Affbank Awards winner interview: ExoClick

Top changes in numbers during the last year. 

The pandemic actually saw large increases of traffic across our network globally, we were even serving 8 billion daily impressions in April at the height of the lockdown.

We saw big numbers in our video ad formats which are generally used by product owners and mega affiliates, this has now been seen as a go to ad format for smaller sized affiliates who are seeing the potential of the conversions video ad formats can bring.

We have expanded our team for both members area (dating) traffic and our email business division due to increased demand from advertisers for these exclusive traffic sources. 

How did you manage the coronavirus crisis? 

As mentioned we have seen large increases in traffic volumes across our network during lockdown. We advised advertisers to concentrate on digital offers, especially VoD/streaming, live cams and games. We advised that sports betting offers should be switched to casino offers as sporting events have been cancelled. Dating has also seen large increases in impressions within our exclusive members area traffic sources, where we advised advertisers to target both dating and digital entertainment products to this audience.

The biggest challenges you faced this year.

Chrome has promised to block heavy ads by the end of August 2020, so advertisers should make sure that they keep their ad weights inline with Google to ensure that their ads are seen by end users. In February ExoClick introduced the automatic optimization of advertisers' creatives by converting PNG banners into lighter JPEG formats and GIF banners to a 90% lighter HTML video format, ensuring that all our network’s ads continue to be served to end users on Chrome.

Chrome also began to block the Popunder format, so we launched the Mobile Fullpage Interstitial to allow advertisers to still reach end users with a high converting large ad format. Our triggering methods for both formats allow advertisers to use both large ad formats in combination, so for example, showing the Interstitial to Chrome users whilst showing the Popunder to non Chrome users, we have a comprehensive blog post here.

What are the trends for this summer in your opinion? 

So,as mentioned lighter creatives will be a big trend this summer as everyone starts getting aligned with Google. As GEOs start to come out of lockdown we can expect Sports betting to begin again in Europe in late Summer, also we are seeing Nutra offers getting a lot of traction as more advertisers try it out, and as mentioned video formats such as In-Stream & Video Slider are growing, and we are seeing more dating offers using the Slider format in place of the IM format.

If you could give affiliates from all over the world one piece advice what would that advice be?

Automation is becoming a key player for campaign optimization, work with an ad network that provides these free tools, we offer several automation tools which you can explore here. I also recommend that advertisers become experts on the trending formats: Mobile Fullpage Interstitial and video because thorough testing of these formats will bring high conversions.