Pop Ads Are Your Secret Affiliate Weapon And Here’s Why

Pop ads or pops are frequently underestimated and that’s a big omission for any affiliate, since they are easy to set up, cheap and effective for all affiliates from beginners to profis. If you still think that pop ads are outdated, expensive and won’t get you traffic, this guide is for you. If you’ve already started considering pops – stay with us and probably you will know something new.  

Are pop ads still effective?

Yes, they are. They stay as strong as years ago, and no matter what kind of ad formats appear, pop ads remain working tools for millions of affiliates and safe and reliable traffic source for advertisers. They’re perfect for eye-catching deals and bargains, as they deliver the most useful information for a potential customer – a discount, a promo code or a winning opportunity in case of sweepstakes.

What makes pop ads so handy is that they catch users mid-action and offer another reason to make a purchase as soon as possible. It’s the best tool to encourage users at every stage of the purchase journey. 

Pop-ups or pop-unders?

As you probably know, pop-up ads appear on the top of the content visitors are viewing in new browser windows. Pop-under ads are opened as an independent page behind the user’s currently open window, appearing only after users close the website they are looking at. As such, pop-unders are less intrusive and thus the user browsing experience is not interrupted. Actually, both have their pros and cons.

In short, advantages of pop-ups include:

• Visibility: a visitor can’t miss the ad out, because it appears on the top of another window
• Directness: the content is direct to the point
• Slick affair: as an affiliate you can showcase the design and development skills and make the pop-up message look professional which will help users to reach their end destination.

Cons of pop-ups can be as following:

• Invasive: they annoy customers, we bet you’ve irritably closed so many pop-ups, because who didn’t?
• Pop-up blockers: whilst not all pop-ups are affected by these browser plugins, it’s still important to consider  
• Spam: the information in the pop-up might be not the one a visitor is looking for

Pros of pop-unders are like these:

• Non-invasive: the ad is opened in an independent window, so it won’t impact visitor’s browsing experience
• Not annoying: a user has a choice to look or not at the ad and when to do it
• Psychology behind: pop-unders are the last thing a user sees in their browsing session, so they’ve mentally finished what they were doing, and they’re open and ready to receive your message without distractions.

Here are some cons of pop-unders:

• Not immediately visible: visitors can simply overlook them and close the window right after finishing browsing the website
• Pop ads blockers: the same as with pop-ups
• Bot traffic: there is an opinion that there is more bot traffic on pop-unders than on other ads, but in all fairness, all ad formats have bots at one quantity or another. However, each network is constantly improving its instruments of blocking bot traffic to protect its reputation. For example, we at Indoleads definitely do everything to exclude bot traffic. 

Pop ads and e-commerce

E-commerce is all about deals and bargains. This is one of the biggest drives behind modern online commerce. People want to buy and they want to save. Pop ads are the perfect medium for spreading the information about ongoing deals and promotions. They bear promo codes, discounts, free shipping codes – and it works, because they provide the best solution for those users who are already considering making a purchase.   

Summer brings loads of deals from different stores, but the upcoming shopping days in the 2022-2023 holiday season will be much more fruitful, and pop ads can be your powerful tool to make it truly memorable. 

What about other niches?

E-commerce converts just amazing with pops, but that doesn’t mean other niches don’t. Online education, hosting services, software products, dating, gambling, sweepstakes are doing just fine. People are searching for deals no matter what they buy: physical or digital products, physical or digital services. Pop ads offer a deal, a discount or a chance to win something. They’re eye-catching and valuable. They make an offer stand out. And that’s why there’s absolutely no reason to miss out on other niches. 

When are pop ads the most effective?

As experience of our affiliates proves, they can be effective all the time, because they hold some sort of value for a visitor. Shopping sprees during big sales and shopping events can turn your pop ad campaigns into extremely profitable ones, as millions of people start browsing stores and are especially interested in saving opportunities. However, the competition gets fierce too: affiliates and stores launch their pop ads and customers are getting picky. 

When there are no big sales, you can get the most out of pop ads too. As long as people are interested in bargains, pops can perform just perfectly. 

So pop-up or pop-under? 

