For many media buying teams, 2026 feels as though major advertising platforms have simultaneously decided to test the market’s resilience.

Between ongoing turbulence in Meta, widespread bans on farmed accounts in Google Ads, instant suspensions, repeated reviews of active campaigns, and sweeping cleanups across Bing and Taboola, the digital landscape is shifting rapidly.

Individually, none of these processes are entirely unprecedented: account suspensions have always been a reality, and iGaming regulations are frequently updated. However, when multiple restrictive measures converge within a single quarter, it raises a legitimate question: is this merely another seasonal fluctuation, or are advertising platforms genuinely entering a much stricter operational era?

Let us analyze, alongside our technical specialists, what has truly changed in the market, why high-risk verticals like iGaming are bearing the brunt of this pressure, and what actionable steps teams can take right now.

Third quarter of 2026: What teams are experiencing in practice

If we examine the current challenges faced by media buyers, a rather concerning picture emerges. Meta is enduring its most significant turbulence in recent times, Google is accelerating account suspensions and re-verifying active campaigns, and platforms like Bing are increasingly flagging accounts for moderation issues and restrictions.

The situation within Meta

The current wave of suspensions is among the most aggressive seen in the past three to five years, drawing parallels to the severe crackdowns of 2022. The market is once again facing an unprecedented density of bans.

Accounts linked to standard payment cards are taking the hardest hit. In certain scenarios, the ban rate for these accounts has skyrocketed to 80–90%, drastically reducing the pool of accounts that can successfully launch and maintain stable operations.

Conversely, accounts utilizing credit lines currently appear more stable, but they are simultaneously becoming more expensive. The market is rapidly adapting to this shifted demand, driving up the cost of such infrastructure.

A distinct challenge over recent weeks involves the transfer of pixels between Business Managers. In numerous instances, pixels fail to transfer correctly to other BMs, disrupting established launch frameworks and forcing teams to rebuild their infrastructure mid-campaign.

The situation within Google

In the Google ecosystem, the primary impact has been felt by farmed accounts and mass-scale infrastructure. Throughout August and September, teams frequently encountered scenarios where batches of accounts were suspended en masse, necessitating appeals that were not always successful.

Concurrently, requests for additional verification have surged. Active accounts are increasingly subjected to Business Operations Verification (BOV) and other stringent checks, while some new launches are halted before they even begin to generate meaningful traffic.

Accounts registered in bulk are suffering the most. Those created in large batches, utilizing identical or recycled proxies, phone numbers, and templated infrastructure, are being flagged due to these highly recognizable, repetitive signals.

The situation across other platforms

The dynamics in Bing and Taboola differ slightly, but the overarching trend remains consistent: moderation is tightening, and platforms are scrutinizing not just the advertisements, but the entire underlying infrastructure.

For gambling and other regulated verticals on Bing, valid licenses and accurate advertiser data remain paramount. Additional checks are frequently triggered by minor changes to account or business information, making successful launches heavily dependent on how cleanly and consistently the infrastructure is assembled.

On Taboola, the primary issue is less about mass suspensions and more about heightened standards for creatives, domains, and overall advertiser quality. Certain assets are flagged for secondary review, specific accounts face restrictions, and weak domains or repetitive patterns are swiftly identified as liabilities.

Why high-risk verticals are taking the hardest hit

The iGaming sector faces an additional layer of complexity. Amidst broader market instability, platforms are continuously tightening their policies regarding gambling advertisements and other heavily regulated categories.

In Meta, this manifests through renewed waves of account restrictions, repeated audits, and general instability within advertising cabinets. Furthermore, the platform is simultaneously ramping up its security measures ahead of the upcoming U.S. midterm elections. Consequently, any new wave of restrictions in the third quarter is felt particularly acutely by the market. While there may not be a direct causal link between the current turbulence and the elections, the overall level of platform scrutiny is undeniably elevated.

In Google, the pressure is multifaceted. Beyond stricter gambling ad certification processes, teams are encountering more frequent verification requests. BOV prompts can appear on already active accounts, and repeated audits are increasingly becoming a standard, albeit frustrating, part of the launch process.

 

This is especially critical for iGaming, as a single additional verification can halt a fully prepared campaign. Furthermore, issues at the account level are no longer just about the creative assets; they are deeply tied to the underlying infrastructure: domains, corporate data, the managing account, and the historical footprint of linked cabinets.

The connection to the U.S. midterm elections

This is one of the most plausible explanations for the current landscape.

With the U.S. midterm elections scheduled for November 2026, major platforms are proactively tightening their security protocols. Meta announced its election preparedness, enhanced security measures, and restrictions on political advertising as early as February. Similarly, Google issued statements in September regarding reinforced protections against service abuse during the pre-election period.

Actionable steps for media buyers right now

Panic and complete work stoppage are not the answers. However, operating under the assumption that the market functions exactly as it did six months ago is now a significant risk.

Do not concentrate your entire volume on a single bundle A single ban or repeated audit should not bring your entire spend to a halt. It is crucial to maintain a reserve of key elements: backup domains, alternative landing pages, diversified funnels, and multiple traffic sources. The goal is not to build an endlessly complex infrastructure, but to ensure that a disruption does not force you to start entirely from scratch.

Strategies for navigating Facebook Given the current turbulence, the most logical approach includes:

• Thoroughly warming up accounts before launching campaigns.
• Minimizing unnecessary actions within the Business Manager.
• Utilizing high-quality, reputable resources and assets.
• Avoiding the simultaneous scaling of a large number of accounts.
• Increasing spend volumes gradually and methodically.
• Leaving stable, performing setups untouched.

Strategies for navigating Google In this environment, it is vital to calculate not just the cost of an account, but the cost of downtime. Losing an active, high-performing account is not merely an expense of purchasing a replacement. It

means halted campaigns, retraining algorithms, enduring additional verifications, facing certification risks, and losing valuable time to restore momentum.
Therefore, for large-scale operations, it makes sense to transition away from disposable, mass-produced infrastructure toward more resilient setups:
• Utilize accounts with an established history of legitimate spend.
• Build a stable, unique infrastructure for each account.
• Avoid mass-repeated proxies, phone numbers, templated websites, and identical behavioral patterns.
• Proactively prepare all necessary data and documentation for potential verification requests.
• Design your launch strategy so that a single problematic signal does not link and compromise dozens of accounts simultaneously.
Keep alternative traffic sources active and tested If your entire operation relies solely on Meta or Google, any platform-wide turbulence immediately becomes a critical business threat. Consequently, new traffic sources should be tested and integrated proactively, well before your primary source experiences a disruption.

 

Can creative work be transformed from a process reliant purely on inspiration into a systematic, repeatable workflow? How does one build a year-long PR plan, source fresh ideas, and tackle current business challenges? During a recent expert panel, three industry professionals—a CMO of a major affiliate network, a CMO of an agency network, and a Head of PR—discussed these exact questions. The experts broke down the most common pitfalls, shared personal experiences, and offered actionable advice on avoiding creative chaos by building a robust system.

