The Most Perspective Affiliate Verticals 2019 ★ [Featuring Top CPA Networks]

With nearly all of 2019 still ahead of us, we decided to create a cheat sheet of sorts, to help affiliates with a tough decision – what offers to promote this year.

And who can possibly know better about trending verticals and hot offers than top CPA networks?

Today, we invited experts from the 10 biggest CPA networks to share their predictions for 2019.  We’ve asked them two questions:

1. Which vertical will be the most perspective in 2019?
2. What verticals are losing their positions?

And here’s what they said. 

1. AdCombo

 

Which vertical will be the most perspective in 2019?

The recent year has shown that Nutra vertical has reached its peak in tier-1 regions. It has no potential there so Nutra will go on its growth in tier-2 and tier-3 geos. The niche of the online marketing experienced the gradual change in traffic distribution: Facebook and Google own the most of the quality commercial traffic, thus we’ll have to play according to their rules. That means we will face changes in the quality of approaches and funnels used in Affiliate Marketing. Affiliates will no longer run black-hat ads, as they will have to turn to white-hat methods.

The market of e-commerce and dropshipping is big enough. We can predict its growth in tier-3 regions. The big guys will adapt and get stronger, while the small players leave the market. The niche is getting more difficult, so those who already gain enough experience and expertise have a chance to survive.

Quite unexpectedly that gambling vertical rocks in 2019. They demonstrate massive expansion in RU affiliate market. We suppose it will soon expand the same as Nutra COD did years ago.

What verticals are losing their positions?

Everything connected to crypto will definitely decrease. At least until BTC start anomaly grows – there is no chance for crypto offers.

Forex and Binary options will go on their fall. People get smarter, and forex niche has reached its peak, so the only it can expect is decadence.

The era of mobile apps and mobile subscription has gone away. The governments all over the planet started regulating this market strictly, so it’s hardly possible, mobile will be popular in CPA.

It is easy to predict that Nutra “free trials” will come to stagnation. A lot of scam on that market lead to strong regulations in tier-1 geos, while “free trial” subscriptions have never been popular in tier-2 and tier-3. So “free trials” will not be popular in 2019.

2. CrakRevenue

Which vertical will be the most perspective in 2019?

We’ve already started to see a crossover between adult and mainstream markets. One thing’s for sure, it’s incredibly more complicated distinguishing a clear line in the sand between certain industry offers and products aimed at both affiliates and advertisers.

That said, Erectile Dysfunction is definitely the vertical to watch in 2019. Not the fake pills, but the real ones. This represents a $5 billion market in the US alone.

Now that the patent for Viagra has expired, a wave of legitimate alternatives has been flooding the market. Pills like these are no longer reserved for just middle to late age males: young adults are known to be turning to these types of E.D products more and more not only for the occasional E.D. need, but for greater peace of mind in social situations that could turn romantic on a dime at any time.

In fact, we’ve started campaigns with BlueChew – the only chewable alternative to Viagra™ and Cialis™ a few months ago, and these have been the fastest growing and most profitable campaigns of the past 5 years at CrakRevenue. This vertical is definitely one of our top focuses in 2019.

What verticals are losing their positions?

Well, Cryptocurrency, for one.

Two years ago, crypto was the talk of town.

Today? It’s lost momentum ever since Bitcoin reached that all-time high and it’s been on the decline ever since. Do we think Crypto is dead? No, we don’t necessarily think so.

But do we think Crypto is losing the promising position it once had?  We do – and for this reason – we think it makes it a lot more challenging for a web marketer to build any semblance of long term success with it, considering the wildly fluctuating market swings the market’s been experiencing.

3. Spicyoffers.com

Lead Generation Sweepstakes, Dating (mainstream & adult) and e-Commerce will certainly be part of the top verticals of 2019.

• Lead Gen Sweepstakes do well due to the fact that people obviously love and will always love to win prizes like iPhones, exotic vacations or vouchers from well-known brands, for example. Also, the flow is easy as it works through a submission form. In addition to that, more and more ad-networks are launching push notification format which is performing like a charm for that type of offers.

• Dating was, is, and will keep being a great vertical with big demand, for both adult and mainstream verticals. Even though it is quite competitive, there is plenty of opportunities given the size of this industry and all different niches. Your first critical task is to find the ones that have the most potential on your traffic.

• e-Commerce has a growing success since years already. Remember, it’s with this vertical that Affiliate Marketing started…! We, at Spicyoffers, believe very much in this vertical. We even have our own in-house offers. E-Commerce also became popular lately thanks to solutions like Shopify, Bigcommerce, Prestashop or Magento, to name but a few, making it possible for Affiliates to sell products on a drop-shipping basis and forget about the struggles related to storage and shipping.

