Whitelist — is a list of trusted, verified or approved websites, applications, contacts and other sources. Depending on the settings, the system may allow work only with what is included in this list, ignoring everything else.
In everyday life, whitelists are used for security: for example, email can be configured to accept messages only from specific contacts to completely eliminate spam.
Whitelist in traffic arbitrage
In traffic arbitrage, a whitelist — is a list of specific advertising placements, websites or mobile applications that consistently generate leads and profit. The campaign is configured so that ads run only on them.
If with a blacklist ads run across the entire network except for ineffective websites, then with a whitelist the logic is reversed: the media buyer purchases impressions only from selected sources that have already proven their performance in tests.
Advantages of whitelists
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The budget is spent on proven placements. After testing, you can disable the remaining sources and direct the budget to those that have already shown good results.
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Cost control. Low-quality traffic is filtered out in advance, so funds can be concentrated on placements with proven effectiveness.
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Traffic control. The media buyer knows exactly which resources their ads are running on.
Disadvantages of whitelists
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Limited traffic volume. Impressions come from a limited set of websites, so it is difficult to get a large volume of leads — you eventually hit the capacity limit of the placements.
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Fast audience burnout. When the same ads are shown on the same websites for a long time, users get used to them and stop clicking, causing the setup to lose effectiveness.
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Difficult to build from scratch. To find working placements, you first need to test a large volume of traffic and spend budget on it.
Where whitelists are used
Whitelists are used when working with push notification networks, pop traffic, teaser networks and native ad networks. They are usually used once a working setup has already been found and the goal is to get maximum efficiency from it without unnecessary spending.
Important to know
Placements can change in traffic quality, while audiences may burn out over time or respond less effectively to an offer. That is why the performance of placements on a whitelist must be monitored constantly, periodically updating both the list itself and the advertising creatives.
