TrafficForce’s Ross Allan knows the web-traffic monetization space quite well.
After all, he’s bought and sold traffic for nearly 15 years, riding the many waves of a digital marketplace that constantly is evolving. And all along, he’s been loving it.
Networking is very important; often who you know is just as important as what you know.
Allan is general manager at the fast-paced and focused TrafficForce, where he leads a group of close-knit, dedicated and talented individuals who turn ideas into feature-rich tools, better methods and even greater ROI for clients.
XBIZ recently had the opportunity to chat with Allan, who offers in this interview some insights of the traffic space and his drive for success — the same one he had when he first started in the biz.
XBIZ: The business behind web traffic is something you know very well. How did this all start?
Allan: My wife’s brother got me into the industry in 2002. He had a couple of MGP sites and he submitted movie galleries. He was doing well and decided to expand by opening up an office and hiring me to work for him. He taught me how to trade traffic, build movie galleries and submit them.
Eventually I went out on my own about 18 months later and started testing different types of traffic monetization. I have bought and sold traffic for almost 15 years now, and I enjoy it more and more each year.
I get to work in a dynamic industry, meet new people, discuss so many business methods and learn new techniques that constantly evolve our products.
XBIZ: What are some of the secrets of purchasing, tracking, selling and monetizing web traffic?
Allan: Networking is very important; often who you know is just as important as what you know. Knowing the right people can lead to payout bumps and cap increases for affiliates that in turn gives them an advantage while buying traffic because they can accept more volume and outbid their competition.
Using the right software as well as understanding everything it can do for you is also very important. Tracking systems like ItsUp.com or Voluum give you information in real time, allowing you to make more rapid decisions and scale your campaigns across multiple ad networks.
Increased payouts, no cap limitations, good tracking software and friendly relationships with your ad network account managers are a powerful combination that puts professional affiliates on the right road to profit.
XBIZ: What are some of the most popular tools that TrafficForce clients are using to capture larger segments of target audiences?
Allan: TrafficForce offers a lot of convenience for advertisers, features including conversion tracking that will post back successful conversion data to almost every single targeting metric we have, allowing our customers to buy the traffic that converts best and cut off the traffic that is not working for them.
We also have a really great tool that automatically optimizes ads based on CTR (click-through rate) and ROI. The system weights ads, sending more traffic to higher CTR/ROI creatives while cutting back the number of impressions being sent to others that may not be performing as well.
This takes some optimization work off our customers’ shoulders and lets innovative technology handle it more efficiently, which allows our customers more time for other things.
Lastly, one of our lesser-known features is our retargeting option. It is fairly new and not many people have tested it yet, but we empower marketers by allowing them to re-target users who engaged their product before by showing an updated sales funnel to the users, essentially giving a second shot at converting impressions into paying customers. The clients who are utilizing retargeting are seeing very high returns and on the TrafficForce side, we’re also seeing some really creative uses of this new feature.
XBIZ: With so many deliverable ads each month and, along with them, so many demands of clients, is TrafficForce constantly optimizing its platform?
Allan: We focus on making the platform efficient, fast and user-friendly so that our customers can easily manage their campaigns 24 hours a day. Our developers have a long list of features in our development pipeline to ensure we always remain competitive by offering the tools our clients need to earn the maximum amount of money from every campaign.
The advertising industry changes so fast these days, so it’s important that our developers love what they do, constantly reading up on new technologies and bringing important upgrades to our system for our clients.
XBIZ: The company has looked abroad in overlooked corners of the world, like China, to find new traffic sources. Is there a wish list of countries the company would like to conquer?
Allan: U.S. traffic is still the most sought after geo, but that doesn’t mean it always will be, so it’s important that we will always work diligently to find and grow our inventory of new placements to fulfill client needs. In the coming months, we will continue making progress in Asia, which is an exciting market that we are expanding into more aggressively.
New products are coming online regularly in the Asian market and there is strong demand for targeted traffic from startup companies. Adult traffic is still considered cheap there, as Asian companies do not have the same concerns about buying adult traffic as we often see in North America from game developers, app companies or non-porn type products.
