Eugene Klimshin, our partner, has been working with traffic for about 10 years already. Traffic reselling, a segment of affiliate marketing, is the main sphere of his interest today. This is the method of directing users towards a website by buying targeted traffic and selling it to the website’s owners. As you can understand, traffic purity means a lot to Eugene — he is responsible for the quality of visitors other people receive.
Anna Efimova, Sales Director at ADEX, had an interview with Eugene and asked him about his activity, experience with our platform, and potential risks of his work. Here we go!
So, Eugene, how did everything start and where are you now?
My work with traffic started with SMS monetization and mobile traffic monetization as a whole. Mostly, I worked with Android applications and other similar spheres of non-performance marketing.
I used mobile networks first, but then I decided to change the format a bit and started working with SmartLink (Editor’s note: SmartLink is a link that contains numerous offers, so that users get redirected to the correct offer considering their GEO, device type, etc. This way, advertisers can benefit from their traffic without losing it).
Things were going pretty well, so one day I thought: well, why don’t we try buying traffic ourselves? And at this point, I started my reselling journey.
Nice! And what about ADEX? Why and how did you start using the platform?
You know, I was working with large advertising networks and I had no idea about fraud at all. I never thought I would need special software to fight it — I was absolutely convinced that platforms are going to inform me if some traffic sources are unreliable and should be blocked.
Last summer my partners (they have about $1000 of return daily) provided a really huge portion of fraudulent traffic without being aware of that. At all! But guys didn’t notice that the traffic was that bad — everything became apparent at a later point in time.
After this situation became clear, all traffic was blocked for two weeks, which reduced a chance to earn a significant amount of money. So from that moment, I started being more suspicious.
It’s important to realize that risks are always around – fraud issues are never excluded, no matter which ad network you choose.
Once I moved to another large advertising network (they track fraud pretty closely and send you daily reports), I started searching for an anti-fraud solution. This winter, the network manager suggested that I should try ADEX, so here I am.
And how exactly do you use ADEX? How efficient is the platform?
ADEX has always been really good at showing real-time results, which is extremely useful for a traffic reseller. All threats are tracked immediately and we can deal with the problematic sources before we lose money.
We actually use ADEX for tracking purposes and it really stands out. As for the filtration, control, and optimization, we have an additional system created by my friend and technical partner Eugene Dogadaev. This system was built on the basis of ADEX. Actually, ADEX is the key component of it.
ADEX has already found more than a million fraudulent traffic sources, which were blocked later by our system. Here, this graph really shows the difference:
Do you have any favorite ADEX tools?
Yes, we rely on API a lot — this instrument helps us gather statistics about the traffic sources, performance, GEOs, and other stuff. We work with large traffic volumes, so API comes in handy with automatic and precise analysis as well as blocking non-trustworthy sources.
What is the main reason for you to stay with ADEX?
First of all, ADEX really helps us to track the traffic quality. It is extremely important for us, since when you are a traffic reseller, you don’t always work with the most elite traffic sources — it just doesn’t make sense, because they are expensive and never pay off.
We have to work with relatively cheap sources and they do need control. Due to ADEX, we haven’t lost a single dollar yet!
In conclusion, let’s discuss a bit of a general question. What are your reflections on the current situation with fraud? Are there any tendencies you notice?
I am pretty sure that modern advertisers need anti-fraud solutions, because fraud doesn’t stand still — it evolves pretty fast and takes new tricky forms. While proxy-based fraud or classical iframes are still here, there are less-familiar cases, when bots start acting like human users and it’s really hard to distinguish between them unless you have special tracking software.
As for traffic reselling, well, I just cannot imagine working without anti-fraud solutions, like ADEX. We have to work with cheap traffic, as I said before, and this entails certain troubles that cannot be solved without anti-fraud tools. So, here is my advice — use ADEX and avoid losing your money!
So, from Eugene’s experience, we can see that it is nearly impossible to predict which traffic you actually purchase — there is always a risk that bots can sneak into your traffic flows. Rely on ADEX to perform real-time checks and don’t waste your money for low-quality traffic!
