Who's making money media buying in 2018/2019?
 

All the dating/gaming/pharma ads you see on all the tubes--who's buying that ad space?

Are there any successful affiliates? Or is it all in-house teams from the ad networks and program owners?

I have to say, I fucked around some in 2018 trying to promote some dating offers from crakrevenue with CPM ads from exoclick. Tried banners, pops, and native. Did A/B testing and all that jazz. So far its seemed basically impossible to make money as a media-buying affiliate in adult. It feels like I don't have access to the best offers/payouts (because I'm not a program owner, or personally affiliated with a program owner), and I don't have access to the best ad prices (because exoclicks in-house team can promote all the same offers as me, and don't have to pay a markup to an ad network).

Any insights? Is it possible to make money as a media-buying affiliate? Or do you need to own the offer and/or traffic source?

Its 90% in-house but there are some aff's but you need to buy on smaller sites and get deals, buying CPM on the big tubes is hard as an aff.

Yeah that's what I've been thinking based on everything I've tried and learned.

Even if I were to somehow hit it big with a campaign on exoclick, their in-house team would immediately notice I was spending big $$$, copy my campaign, and out-compete me with the better CPM that they have access to (since I have to pay exoclick's markup on every impression I buy; exoclick's in-house team gets ad-space for exactly the price they pay the publisher).

So--like you said--I've been focusing on trying to find smaller sites, keywords, etc, where I can get a positive ROI. And I've been pretty close in some cases, but there's no real volume there, so it's hard to get excited about fully optimizing a campaign where I can see from day 1 the profit potential is only a couple dollars a day.

It sucks because I'm really interested in adult media buying and probably have the skills to make a lot of money for someone. But it's too competitive to get in as a lone-wolf affiliate, it seems I need to work for someone.

but fuck it if in-house teams of ad networks filter out what's good for them and what's left to buy is actually shitty traffic for everybody else.

Which you know is exactly what's happening

I've thought of doing the same damn thing--start an ad network like clickaine or whatever (i've got the coding skills to do it, easy), take the valuable traffic for myself, sell the shitty traffic to other advertisers and ad networks

I just wonder, would it be smarter to create an ad network, or to start creating affiliate offers.

that's why I avoid this shit for years... actually the only traffic I need is what I can collect in exchange for my working hours, wouldn't pay money for it

i was making big profit with bought mobile carrier traffic 5 years ago. but nowadays it's impossible too. owning tube sites and generate traffic is easier. media buying as affiliate waste of time

That's why the ad networks are all dying.

It's extremely difficult to find anyone that does good business in our industry that's why I create my own traffic & shoot my own content. I'll try an outside service every now and then. You'll make a bit of money in the beginning, that's how they hook you in, then it's all downhill from there.

Remember you're dealing with ad networks that create their traffic from pop unders, redirects, tricked clicks, etc. , all that nefarious shit that people don't want and is the scourge of the internet.

Expecting those people creating traffic that way to treat you with any kind of respect or honor, and do good business with you, is not logical, but maybe many people don't understand who/what they're dealing with. Ad networks as a way to launder money for the theives is just the tip of the iceberg.

I can only speak for myself but in my network are well known media buying agencies, product owners and some big media buyers.

90% of our customers are buying from us since the start and spending a lot of money every month.

i would be glad if I could deliver only a tenth of the daily budgets but I simply do not have that much.

sure there are people showing up from time to time - test for a few hundert and give up.
the simple reason for that is that the professional buyers are heavily skilled and they know what they do.
and because they are good, they are big and if they promote products what are not their own, they have MUCH better payouts as some small amateur who do not even know the basics of advertisement. to compete with this guys is nothing for a beginner.

so in my network are LESS than 2% houseads and those are running in countries that are so hard to convert that nobody want to buy it.

you are right. as small affiliate you will not be able to make money.
if that would be the case the website owners could do it without networks and professional marketers that are focused just on media buying.

everybody should do what he can do best.

if something is too easy it will not work on the long run because easy things are easy to copy and if too many mice like the cheese they all will die hungry.