Media Buying

Single Offers vs Algorithm: Man Against the Machine

Last updated on May 4, 2018 by Elena Rudneva 4 min read

Table of Contents

Introduction

Imagine you have to perform a time-consuming, nerve-racking task.

Who would you trust?

Yourself, a mere human being, or an innovative, top of the range robot?

It’s a tricky question.

Probably, if you had know-how, time, patience and money, you’d prefer to be responsible for your actions and results.

However, when you don’t even know where to start, you can’t do that.

What you can do is rely on top class professionals who’ve created the robot.

Basically, this is one of the first choices you gotta make when you wanna become a media buyer.

So what’s it gonna be?

Are you gonna look for single offers yourself?

Are you ready to trust a programmatic algorithm?

Single Offers Pros

More Control Over your Activity

If the offer you’ve picked stops working for you, you can be more proactive.

You can understand what’s wrong and act accordingly, usually by pausing your traffic.

This means that you don’t need to wait around to find out what the algorithm is gonna offer you as a replacement and whether or not you’ll lose revenue.

More Profitable

There are plenty of offers available on the market.

Quite a few of them have a very high eCPM and, as seems obvious, not all of these will be discovered by CPA networks and later integrated into algorithms.

So, if you’re a lucky guy, you might be able to find that special offer with an outstanding performance, driving all your traffic to it in order to earn that sweet cash.

Won’t Lose Traffic on Daily Tests

In order to offer you the best solution for your traffic, an algorithm needs to get stats.

That means that, every day, there’s a random part of traffic used on testing existing offers as well as new ones.

Due to the fact that this traffic test is random, your traffic may also be a part of it.

That basically means that a small part of your traffic may end up landing on the test offers with low performances, making you lose money.

Offers that are Specifically for your Traffic

Sometimes, the best offer from your algorithm is giving you less money than the second best.

Even so, the algorithm will continue driving your users to the offer it considers as the best.

That doesn’t happen with single offers.

That means you’re more flexible, being able to choose the offer which works best for your traffic, even when it shows lower results when compared to other ads.

Banner for your Offer

This isn’t exactly a big secret:

The type of banner has a direct influence on the conversion rate and the eCPM.

When you’re using the algorithm, you have to use generic banners which will basically suit every offer from the selected segment.

On the other hand, when you use single offers, you can put some more time and creativity into your banners, making sure to adapt them to your offer.

With a customized banner, the probability of someone clicking on your banner and converting could be higher.

Algorithm Pros

It’s Easier for you

You’ll only be working on one side of the traffic game.

The other side – the tough part – will be the responsibility of very smart people; members of an advertising team that’s part of your CPA network.

Those guys – the geniuses – are the ones that are tasked with choosing the most profitable offers for you.

To put it simple:

Your tasks will be shared.

You’ll care exclusively about traffic optimization as business professionals will be masters of offers optimization.

One Single Link

You’ll have one single link that can be used for all campaigns – with different country/operator/os targeting.

This link will automatically detect your users’ profile, showing you the best offer available for this specific profile.

This option is user-friendly.

The probability of connecting a wrong offer with a campaign that has the wrong target is minimal.

Less Money Invested

You won’t have to spend tons of cash testing each and every offer available on the market to choose the ones that are perfect for your traffic.

Why? Because when you use a global link of algorithm, you’ll be certain that there have been hundreds of offers already tested for you.

The money and resources spent aren’t yours.

Indeed, there’s an affiliate network spending their money on daily tests and spending their time searching for new offers.

By using an algorithm, you’ll be investing only in getting big volume of quality traffic, while the best offers will be already picked.

In addition, you won’t have to waste time on a continuous search.

With this option, you’ll be sure to always have a back-up plan, even if your best offer fades away and ceases to give you the cash you were used to getting.

Less Time Invested

Time, as they say, is money.

It matters.

A lot.

The more time you spend searching for the best offer for your particular traffic, the less time you spend actually earning money.

With the algorithm, you know you’ll start getting results straight away, without having to waste precious time.

Stability

Life is unpredictable.

Things change.

Offers shift and die.

If you’re opting to use a single offer and something happens with it, you won’t make any money.

An algorithm, on the other hand, gives you the certainty that you’ll always have good offers to drive your traffic to.

Basically, you’re exploring your chances safely, knowing you’ll get results.

If your best offer dies, you know others will come to give you a chance to make it rain.

Clearer

When you invest on a single offer and start losing money, it’s never really clear why.

Is it because you were wrong to select that offer?

Is it a problem with the quality of your traffic?

By using an algorithm, you’re certain that the offers are working for the majority of your traffic and that, if you’re not being profitable, it’s probably cause of the quality of your traffic.