Traffic arbitrage is extremely related to flooding the advertisers’ resources with traffic according to their offer. The strategies for flooding traffic can be different, it can even break the rules of the ad networks, and even violate laws. This is what defines white, gray, and black traffic arbitrage, in which you can get confused, and even on authoritative resources you can find contradictory definitions.
We will analyze what is black traffic arbitrage, how it differs from ethical white traffic arbitrage, and which methods are used for flooding/spamming along with what is being offered.
What exactly is black traffic arbitrage?
Dark or Black Traffic Arbitrage might break some laws and regulations of the ad platform and affiliate networks you’re using. For example, offers about medicines for intractable or autoimmune diseases like cancer, websites, and offers that steal the client’s personal data to sell it or try to take money from them without giving the advertised services or products.
Black Traffic Arbitrage gives huge payouts, nevertheless, it requires a lot of ingenuity from the ad network so they can allow the video to be displayed in the first place. Most of the time, adult affiliate programs, casinos, betting, and gambling are classified as black arbitrage from the networks and other resources. However, advertising these offers is not always punishable. For example, in Brazil you’re allowed to advertise online casinos if they are registered outside the country they don’t have any office inside of the country. Adult traffic such as dating requires to be labeled and age verification, but they’re not illegal. Even when they forbid these kinds of promotions, breaking those rules does not instigate legal prosecution, they only restrict access to other users.
The previous image is an example of misleading users using content stolen from another game. A usual tactic.
A scam is usually classified as black traffic arbitrage especially whey tricks, not the audience, but the affiliate program itself, filling it up with bots instead of real traffic or getting leads in another dirty way.
The main difference between black and white traffic arbitrage is that white traffic arbitrage actually complies with the ad network laws. Examples of this are affiliate programs for mobile emulators, food delivery, and affiliate programs for marketplaces like Amazon or AliExpress.
Black offers types
Black offers, also known by the name of shady offers, are the following:
- Prohibited products: weapons, drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, and more
- Fake medications: Products that promise to cure cancer or even HIV, but it’s completely fake.
- Tricky offers: Phishing websites, and surveys made only to collect personal data and sell it or just steal it, including credit card information or bank information, a direct scam.
- Prohibited services: Services like hacking other people’s websites or social media accounts, or providing third parties personal data. Or even, prostitution or illegal porn content.
All of these offers break the rules or are dame specifically to trick the users. The Traffic Arbitrator immediately knows what it’s doing. Descriptions of goods and services promoted that are deliberately inconsistent with reality, medications that are just not effective, and questionnaires with sweepstakes, where these sweepstakes are just not occurring at all. The webmaster might not even know about these scams, so we suggest to check the offers one by one. Otherwise, you might face legal action, and the owners of the scam affiliate program may disappear.
Strategies to attract traffic to black offers
In black traffic arbitrage, they use prohibited or unethical strategies to attract traffic to their scams. Usually, they come from spam or paid traffic, where they promise a reward for doing a specific action. A few of them are:
- Clickander strategy: A website that will redirect the user to the desired website after clicking on any area. Very popular 10 years ago and used along with adult content.
- Clickbaits: Articles or content made only to make the users open the content or article, but the content does not correspond to the title or advertised service. It’s made to only get views or impressions.
- Phishing: A website, platform, forms, or even a “donation” platform made entirely to steal the users’ data, is mostly used to steal bank account information.
- Redirect to Scams: Pure and direct scam projects, from fake cryptocurrencies, exchangers, or even games made to install malware or ransomware on the user’s device.
- Illegal traffic: Traffic that comes from places like casinos or adult websites, is mostly considered a grey niche, but this kind of traffic might harm the network’s reputation, it all depends on the country.