Traffic Types Definition - #1 - POPS (16)
One of the questions Im getting pretty often from new marketers is, "what kind of traffic is this", so I thought I'd do a mini series on this, explaining the specifics for every traffic type. Let's start with the most popular POPs and if there is enough interest, I will cover the other types in following posts.
So what is POP Traffic actually?
History: It all started as POP-UPs, it was the small window that popped over a site - usually used for email collection. What started as a small pop, ended up as a full sized window with the absence of scroll bars, moved up on the screen a bit so the close button wasn’t visible at all 
Even better were the "smart" marketers who chained the popups so you basically couldn’t break out of the chain without crashing your browser - this was the birth of the term "popup hell". As you can guess, browser developers did all they could to block this and they succeeded in a way too.
After a few years, surfers were so annoyed with popups that the most common reaction to seeing a popup was to hit alt-f4 asap. And that’s how POP-UNDERS were born. The idea was very simple, when windows poping up over the site and covering it are annoying, windows popping up and hiding below the active site might be more acceptable by the surfers. Popunders lowered the annoyance level massively and that’s why we have then here until nowadays – waste majority of POP traffic you can buy are actually popunders.
Popunders are also hugely popular amongst site owners. Its a supplementary income stream that doesn’t interfere with the other ads on the site. The only downturn is that google doesn’t exactly love them and they tend to penalize sites running those. The penalty is usually associated with a popunder traffic network tho, so in case you own a site and are running popunders, consider switching the network from time to time and look out for sites of google ban-hammer hitting sites with popunder script from certain network. Couple years ago, hundreds of sites running plugrush pop scripts were hit for example.
Specifics: So POPs are here, they are popular and probably not going anywhere anytime soon. What are some facts you should know about them?
There are some things you need to be aware of, that are connected with the nature of this traffic type.
1. there is no precise targeting, the pop is simply served to every visitor of a particular site, who doesn’t have some tool to block it.
2.they come in different sizes, if you make your LP bigger than the default size, well then you have a problem. Ask the network about the size before you run any campaign with them.
3. they pop-UNDER which means they are sometimes left un-noticed, especially on mobile. Don’t be surprised to see clicks or conversions from them even days after the impressions was bought.
4. they need to load and “hide” FAAAAAST, slow server setup with kill any POP campaign, GUARANTEED!
5. a LOOOOOT of POPs are from adult sites and resold as mainstream, if you are running an offer that is super sensitive and totally against ADULT traffic, you might want to double check with your AM before sending them traffic. Unfortunately, you never know where the POP comes from.
I should also ad one more thing : some part of the POP traffic will be PPV traffic, which is actually pops launched by adware installs. This is a standalone traffic type, so Im not gonna get into it more here, it would need a separate post
Anyone who wants to run POP traffic need to read this too :
http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...of-Pop-Traffic
Questions? Comments? Ask away … Want me to write posts like this about other traffic types? Drop me a PM, post a reply or hit the thanks button so I know there is interest for such posts
NOTES:
Part 2 - Mobile Traffic - read it here : http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...ition-2-MOBILE
Oki dokie, I see some "thanks", so I think its safe to assume some people are interested to get more posts like this. I will go on with it then
EDIT : I moved the post to the POP/PPV section of the forum, I guess it makes more sense for it to be there.
Very good article, especially for new affiliates that want to get into pops.
Three more things that I can think of:
1. Pops are used a lot for cookie dropping campaigns (some advertisers might refer to it as cookie stealing) so pops will work great for big brand names such as booking.com, vistaprint, william hill, etc.
2. The quality of pops tends to be a (bit) lower than normal display traffic as most pop traffic comes from streaming, torrent, filesharing and adult sites. Check with your network AM if those kind of sites are allowed for your campaigns
3. Don't compare the performance metrics (i.e.eCPC, eCPM, etc) of pops with display ads or any other channel. Every channel has its own metrics and the pop channel is really a high-volume channel where you cannot precisely target a specific user or user group. You are shooting with hagel instead of sniper bullets and hope to hit something along the way
Originally Posted by cbrughmans
Excellent post! Looking forward to the rest.
To add.
Pops also work great for pay per call campaigns especially on (shady) streaming, torrent and filesharing sites
Just posted part 2 : http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...ition-2-MOBILE
- This type of post is exactly what I was wishing for a few day's ago.
- You need to get in context if you want to be good at what you do, and it was hard to imagine exactly when/how/what pop-up's and mobile ads were.
- I've found spy tools give some good context on how these formats work.
- Thank you very much for this.
- Feedback : If you can link to a good screencast that shows a popup/popunder being loaded, that would be the best.
Great post, thanks for sharing this.
Originally Posted by heresy
And Matuloo, this is another wonderful post, thumbs up.
Thanks for this Matuloo! Priceless stuff!
Matuloo is indeed one of the best and most high-quality contributors on the forum. As a (starting) affiliate I would strongly suggest to follow his threads and you'll learn a lot!
Regarding pops, here is also some extra info on the topic: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-m...?trk=prof-post
Originally Posted by cbrughmans
Im trying to do my best.
Hi matuloo, very good information, thanks for sharing !
Great information. Thank you.
Originally Posted by imperio
Home > Paid Traffic Sources > POP / PPV / Redirect