New Push Ads Are Disrupting Performance Marketing in Interesting Ways

Performance marketers need to cope with a lot of different challenges. They often get frustrated finding that traffic sources they have relied on for such a long time have stopped working reliably for various reasons. Google and Facebook have put new restrictions on advertisers, which has adversely affected performance marketers. Many dating websites had to cease Facebook advertising after the social media giant banned them a few years ago. Higher CPCs have also created challenges. Ad blockers and a growing number of users pulling back from PPV networks have reduced possible reach and led to saturation concerns.

Companies like Exults Marketing have said that performance marketers need to look for new advertising options if they want to remain competitive in 2020. One advertising medium they should explore is push advertising.

What are push ads?

Push ads are a new form of native advertising. Push ads are still relatively new, especially when compared to PPC and social media advertising. However, push ads are already changing the future of digital advertising. Smart performance marketers are using push ads to scale campaigns and test new offers.

Push ads are an example of a way that technology has changed marketing. How do they work, exactly? When website visitors come to an online publisher, they will be asked whether or not they want to opt-in to receive push notifications. People that opt-in to these notifications will receive future information or advertisements from the publisher.

In many cases, a website or app only allows people to opt in to receive notifications from their own domain. Other publishers are part of a larger network and ask users to subscribe to push notifications and advertisements from all affiliated publishers.

What are the benefits of push notifications for performance marketing?

There are a number of great reasons for performance marketers to explore the benefits of push notifications. Some of these benefits are listed below.

High engagement

Since users have to subscribe to push notifications, the engagement rates tend to be very high. One study found CTRs can be as high as 40%.

Traffic is scaled with site volume

Site volume plays a big role in push notification traffic. As sites get more traffic, advertisers can get more push traffic as well.

Keeping CPCs low

Performance marketers have witnessed a drastic increase in costs with PPC advertising over the last decade. Since performance marketers must be more cognizant of cost than brand marketers, these rising costs have often crippled their ROI. As a result, many performance marketers have abandoned Google ads, Facebook and other competitive ad networks.

Fortunately, they are still able to get low advertising costs by using push notifications. The average CPC for push advertisements on networks like Propel Media is between $0.10 and $0.15.

More nuanced ad targeting then conventional contextual advertisements

Push notification ads are similar in appearance to those found with traditional in-text platforms, such as those that used to be available on RTX and Propel Media. However, they offer much more granular targeting capabilities.

The targeting options available with push notifications vary between networks. However, even on the same network, they tend to be superior. Propel Media’s push advertisements are targeted like their PPV ads. Advertisers can make sure they appear on very specific webpages, rather than only appearing on certain keywords. This gives then much more precision with their targeting then with other contextual pay-per-click ads.

Only pay for clicks

Like other native ads, push advertisements are delivered on a CPC basis. This is preferable to PPV and CPM ads, which require advertisers to pay even when visitors are not engaged with their content.

Whitelists give advertisers access to affordable and high converting traffic

Many push networks allow advertisers to create white lists of website domains and apps that they want their ads to be delivered on. You can often create white lists of search engines, so that you have access to extremely high converting traffic. You might be able to get the same quality clicks from search engine marketing for a small fraction of the cost. You won’t have access to the same volume of traffic, but the risk will be substantially lower and the ROI should be much higher.

Push Advertising is excellent for performance marketing

Performance marketing has become more challenging in recent years. Fortunately, new native advertising platforms have opened the door for new opportunities. Push advertisements are one of the top native ad options to look into in 2020.