Why it is crucial to constantly seek inspiration and ideas

One of the first points the experts highlighted was the importance of finding creative inspiration outside of immediate business tasks. Ideas should emerge and accumulate long before a specific project requires them. These can be individual references, case studies, or successful campaigns from other brands that the team discusses during dedicated meetings.

One of the speakers emphasized this continuous approach. According to her, the team holds general brainstorming sessions several times a month, where solutions often emerge from healthy debate and the exchange of diverse opinions.

“The key here is consistency. You must regularly save brilliant ideas and unique features so they can be discussed later. Often, it is not the task that gives birth to the idea, but rather the other way around,” she noted.

For another expert, the environment in which the team operates is just as important as regularity. If team members believe that every raw thought will be immediately judged or criticized, they are more likely to present safe, conventional options rather than truly innovative concepts.

Therefore, during the initial phase, ideas do not need to be entirely realistic. They can be filtered out later, once the team has gathered a substantial pool of material to evaluate.

“The most important rule is that team members must feel comfortable bringing even the most absurd or wild ideas to the table. We listen to everything. The brainstorming process goes through several rounds before we finally settle on a polished concept,” she explained.

To summarize, here are the key recommendations for marketing and PR teams:

1. Build an idea repository. Discuss and accumulate concepts, hold brainstorming sessions without a specific agenda, and save your findings. Refer back to this strategic reserve whenever a new need arises.
2. Be cautious with criticism. Creativity thrives on freedom of thought. Make sure your team understands this. Even a seemingly unworkable idea can evolve into a highly effective promo for a major project.
3. Do not be afraid to experiment, but always keep the project’s constraints, budget, and your team’s capabilities in mind.

A strong idea must pass a business reality check

After the brainstorming phase comes a less visible but equally critical step: verifying the idea against the core business objective, budget, and execution capabilities.

In affiliate marketing, it is remarkably easy to invent a mechanic that looks flawless on a presentation slide but becomes overwhelmingly complex during actual deployment. Therefore, constraints should be considered during the idea’s development, not after it has been selected.

For one of the experts, the process follows a clear sequence: objective → discussion → brainstorming → concept selection → refinement → preparation for execution → testing → result analysis. The number of initial ideas will always vastly outnumber the projects that ultimately reach the audience.

Furthermore, a large budget does not automatically guarantee high quality. Sometimes, a complex and expensive concept is outperformed by a simple mechanic that is easy to explain and execute quickly.

“Frequently, an idea is genuinely brilliant but far too costly. However, it also happens that a top-tier idea costs, as my management puts it, ‘the price of three beers.’ And those low-cost ideas often perform better than something with a hundred-million-dollar budget,” she emphasized.

For the agency CMO, the business objective remains the starting point—for instance, the need to promote a product, draw attention to a campaign, or incentivize partners. Only after defining this does the team search for a mechanic and verify its realism and brand alignment.

However, the reverse scenario is also possible: sometimes a powerful idea emerges before any specific task exists. In such cases, the business can adapt to the idea if the team identifies a clear path to achieving results.

This is the crucial distinction between a mere amusing concept and true creativity. Ultimately, a promo must not only capture attention but also solve a specific business problem. In our industry, this fundamental principle is often lost during the promo creation process.

Originality does not always equal effectiveness

The desire to invent something that has never been done before is commendable. In practice, however, this is a very high bar, especially in an industry where companies constantly observe one another and everyone knows everyone else’s moves.

Consequently, a significant portion of effective creativity is built upon familiar mechanics. The key is not to copy a ready-made solution, but to understand its underlying principle and adapt it to your specific audience and objective.

The PR expert acknowledged that absolute novelty remains more of a distant dream than a standard for every project.

“So much has already been done and invented. Most of the time, we are just reinventing the wheel. We present the client with several options: some are things that have existed elsewhere, some are a ‘Frankenstein’ combination of different ideas, and the remaining part is what we consider truly original,” he explained.

For the agency CMO, there is no need to choose only one approach. An existing format can often prove much more effective than a desperate attempt to invent something entirely new.

“Novelty does not guarantee effectiveness. Any format that has been used before can be adapted and applied to your own brand to make it work even better,” she reasoned.

A great example is a Formula 1 promo campaign. The team proposed a mechanic where participants who reached a specific traffic volume received a race ticket, a business-class flight, and a stay at a five-star hotel.

The idea was a success, but later, a different product implemented a similar mechanic and achieved an even larger reach. This does not make the original case a failure; rather, it highlights the vast difference between being the first to think of it and executing it more noticeably.

Your visual library should not be limited to your own market

Monitoring competitors is useful, but constantly looking only at them means gradually narrowing your own worldview. Within a single industry, the same mechanics quickly begin to repeat. Moreover, people become accustomed to perceiving certain solutions as the only possible ones simply because they have seen them multiple times from others.

One expert noted that she felt this particularly strongly after immersing herself in the affiliate sphere. When she first entered the industry, she had far more ideas precisely because she had not yet internalized the internal limitations and conventional formats.

“When I first started, I had many more interesting, unusual, and fresh ideas for the sphere. Perhaps they would not have worked, or perhaps they would not have fit our target audience at all, but nevertheless, there were more of them,” she recalled.

Therefore, it is worth seeking references outside of affiliate marketing. B2C, fashion, mass advertising, entertainment, cinema, and other markets engage

audience attention differently—which means they can provide mechanics that have not yet become cliché in B2B.

At the same time, completely disconnecting from your own market is not advisable. One expert suggests separating monitoring from referencing: know what your competitors are doing, but do not let their solutions dictate your own thinking.

“If you completely stop observing and watching the market, you exist in a vacuum. You still need to understand what others are doing and draw inspiration from it. You must separate monitoring from referencing,” she noted.

The PR expert looks even broader, suggesting that ideas should be sought in culture: from advertising and music to major film premieres. This approach allows you to collect underlying principles rather than ready-made solutions, which can then be adapted to your specific task.

Constraints actually help you think faster
Paradoxically, the absence of limitations does not always make creativity easier. When a team is tasked with coming up with “something cool,” the sheer number of options makes choosing just one significantly harder.
Therefore, when an idea is not forthcoming, it is useful to first narrow the search field. Break down a familiar format into its core elements and start changing them one by one: the text, the visuals, the video, the mechanic, or the delivery method.
The PR expert advocates for this exact technical approach. Instead of trying to generate a complete concept from scratch, the team takes an existing format and asks: what happens if we replace its components?
“You can step away from just trying to ‘generate’ ideas. You can sit, think, look at things, and sketch out technical solutions point by point. For example, we have a basic seeding campaign. What does it consist of? Text, an image, a video, or a GIF. Fine, we cross all of that out and choose a completely different format,” he stated.
Another expert suggests a similar principle, but starting even earlier. You do not necessarily need to see the final concept immediately; it is enough to latch onto a single word, association, or question and begin expanding upon it.
In this sense, even tools like AI can be useful as a starting point, but not as a replacement for your own visual library and expertise. The goal is to kickstart the thinking process, not to obtain a finished idea with a single prompt.
Another method is to turn limitations into task parameters. No budget for a video shoot? Then look for a format that does not require one. No resources for complex development? Remove non-essential elements. Short on time? Then the idea must be executable quickly.
Once constraints are clearly formulated, the blank page disappears, replaced by a concrete problem that can be solved.
Speed becomes an integral part of creativity
In a rapidly changing industry, having a good idea is not enough. You must execute it before someone else comes up with a similar solution. Therefore, long-term planning and planning specific creative campaigns are not the same thing. You can build a strategy for a quarter or a year, but a specific mechanic might need to be revised in a matter of weeks.
One expert has ideas that have remained in her notes for years. However, when it comes to a specific campaign, she tries not to stretch the path to execution.
“Nowadays, I no longer make year-long plans. I might outline some global strategies, but definitely not for specific creatives. Most of the time, the journey from idea to execution of a creative campaign takes a week to a month, no more. I understand that if I come up with something at the beginning of the year, someone else will 100% do the exact same thing by September,” she shared.
Another expert shared a story that illustrates this problem even more clearly. After the company gifted her a skydiving experience in Dubai, she conceived an entire PR mechanic: find a media personality willing to jump with her, shoot several videos, turn the search for a partner into a separate news hook, and seamlessly integrate the brand into the story.
The idea emerged completely organically, but during preparation, it was discovered that a competitor had already implemented a similar format.
“One good, brilliant idea never comes to just one person, especially in our field; it comes to ten people at once. Therefore, speed is incredibly important, especially in PR,” she emphasized.
The point here is not to abandon planning altogether. On the contrary, a pre-formulated news hook gives the team time to think. However, the closer the launch gets, the more crucial the ability to adapt quickly becomes, even if it means abandoning an idea that seemed perfect just days ago.
Creativity must be tested
There is one more reason an idea might fail: the team has looked at it from the inside for too long. When several people brainstorm a promo together, they understand the entire context. They get the joke, the reference, and the meaning behind every element. The audience, however, only receives the final version, and they do not always dive into it with the same level of dedication. Therefore, external evaluation becomes a separate, essential part of the creative process.
The PR expert draws attention precisely to this gap between the creator and the viewer:
“A person will look at this implemented idea for maybe three seconds. They are unlikely to fill in the blanks or figure out what you were trying to say.”
For an affiliate brand, a particularly useful test is the reaction of someone who works directly with the target audience. For example, an account manager who communicates with partners every single day. If they struggle to quickly explain the essence of the promo and why a partner should participate, that is far more important than the team’s internal belief that the idea is destined for success.
Creativity should make your brand stand out, but it should never force the audience to waste time deciphering the core message.

 

Nutra-focused teams typically enter white-hat verticals already equipped with a robust set of performance marketing skills. They know how to identify consumer needs, match products to specific geographic regions, rapidly test creatives, build landing pages, analyze funnels, and scale profitable campaigns. Consequently, diversification does not necessarily mean starting a business from scratch. It is entirely possible to retain familiar traffic acquisition mechanics while simply shifting the product category. Fortunately, the market offers ample opportunities for this transition.

The global beauty industry is valued at approximately $450 billion. McKinsey forecasts an annual growth rate of around 5% through 2030, potentially expanding the market to $590 billion. The global e-commerce market is projected to reach $6.88 trillion in 2026, capturing 21.1% of worldwide retail sales, with further growth to $7.89 trillion and 22.5% of retail by 2028. The physical activity sector accounted for $1.144 trillion in global consumer spending in 2024, with the Global Wellness Institute projecting a rise to $1.464 trillion by 2029 (a 5.1% CAGR). Meanwhile, the broader wellness economy already hit $6.8 trillion in 2024, growing 7.9% year-over-year and nearly doubling since 2013. For the next five years, a 7.6% annual growth rate is expected, pushing the total volume to roughly $9.8 trillion by 2029.

While these four categories appear distinct, they share a major advantage for affiliate teams: they represent massive consumer markets where direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands, affiliate programs, and e-commerce models are already thriving.

What transfers from nutra to white-hat verticals

Nutra marketers already possess the most critical asset: an understanding of direct response. The user journey remains consistent: a person recognizes a problem or desire, encounters a solution, understands its value, lands on a product page, and makes a purchase decision. In beauty, this might involve skincare or haircare. In fitness, it could be a workout program or home gym equipment. In wellness, it might be a sleep aid or recovery tool. In e-commerce, it is any item whose value can be demonstrated in seconds. However, each category has its own unique nuances.

Creatives

The habit of testing dozens of hooks and visual concepts remains highly valuable. However, compliance and category sensitivity become much stricter. For beauty, McKinsey specifically notes that consumers increasingly evaluate products based on visible results and authenticity, with demand shifting toward items that deliver clear value, regardless of the price point.

Product pages

In nutra, landing pages often revolve around pain points and immediate solutions. In e-commerce, buyers additionally scrutinize specifications, high-quality photos, stock availability, shipping details, return policies, reviews, and the checkout process. This aligns with market structure: in 2024, over 75% of internet users had already made online purchases, and mobile remains the dominant e-commerce channel in 2026.

Economics

This is where things get interesting. For physical goods, marketers must look beyond customer acquisition cost (CAC) to the entire chain: CAC, average order value (AOV), cost of goods sold (COGS), fulfillment, payment processing fees, refunds, margin, and repeat purchases. For subscriptions: CAC, activation, retention, churn, and lifetime value (LTV). For affiliate models: traffic cost, conversion, approved sale, payout, earnings per click (EPC), and net profit. This is especially crucial in e-commerce: a high commission rate does not automatically mean the advertiser can sustain expensive paid traffic.

Beauty: the most obvious neighbor to nutra

Beauty is the closest vertical to nutra in terms of consumer motivation. Buyers want to improve their appearance, skin, or hair, seeking a specific aesthetic outcome. The market is vast and diverse, encompassing skincare, haircare, fragrances, cosmetics, body care, and beauty devices.

The market continues to expand

In 2025, McKinsey valued the global beauty market at roughly $450 billion. While it grew at about 7% annually between 2022 and 2024, future dynamics are expected to stabilize, with a projected 5% CAGR leading to $590 billion by 2030. Growth, however, is unevenly distributed across regions.

McKinsey anticipates the highest growth rates in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia. In Europe, consumers are becoming more price-sensitive, meaning price hikes will yield diminishing returns, making volume growth more critical. This provides a useful hint: the beauty niche is worth testing far beyond the classic US and UK pairing.

E-commerce is capturing market share

By 2026, 28% of global beauty sales will occur via e-commerce, making it the largest channel in the category. McKinsey expects online channels to drive the majority of beauty market growth through 2030. Social commerce is expanding even faster. TikTok sales have grown by approximately 260% annually since 2023 and are projected to reach around $4 billion in 2026. Skincare on TikTok grew by nearly 300% during the same period. For teams accustomed to testing short, direct-response creatives, this is a vital characteristic of the category.

Which sub-verticals to target

The areas most aligned with traditional nutra logic include:

• Skincare
• Haircare
• Anti-aging
• Problem-skin solutions
• Body care
• Beauty devices
• Makeup
• Fragrances

Within beauty, specific segments offer unique growth points. McKinsey forecasts fragrance to grow at about 6% annually through 2030, making it the fastest-growing of the four main beauty categories. Skincare remains the largest segment and is expected to command roughly 40% of the market by 2030.

Where traditional nutra mechanics end

The primary hurdle is regulation. In the European Union, cosmetics are governed by strict rules. Regulation (EU) No 655/2013 establishes common criteria for cosmetic product claims, including requirements for truthfulness and substantiation. Furthermore, Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 dictates safety and market-entry standards for cosmetics in the EU.

Consequently, creatives promising to “solve the problem in 7 days” cannot be mechanically ported from nutra to cosmetics. Marketers must first verify what the brand actually claims, how those claims are substantiated, and which specific formulations are permitted in the target GEO.

E-commerce: maximum product variety

E-commerce distinguishes itself from the other three categories primarily through sheer scale. There is no single product type. A media buyer might test smart home devices today, kitchen gadgets tomorrow, and sports accessories the following week.

For nutra marketers, the economic logic here is familiar. In e-commerce, the first order is rarely the final endpoint. Shopify identifies repeat purchase rate, AOV, and customer lifetime value (CLV) as key metrics. CLV accounts for not just the initial

purchase, but subsequent orders and the duration of the customer relationship. This allows teams to evaluate campaigns more broadly, comparing acquisition costs against order margins, return rates, and repeat purchases. For certain categories, the potential is particularly striking; for instance, Shopify data indicates that beauty and personal care boast an average CLV of around $185, while health and wellness reaches $300 to $550+.

$6.88 trillion in 2026

Shopify forecasts that global retail e-commerce sales will hit $6.88 trillion in 2026, a 7.2% increase from the previous year. Online sales will account for 21.1% of global retail. In 2025, China, the US, and Western Europe collectively generated over $5.17 trillion in e-commerce sales, representing more than 80% of the global volume.

However, emerging markets are growing at a faster pace. Shopify’s 2025 projections highlight retail e-commerce growth of 23% for the Philippines, 20% for Thailand, 15.5% for Malaysia, 14.6% for Ecuador, and 14.4% for Uruguay. For media buyers, this opens up far more opportunities than the traditional tier-1 and tier-2 grid.

What to look for

The best products are those whose value is easy to demonstrate:

• Problem-solving gadgets
• Home goods
• Personal care items
• Pet supplies
• Hobby-related products
• Functional consumer goods
• Items with a strong “wow” factor

Current catalogs from popular affiliate media networks feature top e-commerce offers from Amazon Associates, eBay Partner Network, AliExpress Portals, Alibaba, Wayfair, Printful, Shopify, BigCommerce, G-Shock, Kay Jewelers, and similar companies.

The main challenge: margin

Suppose a product sells for $100, and the affiliate earns 10%. The payout appears to be $10. However, from that $100, the advertiser must still cover the cost of goods, order fulfillment, payment processing, returns, and the CAC itself. Therefore, testing e-commerce offers requires a solid understanding of the complete unit economics.

A prime example is Nectar Sleep. Their program offers an 8 to 12% commission with a 30-day cookie for mattresses and bedding. This combines a high ticket price with a reasonably long attribution window. Another example is Withings, which allows promotion of not only smartwatches but also sleep and health products, offering a 7 to 10% commission.

Fitness: a $1.14 trillion physical activity market

Fitness closely mirrors nutra in terms of user motivation. Individuals want to look better, move more, improve their physical condition, and increase their activity levels. The solution, however, can be entirely different: a workout app, a gym membership, equipment, apparel, wearables, or training programs.

$1.144 trillion in 2024

The Global Wellness Institute defines the physical activity market as consumer spending on purposeful leisure and recreation activities. In 2024, this market reached $1.1439 trillion, up from $912.1 billion in 2019. GWI forecasts it will hit $1.4636 trillion by 2029, reflecting a 5.1% CAGR for the 2024 to 2029 period.

The market comprises several major components. In 2024, sports, active recreation, fitness, and mindful movement accounted for roughly $541 billion, while technology, equipment, consumables, apparel, and footwear generated another $623 billion. Fitness technology is particularly intriguing: this sub-sector has more than doubled over five years, reaching $85.9 billion in 2024.

Commercial fitness is also expanding

A 2025 study by the Health & Fitness Association recorded a 6% global increase in membership purchases in 2024, an average 8% revenue growth, and nearly a 4% rise in the number of fitness centers. A staggering 91% of operators anticipated further revenue growth in 2025. Since this research covers nearly 30 countries and five major regions, fitness can no longer be viewed merely as a localized US or Western European market.

The most interesting model: subscriptions

For physical goods, the funnel is familiar: click, product page, purchase. For a fitness app, it is: click, registration, activation, subscription, retention.

This introduces an LTV model, which is familiar to nutra teams but calculated over a much longer horizon.

An interesting example is Trainerize. Partners receive a 15% recurring commission on subscriptions and additional services, with a 90-day cookie. The target audience includes anyone involved in training, fitness, health, or wellness.

Another format is Gymondo. Under current Awin conditions, it offers €3 for a 1-month subscription, 20% for 3- and 6-month plans, 25% for a 12-month plan, and 10% for Gymondo Shop purchases, with a 60-day cookie.

Wellness: $6.8 trillion spanning 11 different markets

Wellness is the broadest of the four categories. According to the Global Wellness Institute, it is not a single product type but an economy comprising 11 sectors, including personal care and beauty, physical activity, healthy eating, mental health, wellness tourism, wellness real estate, and more.

$6.8 trillion in 2024

In 2024, the wellness economy reached $6.8 trillion following a 7.9% annual jump. The average annual growth from 2019 to 2024 was 6.2%. GWI expects this to accelerate to 7.6% annually between 2024 and 2029, nearing $9.8 trillion by the end of the period. Notably, the fastest-growing sectors from 2019 to 2024 were wellness real estate (19.5% CAGR) and mental wellness (12.4% CAGR).

GEOs are particularly interesting here

The US remains the largest health market at $2.1 trillion in 2024. It is followed by China ($950 billion), Germany ($281 billion), Japan ($262 billion), the UK ($261 billion), France ($211 billion), India ($180 billion), and Canada ($159 billion).

However, when selecting a GEO, growth rates are equally important. India showed an 11.3% CAGR from 2019 to 2024, Mexico 9.8%, Turkey 11.8%, Poland 9.3%, and Saudi Arabia 12.2%. This creates an interesting combination: large markets provide volume, while fast-growing markets offer opportunities to find less saturated entry points.

What to target

For performance teams, the following sub-categories are particularly intuitive:

• Sleep
• Recovery
• Massage
• Meditation
• Mindfulness
• Wellness devices
• Self-care
• Ergonomic products
• Healthy lifestyle goods
  For example, Sleep & Beyond sells sleep-related products. Their Awin program offers a 10% commission, a 365-day cookie, and a stated AOV of $150 to $300+, with shipping available in the US and internationally. Yogasleep works with sound machines and sleep solutions. Their Awin listing shows a 60-day cookie, 10% on sound devices, and a tiered fixed payout for mattresses ranging from $65 to $205 depending on sales volume.Four verticals in one matrix: where to find white offers

  It makes sense to divide the search into three distinct models.

  Affiliate networks

  This is the fastest route: register with an affiliate network, select an advertiser and offer, and verify the allowed GEOs and traffic sources.

  Beauty

  • CJ Affiliate: One of the largest international networks, giving publishers access to a global market of advertisers. For beauty, it features brands like SkinCeuticals (up to 10% commission, 30-day cookie).
  • Ulta Beauty: Cosmetics, skincare, haircare. Offers 2 to 5% revshare and a 30-day cookie via FlexOffers.
  • Function of Beauty: Customized hair and skincare. Features dynamic commissions and a 7-day cookie, also available on FlexOffers.

  E-commerce

  • Admitad: One of the most convenient platforms for finding a large volume of white-hat e-commerce offers in one place, spanning fashion, beauty, electronics, and lifestyle.
  • Rakuten Advertising: An international network specializing in e-commerce, digital content, and fintech, boasting over 150,000 publishers, deep linking, and access to numerous programs.
  • Amazon Associates: One of the largest e-commerce programs, with a $10 minimum payout threshold for direct deposit or gift cards.
  • AliExpress Portals: Another major program with a $16 minimum withdrawal.
  • Alibaba: Offers up to 6.91% for new buyer orders under $5,000, with a 60-day cookie. (Note: Russia is excluded from commission-eligible countries).

  Fitness

  • Awin: An international network working with e-commerce, retail, and digital service brands. For fitness, it features both physical products and subscription services. Sportstech DE is a great example of a physical fitness product (home gym equipment), offering 5 to 10% commission, an AOV over €400, a bounce rate under 4%, and a 30-day cookie. (Paid search and Google Shopping CSS are prohibited).
  • Trainerize: Fitness coaching platform. 15% commission, 90-day cookie.
  • Adidas and Under Armour: Both are prominently featured in current sports affiliate program aggregators.

  Wellness

  • Impact: This platform aggregates brand programs, allowing publishers to find advertisers by specific categories. For instance, Manta Sleep operates via CJ Affiliate with a 10% commission. Impact is ideal for finding both physical products and digital subscriptions.
  • Foria: Wellness and plant-based products. 10% commission, 30-day cookie. (Note: Assortment includes CBD products, so compliance with Facebook rules and local GEO laws must be verified before launching).
  • BookRetreats: Wellness retreats. Worldwide program, 3-month cookie. Affiliates earn 40% base commission for 1 to 10 monthly bookings, 50% for 11 to 30, and 60% for 30+ bookings.

  Direct DTC brands

  This path is more appealing when you need a specific, well-positioned product rather than a catalog of hundreds of offers.

  Beauty

  • Function of Beauty: Personalized hair and skincare. $25 commission, 7-day cookie.
  • Beauty by Earth: Skincare and beauty. 10% commission, 30-day cookie.
  • SBLA Beauty: Skincare. 8 to 10% commission, 30-day cookie.

  E-commerce

  • Nectar Sleep: Mattresses. Direct brand program, 8 to 12% commission, 30-day cookie.
  • Withings: Wearables, sleep, and health products. Direct program, 7 to 10% commission.

  Fitness

  • Trainerize: Fitness coaching SaaS. 15% recurring commission, 90-day cookie.
  • Sportstech: Home fitness equipment. 5 to 10% commission, AOV > €400, with international versions available for various European GEOs.

  Wellness

  • Sleep & Beyond: Organic bedding and sleep products. 10% commission, 365-day cookie, worldwide shipping.
  • Yogasleep: Sleep technology and sound machines. 60-day cookie, 10% on sound devices, and tiered payouts for mattress categories.

  Own product / white label

  Here, the team becomes the advertiser. For beauty and wellness, private-label infrastructure can be utilized. For example, Supliful offers ready-made products for skincare, beauty, wellness, fitness, and supplements, allowing you to add your own label while the platform handles fulfillment. Their catalog currently features over 180 products, including more than 150 white-label wellness items with no minimum order quantity, with fulfillment available in the US and Europe.

  For fitness accessories and apparel, Printful is another excellent option, providing white-label fulfillment, custom branding, and fulfillment centers across North America, Europe, Australia, South America, and Japan.

  For a nutra team, this represents a different level of responsibility. New variables emerge: compliance, order fulfillment, customer support, refunds, payment processing, and customer retention. However, it also grants complete control over margins, branding, and the customer base.

  Traffic volume and GEOs: where to look first

  It is more effective to evaluate several metrics simultaneously:

  • Beauty: McKinsey expects the strongest growth in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia.
  • E-commerce: China, the US, and Western Europe account for over 80% of global online sales, but Southeast Asia and Latin America are the fastest-growing directions.
  • Fitness: Physical activity spending is concentrated in major regions, with GWI specifically noting growth in fitness technology, outdoor activities, yoga, Pilates, and new sports formats.
  • Wellness: Comparing absolute volume with growth dynamics is key here. The US is $2.1 trillion with a 7.9% CAGR (2019 to 2024); India is $180 billion with 11.3%; Mexico is $98 billion with 9.8%; Turkey is $73 billion with 11.8%; Poland is $52 billion with 9.3%; and Saudi Arabia is $42 billion with 12.2%.Therefore, for an initial test, look beyond the “tier-1” label and evaluate this chain: market volume, growth rate, purchasing power, e-commerce penetration, competition, payouts, logistics, and allowed traffic sources.

    What the nutra team will need to rebuild

    Creatives

    In beauty, product demonstration and trust are paramount. McKinsey highlights the rise of creator-driven discovery and social commerce, alongside demand for products with clear, visible results. In e-commerce, creatives must quickly explain what the item does and why it is needed. In fitness, demonstrating the product, the usage process, and the end result works best. In wellness, controlling claims is especially critical: product promises must align with actual properties and local GEO regulations.

    Analytics

    For physical products: CAC, AOV, margin, refunds, repeat purchases, LTV. For subscriptions: CAC, activation, retention, churn, LTV. For affiliate: click, conversion, approved sale, payout, EPC, net profit. For a team used to calculating approval and redemption rates in nutra, this is simply a longer chain to track.

    Working with the advertiser

    Before launching an offer, obtain clear answers to specific questions:

    1. Which GEOs are allowed?
    2. Is paid social permitted?
    3. Are Facebook and Instagram allowed?
    4. Can direct linking be used?
    5. Is pre-landing permitted?
    6. Can the brand name be used in creatives?
    7. Are there PPC restrictions?
    8. How are refunds and booking cancellations handled?
    9. What specific restrictions are in place?
    10. Are there unique landing page requirements?

    These restrictions genuinely vary from program to program. For instance, Sportstech prohibits paid search. Yogasleep also forbids PPC, paying commissions only for organic promotion. BABOR offers separate program versions for different GEOs (e.g., Germany, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands), each with distinct commission and AOV conditions. Therefore, the offer card is merely the starting point of your verification.

    Transitioning to white-hat does not mean starting Facebook from scratch

    A nutra team already possesses most of the necessary performance expertise. They know how to identify needs, test creatives, segment GEOs, work with landing pages, and calculate economics. Only the context changes.

    • In beauty, there are higher standards for claimed effects and brand credibility.
    • In e-commerce, margin, shipping, and returns are critical.
    • In fitness, there is vast potential in subscriptions and fitness tech.
    • In wellness, the market is so broad that you can select a specific sub-vertical tailored to a familiar audience need.

    Meanwhile, Facebook remains the same source of paid traffic. For a former nutra marketer, the most rational approach is not to search for the “most profitable white vertical,” but to test specific bundles: vertical, GEO, offer, payout, allowed source, creative approach, landing page, CAC, and final unit economics. Only then should you scale.

    What to look at first

    To summarize, here is where to focus your attention initially:

    • Beauty, if you want consumer motivation closest to nutra. The market is around $450 billion, e-commerce is projected to drive 28% of global beauty sales in 2026, and McKinsey expects 5% annual growth through 2030.
    • E-commerce, if you need maximum product variety. The market is set to reach $6.88 trillion in 2026, with emerging markets providing distinct growth points.
    • Fitness, if you are interested in subscription models and retention. The physical activity market already stands at $1.144 trillion, and fitness tech has reached $85.9 billion.
    • Wellness, if you need the widest selection of sub-verticals. At $6.8 trillion in 2024 and projected to hit $9.8 trillion by 2029, it leaves enormous room for new products and services.

    Transitioning from nutra to these categories is entirely logical: the skills for buying traffic, working with creatives, building landing pages, and optimizing funnels are already in place. What changes is the product and its underlying economics. Therefore, the team’s main task is to find the right bundle and learn to calculate it under the new rules.

Cards constantly get declined, accounts get banned, mysterious fees appear, and support takes a day to reply—a familiar story for almost everyone running traffic. The only difference is which payment provider causes these headaches most often.

Today, we have compiled a list of 24 top-tier payment solutions for traffic arbitrage so you never have to deal with unreliable services again. We gathered only the best of the best, detailing their actual commission rates, the best BINs available, and card issuance costs. After reading this guide, you will permanently solve the problem of finding a payment processor. If you ever want to switch services, simply return to this list and pick another one..

LuckyCards

Official website: LuckyCards

LuckyCards is one of the leading payment solutions for arbitrage professionals, brought to you by LuckyGroup, a holding company with a decade of industry experience. Initially, the service was developed for the internal media buying needs of LuckyTeam, but it was later opened to other teams and solo buyers. Consequently, its core features are perfectly tailored for traffic campaigns and will resonate strongly with any arbitrage specialist.

LuckyCards offers 20+ BINs across two GEOs, including exclusive options. These cards are compatible with Meta, Google, TikTok, Taboola, and other traffic sources. They feature 3DS support, Apple Pay and Google Pay compatibility, and come in two types: limit-based and unlimited. Limit-based cards allow you to set a predefined budget, while the unlimited option draws from the main account balance.

LuckyCards terms and commissions:

• Crypto top-up: 3%
• Card issuance: from $1.50
• Successful payments: $0
• Declined transactions: $0
• Card maintenance: $0
• Internal transfers: $0
• Fund withdrawal: 0%
• Minimum deposit: $100

You can fund your balance via USDT, USDC, WIRE, SEPA, and ACH. There is direct integration with LuckyOnline, allowing you to transfer funds directly from an affiliate network to your payment balance. Useful team features include role management, buyer restrictions, bulk card issuance, auto-top-up, and expense tracking. For automation, a REST API is available.

A unique feature of LuckyCards relates to linking issues. If a card fails to link to an advertising account, the service is ready to compensate for the issuance cost or replace the card. The service also regularly onboards new issuers to keep the BIN pool fresh. The successful payment rate at LuckyCards exceeds 98.7% across all popular merchants.

eCards

Official website: eCards

eCards is a payment solution for arbitrage professionals offering virtual Visa and Mastercard cards for Google, Meta, TikTok, subscription services, and more. The service has been operating since 2020 and features a vast selection of BINs for various GEOs and tasks, with some teams using the same BINs for years without issues. New BINs and GEOs are added regularly, and there is no limit on the number of cards you can issue. Cards are created instantly and support 3DS.

For large teams, private BINs are available, used exclusively by a single team. Along with these, you can negotiate individual terms. API access is available upon request, enabling automation of payment operations, including integration with AI agents. Support operates 24/7 and responds within 15 minutes.

The main advantage of eCards is that you only pay for funding your account. There are no hidden fees.

eCards terms and commissions:

• USD account top-up: 3%
• EUR account top-up: 4.5%
• Top-up methods: USDT TRC20/ERC20 and Wire
• Fund withdrawal: in USDT
• Card issuance: $0
• Funding a card from eCards balance: $0
• Successful transactions: $0
• Declined transactions: from $0.20 to $0.50
• Monthly maintenance: $0
• Number of cards: unlimited

Cards can be limit-based or linked to a shared account balance. In the first scenario, each card must be funded separately; in the second, all payments are drawn from a single account linked to the cards. Teams can add employees, assign roles, distribute budgets, and cap each buyer’s spend.

Bulk issuance is also supported: you can issue up to 100 cards in a single operation, adjust their limits, transfer them to other employees, or close them. Expenses can be aggregated by card or individual buyer, and the data can be filtered and exported to CSV or XLSX.

Betatransfer

Official website: Betatransfer

Betatransfer is a payment solution designed for high-risk projects across any vertical. The service handles both payment acceptance and payouts, working with fiat and cryptocurrency. Supported GEOs include the CIS, India, LatAm, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Argentina, and others.

Betatransfer processes over 100,000+ transactions daily, with a successful payment rate exceeding 70%. For receiving funds, it offers acquiring, e-wallets, P2P, crypto, Binance Pay, and other local methods tailored to each GEO. Notably, Binance Pay is already in the top 3 Betatransfer methods by volume. It is definitely worth considering.

One of the platform’s main features is its AI-powered cascading system. It monitors payment success rates across providers and specific details, disables weak routes, and redirects payments to stable alternatives.

What Betatransfer offers:

• T+0 payouts, allowing you to receive funds on the same day.
• Payment acceptance via bank cards, e-wallets, P2P, crypto, and Binance Pay.
• AI-driven cascades that select the optimal path for your client.
• Local payment methods for specific GEOs.
• API and ready-made modules.
• Customizable payment paths and interfaces tailored to the device, GEO, and payment scenario.
• 24/7 support.

Betatransfer does not have a fixed price list. Commissions are calculated individually based on GEO, vertical, volume, and connected payment options.

All fees are agreed upon before launch, ensuring no unpleasant surprises once operations begin.

Betatransfer also has an affiliate program. Partners earn a percentage of the transactions generated by their referred clients for as long as those clients continue using the service. You can also negotiate rates directly with clients, add your own markup, and keep the difference after transactions.

Multicards

Official website: Multicards

Multicards is a virtual card service designed for large arbitrage teams and solo buyers. One of its main advantages is a wide selection of BINs and robust role distribution within a team. Currently, it offers over 50 BINs across 5 GEOs with cards in USD and EUR. This includes private and stable BINs for classic traffic campaigns, with new ones added regularly.

The cards are suitable for Meta, Google, TikTok, and other sources. You can use them to pay for proxies, trackers, AI services, SEO tools, hosting, and more. When issuing a card, you can immediately see which advertising platforms a specific BIN is recommended for. Some cards support 3DS, Apple Pay, and Google Pay, and issuance is instant. The accounting department will promptly advise on the best BIN for your specific sources and GEOs.

Multicards terms and commissions:

• Balance top-up: from 1% to 3%
• Virtual card issuance: from $0.50
• Successful transactions: 0%
• Declined transactions: 0%
• Card maintenance: $0
• VIP teams: individual terms
• Top-up methods: USDT, Wire, and Capitalist

Multicards takes team functionality seriously. Inside the dashboard, you can divide access between the team owner, team lead, buyers, and financial manager. Employees can be assigned separate budgets, daily and overall limits, and cards can be linked to the team’s shared balance. If a buyer leaves the project, you can quickly revoke their access to specific cards and dashboard sections.

Bulk card actions are also available, so managing hundreds of advertising accounts doesn’t require manual work for each card. Spending, top-up, and transfer statistics can be filtered by employee or card, then exported to CSV or XLSX.

An API is available for automation. Support operates 24/7, and teams are assigned a dedicated manager.

Zarub Wallet

Official website: Zarub Wallet

Zarub Wallet is a payment solution offering virtual and physical foreign cards. For arbitrage professionals, this service is useful for paying for foreign software, subscriptions, and even everyday expenses. Cards are issued through partner banks, with Visa and Mastercard available. Apple Pay and Google Pay are also supported.

The main advantage of Zarub Wallet is the ability to fund your account not only with crypto but also with rubles via SBP (Faster Payments System). A virtual card costs $19 as a one-time fee. A physical card can be ordered for $149. Both operate in USD, with top-ups starting from $10.

Zarub Wallet terms and commissions:

• Virtual card issuance: $19
• Physical card issuance: $149
• Maintenance: $0 per month
• Card closure: $0
• Funding card from balance: 1.5%
• Transaction fee: $0.35
• Non-USD payment: bank exchange rate + $0.35
• Balance top-up via SBP: 7%
• Balance top-up via USDT TRC20: 3%
• Minimum card top-up: $10

There is a separate fee for declined payments. If the card has sufficient balance, $0.35 is charged; if funds are insufficient, the fee is $0.50. In terms of limits, Zarub Wallet can handle substantial volumes. You can load $10 to $2,000 onto a card at once, with total top-ups reaching $50,000 per day and $1 million per month.

Zarub Wallet has restrictions that are particularly important for arbitrage professionals. Cards cannot be used for direct payments to online casinos, bookmakers, crypto exchanges, P2P services, e-wallets, or account-selling services. There are no such restrictions for paying for standard foreign services, subscriptions, and work-related software.

AdsCard

Official website: AdsCard

AdsCard has been operating since 2020 and is primarily tailored for advertising cards. The service was created by a team of practicing arbitrage professionals, so its entire logic revolves around traffic campaigns. Cards are issued instantly and are suitable for Facebook, Google, TikTok, and other sources.

It offers over 25 BINs, including those for the USA, Hong Kong, and Tier-1 Europe. Cards can be in dollars, euros, or pounds, and 3DS is supported. Upon first login, you receive two verified BINs; the rest are unlocked by support, who will also help you select a BIN for your specific source and GEO.

The balance is shared—cards draw from a common account, so you don’t need to fund each one separately. Deductions occur in real-time, and each card has a statement and date-based statistics.

AdsCard terms and commissions:

• Card issuance: $1 for advertising spends over $500 per month
• Account top-up: 0%
• Maintenance: 0%
• Transaction fee: 4%
• Bulk payouts: 3%
• Top-up methods: USDT, SEPA, Wire, ACH, and SWIFT

The commission is charged only on the spent amount. For teams with large budgets, terms are reviewed individually. Teams also get access to roles, buyer limits, and card grouping by offers. Via API, you can issue cards, generate reports, and distribute budgets.

Additionally, the service features a marketplace for advertising accounts with pre-linked cards, as well as rental of agency Facebook, Google, and TikTok accounts starting from 4% with no daily spend limits.

One of the most interesting features is that AdsCard has a WEB 3.0 Telegram application @cardspaysbot for personal purchases. With just two clicks, you can issue an international card linked to Apple Pay and Google Pay. These cards allow you to pay for subscriptions, foreign services, or even dinner at a restaurant on the other side of the planet. A recent update includes QR code payments directly in the bot. Thanks to this feature, you can pay in any store in Russia using the

cryptocurrency balance in your personal account, with a 3% commission for such operations.

Stellar Card

Official website: Stellar Card

Stellar Card operates on a subscription model where the cards themselves are free, and you only pay for the plan and top-ups. The Stellar plan at $100/month unlocks 12 BINs with crypto top-ups at 4% and bank transfers at 3%. The Private plan at $500/month expands the pool to 24 BINs plus international ones, reduces the crypto top-up fee to 3%, bank transfers to 2%, and enables API access. For non-standard tasks, there is Stellar Plus with custom BIN configurations and individually negotiated commissions.

Stellar Card terms and commissions:

• Card issuance: $0 within the plan
• First deposit: from $500
• Subsequent top-ups: from $1,500
• Bank transfer: from $3,000
• Withdrawal: no commission from the service
• Decline fee: none, as long as the decline percentage remains within a reasonable range.

The team model is one of the most well-developed: Admin, Financier, Employee, and Team Lead roles (on the Private plan), daily, weekly, monthly, and lifetime limits, automatic transfers between users, and spend and decline statistics for each buyer.

Experts answer

Denis, Head of LuckyCards

What actually determines the reliability of a payment service—the number of BINs, brand reputation, or something else?

The sheer number of BINs means nothing if the service lacks a strict KYC policy and client risk-scoring—without these, the user base is quickly destabilized by bad actors. Stability isn’t a promise that nothing will ever break; it’s a guarantee that if an issuer experiences a failure, the client won’t be left stranded: the service must proactively warn the team, organize a migration to other BINs, and compensate for card issuance during the problematic period, rather than freezing funds and disappearing.

AgencyGeo

Official website: AgencyGeo

AgencyGeo is a payment solution offering American virtual Visa cards for various tasks. The cards are designed for Meta, Google, TikTok, X, Reddit, Snapchat, Pinterest, and other sources. You can set daily, monthly, and overall limits for each card, and funds are deposited via cryptocurrency.

The balance is topped up via USDT TRC20 and BEP20. The minimum deposit is $50, with a 0% top-up fee. Funds are credited after the first network confirmation, which usually takes less than five minutes.

AgencyGeo terms and commissions depend on monthly spend:

• Up to $5,000: 3 free cards per month
• From $5,000: 5 free cards and 0.5% cashback
• From $20,000: 10 free cards and 0.7% cashback
• From $100,000: 20 free cards and 1% cashback
• Each card beyond the free quota: $10

AgencyGeo strictly separates access within a team. A buyer sees only the cards assigned to them, while the owner can group them for specific traffic campaigns. You can receive instant notifications about new deductions, declines, and top-ups via Telegram or email.

