Myth: as long as the cost-per-click is low, the placement quality doesn't matter.

Myth: as long as the cost-per-click is low, the placement quality doesn't matter.
Wrong. A brand ran native at a tempting $0.08 cost-per-click and felt clever. An audit of where those clicks landed told the real story.

64% of spend hit made-for-advertising pages: 8+ ad slots, auto-refreshing units, infinite-scroll junk. Click cost was low because the inventory was worthless — accidental clicks on cluttered pages, sub-1% conversion.

They applied a quality filter, paid $0.21 a click on clean inventory, and conversion tripled. Cost-per-sale fell 38% despite the higher click price.

Cheap clicks from garbage pages are the most expensive traffic you can buy — you just pay on the back end. Are you optimizing for the price of the click, or the price of the customer?