On the losing side, Mobile Content is certainly the vertical that will be declining the most in 2019. This is mainly due to the new regulations adopted by some countries. Hence, there are more and more offers with less competitive conversion flows, like SMS billing, and fewer 1-click and 2-clicks flow.

4. PeerFly & affLIFT.com

Which vertical will be the most perspective in 2019?

There are a few verticals that I have noticed our publishers at PeerFly have been very focused on over the past few months and it seems like it’s going to be a trend throughout the rest of 2019.

Dating traffic seemed to have slowed down over the past few years after being one of our biggest verticals. I believe the main reason there was a big slow down was because so many people have turned to apps for online dating rather than websites like Plenty of Fish.

Well, with the surge of interest in push notification traffic, dating traffic has skyrocketed because it’s been found that dating converts well with push.

We’ve also seen an increase in sweepstake traffic. Sweeps have been a big vertical for PeerFly publishers for a long time, but we’ve seen an increase over the past few months and it seems like something that will be maintained throughout the rest of 2019. Part of that is because we have so many publishers buying pop and push traffic from PropellerAds for our sweeps traffic.

What verticals are losing their positions?

Cryptocurrency offers really blew up with the crypto craze, but now that the market flipped, there is definitely less interest in those types of offers. We still get steady traffic on Bitcoin business opportunity type offers, but I expect that to decrease significantly by the end of this year if the crypto market does not turn around.

Pin submits also seem to be having some regulation issues so I do not expect those to be as popular by the end of 2019.

The industry as a whole seems to be maturing more and more every year. Hopefully, by the end of 2019, we see less of the crappy short term money makers and more offers from bigger brands available that will be able to provide long term revenue for affiliates.

5. ClickDealer

Which vertical will be the most perspective in 2019?

Cryptocurrency will continue through 2019, with more and more Affiliates promoting these offers with lower, high-quality leads versus high-volume low quality leads on other verticals – the higher CPAs are the low-hanging fruit that will attract more and more affiliates to these kinds of campaigns. We’re also seeing a trend towards SmartLink monetization helping grow affiliate’s business through more efficient promotion and increased ROI, which is why we launched our new Dating SmartLink this month – with partners seeing amazing results.

What verticals are losing their positions?

Its glaringly obvious that Mobile Content will continue to slip and continue its downward trend of 2018 – changes in policy and regulation mean that the volume and revenue previously seen in this vertical just are not as easily attained and the knock-on effect is a downward spiral for many affiliates who relied on certain promotional methods in the past. To add to that, verticals that relied on cheap tricks or quick wins will continue to slow down due to regulation, while verticals that can leverage quality content or a focus on quality images/video/copy will continue to rise.

6. Alfaleads

Which vertical will be the most perspective in 2019?

We’ve been seeing the rise of sweepstake market over the past year and demand for it going up every convention out there. But unfortunately, not everyone understands how to work with this vertical making profit consistently, as it requires quite an unconventional approach to make traffic expenses pay off. We should note that it’s a good way to monetize unused traffic from other verticals if done right, of course.

Also, gambling is undeniably growing, all parts of it as well, the market is changing and new CPA, CPL and RevShare offers are appearing every day. Hybrid models like CPA+Revshare are trending heavily as we have noticed lately. This particular model allows the advertiser to control their spendings tying payouts to their own income. It also allows the affiliate to have enough funds to top up their circular money flow and keep it stable. As well as drive traffic from different sources, not only the ones we are used to but also ones that are less familiar.

And lastly, eCommerce. The “wonder” of this vertical is that it can be scaled up virtually indefinitely. Usually, white eCom is about low ROI and high volumes which tremendously help working with other verticals. It requires, however, to be more of a classic marketing manager than a performance marketer here. To develop massive funnels, look for inside info for advertising, work with the audience. A huge plus is that you are working with white areas on Facebook, albeit with low ROI, but it helps grow your account’s trust which in its turn allows you to avoid farming accounts and helps scale up the grey verticals with ROI of several hundred percents.

It’s important to be a solid marketing specialist here. The accounts keep the balance of white and grey, so farming is out of the picture for good.

What verticals are losing their positions?

It’s hard to say if some of the verticals’ numbers are going down or not but we can firmly state that it’s getting harder to drive traffic these days. Classic sources and approaches are dying out, driving traffic directly got much harder, KPI’s tougher. It affects white apps, eCommerce. One needs to spend more time, effort and expertise to be successful. 

7. WOW TRK

In 2019 I expect to see big growth in CPA campaigns for subscription model services, with Netflix being so successful over the past couple of years, huge companies are jumping at the idea of a subscription business model. Apple for many years seemed to be against this for iTunes but then launched Apple Music to huge success.

Now with the likes of Apple, Disney, Sony, and Microsoft all getting involved in subscription offerings for consumers (TV subscriptions, gaming subscriptions, bundled subscription packages), I think this is the biggest vertical we will see growth in this year. We have already seen a huge growth in advertisers launching subscription products for products like dental and healthy food.

Consumers are moving more and more towards subscription-based services, and for this reason, I think traditional software campaigns are going to suffer this year, I think it is already suffering, to be honest, but I think it’s going to see a huge decline in 2019. In a world where consumers are looking for instant gratification and low costs, demand for subscription models for digital products is only going to increase in 2019.

8. Cpamatica

Gone are the days when affiliate marketing was considered as a tiny and shady hobby for internet geeks. Now it has become a serious digital marketing business and one of the most high-growth industries within the digital marketing realm. With this in mind, publishers need to keep up with the latest affiliate trends, techniques and methods, in order not to bring up the rear.

Which vertical will be the most perspective in 2019?

There will be said a lot about influence marketing,  push-traffic, and artificial intelligence. But I’d like to go more in details and draw your attention to the next point.

So talking about the trends, one of the important trend in 2019, we see mobile applications with a trial payment model. This payment model started to gain enormous popularity in 2018, having a significant number of advertisers appearing every day. In order to get traffic, advertisers with similar offers will look for different ways to attract traffic, besides their own media buying departments. Meaning, budgets will be actively given to the affiliate business.

Possible payment models – CPI, CPL, CPS (or rather, payment for the trial)

What verticals are losing their positions?

In my opinion, in 2019 the general trial model for Nutrition and Goods will become less popular due to the sanctions from Visa and Mastercard. I think that the number of advertisers in this niche will decrease, and the volumes will fall.

It’s exciting to anticipate how the aforementioned trends will play out in 2019. For sure, the year will be full of changes as the industry gets smarter and transparent.

9. Mobidea

Which vertical will be the most perspective in 2019?

Lead generation campaigns are on fire and will continue to grow in popularity in 2019. Verticals that showed awesome results last year would keep up the pace. Think Coupons & Vouchers, Sweepstakes, Cash-back offers, etc.

The massive growth and success of Push notifications also supports this prediction. All of them work quite well with the format and it’s a sign of the market’s maturing and going towards compliance, or at least until this definition is taken on by the next disruptive global policy update.

We expect successful Tier 2 and Tier 3 verticals to pick up further, and speaking of which, if you’re a Mobidea publisher your go-to verticals would be Videos, Games and all sorts of Mobile Content.

Let’s not forget eCommerce. It’s a massive CPA trend right now and with the hard-hitting regulations on Nutra rebills, it’s really going to own the spotlight. Cash on delivery is about to shine in a new light too for the very same reasons.

What verticals are losing their positions?

As for verticals that are losing positions, I’d say one that stands out from the crowd is crypto. There still are successful crypto offers out there, no doubt, but these come in combination with affiliates who are knowledgeable in the field. As far as newbies are concerned, this segment is practically closed for entry.

And, no surprise here, all of this will continue to be domineeringly Mobile. Sorry, Desktop.

10. Biggico

Apparently, the high start crypto has taken wasn’t that lasting: now not only is this sphere losing its most zealous admirers but is also becoming less attractive for affiliate marketing. The CR of crypto offers is decreasing while website visitors seem less and less keen on surfing crypto websites or simply clicking on ads, not to mention investing in products.

As far as positive trends are concerned, things are looking up for the trading vertical. Firstly, a lot of renowned and established brokers are getting viral due to gradual yearly growth of public trust. Solid and reliable forex platforms are expanding their audience by sticking to favorable pay and withdrawal conditions and widening the line of innovative trading products. Secondly, affiliate marketing helps brokers bring clients targeted more and more narrowly so that the conversion rate is incredibly high – because each sign-up is carefully calculated and is thus almost certainly a clear shot.

Finally, one of the most surprising benefits for trading companies seems to be the increase in the number of funnels. Interestingly, besides doing their direct job, which is bringing eager clients to brokers, funnels manage to make much more money than is intended for them. The unusual trend is that people are more likely to trust – and hence pay – an intermediary rather than go to the actual trading platform and earn there. One of the answers to this mystery is high-profile marketing and genuine appeal to visitors’ psychological profiles.

What will come out of this later? We’ll have to wait and see. As for now, brokers are on hype, and feasting on it are trading funnels.