Everything You Need to Know About Push Ads

Push-ads are an integral part of digital advertising and have been treated as such for many years. All their benefits (prequalification, alerting nature, visibility, engagement) still stand and still make them the best advertising channel for certain types of offers.

If you somehow are unfamiliar with the concept of push ads, or know a bit about them but never actually considered using them in your campaigns, here’s a handy guide into the world of push advertising.

What Is Push Notification Advertising? 

Let’s start from the very beginning, just to be sure we are on the same page. Unless you’ve spent the past decade somewhere under a rock, you must be familiar with this little thing:

Those short messages that appear at least a couple of times a day on your smartphone screen are called push notifications. They’re sent by apps or websites and typically concern news, traffic updates, weather forecasts or alerts, flight changes, social media updates, or whatever other types of info you are interested in.

Push notification advertising delivers ads instead of information. 

How Push Ads Work – The Subscription-Based Model

It’s all really simple. First, users must agree to receive push notifications from a website. Ads are then delivered to the user’s mobile or desktop devices in the form of notification.

You can probably already see where push gets its lead over other ad types. These ads use a subscription-based model, which means that a user has to agree to receive push notification first. This prequalifies the audience and leaves out only those who are probably more interested in digital offers.

The other beauty of it is that the process is ongoing even when people aren’t browsing. When they click the notification, users go to the promoted landing page or directly to the offer. This part is entirely up to you. 

Push vs In-page push (web push)

The novelty on the market are so-called “in-page” push, sometimes referred to as “web push”. They are the answer to growing restrictions toward traditional push.

For example, Google Chrome since it has been updated to the 80 version learns how a user reacts to push notifications and, if a user commonly disables them, it will disable all further questions.

To combat this and other problems, web developers have introduced a type of display ad that looks almost exactly like a push notification. Because it is generated by a web page itself and not by a web browser, it is immune to any web browser policies. 

More on in-page push ads can be found in this article.

Mobile push notifications vs. desktop push notifications

Now let’s talk about another two types of push notifications… after all, this type of ad is not limited to mobile. They are powered by web-based SDK targeting browser traffic. So on both platforms you can send push ads, however on mobile you have a lot more options for personalization and interaction with a given user.

It won’t come as a shock when I say that mobile is growing growing. And an advertising method that allows you to interact so personally with users. Another consideration is exposure – mobile push can cover up to 80% of a user’s screen. Of course, you don’t want to be too irritating, but that is the kind of exposure a desktop push simply cannot attain.

Mobile push also has GPS data incorporated allowing you to target based on location as well and generally just get a more specific audience. Overall, both formats deliver a decent quality of traffic. 

Why Try Push Notification Ads? 

Like everything in life, this ad format has its pros and cons. There are, however, certain proven benefits that make this advertising format an attractive little treat that it is. Here are a couple of reasons why you should consider giving push notification ads a try as soon as you’re done with this article:

• High-quality traffic and a real audience
• 300+ million potential users worldwide
• Higher click-through rate (CTR) than banner ads
• Unparalleled ad visibility
• Sense of urgency
• Advanced customization options
• Easy pricing model with a high return on investment (ROI)

And that’s just the tip of an iceberg! Wanna hear a real deal? With push, there are no adblockers, and they are practically immune to banner blindness.

What else can an advertiser want? 

I’ll tell you what. Conversions. Because no matter how simple and cheap an ad format is, it all comes down to its ability to bring you profits. So, let’s have a look at how to make these ads perform. 

Find Profitable Verticals for Push Traffic

If you put in a decent amount of work and correctly set up your push-ads campaign you can later match it with a wide selection of verticals. We’re talking e-commerce, travel, news & entertainment, finance, health & beauty, mobile apps, games, job search, insurance, video streaming, and many more.

However, the alerting nature of this ad format works best with the following ones:

• Finance
• Dating
• Sweepstakes
• Gamblings
• News

All of these verticals have offers that can be advertised well by creating a sense of urgency:

“Get this financial opportunity now!“

“Love is just around the corner“

“Wanna have a chance of winning a brand new PS5?“

You usually don’t use this kind of language when selling fishing equipment.

Make sure to check out this article if you need help selecting the right vertical for your offer! 

How to Set Up a Converting Push Campaign

Being a successful affiliate marketer requires attention to detail.  This is particularly important when setting up a push-ads campaign.  In order for it to convert, you need to carefully optimize each of its core elements: an image, a title, and a description (main message).

Each of these elements is customizable, which means that the only limit is your imagination.

The example below is from an ad setup at Mobidea for an antivirus software:

And below is an example of what a working push ad could look like on your phone:

However, there are some rules that need to be followed each time you craft a new push-ads campaign.

Your image must be simple, but catchy

We’re visual creatures, which is why most likely, the graphics will be the first thing that catches the eye. If you go with a boring safe choice, you’re risking people swiping your push ad right off their screens without bothering to read your carefully crafted copy. 

