Case study: why a beginner moved from social to push and 2x'd results

Case study: why a beginner moved from social to push and 2x'd results

New to traffic sources? Here is a clean comparison from one person who tried both. They had a sweepstakes offer paying $1.10 per lead and $90 to test.

First they spent $45 on social traffic. The clicks were cheap but the people were not in a 'win a prize' mood. Result: 51 leads, $56 earned, but the advertiser reversed 18 of them as low quality. Real income: about $36 on $45 spent. A loss.

Then they spent the other $45 on push traffic (push = small notification-style ads users opt in to receive). Push tends to bring people who clicked because they actually wanted what the ad showed.

Result from push:
— 39 leads (fewer than social)
— Only 2 reversed
— Real income: about $40.70 on $45 spent

Neither was a big win yet, but here is the key. After tuning, push leads held their quality, so scaling the push budget to $90 returned $108. Scaling the social budget just brought more reversals.

The lesson for beginners: cheap clicks are not the goal. Clicks from people in the right mood are. Push often matches sweepstakes intent better than broad social.

Next step: if your social leads keep getting reversed, test the same offer on one push source with a small budget.