Last updated on January 26th, 2023 at 04:20 pm
A known business model, Traffic Arbitrage is where one can buy traffic at a relatively cheap rate and make money by displaying ads at high CTR zones and making a profit. In this process, you buy traffic at a lower cost and make money out of it by the placements of ads at prime locations which increases the overall click-through rate. The difference in revenue is the profit. There are several viral websites that are doing this for a long time and making profits out of it. Additionally, popular search engine Ask.com has been using this model to monetize its paid search results for over a decade, now. There are many success stories on native ad arbitrage today, in this article, we are going to discuss how you too can create a successful native ad arbitrage model and make money from it.
Publishergrowth: The Revenue Acceleration Platform for Publishers
Blognife is elated to announce the launch of Publisher Growth- a community of publishers that helps you actively accelerate your revenue. This platform assists publishers in growing their traffic and revenue. As publishers, you can share and read reviews of ad networks and hosting companies. You can connect with other publishers to build links for growth and monetization hacks and more. This platform will help you stay up to date with the advertising and publisher ecosystem.
Features:
How does Native Ad Arbitrage work?
Native ad arbitrage is said to work when you buy traffic from Facebook or native ad networks at cheaper rates and monetize your website by showing native and display ads. One of the underlying principles of a successful native ad arbitrage strategy is to ensure that you select the right niche.
The Secret Sauce for a Successful Native Ad Arbitrage Strategy
Any long-term arbitrage strategy works on the underlying principle of “making the ecosystem”. Essentially, the ecosystem consists of the advertiser, the publisher, and the ad network. So, as a publisher, if you can help advertisers make more money, they would essentially bid on your traffic. This would increase the competition since your traffic is converting for advertisers, and this would essentially boil down to higher revenue for you. For conversions, the content remains one of the essential parts of the strategy and you should be confident enough to ensure that your content strategy and niche are good enough to make advertisers encash on their bids.
Best Themes for Native Ad Arbitrage
If you can identify the correct theme for your arbitrage model, you can increase your overall CTR and in the process, earn money too. Any arbitrage is essentially a click arbitrage and one needs a high CTR to make good money. Hence, making the choice of the appropriate theme with supportive functionalities is essential for any traffic arbitrage model. There are some prerequisites for a theme to work well in traffic arbitrage or click arbitrage, and these include:
- High CTR- While you might think color and design are quite secondary and would not affect the CTR of ads, it sure does and also provides assistance in keeping ads professional, clean, and sorted. Such a theme, allows the focus to be concentrated on ads and thereby increases the click-through rates.
- Pagination- If you’re doing traffic arbitrage or AdSense arbitrage, one of the most crucial things is to have pagination enabled for your posts. Your theme should have “Next” and “Previous” buttons and long image posts should be broken down into pages that users can read and then click on the Next button once they are done reading the first page. In this way, your page views per user increase, and you can make more revenue with CPM-based ads.
Other features include quick setup, better customization, good loading speed, and an overall professional look with ready-to-import templates. We have used over a dozen of professional and premium themes for traffic arbitrage and came down to these few recommendations for you.
Publisher WordPress Theme– The Publisher theme from Themeforest is our first and most preferred choice. It is a multi-purpose theme and probably the best theme currently in the market. Apart from having several interactive demos, this theme has slideshow features and several pagination features which can be quite handy. Also, you can use the theme on your other blogs to increase your overall CTR. We have seen the theme perform quite well in terms to increase the AdSense CTR and we use it on a number of our blogs like Essencz, TheBreakupCafe, and others. Take a look at the Publisher theme now.
Bimber- Bimber is yet another viral WordPress theme that is recommended if you’re running a blog on cats/dogs, celebrities, inspiration, science facts, etc. This theme has custom pagination options and can be used to divide your long post into multiple pages. Bimber offers sticky share buttons for Facebook and Twitter to increase the chances of your content going viral on social media. If your entire source of traffic is Facebook, then this theme can be an appropriate choice for you. Take a look at the Bimber theme now.
Ad Networks to Monetize your Traffic Arbitrage Website
Here is a list of ad networks that we highly recommend to publishers who are running viral sites or using the ad arbitrage model to make money from their websites. We suggest publishers split the revenue across multiple channels and run them parallelly to have a sense of your overall revenue potential.
1) VDO.AI (Blognife Recommended)
VDO.AI‘s native units are designed to be non-obtrusive and provide a seamless way for publishers to leverage the power of video. A lot of publishers see more revenue from a single VDO.AI unit compared to multiple banners and traditional native units. VDO.AI is headquartered in Mountain View, CA. With VDO.AI’s native video widget, you can see an increment of almost 50% of your regular earnings on sites that are typically known to perform well with video ads. The setup usually takes less than a day to get started and goes live once your site gets approved by the demand partners. Listed below are the benefits of joining VDO.AI
- Easy integration using a single javascript
- See an additional revenue of almost 50% of your regular earnings
- One tag that sources the video demand is Google ADX, Appnexus, Sovrn, and other demand platforms.
