What is Social Bar and how does it increase CTR by 30 times | Review of Adsterra

Oh, how we love writing reviews. When you delve into all the nuances of a particular product from the affiliate sphere, you come to understand more and more that people here are interested in doing something cool and of the highest quality. As you may have already guessed, today we’ll get to know the guys from Adsterra. This advertising network has something to surprise with (spoiler in the title, yes), so without further ado – let's get started!

Advertising formats and available GEOs in Adsterra

Adsterra is a network with 28 000+ publishers worldwide, focusing on Tier 1 and Tier 2 GEOs. Judging by numerous cases, the traffic performs best for VPN offers, software and utilities, mobile subscriptions, dating, e-commerce, iGaming, and finance. Of course, it doesn't mean that other verticals won't work here, but it's better to have a close conversation with the manager on that. But for now, let's talk about the formats.

Adsterra offers a range of the most effective ad formats: Popunders, In-Page Push, Interstitial, and Social Bar in almost 30 configurations. You are probably familiar with most of them, so let's focus on the last one.

Social Bar is a variation of the push format and the highlight of the network. You can configure and customize your push for almost any vertical, as we’ll demonstrate below. According to the guys, skillful customization of the format for the target audience of the offer can increase CTR by 30 times.

☝️Once again, we recommend working closely with the manager on this matter because achieving such results without understanding the nuances is unlikely to happen on the first try!

What does Social Bar include: 

• Native notifications. Neat, user-friendly icons, animated in a way to grab users' attention and encourage them to click or react. You can add brand elements to template widgets or create your own icons.

• Mimicry of social networks. Pushes can be configured to look like notifications from popular apps and messengers.

• Multimedia. The feature includes placing an animated banner, which should undoubtedly increase clickability when targeting apps, games, and other entertainment content.

• Data collection forms. We believe there's no need to explain how effective this tool can be when working, for example, with the sweepstakes vertical.

• Interstitials. This variation of the Social Bar is impossible to miss, as it occupies from 45 to 80% of the page. A bright advertising message on a darkened background above the rest of the content - the user won't be able to pass by.

• Other custom settings. Animated coupons, countdowns, and product carousels - everything that increases conversion during promotions and seasonal sales.

In addition, Social Bar can be designed in the form of an animated icon with or without a chat bubble, provoking curiosity for users to click!

Of course, all of this wouldn't work well without the powerful platform and service that Adsterra offers. Let's delve deeper into this matter.

Summary of the advantages of working with Adsterra

Let's go through all the key points you can find on the Adsterra advertising platform. Here, we have highlighted the following features for ourselves:

• Adsterra Wishlist. Essentially, it's a kind of SPY and affiliate manager in one. Here you can see recommended offers that will convert well on Adsterra traffic.

• Traffic Estimator. The system provides an estimate of the traffic volume in a specific GEO based on your set bid. This allows you to understand in advance whether your bid is optimal for a particular GEO.

• Traffic Chart. It shows the volume of traffic you’ll receive, taking into account the selected country and targeting parameters (ad format, traffic type, device type, and OS).

• Custom Bid. This feature allows for pinpoint optimization within a single campaign. You can increase bids for better-performing traffic sources and decrease bids for those with lower performance.

• Easy tracking integration. The platform works with most tracking services popular among affiliate industry representatives.

• Built-in constructor of high-quality profitable creatives. We’ll visually demonstrate how it works during the campaign setup.

• Rules-based optimization: Smart CPM and CPA Goal. In the first case, you set the maximum rate, and the system will place an optimal bid to obtain the best traffic according to the auction, without exceeding the limits you have set. As for CPA Goal, it automatically disables non-converting placements based on your filters, thus eliminating the need for manual sorting of black/white lists.

Separately, let's highlight the support service. You know, this isn’t our first review, and the phrase “first-class support that operates 24/7” often sounds quite clichéd in our understanding. Plus, often there is nothing substantial behind these words. But not this time. After registration, we encountered issues with the campaign creation button (AdBlock was enabled 😅). We resolved the issue within 5 minutes with manager Arthur.

How to start buying traffic in the Adsterra advertising network

Just like everywhere else, it all starts with registration. It was pleasing that to access the personal account, there was no need to prove your identity and answer a bunch of annoying questions. We filled out the standard fields with email, password, contact information, approved the account through email, and that's it.

Next, naturally, you need to make the first deposit. We’ll explain how to do this in detail in the next section. After you’ve deposited funds, you can go to the Dashboard tab and start setting up your first campaign by clicking on the “Create campaign” button.

P.S. We also strongly recommend setting up integration with a tracker in advance (and, in general, using a tracker when working with traffic) in the Conversion tracking section.

Give the campaign an arbitrary name that you'll remember for future reference. Choose the type of connection—3G, Wi-Fi, or both—and the payment model. You have the option to run on CPC, CPA, or CPM.

Next, select the ad format, traffic type, and devices. In our case, it’ll be a Social Bar for mobile users. Attach the link to your landing page (macros can be added here), and upload a screenshot of the landing page.

Afterward, choose the offer's GEO and experiment with the bid, guided by the Traffic Estimator's indications.

Now, choose one of the numerous Social Bar formats. Take the time to click through all the options, as you won't find such diversity anywhere else. As an example, we selected this option:

Next, the advertising platform suggests setting daily budgets, configuring targeting based on operating systems, devices, browsers, language, and subscription time, adding black/white lists, and using the Custom Bid and CPA Goal features we mentioned earlier.

We won't go into detail here, but we recommend checking out the detailed step-by-step guide provided by Adsterra themselves. Who better than them to know all the tricks and hacks of working with push traffic? By the way, you can also find useful information in their blog.

Ways to top up your balance and minimum deposit in the Adsterra advertising network

Adsterra provides the opportunity to start with a budget of $100. This amount is the minimum for replenishing the balance of the advertising account. With effective targeting and engaging creatives, this sum is quite sufficient to test several hypotheses.

Please note that depending on the payment method, the minimum deposit amount may vary. For Visa/Mastercard, Paxum, Capitalist, and PayPal, it’s $100, while for Wire Transfer, it’s not less than $1000.

We also remind you about our promo code "9DFNWJ8U"! Deposit $200 into your account and get an additional $50. The promo code is valid until June 1, 2024, and applies only to new users.

Feedback on Adsterra

As a tradition, we encourage everyone who has already launched campaigns in this advertising network to share their feedback, and ideally, case studies! Help us develop the recommendation system on our portal, and may the holy ROI be with you :)

P.S. By the way, Adsterra also has its own affiliate program with offers tailored specifically for their traffic. Here is the link for reference.