Blacklist — is a list of unwanted or blocked objects: websites, applications, IP addresses, phone numbers and other data. Anything added to such a list is excluded by the system or user from further use.
In everyday life, blacklists are used everywhere: email services add spammers to them, unwanted phone numbers can be blocked, and websites can restrict access for suspicious visitors.
Blacklist in traffic arbitrage
For an affiliate marketer, a blacklist — is a key tool for manually filtering traffic and protecting campaigns. Most often, the following are added to it:
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Unprofitable placements and websites. When running ads through advertising networks, ads are shown across thousands of third-party resources. Placements that generate bots, accidental clicks or audiences that do not make purchases are immediately added to the campaign blacklist so the budget is not wasted.
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Suspicious IP addresses. In traffic filtering systems, IP addresses that regularly generate suspicious or low-quality traffic can be added to a blacklist to exclude them from future impressions.
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Unsuccessful card BINs. Teams may maintain their own BIN blacklists — the first digits of a card number. These lists include BINs that are frequently rejected by advertising networks or associated with problematic payments.
Advantages of blacklists
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Easy management. Add the placement IDs to the required field in the ad account or tracker — and impressions on those placements are disabled.
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Gradual optimization. As statistics accumulate, new placements that consistently generate poor-quality traffic can be added to the blacklist.
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Reusability. A ready-made list of ineffective placements can be saved and used in future campaigns for similar offers in the same advertising network.
Disadvantages of blacklists
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Testing requires money. To understand that a placement does not work, you first have to spend part of the budget on it and collect statistics.
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Require constant attention. New websites and applications appear in advertising networks, so the list has to be checked and updated regularly.
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A good placement can be blocked too early. If you add it to the blacklist after just a couple of clicks without conversions, you may make a mistake: the placement may simply need more traffic to produce reliable statistics.
Where blacklists are most commonly used
Blacklists are especially common in push advertising, popunders, native advertising and mobile ad networks. Ads there can be shown across thousands of different websites and applications, so quickly filtering out ineffective placements is especially important.
Important to know
You should not blindly copy other people's blacklists from the internet. A placement that did not generate sales for one offer may perform well for another. That is why it is more reliable to build your own list based on your own statistics and test results.
