Unengaged users, creative fatigue, banner blindness, ad burn out, market saturation… are these sending chills down your spine, too? If you keep seeing those in nightmares and fear for your push ads campaigns this holiday season, you should know that you’re not alone. Such ideas wreak havoc even among the most experienced affiliates. So, is the world of affiliate marketing doomed? Absolutely not!

Push notification advertising has been the ad format since the moment it launched, and it’s still going to be one of the hottest trends on the market. Everybody wants to do push. Everybody does push. Only a few dare to ask how to scale in the already saturated market of push ad notifications. Despite the booming competition of the Golden Quarter period, money’s still on the table. 

Read on and find out how to break through the competition and scale up your push traffic campaigns.

You need push ads this holiday shopping season! 

Assuming you’ve already got some experience running push ad campaigns, you probably know their phenomenon comes mainly from being so user-friendly. The non-intrusive form of a mobile or desktop notification allows users to view the ad content whenever it suits them best. And since push ads resemble system notifications users are familiar with, push ad format comes across as more trustworthy. That’s the benefit that it has over other ad formats within digital marketing like search ads ie. google ads, or social media ads like Facebook ads, which are more obviously advertising something.

Also, the little amount of text or visual materials placed on push ads makes them quite easy to look at. If all are done well, engaged users click on your ads and deliver desired conversions. 

The affiliate industry is full of tips on writing copy that converts or creating highly engaging visuals for push ads. Targeting and optimization practices have been extensively covered by industry experts and numerous case studies can be discovered within community forums. All these resources help you learn how to master push advertising, so make good use of it.

Be original with your push ads.

Push ads are all great and easy until tens, or hundreds, or thousands of people keep on recreating the same patterns running their push notifications ad campaigns. With users heavily exposed to the same or similar marketing techniques within a short period of time, the measures used become evident even to the most oblivious users. So what threats are lurking out there? 

Why banner blindness is a problem!

Banner blindness is not a brand new phenomenon. It hasn’t emerged within the last decade or so but has been there for as long as marketing and advertising exist. People stop noticing things they’ve seen multiple times before. In terms of online advertising, it simply means users tend to focus only on the main content, ignoring ads placed next to it. They simply get used to seeing them to an extent they become ad-blind.  

The same goes for affiliate marketing advertising and push traffic. If the same ad is displayed to the same user a couple of times, there’s generally nothing wrong with it. But if the same ad is being frequently displayed to the same user over a short period of time, then there’s a lot that’s wrong with it. It causes creative fatigue.

First, it means you’re trying to save time and money by avoiding producing multiple ad versions. Instead, you’re trying to pull it off with little resources you’ve got already. DON’T BE LAZY! It means you’ll end up losing even more time and money.

Second, your targeting choices might be wrong. If you’re aiming at the same device type, country location, and frequency filtering on and on again, you’ve got to stop and move on. Finding a fresh niche is cool, bothering your niche audience is not.

Third, you’re wondering why your push traffic campaigns keep dying if they’ve been converting so well all this time. Well, here’s your answer — your campaigns die precisely because they have performed so well recently. Affiliate marketing isn’t about finding one never-ending horn of plenty. Yes, we’ve all heard how reinventing the wheel is useless, but there’s a difference between reinventing the wheel and taking it from Bronze Age to the 21st-century level. 

Whether users experience banner blindness or ad fatigue involuntarily or exploit it willfully is debatable. What’s not debatable, is that they suddenly stop engaging with your push ads. Once ad fatigue or banner blindness kicks in, the time and budget invested will be burnt and profits scarce. With few users converting, your push traffic CTR and CR drop, and within a very short time your campaigns die. This can be identified as ad burnout.

Creative fatigue is real, get ready to fight it!

Ad fatigue, and consequently ad burnout, are not an individual advertiser’s case. With the whole industry playing by the same rules, the pattern gets repeated. Short-term thinking or lack of experience can be one of the main causes, but simply copycatting other’s affiliate’s ideas is something entirely different.

Use spy tools wisely, don’t just blatantly copy things! Rings a bell, doesn’t it? Using spying tools is a common and much-recommended practice. But like everything, it has to be done within limits. Remember that spy tools allow you to lurk into other affiliates’ campaigns, but these very same affiliates can also lurk into yours. Try to outdo your competition instead of flooding an already saturated market with more examples of the same ads. 

Being clever with spy tools does not solve the issue. You’ve got to figure out how to utilize a whole lot of knowledge this industry offers. Your own lessons learned and experiences gained while running highly profitable yet short-lived push traffic campaigns are valuable. Use that to take your affiliate efforts to a completely new level instead of repeating the same pattern users are simply fed up with.

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Affiliate ad tracking tools can help!

Let’s face it, humanity evolves, and so does online advertising. If you want to break through the glass ceiling of banner blindness and creative fatigue you really need to step up and get your push ads out there. 

Read This Ultimate Guide And Learn All You Need To Know About Push Notifications Advertising Here!

In order to do just that… go back to the basics. A good idea to start with would be analyzing your past and existing campaigns, which can teach you a lot by looking through the proxy of time and experience you’ve gained on the way. 

Remember how all super affiliates always stress the importance of tracking? This is because staying vigilant and able to respond to the changing sands of the affiliate industry is crucial. Digging through vast amounts of data takes time and tracking software helps you save those precious moments while getting a clear view of what has and is currently happening to your campaigns. Your tracking tool is the first go-to place.

Now, look at the data and try to find answers to the following questions:

• Have you started with broad or specific push ads campaign targeting?
• What targeting have you used for scaling up push traffic and how did it perform?
• Have you focused on desktop devices, mobile, or both?
• What offers or verticals have you used for push notifications advertising?
• How many creatives have you used for your push ads campaigns?
• What was your copy or design strategy with push traffic creatives?
• How long and expensive was the campaign testing phase?
• What were the best performing push traffic campaign setups?

Once you identify what worked well and what didn’t for your push ad campaigns, the next step would be spying. That’s probably what you’ve been doing so far prior to launching campaigns and hence try to recreate that flow. Naturally, bear in mind what we’ve already established — do that to learn or to get a bigger picture rather than boldly copying already promoted creatives.

Is running push ads really that easy?

Turning theory into practice is never done easily but easy does not convert. You want your ads to convert, so here’s an idea.

Given the Golden Quarter period and Holiday Shopping Season at its best, there’s one vertical that rules them all — it’s e-commerce. To succeed with your Black Friday deals and push ads this year, you need to plan ahead and get your marketing strategy in place before the holiday shopping season begins. But the real shopping craze is yet to unfold. It’s the last chance to order your gifts, the last call to find great deals. People frantically searching for products are desperate for help and finding the perfect gift for one’s in-laws has never posed a bigger challenge. Why not help them a little? 

Just think how easily you can target this very specific yet vast group of people. Not to mention their proactivity, thus high ad engagement. We dare say that running e-commerce or travel gift recommendations will reach all kinds of target audience, all over the world. Anything might be promoted as a perfect Holiday gift right now. Home appliances, cosmetics, clothing, furniture, sports equipment, iPhones, or headsets — literally anything works. And with offer networks booming, it’s up to your marketing skills and creativity. 

Running a push ad campaign promoting designer wicker chairs might seem a bit odd at first. But running a push ad campaign promoting designer wicker chairs as perfect Holiday gifts targeted at Florida might be a niche, yet very profitable angle. High payout, little competition, precise targeting (get your traffic source filtering options to work!) and the ROI might actually surprise you. But how about running such push notification campaigns on desktop rather than mobile devices this time?

Move over mobile, it’s time for desktop push ads!

So, we’ve got our vertical, angle, offers, and target audience. We know that push is doing great in general but the market saturation is dense. We also know where all the people are with push — mobile. But where do most of the online sale purchases take place? Desktop.

People do tend to normally browse more on mobile devices, there’s no denying it. The Holiday Season isn’t anything close to normal when it comes to sales, it’s pure madness. That’s precisely why we’d recommend going for desktop targeting. Verticals, angles, offers, target audience — everything stays the same, but you might possibly get fresh users. 

Again, numbers might be smaller than with mobile, but isn’t that the value of finding one’s niche — smaller yet highly profitable?

Zeropark data shows that the Click-Through-Rate for Push Traffic with the E-Commerce /Travel vertical is approximately ten times higher on Desktop than on Mobile devices. Mobile might be where most people are at first then, but the desktop is where they finalize their purchase — that’s already some food for thought. After all, you need to focus on where your target audience is spending money, to score conversions.

Make a creative strategy and stick to it!

So how to avoid creative fatigue and scale your push traffic campaigns during the 2021 holiday shopping season using desktop targeting? Here’s how.

Actually, you don’t have to do much… or nothing you haven’t done already with push traffic, to be more precise. Fighting banner blindness and ad fatigue does not require coming up with entirely new things, it requires being clever with resources you have already. For example, make use of the super affiliate’s pro tips on maximizing profits running push campaigns during the Golden Quarter period (the Black Friday Weekend and Holiday Season included!)

As we’ve already established, start with analyzing your former campaigns. Since we’re talking about running push ad campaigns on e-commerce and/or travel verticals during the holiday shopping season, try to focus only on relevant ad designs, targeting, and optimization practices as well as campaign performance flows. 

Get your ad creatives to work!

The next step would be to think of your fresh push ad creatives. When it comes to breaking through the competition and fighting banner blindness, remember to align your thinking with user’s perception. With the number of push notifications they’ve received on mobile devices in the last couple of weeks (Black Friday Weekend included!) it’s no wonder users may become a bit blind.

Still, looking for some inspiration?

Take a look at how to use push ads creatives throughout the holiday shopping season with an example with the theme of Black Friday:

#1 Try to shake things up a bit.

