Promotion tool

PropellerAds push, pop, and interstitial

PropellerAds is an advertising network that sells several formats from one account. The three this guide covers are push, pop, and interstitial. They are not native headline-and-thumbnail ads, and they are not the same as each other. A publisher who says “I run PropellerAds” has not yet said which format they run. On a CPA offer, that missing word is often the difference between an approved conversion and a rejection.

Maxlead does not own PropellerAds. PropellerAds is a separate company. It prices and delivers the impression or the click under its own rules. Maxlead is a CPA performance network that has operated since 2015. Maxlead gives you the offer, the tracking link with your publisher id, the sub IDs s1 through s8, the postback, and a weekly payout of approved earnings only. The ad network cannot approve your lead. The CPA network cannot make a forbidden format allowed because the traffic was easy to buy.

Three formats, three kinds of visit

Push is a notification. A person opts in on a site, and later a message can appear from that subscription, with a short title, a line of text, and often an icon. The click opens a URL. The opt-in itself is not a conversion on your CPA offer. The notification impression is not a conversion. Only the action the offer names, completed after a valid click and then approved, can become earnings. If your offer is a signup, a subscription to notifications is not that signup.

Pop traffic, including what buyers often call popunder or onclick, opens another window or tab, commonly behind the page the person is already using. They did not choose a headline so much as trigger a placement. Many CPA offers forbid pop, popunder, clickunder, and similar formats by name. Some also forbid anything that feels forced or incentive-like. A window that opens without a clear choice is exactly what those rules are written to stop. If the offer forbids pop, you do not “test a little pop.” Forbidden means do not run it. A completed form does not wash the source clean. The conversion can be rejected, and rejected is not paid.

An interstitial is a full-screen unit between pages or inside an app flow. The person has to deal with it to continue. It is not a push notification, and it is not a popunder sitting behind the current tab. Offers that allow push sometimes still forbid interstitials, or the reverse. You cannot inherit permission from a neighboring format. Read the line that names the format you are about to buy. If the line is missing, ask the account manager on Maxlead before you spend. Do not guess that “display” or “all traffic” includes pop.

Incentive-like traffic is the cousin of these bans. If the person is paid, given a download, or promised a reward for converting, mainstream offers reject the lead. Push and pop can be run cleanly or they can be wrapped in a reward. The wrapper matters. A format the offer allows, delivered as an incentive, is still a broken rule. When you are unsure whether a landing page you own adds an incentive the offer did not allow, do not send the click.

Read the offer, then choose a format, or choose none

Open the offer after your publisher account is approved. Public offers can be used then. Offers that require approval wait until an admin accepts your request. On the offer, read the allowed sources and the banned sources as carefully as you read the payout. Write down whether push is allowed, whether pop is allowed, and whether interstitial is allowed. Write down the countries. Write down the action that counts and the cap for today. If the format you wanted is on the banned list, stop. Pick a different offer that allows it, or pick a different format this offer does allow. Do not buy the forbidden one and plan to argue after the rejections.

Country rules do not relax for push or pop. A click counts on the offer only when the visitor’s country is allowed. PropellerAds geo that spills outside that list can still cost you money on the ad account and leave no click on the offer. Match the geo to the offer, or to a smaller slice. The preview URL is for reading the advertiser page. It is not the URL you put on the push, the pop, or the interstitial. The URL you put there is the Maxlead tracking link.

The payout on the offer is the amount for one approved conversion. It is not a promise about how many of your clicks will be approved, and it is not related to what PropellerAds charges. This guide does not invent those charges, a minimum spend, or a click-through rate. Your ad account shows the cost. The Maxlead report shows approved earnings. EPC is those earnings divided by clicks. CVR is approved conversions divided by clicks. Pending is neither.

If the format is allowed, test one of them

Do not launch push, pop, and interstitial on the same afternoon against the same offer, even when all three are allowed. You would blend three kinds of intent into one argument. Pick one format. Build one campaign. One country. One offer. One tracking link. Label it so the report cannot confuse it with the formats you did not turn on.

A clean set of sub IDs is s1 set to propeller, s2 set to the format, s3 set to the campaign, and s4 set to the creative. Push creatives are the title, the text, and the icon. Pop and interstitial may have less “creative” and more placement, but you still name the campaign in s3 so a later test does not reuse the token. If you later get permission and evidence to try a second format, it gets a new s2, such as push on the first test and interstitial on the second. Never store both formats in one s2 called mixed. You cannot pause a format you cannot see.

Keep the test small. Small means you limit how much of that one format you buy while you wait for a readable Maxlead report. It does not mean a dollar figure printed in a blog post. Stop if the cap fills. Stop if the offer pauses. Stop if approvals are not appearing and the clicks are no longer a sample, they are a loss you can see by comparing ad-account cost with approved earnings. Do not widen the geo to hunt a conversion. Do not add a second offer onto the same URL.

The path of a good click is the same for every format. The person hits the tracking link. Maxlead stores the publisher id, the sub IDs, and the click id when the country is allowed, then sends the visitor to the advertiser. A conversion refers to that click id. A postback, global or specific to the offer, is sent when the conversion is approved or rejected. Pending does not send one. Read the status. Credit approved. Do not credit rejected. The postback is not the weekly payout. The weekly payout pays approved earnings only, to the details on your account.

