PropellerAds After All These Years: Why I Never Switched

Anyone doing Media Buying knows there’s no once-and-for-all choice when it comes to traffic sources.

Over the years I’ve tested dozens of platforms. Some had decent ROI at the start, then the quality collapsed as I kept running; some were too small, and the moment I raised the budget they couldn’t deliver; and some had dashboards so hostile that just setting up a campaign could waste half a day.

But PropellerAds is the one I started using in 2016 and am still running today, and it has always been my main traffic source for Pop and Push. Today, let’s talk about why.

Volume and stability

Anyone who’s run Pop and Push knows the biggest fear with these two formats is not having enough volume. You finally test your way to a profitable campaign, then when you scale you find the platform only has that many daily impressions, and it simply won’t run.

PropellerAds averages around 15 billion impressions a day. Whether you run Southeast Asia, Africa or Latin America, you can basically always find enough volume. For Pop and Push, I’ve tested the vast majority of traffic sources, and their performance and volume are among the biggest.

Optimization efficiency

The most painful part of running Pop used to be blacklisting zones by hand: checking the data one by one, adding them to the blacklist one by one, slow and tiring.

PropellerAds offers more than 10 advanced targeting dimensions and automated optimization tools: you set a target CPA, the system filters zones for you automatically, and the time you save can go into testing more offers.

A variety of ad formats

PropellerAds isn’t just Pop and Push. Its ad formats can fit pretty much any funnel you have; whether you’re doing performance-driven CPA or brand exposure, you can find a suitable way to run it.

Not just affiliate marketing

I first used it as a CPA affiliate, but over the last two years it’s been obvious that PropellerAds is also pushing hard into e-commerce, gaming and mobile app promotion.

Whether you’re a brand, an app developer or in e-commerce, you can find suitable traffic there. For those of us running a Media Buying Agency and doing affiliate marketing, it’s one of the platforms we’re most deeply tied to when promoting products globally.

They recently published a few hands-on case studies with decent numbers; take a look if you’re interested: