Interview with AD Networks: Meet Tim Ram from TrafficStars

Today, we’re publishing an interview with Tim Ram, CEO of TrafficStars. Tim shares his thoughts on popular ad formats and verticals, mVAS and DCB, and leaves a promo code for our partners, so read the interview till the end!

Tim Ram

Tim gives a sneak peek at what’s going on behind the scenes at one of the largest ad networks and provides valuable tips for new affiliates.

CEO of TrafficStars

• 10 years of experience
• Traffic expert
• Affiliate marketing pro

• What’s your position in TrafficStars? Tell us about your company. How long have you been in the market? Could you share some key milestones and achievements of TrafficStars?

• Hey everyone! My name is Tim Ram, and I’m СЕО of TrafficStars. Our advertising network has been in the market since 2014, being one of the industry leaders. One of our advantages is having exclusive traffic sources and a wide targeting choice for our clients (an opportunity to choose IP addresses of interest or traffic from certain carriers.

  Recently, our clients have gotten an opportunity to create specific rules for automatic campaign optimization, which certainly helps media buyers and saves their time.Our focus is our product. In the second quarter of 2022, the amount of shown ad impressions through our ad network has surpassed 5 billion per day.

• What ad formats are you working with? What are the most popular? What type of traffic do you offer, and what GEOs are present in your network?

• We have all in-demand formats: popunders, video, banners, native ads, interstitial ads, and push ads. An advertiser can choose websites and spots they receive traffic from as well as countries. Tier-1 countries are in the most demand, but Asian, African, and Latin American countries are starting to gain momentum in some verticals.

• Which affiliate verticals are the most popular in your network?

• The top verticals are Dating, Games, Nutra, Casino, Betting, Financial Services, VPN, and Utilities. The number of verticals is constantly growing. Media buyers are searching for alternative traffic sources since the competition on Facebook and Adwords is getting more and more complicated. Our goal is to help our clients buy traffic with the best ROI.

• Are there many mVAS advertisers and publishers among your clients?

• Offers based on Direct and SMS billing are present on our platform. Earlier, this vertical was extremely popular, but with time, it got more regulated, so now it only has “white” offers, which is definitely good for the industry. But it’s harder to monetize them: it’s not enough just to run a campaign for the whole world. You need precise settings, tests, optimization, and good creatives. Only those who can do this are successful.

• What are restrictions on working with mVAS offers, if any?

• We have a general Compliance policy, which applies to all offer types and is agreed on with our publishers. We don’t have separate restrictions specifically for mVAS.

• You’ve been in the industry for a long time. Can you tell us your thoughts on its future? In your opinion, which verticals will boom in the nearest future, and which ones are going to die soon?

• The crypto vertical drives the attention, and interest of many and this interest is growing. The industry has high volatility and is speculative. A large amount of scum product interferes with its development. But the dynamics are here, and the interest will steadily grow anyway.

  The future, as well as the present, belongs to the products that are valuable to users.

  There is more and more regulation in different verticals, and the tendency will continue.

• Which advertising formats will grow big, and which, on the contrary, will become a thing of the past?

• The video format is the most promising for product owners. Apart from direct conversions, it influences the growth of organic traffic. However, making video creatives is harder. This is why classic push notifications and popunders are still so popular.

• What are your thoughts on the mVAS as an affiliate vertical? Is it profitable for affiliates?

• Everything depends on the offer conditions and the competition inside it. You always need a budget for testing new offers and consequent optimization, for searching the required angle spot+GEO. Recently, in TrafficStars, we’ve opened a CPA payment model. I believe it allows you to test an offer and spots the most efficiently to understand the real eCPM. After this, you can switch to the CPM payment model to receive more stable traffic.

• What do you feel about fraud and misleading information in the affiliate field?

• TrafficStars bans such creatives and offers.

• How do you control the quality of the traffic brought to you by publishers and affiliates?

• We have an in-house anti-fraud monitoring system, which we’re constantly improving. Unfortunately, I can’t share any further details.

• Could you give some sort of advice to a beginner affiliate marketer? Something that can help them start in your network?

• TrafficStars is a self-serve platform, so you can understand many things natively and intuitively. In case you have any questions, you can always ask our managers through the chat. They are always happy to help you learn the platform and start working.

  If a beginner affiliate marketer has a good offer, it’s half a deal. Next, you need to find working angles/bundles, spending time and effort on testing. After this, you work on optimizing your campaign and creatives and work with statistics and analytics. All of this is very exciting, and everything is in your hands. The main thing is to be proactive! We’re waiting for you in TrafficStars.