After almost five months of coronavirus pandemic, the whole world’s economic activities seem to get back in track. Or at the very least, countries trying their very best to get back to normal. But it’s definitely not going to be easy to do this in between all the current restrictions and limiting regulations.

But how is it affecting your affiliate marketing campaigns? Which of the current ad formats has the most potential to perform best during this time? What really going to work right now?

In this article, we’ll discuss how coronavirus pandemic is affecting affiliate marketing and which ad formats are your best bet to tackle the current situation and run successful campaigns.

So, let’s get right into it…

How Coronavirus Pandemic Has Affected Affiliate Marketing

The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 has forced many people around the world to change their lifestyles drastically. As people are locked inside their own homes, people seem to shift toward finishing most of their work online and surf the internet for a longer duration of time. And it looks like people are actually liking their current lifestyle. So, how is this going to turn out for affiliate marketers?

So, how is this coronavirus pandemic affecting our industry?

Right at the start of the coronavirus outbreak, industries such as travel and sports were totally shut down. As a result, activities that belong to these categories experienced a total hold. And with that, people also lost interest in those categories and their demand dipped. So, affiliates who used to run campaigns in these industries started to look for other verticals.

But not all the industries have been affected negatively because of this. As people are spending all their time inside their homes, they have started to seek more and more options to stay busy and entertain themselves. As a result, the demand for online video streaming services and home entertainment such as online games and gaming equipment has drastically increased.

Here are some of the industries that are seeing a massive increase in demand:

• Online video streaming
• Gambling
• Dating
• Gaming and gaming equipment
• Antivirus and VPN services
• App and software downloads

Therefore, affiliate marketers who are promoting products and services that belong to one of the above categories are seeing a huge surge of quality traffic. The question is how can you run the campaigns that can take advantage of the huge surge in traffic and gain the most ROI.

Best Ad Formats During The Coronavirus Pandemic

Now that you already know about the best and the worst industries to run an affiliate campaign, it’s time you dive into different ad formats and how they’re expected to perform during this pandemic. Here, we’ll dig into three major types of ad formats and see the strong points of each of the ads to figure out the best ad format for you.

Here we go…

Pop Ads

In spite of what people are saying nowadays, pop ads are not dead. Sure, they have been here for a long time and very old-fashioned. But they’re still hiding a lot of potential under their sleeves. Here are some advantages of pop ads you need to know:

• This ad format has 30+ years of track record of advertising and as a result, we have a lot of data available on how to make these ads work. These ads are popular among the affiliates and they’re quite a stable form of advertising which advertisers and affiliates need nowadays.
• Pop ads are a popular traffic source and they have a high demand. And in this market, anything that has a high demand equals profit.
• Pop ads are one of the cheapest ad format available in the market right now and it costs as low as $0.0001/view.
• Even a beginner affiliate marketer can use and tweak with pop ads.
• It works with nearly all the verticals.

Domain Redirect

These ads are almost like pop ads but a little more complicated and costs slightly more than the pop ads. And because of its complex nature, it’s generally recommended to get into this ad format after an affiliate gains some experience of running pop ad campaigns. Here are some common benefit of using domain redirect ads:

• These ads redirect the user to a new domain quite fast and virtually zero lag and show them what they want to see.
• As these ads are triggered by matching keyword input, these ads immediately take the user to the landing pages of relevant products according to their demonstrated interest.
• Unlike pop ads, you can get even more precise with domain redirect ads which helps you reach the perfect audience who might be interested in the products you’re actually promoting. This, in turn, saves you a lot of campaign money from being wasted on audiences who are not interested in a certain product.
• The cost per view for these ads starts at $0.0003 which provides great value for your ad money.
• Plus, they’re quite easy to set up.

Push Notification Ads

Push ads or push notification ads are undoubtedly the best performing ads for affiliates in 2019. Here are some benefits of push ads that makes it the best ad to try out during the coronavirus pandemic:

• No other ad format available in the market is as profitable and effective as the push ads so far. Of course, all the rockstars of affiliate marketing started their career with pop ads. But they have all set their eyes to push notification ads. As they’re quite popular between both affiliates, advertisers, and users, these ads have proven themselves to be the ultimate winner.
• Because of their non-intrusive and user-friendly nature, most users generally trust push ads more than most other ad formats.
• Push ads are proven ad formats that attract the right kind of traffic which helps you increase your campaign’s ROI.
• They’re easy to set up, has a broad reach, and allows multiple creative testing.

In The End: Choose The Right Ad Format

The coronavirus pandemic is affecting each and every industry. And as a result, the affiliates need to test each and every possible resource to test what works and make their campaigns successful. Use the data above to check which ad format will be the right fit for you according to your respective industries and run the right campaign to maximize your revenue.