The evolution and growth of the internet has helped to recreate the business landscape. More people are now connected online and businesses have found that an online presence is a prerequisite for your brand to be discovered.
While users are continually being bombarded with different types of information, so much more than anyone can spend their lives browsing through them. Yet billions of blog posts, articles, videos, images are being created as we speak.
Inside all this clutter of information on the internet, businesses must find ways to get the attention of their target audiences.
Quite fortunately, many web servicing companies have sprung up to provide the much needed services for businesses to reach their target audience, and this they offer at very affordable costs.
One of such services that help promote brands and keep them in the face of their audience is online advertising.
This service, like the internet, has also evolved into different online advertising platforms popularly referred to as Ad networks.
We will be reviewing one of such ad networks which has a global reach. But first let’s provide you with basic information about ad networks.
The main topics covered in our PropellerAds review are:
- What is an Ad Network and How Does it Serve Users?
- Overview of PropellerAds
- The Main Features to Be Found Using PropellerAds
- Different PropellerAds Formats
- Components of a PropellerAds Dashboard
- PropellerAds Payments
- Pros and Cons of PropellerAds
- Getting Started With PropellerAds
- Conclusion
What is an Ad Network and How Does it Serve Users?
An ad network is an online advertising network that functions as an intermediary by aggregating large inventory of ads from publishers and selling the same to advertisers.
The online advertisement marketing model is built on adtech technology, enabling platforms to bring advertisers and publishers together using digital media. Advertisers have the opportunity to leverage on these networks in promoting and sales of their offers for commissions.
How Does an Ad Network Serve Users?
The main users of an ad network are advertisers and publishers, and ad networks act as go-between for these two.
An ad network mediates between the users by taking inventory of all ad spaces made available by the publishers. These ad spaces could be from traffic sources like blogs, email newsletters and social media profiles.
Most ad networks would verify the traffic sources to ensure that it has good quality target audience before approval. Once approved, publishers are then furnished with tools and unique referral links for promoting offers.
Ad Networks use any number of advertising models including CPA, CPC and CPM.
Advertisers are then allowed to bid for their ads which will be displayed to the publishers’ traffic.
Ad networks have their strengths, particular niches that they cover and scope of coverage. Quite a number have grown to service both advertisers and publishers on a global scale.
Overview of PropellerAds
PropellerAds is a global advertising network serving more than 3 billion daily ad impressions to 195 countries around the world. The global ads network is famous for its use of push, native and pop up traffic with more than 350 million push subscribers
PropellerAds was founded in 2011 with a focus on pop-unders but has since grown and now provides a wide range of cross- platform formats. Other ads formats supported by Propeller Ads include mobile interstitial, mobile dialog, push notifications, On-click, and direct link.
PropellerAds also supports native, video and affiliate services. The company offers a wide range of features and benefits to advertisers and publishers.
Here are my best picks on the features of PropellerAds.
The Main Features to Be Found Using PropellerAds
1. Global Reach – PropellerAds has a reach of 195 countries serving online ads for both English and non-English speaking traffic. It has one of the biggest traffic sources and is well known around the online marketing circles.
2. Best CPM Rates – The Company claims to have the best CPM rates in the industry.
3. Over 3 Billion Daily Ads Impression – This by no means is a very large amount of ads impression to deliver daily. Advertisers are assured of ads display platforms while publishers are never short of ads.
4. PropellerAds Frequency Capping – This is a feature offered by PropellerAds with the option to enable or disable it. Frequency capping helps to ensure that you do not end up having plenty of redundant impressions.
5. Targeting Options – PropellerAds provides targeting options that let you choose from a selection of segments to include or exclude. You can choose from a range of options like mobile devices, and between Android and iOS and also between phones and tablets or Windows devices.
PropellerAds also lets you choose from connectivity types like 3G, 4G and Wi-Fi. Individual targets can also be included or excluded, white list and blacklist individuals, filter based out based on proxy or fraudulent traffic sources.
6. Propeller Ads Traffic Boost – When creating a campaign you are offered the option of using the publisher network of Propeller Ads or activating Traffic Boost.
Traffic Boost is a feature that enables users to obtain traffic from PropellerAds’ partners and also PropellerAds itself.
7. Works With a Wide Range of Verticals – Users of PropellerAds enjoy services spanning a wide range of verticals that include financial services, gaming, technology, dating, Ecommerce, mobile app installs, and entertainment.
8. Different Advertising Models – PropellerAds supports different online advertising models which include CPM, CPC, CPL, CPI and CPA.
9. No Minimum Traffic Requirements for Publishers – Propeller Ads does not have any stated traffic requirements for Publishers to join its network. However, publishers are encouraged to maintain high quality traffic sources to facilitate higher click through rates and conversions.
This by no means isn’t an exhaustive list but contains most of the best features of PropellerAds.
Different PropellerAds Formats
There are lots of ads formats for advertisers to choose from using PropellerAds self service feature. Publishers can also avail themselves with these ads formats in creating campaigns through their traffic sources.
1. Push Notifications Ads – Used by the company to drive more traffic by displaying notifications on the user’s screen about updates and the latest content that may be of interest. The notification is also “pushed” to the mobile devices of users, giving it a wide reach considering that more internet users browse the web with mobile phones.
