In the vast and ever-changing digital marketing landscape, everyone is trying to find a new avenue for success. As in any industry, providing a quality service or product at a lesser price will allow you to gain crucial advantages over your competition. In the CPA marketing world, incentive traffic has come from a fledgling and often looked down upon traffic source, to a viable means of connecting consumers to businesses. Incent Traffic is usually driven in any of the following ways:

• Points and Rewards based Virtual Currency
• Content Gateways / Content Unlocking
• Social Incentives
• Co Registration / Offer walls

Incentive Traffic in Games

Many online businesses have been fueled by success with virtual currency to drive their user base up, and continue to get more interested consumers. The ability to purchase virtual goods and get access to virtual worlds has been the backbone of the online gaming industry. This allows users to stay intrigued and motivated to keep playing, all while giving advertisers a larger base to market to on a more consistent basis.

Content Unlocking

More recently, Content Unlocking has become a major player in the incent space as a traffic form. Content Unlocking and Content Gateways usually have a layered form over the actual webpage that will prompt the user to complete an offer to gain access to the content of the site. This works well in the download and toolbar world, as many people are often searching for software or browsing download and torrent sites.

Long Term Success

The key for long term success in working with Incent traffic is to make sure all sides are in full understanding of what is to be expected and allowed from the traffic source. Advertisers love the thought of paying less money for leads, but need to be aware of the channels these users are coming from. Everything will be different on a case by case and offer by offer basis so it is important to have that be cleared up in the beginning of the business relationship.

If the offer is based around a flat rate or a subscription fee but is not getting much traction, overlaying it as a requirement to enter a site that has relevant content is an avenue that should certainly be explored. This gives the business an interested consumer, and gives the visitor access to what they want without paying.

With content unlocking and incent traffic in general the advertiser should be made aware that, the consumers they will be marketing to had used their product or service as a means to get something else in return. Because of this the conversion rate will often be much higher than a more traditional traffic source. This is why the pricing has to be matched and is almost always a good percentage lower than the non-incentivized traffic payouts. This requires IP’s of country groups should be thoroughly watched as well as abnormal conversion rates to nip fraudulent practices right in the bud.

Transparency is Key

The biggest take away from the current state of Incent traffic is that it is becoming a much more viable and accepted traffic source than it was even a year ago. There are talented affiliates who drive legitimate traffic through these channels, but as in any business relationship honesty and transparency from both sides are integral to success. Advertisers must be willing to share what they exactly need from the leads they receive in order to get users that will back out for them. This has often times been the case, and more and more brands from start-ups to the most reputable names in the industry are branching towards incent promotions to give them the leg up on the competition.