This is up to you. Both have their pros and cons, but both work greatly according to our affiliates. No matter what you choose – pop-up or pop-under, in both cases landing page is what you need. 

What should a converting landing page contain? 

1. Scarcity Marketing is spot on

No one wants to miss a deal and the FMO (fear of missing out) is getting even stronger these days. How many times have you regretted not using a promo code which had already expired by the time you clicked on ‘buy’? So do your visitors. Push them to make a purchase by mentioning in your lander the coupons and deals that are for a limited time only. 

Play it creatively. Time frames and timers are perfectly working motivators for those who already have something on their mind and just deliberating on completing a purchase.

What you can do: add timers on your lander or make it clear in the text that the deal is for a limited time only.

2. Show it off

While showing off is often considered as something negative in usual life, in marketing there is no such thing as too much promotion. Quite on the contrary, it’s highly effective to describe the most striking and useful features of the product you’re promoting. Make it clear from the beginning that this is exactly what a visitor is looking for. 

Make sure to include the answers to these 3 crucial questions:

• Who is this product for?
• Why is this product better than others?
• What is the value in a long-term perspective?

Put yourself in the shoes of the visitor: what would make you buy this product? What are its most important and valuable features? Use your landing page to the most and describe the promoted product the way you would be allured into purchasing it. 

What you can do: present the product as a ready-to-go solution to address the specific pain point of your audience.

3. Public opinion matters

Online shopping is all about reviews, because people prefer reading or watching the feedback from those who have already bought this product. Positive reviews and comments add points in the eyes of the visitor and encourage them to make a purchase faster. If there are two landing pages with the same perfectly written descriptions, but one contains reviews, and another not, a visitor will most likely click on the first one. 

What you can do: add positive reviews and comments on your lander.

4. Quality is above all

The layout as well as the content of your landing page should be made with the utmost attention to details. The smooth language and high-resolution photos play a huge role in the way a visitor makes a decision on buying something. Poorly designed lander with roughly translated descriptions and unprofessional photos will only arouse thoughts about a fake store. Your goal is to motivate people to click on the ‘buy’ button, and not make them feel like it’s a scam and eventually leave the store for good. 

What you can do: find high-quality photos and put all your efforts into the text.

5. The loading speed should be speedy

The longer your lander loads – the more likely a visitor will quit. Pop ads are all about speedy handy information to catch the user’s attention and push them in a smooth way to complete an action. If it fails to deliver the message quickly, no matter how perfect the layout or a text is, you lose a potential customer. 

What you can do: use your coding skills to optimize the loading speed or leverage the advantages of professional landing page builders.

Now let’s wrap everything up and see why pop ads should be at least on your list of ad formats.

The reasons why you should at least try pop ads

• Visibility: both pop-under and pop-up ads don’t blend in with the site, as they are displayed in their own tab
• Volume: pop traffic allowed by most networks and affiliate programs, so it really beats push notifications
• Affordability: minimum effort and extremely easy to set up
• Unbeatable price: it’s low, really low compared to other formats
• Versatility: pops deliver great results for both desktop and mobile traffic
• Not a novice: and this is good, because there are tons of material on the web as well as other affiliates’ successful experience
• Proven results: pop ads perform just fine in different niches, for example, e-commerce
• Scalability: this kind of ad can work with both low-payout and high-payout offers
• Precise targeting options: pop-ups are triggered by the browser extensions, which are installed by users. By properly optimizing your targeting, your ads will appear for the customers who’re looking for specific products to buy. 
• E-commerce’s little helper: pops are widely used during big shopping events and there is a reason for that – they are perfect as a warm-up in the purchase journey, smoothly converting a visitor into a customer. Q4 is rich in shopping events, so this is your chance to increase sales volume and boost your traffic. 

Where to find the best affiliate programs for pop traffic?

Here on Indoleads CPA Network we have 2000+ affiliate programs from big brands and local players in 180+ countries. We’re an old hand at e-commerce niche, and we have hundreds of affiliate programs in online education, software products, finance and many more. Most of them convert just amazingly with pops. 

But don’t take our word for it: try it yourself! Sign up and choose high-ticket programs in our regularly updated catalog of offers.