now run a retargeting ad with my offer + calling out the location and you have a formula for conversions. That's 100,000 potential customers acquired for extremely cheap.

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honestIM said:

Landing page/ Preselling and even retargeting flow is essential skills.
Example of retargeting usage.
Visitors click ads and visit Preselling Page A. Retargeting code is placed there to capture for 30days.
Visitors starts to see ads related to this preselling page wherever they go. When they click the ad, they get redirected to preselling page 2 asking why they have not taken action to signup? Is there any questions that they have that is holding them back? Ask them for email signup to answer the query. Make use of autoresponder to build listing. Basically you are trying to milk for every $ you spend on marketing. Another set of retargeting code will be placed on this preselling page 2.

Visitors will start to see ads related to preselling page 2. Usually a discount will be given to entice the visitors. I would prefer to use retargeting from facebook for this purpose as cost is lower for retargeting visitors.

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ancientaliens said:

It's akin to trying to seduce a woman that doesn't know you by jumping in front of her, screaming "SURPRISE", then continuously poking her hoping that she'll fall in love with you.

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