On the other hand, an overly complicated design fitted in a tiny icon reserved for a push notification will only cause confusion and frustration.

Hence, it’s all about finding the right balance. It may sound tedious, but don’t worry! More often than not your gut will help you out. You are accustomed to those notifications just as much as the other guy will be, after all. 

Keep the title short and concise

Hate to break it to you, but you’re not writing the next great American novel. You’re selling stuff via a phone screen. So, no matter how proud you are of the brand-new metaphor or a semi-offensive joke you’ve come up with the other day – keep it to the point. 

Make the description creative and effective

This is your time to shine. Just keep in mind there’s still not that much space and you want people to click rather than to read your ad. In a way, your ad description is your final chance to convert them. 

Think of it this way: those who’d be intrigued by the image would click right away. The catchy title would grab another percentage of your potential audience. And only those who remained unimpressed with your previous effort will stick around to read the description.

Make it worth their while or you’re losing money right there and then. 

We are done with the theory, for now, so let’s check out what it means in practice.

Get traffic from a push-oriented traffic source

There are many traffic source platforms that offer push traffic among others. Chief among them is Zeropark, Voluum’s close partner. But if you want more options, you can take a look at our review of the best push traffic sources.

An Example of a Well-Crafted Push Ad

Here’s an example of a well-crafted summertime-themed push notification advertisement.

All three fundamental elements of push notification ads here are optimized. We have an enticing image (but still a legal one – keep in mind that push is only non-adult-traffic ad format). In the description, you can observe a sense of urgency with a couple of “power words” like a “bargain”, “deal”, “sale” or “discounts”. What is more, there are some emojis, proven to be really eye-catching and hence – profitable. 

A Few Tips Before You Start Running Push Campaigns

You may have heard once or twice that affiliate marketing is quite an easy way to become a billionaire. Well, hold your horses, cowboy. Sure it may be a profitable business but it takes a lot of learning, hard work, and optimization skills.

Crafting a well-performing push campaign requires time, good ideas, and patience. Setting-up a brilliant campaign that will bring you profits from scratch is quite a challenge. You’d probably need to run lots of A/B testing to learn which combination of copy and design converts best before you’ll start earning the big bucks.

Track Your Performance & Automate Your Work With Voluum Ad Tracker 

In affiliate marketing, it’s wise to craft a strategy based on hard data rather than hope for the best while struggling with a chaotic optimization. The best way to get that data, measure its effectiveness, and manage your campaigns is to get an ad tracker.

How Do Ad Trackers Work?

Ad trackers collect user data online for you to use in your future campaigns. Thanks to ad trackers you can know exactly what type of audience you’re dealing with, where they are coming from, what mobile device to use, and more. 

More importantly, ad tracker facilitates campaign management for affiliates, as the most advanced trackers, like Voluum, will let you run all your campaigns from one platform, regardless of the ad format and traffic source.

Why Voluum? 

Unlike some other trackers on the market, Voluum has been designed by affiliates for affiliates. It is a powerful tech solution focused on campaign optimization and automation. Thanks to Voluum Automizer you can integrate your account with the most popular affiliate traffic sources to set up rules and alerts, create whitelists and blacklists, access granular targeting reports, and more. 

Let Voluum take care of your affiliate marketing campaigns while you reap the benefits. 

Integrate Your Voluum and Zeropark Accounts for an Even Better Experience!

Voluum and Zeropark work best in tandem. Using the same, robust infrastructure, redirections between them are lightning-fast, tracking becomes as easy as it gets, and the synergy effect of integrating both solutions allow you to maximize your profit.

We’d additionally advise you to use Voluum for tracking your campaigns, as it will increase your redirect speeds to a level no other traffic source+tracker combination can match. This is because we pass all the data on the backend. Learn more about the benefits of integrating Voluum with Zeropark!

Push in 2022

Another year in advertising brings another set of challenges and axioms:

• Accurate optimization is the only true way to scale;
• Even post-pandemic, we still love spending time with our mobile phones (no surprise there I think 😉
• However advertising on mobile is becoming increasingly difficult without in-app traffic;
• Cookieless tracking & other workarounds are the key way to securing your campaigns against future browser changes.

This is just a shortlist of course.

Push Notification Ads – Key Takeaways

To sum up, this native ad format is still a very on trend , offering a non-intrusive, user-friendly, and highly-engaging way for advertisers to reconnect and expand their audiences. Here are some key takeaways worth remembering from this article:

• Push ads are still trending
• Ads are delivered on a user’s desktop or mobile device even when they’re not browsing
• Higher CTR and ROI are among the top of its proven benefits
• Users need to opt-in to receive them, which makes push notification ads less intrusive than other ad formats
• Crafting a well-performing push requires time, good ideas, and A/B testing
• To boost their performance marketers should always track and manage their efforts, getting an ad tracker is advisable here.

Get Voluum Today to Track, Manage, and Optimize your ads!