A worked example with one format turned off on purpose

A publisher has a PropellerAds account and a habit of running pop because it is simple to set up. They find a utility offer on Maxlead that pays on an approved signup. They read the source list. Push is allowed. Native is allowed. Pop, popunder, and incentivized traffic are forbidden. Interstitial is not mentioned. They do not treat silence as a yes. They ask the account manager. The answer is that interstitial is not allowed on this offer either. Push is the only one of the three formats they may buy.

They do not run “a little pop to compare.” Comparison is not a defense. They set up one push campaign in the one country the offer accepts. They preview the advertiser page, then they discard that URL. The push destination is the tracking link with s1 propeller, s2 push, s3 utility-signup-test, and s4 title-bill. A second notification uses s4 title-save. The titles describe the signup the page actually contains. They do not promise a prize for subscribing, because incentive is forbidden even on an allowed format.

PropellerAds shows the push clicks and the cost. Maxlead shows clicks on s2 push. title-bill produces approved signups. title-save produces clicks and no approved signups. They pause title-save. EPC for title-bill is the approved earnings on those clicks, not the cost per click in the ad account and not a pixel fired when the notification was delivered. CVR is approved signups divided by clicks on that s4. They do not scale because the push list is large. They scale only if the approved result still makes sense against their cost, the cap is open, and push is still allowed.

Later they see a different offer that explicitly allows pop and names the country they can reach. That offer is not an excuse to point the old push URL at pop. They copy a new tracking link. s2 is pop. s3 is a new campaign name. They run a small test of pop on that offer alone. If approved conversions do not appear, they pause it. If the offer had said pop was forbidden, this paragraph would not exist. They would not have run it. A rejected pop lead is not a research expense the network agreed to fund. It is a broken rule.

They keep interstitial off on both offers unless a future offer says it is allowed in writing on the offer. When that happens, s2 becomes interstitial, the campaign stays small, and the score is still approved conversions on Maxlead. An interstitial impression, a closed window, or a push opt-in is not that score.

How to judge the test without fooling yourself

The dashboard cards are clicks, conversions, CVR, earnings, and EPC. Earnings mean approved payout. Read them on the sub ID for the format you bought. The performance report can group the work and still carries the sub IDs. The conversion report lists the conversions that count. Activity lists click ids. None of these pages will show a pop click as approved if the offer forbade pop and the lead was rejected. If your tracker shows revenue anyway, your tracker is wrong. Fix the tracker. Do not fix the story.

Pause inside the format first: the push title, or the pop campaign, that has clicks and no approved conversions once you can see the split. Leave a thin sample alone until it is a sample. Do not add the forbidden format to “help the algorithm.” There is no algorithm on Maxlead that converts a banned source into an allowed one. Do not mix propeller push and a native campaign under one s1 and then wonder why EPC moved. Native is a different source and needs its own labels.

Postbacks help only if you honor status. Map the click id, the payout, the offer, and sub1 through sub8. A custom parameter can be included when it follows the guide. Ignore any token you hoped existed but the desk does not fill. A missed postback does not delete an approval that is on the report, and a forged postback does not create one.

Caps and countries still apply to loud formats

Pop and interstitial can spend quickly because the placement does not wait for a careful headline choice. That speed is a reason to watch the cap, not a reason to skip it. The cap for today is on the offer. When it is reached, further clicks are not further payouts. Pause the PropellerAds campaign. Check again before you restart. A push campaign that drips clicks can hit the same cap if other sources of yours are on the offer. The cap is shared by your traffic to that offer, not granted once per format.

Country targeting on a loud format needs to be tighter, not looser. A mis-targeted pop still opens. It still costs money if your account is charged for it. It still fails to record on the offer when the country is outside the list. Language and device show up in CVR. A page that cannot be completed on the device you bought will not become approved conversions because you bought more of it. Look at the report. Stop. Adjust the one setting that was wrong. Then judge approved conversions again.

The weekly payout includes the approved amount only. It does not include the push opt-ins, the pops that opened, or the leads still pending. If the payout page on your account shows a minimum, read that page. This article will not invent the figure. Plan cash from approved earnings that have actually reached a payable state.

Mistakes

Running pop because the account can, when the offer forbids pop. Running interstitial because push was allowed. Calling an incentive page “push traffic” and hoping the format name is all the reviewer sees. Sending any of the three formats to the advertiser preview instead of the tracking link. One sub ID for every format. Targeting countries the offer does not accept. Counting a notification subscription as a CPA conversion. Trusting a conversion pixel in the ad account over the Maxlead status. Scaling before an approved conversion exists. Ignoring a full cap because delivery is fast. Reusing a Taboola or MGID sub ID on a PropellerAds link. Asking PropellerAds to pay the offer. Asking Maxlead to pay a source the offer banned. Skipping the manager’s answer when the source list is unclear and spending anyway.

The correction is dull and reliable. Read the offer. If the format is forbidden, do not run it. If it is allowed, test that one format, small, with its own sub ID, to the tracking link, and judge approved conversions only.

Start on the offer, not on the format menu

PropellerAds can sell push, pop, and interstitial. Maxlead pays for an approved action on an offer that accepts your country and your source. Those sentences are the whole method. Pick a format the offer names as allowed, copy the tracking link with your publisher id and with s1 through s8 that identify the format, and keep the test small enough to pause. Leave every forbidden format off. When you need the desk that records the approval and pays the week, open the Maxlead homepage.