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Most newcomers to traffic arbitrage face the same difficulties at the start: a lack of skills in creating their own traffic drain connections.
To solve this problem, many turn to spy services. Looking through ready-made creatives, they find links that show good results. They take them and put them to work, but the result is often the same – significant losses, because the link does not bring the expected profit.
Then the beginner wonders: “Why does everything work in the spy service and I have losses?” Why does this happen, and why do links copied from spy services most often lead to a negative result? Today we will discuss this very thing.
We will warn you right away that this article will primarily focus on the gut, but the algorithm is similar in other verticals.
The classic structure of arbitrage communication includes such elements as offer, GEO, creative, pre-launch, and landing. However, there is one key point that is often overlooked – the offer rate, which can be significantly different from those available publicly.
Digging deeper into the mechanics of affiliate programs (APs), you will notice that most of them do not create the offers they offer for work. Instead, they are engaged in their resale.
Resell is the process of reselling a product purchased from another partner.
A typical situation is as follows: an advertiser approaches an affiliate with an offer and states that he is ready to pay $20 for each lead. The affiliate accepts this offer and sets a public rate of $12. Then the rates can be raised to $14-16 for proven webmasters and teams, and the difference of $4-6 is left to the affiliate to cover expenses: call center fees, taxes, salaries, and other costs. At the same time, the internal buying team of the affiliate can work at a maximum rate of $20. This is beneficial for the affiliate, as webmasters receive a percentage of the volume only (all figures are approximate, the principle is important).
The main conclusion: you will never know at what rate webmasters who promote this link work. Most likely, the open rate is lower than the one at which the volumes actually go.
Original creative plays a key role in any advertising campaign. One of the main indicators of its effectiveness is CTR.
CTR (click-through rate) is a metric that shows the share of users who interact with an ad in relation to the number of those who saw it. A high CTR indicates that the content has attracted the attention of the audience.
Those who prefer to copy creatives from spy services, especially those that are already shown in large volumes, often have to face unpleasant consequences. When an ad has already been shown to the target audience relevant to the offer many times, its CTR inevitably drops. This is due to the fact that users have already seen this content and it no longer arouses their interest. As a result, the number of clicks decreases, which increases the cost per lead. Fewer clicks mean a higher cost per click, which entails a higher cost of customer acquisition.
This leads to the second important aspect: borrowed creatives, especially at high volumes, will always have a lower CTR, which will negatively affect the overall effectiveness of the advertising campaign.
These two elements of work in traffic arbitrage are closely interconnected and have almost the same performance indicator – conversion rate (CR).
CR (Conversion Rate) is a metric that displays the percentage of users who have performed a targeted action on the site (for example, placed an order), relative to the total number of visitors.
In the context of pre-lands, the term “click-through” is often used, which means how many users after viewing the pre-landing went to the landing page for further interaction.
When it comes to pre-roll and landing pages, as well as advertising creatives, the situation is similar – if the link has already been used repeatedly, the percentage of “breakthrough” from the pre-roll and CR of the landing page will decrease. This, in turn, increases traffic costs and worsens the overall campaign economy.
It is important to realize that a decrease in the performance of any link copied through a spy service is inevitable. Yes, some elements may lose their effectiveness. However, in the aggregate (landing, prelisting, creatives), the overall difference in results will be noticeable. And if the offer rate is not increased by the PP, then losses from the use of such a link become guaranteed.
Many webmasters misinterpret the role of spy services. They perceive them primarily as a tool for copying other people’s communications. In fact, spy services are designed to analyze current trends, study approaches, and based on this data, choose an offer and create your own link to fill traffic.