We are happy to move into any market where opportunity exists for us to grow TrafficForce by working with new advertisers and publishers to provide our clients with new monetizable insights.
XBIZ: What will the desktop and mobile traffic landscapes look like in two to three years?
Allan: 2016 was the year when most people will tell you mobile overtook desktop as their main traffic platform. I see that continuing with the gap widening during the next few years.
Mobile traffic commands higher CPMs (cost per impressions) than desktop on comparative ad types including pop-unders and the demand for mobile will cause this to continue to happen. More companies are developing mobile first nowadays to be relevant to the needs of their users or potential users and see desktop as a secondary channel.
Ad block is also a big problem for desktop, with estimations that as many as 30 percent of total users visiting desktop sites are now using some form of ad block software. Ad networks need to fight back and are doing so, but it’s going to be a long battle to recoup that lost revenue and safeguard desktop traffic as a profitable resource.
XBIZ: What is it like to work with TrafficForce/PimpRoll?
Allan: It’s a fast-paced environment that you have to be ready to be a part of the moment you wake up each morning. For me the challenge is what makes it fun.
Most people in the industry know a lot of the team members already because the core group of people has been at the company since the early days, and they still have the same hunger to succeed as they did when I started here in 2007.
Newer people have also come in and add new dynamics to the team, which gives us fresh ideas, creative ways to do what we do and helps the end products be more successful.
The fact that we are such a tight group is a real credit to our management team and one of the main reasons we have managed to adapt as well as we do. We socialize out of the office together; we go to each other’s houses on weekends, or golf together in the summer. I’m proud to be a part of the company and part of the community, alongside such a great group of people.
XBIZ: What’s new and on the horizon for the company?
Allan: Traffic Force continues to grow year over year. We are up to almost 18 billion monthly ad impressions now and we have some exciting new upgrades in the pipeline. The ad industry is evolving towards DSP (demand-side platform) and SSP (supply-side platform) technology that is creating a big buzz between mainstream and adult marketers.
We will have our own take on this in the not-too-distant future and will be sure to share it with XBIZ readers when we are live. New publishers are coming on board each month and our emerging markets in Asia will see us continue to explore all possibilities in the region to match advertisers with quality publishers.
We also have a new stats package in the works that will blow away what I currently see on the market. It will allow users to dig down even deeper to their campaigns, optimize with greater depth and should increase profits even more on all of our ad space for clients.
XBIZ: What parts of managing the business excites you the most?
Allan: If you asked me this question five years ago I would have said buying and selling advertising. I loved nothing more than working deals and negotiating with clients in a fast-paced environment moving from deal to deal.
Nowadays, as technology becomes a much bigger factor in the advertising world, I really like to work with our developers on enhancing our system to ensure we offer the best tech possible.
At TrafficForce we have a truly dedicated development team. Our guys even come back from vacations with new ideas for the system and ways to make it more efficient or more feature-rich to give our clients the best opportunity to profit on each campaign.
XBIZ: What’s a typical work day like?
Allan: I get to the office between 7:30 and 8 a.m. usually. First I catch up with the developers and discuss features to prepare for upcoming system upgrades. Then I catch up with our E.U. team, and we discuss their day so far, talking targets, discussing deals for clients and ensuring we’re all working toward the same goals. That’s really crucial since we are a 24/7/365 entity working with clients in every time zone and monetizing traffic on a global platform.
The rest of the morning is spent working with our Asian clients, helping them optimize campaigns and get more advertising. Afternoons tend to be focused towards E.U. and North American clients, working on marketing, researching our traffic trends and making sure we prioritize markets that need some extra pushing. The day never really ends because global traffic never actually sleeps.
XBIZ: When not thinking about the biz, what do you like to do?
Allan: I enjoy going to the gym, lifting weights and running. On weekends I love watching sports, mostly soccer, football and Formula 1.
When the weather allows, I enjoy playing golf with friends on weekends and socializing, meeting for dinner, and I really enjoy being outdoors. A big part of my life is travel. My wife and I tend to take three to four vacations per year together.
We love experiencing new cultures, new places and getting away from home for a short time to recharge our batteries and refocus our minds.