- Generate higher CPMs from native video ads
- No player, video content, or ad integration separately. Everything comes bundled in a simple js tag.
2) AdSense- Best Native Ad Arbitrage Platform
AdSense, run by Google is one of the best ad networks there is, and definitely the go-to ad network for monetizing your worldwide traffic. It is the primary ad network for CPC arbitrage. However, to boost your overall ad revenue, you could try using both AdSense and Ad Exchange. It is assumed that it would show results. You have to place your AdSense display and native tags on those locations where you expect the maximum click-through rate since that will increase your revenue from AdSense. The ad units which perform well for AdSense include 300×250, 300×600, responsive link units, and responsive native ad units.
- Minimum Traffic Requirement: NA
- Payment Terms: NET 21 days payment via Direct Deposit
3) Google Ad Exchange- Best Native Ad Arbitrage Exchange
It is one of the best ad exchange platforms that offer high fill rates for global traffic. We suggest putting the ad tags on places where the CTR is comparatively lower than AdSense like the sidebar (you can place a 300×600 ad unit), in between the post content or right before the last paragraph of your article. The ad exchange bid prices are primarily based on cookies and audience targeting defined by the advertisers. Higher the auction pressure, the higher the overall CPM value for your impressions. Your Google Ad Exchange sub-account can be approved by third-party ADX partners. Kindly contact us!
- Minimum Traffic Requirement: 300,000 page views per month
- Payment Terms: NET 30 days payment via Wire Transfer
4) Media.net- Best Native Ad Arbitrage Company
It performs specifically well for US traffic in product-related niches. So, if your site has content that targets specific users, then media.net can be a good add-on network for your overall revenue. You can use their contextual/native ad unit at the bottom of your article and analyze the performance. Either you will be earning good rates with Media.net or you won’t be earning well enough to keep their ad unit. However, we strongly recommend you add Media.net to your ad stack. Sign up with Media.net using this link and get 10% extra income for the next 3 months.
- Minimum Traffic Requirement: 100,000 page views per month, depending on the site
- Payment Terms: NET 30 days payment via Wire Transfer or Paypal
5) iZooto (Blognife Recommended)
iZooto allows publishers to tap into web push notifications for driving traffic and monetization using native content ads. Unlike conventional display ads, native content ads served on push notifications attract CTRs up to 2% – 3%. Publishers working with iZooto are now able to generate 15-20% of their traffic using push notifications and increase their revenue by 15%. As a publisher, you can subscribe to iZooto’s Monetization plan which allows you to use use the product for free of cost and also helps you monetize push notifications. iZooto helps you in monetizing push notification inventory using native ads. iZooto has partnered with leading Ad-networks and exchanges including the likes of Taboola, Pubmatic, and RevContent to name a few. The modus operandi is simple –
- iZooto sources contextually relevant ad from it’s Ad network partners.
- These native ads are delivered via notifications to your subscribers.
- iZooto operates on a CPC model and when your subscribers click on these ads, you earn revenue.
2 native content ads are pushed to subscribers. At an average CPC of 10 cents, publishers in the US could potentially start generating up to $1,000 per month in just a quarter. Check out this detailed calculator that will help you estimate your earning potential.
6)Taboola- Best Global Native Ad Arbitrage Platform
Taboola offers higher CPC for US audiences. The network can pay as high as 20 cents per click for US traffic. Running 2-3 Taboola widgets can increase your overall ad revenue and certainly is the best alternative to Adsense, at the present day. Also, Taboola is constantly expanding its team and putting in more marketing efforts to add more advertisers to its base. Thus we recommend using them after post content and in the sidebar for maximum visibility and clicks. (We intend to write a post on Taboola arbitrage and shall update the link here once the article is published).
- Minimum Traffic Requirement: 500,000 page views per month
- Payment Terms: NET 45 days payment via Payoneer
7) Sulvo X- Best Programmatic Native Ad Arbitrage Network
Sulvo uses advanced price optimization technology to enable a publisher to earn more for every impression that is being delivered. We recommend using Sulvo’s sticky ad units like 320×100 for mobile, and 728×90/300×250 for desktop in addition to the existing ad stack to increase your overall revenue from ads. Sulvo’s fill rate is almost 100% for US traffic. Although their net payment is in 60 days, also they pay pretty much on time. Sign up with Sulvo here.
- Minimum Traffic Requirement: 500,000 page views per month
- Payment Terms: NET 60 days payment via Paypal
There are quite a few other ad networks that can be equally useful to further monetize your site- these are Revcontent, Zergnet, Gemini, PubGalaxy, Setupad, AdRecover, Disqus, Content.ad, and Mediavenus to name a few. Do take a look at our list of 20+ native ad networks.
