Visitor Boost: Turning Traffic into Snake Oil?
Affiliate marketers that who buy traffic are better off following the time-tested and true practice of Buy Low, Sell High.
If you're an affiliate marketer, whether you use CPC, CPA, CPM, or CPT advertising to monetize your traffic, you nonetheless face the same challenge: without traffic, there's nothing to monetize. Well, a service called VIsitor Boost offers to send you not only targeted traffic, but geo-targeted traffic. As far as conversions go, however, the model through which Visitor Boost sends affiliate marketers traffic turns that traffic to garbage. While the traffic will unlikely convert for affiliates who feature CPC or CPA advertising, the conversions that CPM or CPT affiliate marketers will see will be both short-term and likely to compromise their reputation with their advertisers. As Visitor Boost's about page explains:
We offer over 20 categories so that you can target your traffic and only receive visitors interested in what you have to offer, and if you only want to market to individuals in certain countries, you can target geographically as well.
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Your website is shown in a full-screen popunder window on websites in our publisher network. When someone visits one of our network sites in the category you chose, we send that visitor to your site.
The main weakness of a pop-under is that, as a user, I'm only likely to notice it toward the end of my session. Granted, I may very well choose to pro-long my session once I close my main browser window, but the majority of users only begin closing windows once they have decided to go offline altogether. It therefore seems unlikely that this kind of traffic will convert for either you or your advertisers in any tangible way.
If you're an affiliate marketer who features CPM advertising on your portal, the traffic that you can buy from Visitor Boost is not only unlikely to convert for your advertisers, it is likely to have your account with that advertiser cancelled. Essentially, users will be likely to only notice toward the end of their session, meaning that you'll make a quick buck when you page loads, but your advertisers will soon notice that your traffic isn't only expensive (because of high amount of page views), but in no way associated with an increase in their own traffic or conversions. Consequently, they'll drop their account with you and move on to the next webmaster.
Similarly, if you rely on CPT advertising, the boost in your traffic may enable to raise the price of ad placements on your site. However, given how the majority of new users only notice your site when their on their way offline, this traffic will only erode the ROI of a banner on your site. Essentially, it will seem as though your unique visitors both are many and spend a lot of time on your site, but given how the user only sees your site when their on their way offline, those banners won't actually be reaching them.
Finally, if you're an affiliate marketer that employes CPC or CPA advertising, users who haven't voluntarily visited your site are unlikely to engage with either your content or your advertising. Although this kind of traffic won't compromise your reputation with advertisers, it will exhaust not only your bandwidth, but your marketing budget as well.
In sum, Visitor Boost demonstrates the rock-and-a-hard-place between which pop-up advertising sits. While users find pop up advertising intrusive and are, therefore, unlikely to act on it, pop under advertising is likely to go unnoticed until the user is ready to log-off. Consequently, affiliate marketers that are interested in buying traffic are probably better off following the time-tested and true (albeit challenging) practice of Buy Low, Sell High. In other words, whether it's through CPC, CPA, CPM, or CPT advertising, those hoping to invest in generating targeted traffic should not so simply pay less than what they sell it for.