2. Native Ads – Propeller native ads are advertising formats that are designed to appear like on-site related widgets. They are usually displayed under “related posts” that lead to other websites when clicked by visitors.
3. Native Interstitials – These ads offer a combination of the timed pop over light box technology with native advertising.
4. Adblock Bypass – This is an Ad blocker solution from Propeller Ads that provides a way for publishers to monetize through replacing of standard display ads with non-Intrusive ads like native ads.
5. On-click Popunder Ads – This ad format is also referred to as ClickUnder ads and they expand to full screen when clicked by users. This ad provides more details to users while also displaying a link directly to the website of the advertiser.
This ad format is an income earner for publishers while providing relevant user information to the advertiser.
6. Other available options include standard banner ads, responsive media ads, and mobile optimized ads.
You can choose from the ad formats listed here or find the full list of available ad formats from your Propeller dashboard.
The dashboard gives you a central location from which you organize and manage all your ads campaigns either as an advertiser or publisher. There are also other features and components that can be found on your PropellerAds dashboard.
Components of PropellerAds Dashboard
1. Traffic Chart – This chart displays traffic volumes based on ad formats, different pricing models, and targeting options like countries, Operating Systems and platforms.
Also included in this chart are “hot” traffic segments and best prices with low competition and high volumes.
2. Audience – From here, users can set up audiences for retargeting.
3. Tracking – Enables users to set up conversion tracking.
4. Add Funds – This is the place to go to when you want to make a deposit or claim a promo code.
5. Profile – As with other platforms or dashboards, the profile section contains personal information that includes security. There is also Information like passwords, set up of recurring payments and notifications.
6. PropellerAds Help Center – Contains knowledge base where you can find most important information on Propeller Ads.
7. Special Offers – Where you will find bonuses offered by PropellerAds’ partners.
8. Property Priority – Is the Ads network’s bonus program.
9. Feature Request – This is the go-to-section to vote, shared ideas that could help improve PropellerAds services.
10. Live Online Chat – This leads to the online support where you can get instant response for requests.
PropellerAds Payments
The minimum deposit on PropellerAds is $100 for credit cards while it is $1,000 if using wire transfer.
The funding methods include debit/credit cards with Visa and MasterCard only accepted. Other funding methods are UnionPay, PayPal, ePayments, Webmoney, Skrill and wire transfer.
For PropellerAds Publishers, the minimum payout threshold is $5 on a net 7 day basis.
The available payment options are PayPal, ePayments, Webmoney, Payoneer, Skrill and wire transfer.
Pros and Cons of PropellerAds
A review can only be considered as objective if the advantages and disadvantages are clearly spelt out. To this end we will highlight the pros and cons to both advertisers and publishers for using PropellerAds.
Pros of PropellerAds
- PropellerAds is a global network with a wide range of benefits to suit advertisers and publishers around the world.
- Offers self service that gives advertisers more control on how their ad campaigns should look like, and the tools to optimize their ads for better results.
- The ad network is a great place for publishers who are new to online advertising since there is no strict requirement for high traffic. What Propeller requires from publishers is a good quality traffic source.
- Low payment threshold of $5 is quite encouraging for publishers, especially beginners.
- Payments to publishers on a weekly basis.
- Publishers have a wide range of ads formats to choose from. These ads formats are created by PropellerAds with the goal of optimizing the performance of publishers.
- 24/7 customer support through live chat.
- Targeting with so many options that allow you to narrow your audience for higher click through rates. Targeting options like country, type of device, and operating system.
- Lots of focus on mobile advertising
- Wide range of available payment options for publishers.
Cons of PropellerAds
- Publishers whose traffic is from non-English speaking countries tend to earn lesser than their counterparts having English speaking traffic sources
- Lower earnings for websites and blogs with low quality traffic
Conclusion
Ads networks function as mediators that make it possible for advertisers to buy ads spaces on the sites of publishers, which create income earning opportunities for publishers through monetizing their traffic.
Some examples of ad networks are Yahoo’s Gemini, AdBlade, and Propeller Ads. This review focuses on PropellerAds highlighting the features, benefits, advantages and disadvantages to both advertisers and publishers.
PropellerAds has a global reach serving ads to 195 countries of the world. Advertisers are exposed to more than 3 billion ads impressions daily and more than 350 million push subscribers, and to a wide range of verticals that include Ecommerce, entertainment, forex, finance and cryptocurrency.
The PropellerAds self service makes the process of creating and monitoring ad campaigns easy for advertisers, giving them greater grips over their campaigns.
Publishers have the opportunity to earn alternative income streams from an ad network that runs smoothly with Google AdSense. There are no traffic restrictions barring publishers from joining the network except having access to good quality traffic. PropellerAds offers so many ads formats that are optimized to deliver higher conversions.
PropellerAds is a great place for marketers who are new to online marketing.
The drawback is that publishers who have non-English speaking traffic sources earn lower than their counterparts.
PropellerAds sign up is free and straightforward for interested bloggers, internet marketers and social media influencers.
Want to start building a passive income stream alongside earning revenue from side hustles? Try out Wealthy Affiliate, receive your training and get going in the online world? I wrote a comprehensive review of the WA community. Check it out.