Native Ad Networks to Buy Traffic for Native Ad Arbitrage
While getting started with CPM arbitrage, Adsense arbitrage, or traffic arbitrage, it is important to know that buying traffic from unreliable sources can actually get you in trouble since most of these networks sell fake clicks or traffic. My recommendation would be to build your plan and content which is viral in nature and promote it only on these ad networks.
- Taboola– Taboola is a native ad network and is a good source of cheap traffic for certain geographies especially if you’re targeting Asian countries for your arbitrage.
- Facebook– Driving social traffic from Facebook by promoting posts can be quite useful in the long run. It can not only help you drive a good amount of traffic but also help you generate social signals and build a robust brand around your content. Facebook should be one of your primary traffic acquisition sources for your arbitrage site.
- Revcontent- Most of the popular traffic arbitrage sites use Revcontent to buy traffic. Having a good teaser and an image can help you increase the CTR of your ad and hence the overall cost per click will be highly reduced. Revcontent arbitrage is very popular as there are a lot of publishers who also advertise on revcontent and make money from arbitrage.
Native Ad Arbitrage Content Strategy
For the first few days, you might be running in negative ROI. That is completely fine since you are just setting up your ad placements which can be optimized for a profit. Ensure that you’re targeting the right audience through Facebook and native ads. Try to provide in-depth information about the subject. Many websites which are doing traffic arbitrage or creating viral content don’t seem to provide engaging content. You may take inspiration from Bored Panda which focuses on viral content and uses Facebook post boost and yet maintains the quality of the content and thus have a wide readership across the globe. Your content creation inspiration should be something like Bored Panda if you’re looking to scale your site. Hope we have been able to provide all the resources required to start AdSense arbitrage and we hope you’ll be running into profits after the initial optimization is done.
Additionally, it is your responsibility to audit the quality of the traffic you’re getting. Networks like Revcontent have a lot of fakes and junk traffic that needs to be filtered out. Thus, if you’re planning big, you need to have a dedicated resource that can just filter your traffic by passing essential parameters and having view-ability vendors monitor the traffic. You should be blocking all the sites which are bringing fake traffic and essentially get rid of those networks with are bringing a substantial volume of fake traffic. This will ensure that the quality of your traffic is good and you’re all good to go.
Investment for Native Ad Arbitrage
You need to have a good amount in your pocket, we suggest keeping at least $2000 in your kitty to get started. You would be spending around $500 to build the content, keeping aside around USD 1200 for buying the traffic for the next 2 months. The remaining amount of $300 will go to setting up the website, optimizing it for page load speeds, buying plugins, hosting, and doing other necessary integrations which can help users or visitors share your content smoothly. Since most of the networks pay in NET 30 days, you will have money in your hand after 60 days which you can roll over. The first two months will be more of a roller-coaster with experiments and trials. But once you crack the winning formula, you can monitor your traffic buys and optimize the ad placements for higher yield. Also, keep an additional $1000 as a backup and use it to scale the traffic as required. Generally, arbitrage sites see a profit margin of 30%. So, if you’re investing $3000 per month initially, you can take home an additional $1000 and work on optimizing your campaigns and ad placements for higher ROI. Now the amount mentioned here is marginal and if you’re planning to do native ad arbitrage at a good scale, you need a much higher investment. However, you can always negotiate with networks to have ad credits on your account or bills which you can pay in NET 60 days since that will give you enough time to encash from advertisements.
In order to scale native ad arbitrage, you need to have a proper flow of transactions since you will be flipping your revenue to buy traffic. Additionally, it is important to have good contacts with ad networks. Above all, you need to have a fair idea of filtering bot traffic and traffic sources that are not converting. This would essentially help you manage your campaigns better and generate more profit for every impression that is served. If you need to know more about native ad arbitrage and traffic arbitrage, get in touch for a consultation! Some of the other arbitrage business models you might be interested in include retail arbitrage, tactical arbitrage, amazon arbitrage, eBay to amazon arbitrage, etc.
Our Recommended Tools for Publishers:
- Best AdSense Alternative- Setupad, Ezoic
- Push Notification Network- iZooto, Unative,
- Best Contextual Ad Network- Media.net (Extra 10% for 3 months)
- Native Ad Network- Mgid
- Popup Ad Network- Exoclick, Propeller Ads
- Best Web Hosting- Bluehost, Hostgator, Stablehost, WPEngine
- Blogging Tools- OptinMonster, Astra, Teachable,
I and my team research various ad networks and can help you increase your overall ad revenue; so you could rake in more greenbacks with the best monetization platforms. Tap into the power of the online publishing business with me. I am just a mail away, so reach out to me if you want to scale up your website revenue. mail: [email protected]
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