Take what’s been working best and identify why. Then recreate the pattern, only this time apply subtle changes. Since we’re talking e-commerce and travel offers promoted as gift recommendations, try to keep it within the holiday spirit. Visually speaking, that’s quite easy to do. And yes, spying tools are the place for you to be right now. But remember… no copying, just watching! 

#2 Don’t limit yourself to spying on push ads ideas alone.

Look for inspirations for your holiday push ad campaign among pop, native, or domain redirect, too. They all have their winning elements and these winning parts may work perfectly well for you, too, and still bring something fresh to your push ad campaigns.

This is because mobile push ad creatives need to stick to quite strict rules of the simpler, the better so the ad creatives aren’t usually too crazy. Yes, the rule still applies on desktop, but users can receive only slightly different ads as more diverse. 

#3 The same ad creatives can look fresh on a different device.

That’s one reason. The second would be that the push ad placement, format, or simply much smaller competition contributes to a fresh experience. The right approach and still quite easy solution would be to stick to the usual push ad format but combine it with ideas gathered from other ad types. Such creatives are already much more probable to get noticed by users desperately looking for last-minute holiday presents, thus successfully breaking through the ad fatigue and market saturation.

#4 Keep a bank of creatives to test and rotate!

Have at least 10 creatives to test so that once you identify the best-performing ones and reject the poor-performers you still have enough to rotate them. The time you keep given ads running is also important. With market saturation being quite dense recently in terms of push ads, a week can be already way too long for it to keep performing. 

The best converting ads risk very quick burnout because users take notice of them that often. Your competition is very likely to copycat your best creatives and use the same or almost identical ads. In this way, a potential user may be exposed to more views of the same ads than coming from your campaigns alone. Have back-up creatives based on the same pattern, yet differing visually to rotate once your winning ad creative starts suffering and its performance drops. This means that changing creatives may be required even on a daily basis. Brace yourself, the competition is watching!

#5 Make your ads more interactive to catch user attention and increase ad engagement.

One trick for making that happen could be polling. This easy trick could be worth trying due to our behavioral patterns — people like being in control. Giving users a choice equals giving them such power. 

Try making your ad creatives look like simple pols, add suitable copy and images and you’re done. A simple question of What’s a Better Christmas Gift For Your Dad, A or B? can easily get people to notice and click your push ads. Again, it’s up to you and your creativity!

#6 Targeting is the key ingredient in avoiding creative fatigue.

It may also be the reason because of which your ads experience it. The below filtering options are especially worth investigating. Try to find room for improvement or greater diversity in terms of who, where, when, and how often sees your ads. 

• Target audience — think who you’re addressing and try to step into their shoes for a moment. Do your research, ask on affiliate forums what’s working best for whom. Such insights might be quite valuable for your further targeting choices.
• Device type targeting — well, we’ve made that quite clear. Desktop is the place to go. With the Click-Through-Rate for push e-commerce and travel verticals ten times higher than on mobile devices, there’s no doubt about that.
• Country, city, or region targeting — the more granular you get with your campaigns, the more careful you need to be. Know your campaign goals well and make sure you target them accordingly. Instead of running one broad campaign with just one set of ads try getting more precise with where your ads are promoted while rotating the ad sets among your target locations. In this way, potential users won’t be seeing the same ads repeatedly but instead receive more diverse sets more frequently. 
• Day Parting and Frequency Filtering — these are most definitely responsible for the make or break the state of your push traffic campaigns when fighting creative fatigue and ad burnout. Try to play with these settings, don’t bet everything on the peak timing or else your campaign will burn very quickly having quite the opposite effect.

Conclusions

• Go for e-commerce and travel vertical combined with holiday shopping season offers targeted at desktop devices. In this way, you address highly motivated users, already proactively searching for products related to your angle. And it still allows you to get even more granular with your niche offers and targeting. 
• Make the most of the last-minute shopping frenzy! But remember that you’re not the only one trying to benefit from the affiliate business during the holiday shopping season. Act both tough and clever to break through push traffic competition.
• Use spying tools wisely and don’t limit yourself to typical push ads campaigns only! If you want your ads to excel and get user attention they need to offer them what they need, in a form they haven’t necessarily seen five times during this morning already. 
• Fight banner blindness and creative fatigue by keeping your push ads unique, fresh, more diverse, and also interactive. Strive for greater user engagement and boost your push campaign performance. Reach out to your traffic source representatives and see if they’re able to provide you with fresh whitelists of top sources suitable for your campaigns! These might bring you the needed injection of fresh users who will be very much prone to engage with your ads.
• Avoid ad burnout by improving your targeting choices. Start with desktop and work your way through granular country and region targeting, swapping sets of ad creatives, also watching out for when and how often your push ads would be displayed, to ensure the ad life-cycle isn’t going to be too short. 
• The Golden Quarter period isn’t over yet and money’s still on the table. Make use of all the resources the affiliate marketing industry offers you and scale up your e-commerce and travel campaigns getting way ahead of your competition.

Fight Banner Blindness This Holiday Season
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Kinga Gawron