For high-volume users, there is an API and 28 types of webhooks. These allow you to pull transaction history, check balances, request new cards, and automate internal accounting. However, the API does not expose full card details or allow transferring money between balances.

There is an important nuance regarding card usage: AgencyGeo is strict about chargebacks. The service is designed for the white/gray sector, so a high volume of disputed operations may result in account suspension. Full KYC is also required for full functionality.

Kripicard

Official website: Kripicard

Kripicard is a payment solution offering virtual Visa and Mastercard cards for arbitrage professionals and money makers who need a large pool of cards funded with USDT. The cards are suitable for Meta, Google Ads, TikTok, as well as for paying for foreign services. It features several debit and credit BINs, 3DS, and support for Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay. There is no limit on the number of cards you can issue.

The balance is topped up via USDT on TRC20, ERC20, and Solana networks. All cards operate in USD, and Kripicard does not charge any additional markup for currency conversion—it all follows the bank’s exchange rate.

Kripicard terms and commissions:

• Card issuance: $5
• Top-up via USDT: 4%
• Additional fixed fee: $1 per card
• Minimum balance upon issuance: $10
• Subsequent top-ups: from $1
• Monthly maintenance: $0
• Payment authorization fee: $0
• Currency conversion markup: 0%
• Single transaction limit: up to $25,000
• Daily spend limit: up to $25,000
• Monthly spend limit: up to $150,000

The minimum $10 upon issuance is not a fee and remains on the card’s balance. Therefore, creating your first card with $10 for spending will cost $16.40: $5 for issuance, $1 fixed fee, and $0.40 top-up commission.

For large teams, terms become more favorable as volumes grow. Discounts on card issuance and top-ups can reach 30%. For clients requiring 500+ cards per month, individual terms are available.

Kripicard’s API is free. Through it, you can issue and top up cards, change limits, freeze and close them, retrieve transaction data, and automate work with a large number of cards.

VMCardio

Official website: VMCardio

VMCardio stands out significantly due to its card pricing. For several current BINs, issuance costs just $0.30, and account balance top-ups are 0.3%. The service works with virtual Visa and Mastercard, offering 20+ BINs. They can be used for traffic campaigns via Meta, Google Ads, TikTok, as well as for paying for subscriptions, software, and everything else.

 

VMCardio has two types of cards. Cards with a separate balance must be funded with a specific amount first and will only spend that amount. Limit-based cards draw from the account’s shared balance, but each has its own spending cap.

VMCardio terms and commissions:

• Main balance top-up: 0.3%
• Transferring funds from main balance to card: 0%
• Card issuance: $0.30 for BINs 537872, 555671, 544015, and 525962
• Unsuccessful transaction for BIN 537872: $0.20
• Unsuccessful transaction for BINs 555671, 544015, and 525962: $0.30
• Payment refund for BIN 537872: 5%
• Payment refund for the other three listed BINs: 10%
• Chargeback: $35
• Currency conversion and cross-border payments: 0%
• Returning remaining funds from card to VMCardio balance: 0%
• Withdrawing from main balance to external wallet: 2%

There is an important condition regarding declines. As long as their share remains within a normal range, VMCardio charges nothing. If the Decline Rate (DR) exceeds acceptable limits, the rates listed above are applied.

It is also important to note 3DS. For all current VMCardio BINs, it is disabled by default. If you absolutely need 3DS, this service is likely not for you.

FuncCards

Official website: FuncCards

FuncCards is a payment solution offering virtual Visa and Mastercard cards for arbitrage professionals and anyone who needs to pay for things online. The cards are suitable for Meta, Google Ads, TikTok, subscription services, AI tools, and other online platforms.

The service provides cards with various BINs that can be selected for specific tasks. Some cards support 3DS, and some can be added to Apple Pay and Google Pay. There is no limit on the number of cards issued, making FuncCards suitable for both solo buyers and teams with numerous advertising accounts.

FuncCards terms and commissions:

• Balance top-up: from 2.5%
• Card issuance: $1
• Card maintenance: $1 per month
• Successful payments: $0
• Declined payments: $0
• Refunds: $0 from FuncCards
• Top-up available via cryptocurrency.

For teams, there are roles, allowing you to distribute cards among buyers, control expenses, and manage a large number of cards from a single dashboard. An API is available for automation, enabling card issuance, operation data retrieval, and integration with your own tools.

When using the service, it is important to monitor the decline limit. If the decline rate exceeds 20%, FuncCards may ban the account.

Experts answer

Yura, CFO of eCards

What signs indicate that a payment service can truly be trusted?

For us, one of the key indicators of reliability is the quality of the transaction history. We constantly monitor the client decline rate and the ratio of successful to declined operations to ensure that BINs do not lose, but rather strengthen, their trust with relevant merchants over time.

We also pay close attention to onboarding, working primarily with large teams, including those referred by existing clients, and collaborating only with verified providers. This is why many BINs operate stably for months without the need to constantly migrate clients to new cards.

AdPay

Official website: AdPay

AdPay boasts one of the widest lists of payable services in this entire compilation: beyond the standard Meta, Google, TikTok, X, YouTube, LinkedIn, Microsoft Ads, Taboola, Reddit, and Amazon/eBay Ads, you can use the card to pay for Keitaro, TradingView, Semrush, ChatGPT, Midjourney, Alibaba Cloud, DigitalOcean, and Adobe—essentially, the entire toolkit an arbitrage team needs outside of the advertising dashboards themselves.

Cards are issued without quantity limits and support 3DS, while the balance can be topped up with both fiat and crypto. The limit for a single transaction reaches $200,000, and the overall card limit is up to $300,000.

AdPay terms and commissions:

• Minimum top-up: from $50
• Transaction fee: from $0.15
• Top-up: from 1% on large volumes. For example, at a $10,000 monthly volume, it comes out to about 3.4%
• Fund withdrawal: 0.75%
• Card issuance: from $2.75 when ordering 100+ cards
• Card maintenance: from $1.75 when ordering 100+ cards

There is no fixed rate for everyone: the higher the volume and number of cards, the lower the top-up percentage and card cost, so it is best to calculate your specific numbers using the calculator on the website before starting.

Registration is simple—email, name, and Telegram. Teams that verify a volume of $100,000+ per month via the @adpay_support_bot are offered individual terms and dedicated support.

Cashinout

Official website: Cashinout

Cashinout is a wallet with built-in cards: currency and crypto exchange, QR payments via SBP, user-to-user transfers, and virtual cards all in one application.

The card is Platinum. It costs $17.99, of which $10 is immediately credited to the balance, meaning the actual issuance price is $7.99. Apple Pay and Google Pay are supported.

Cashinout terms and commissions (Platinum card):

• Card issuance: $7.99
• Monthly maintenance: $4.99
• Successful payment: from $0.50
• Declined payment: up to $1
• Card top-up: 2.5%, minimum $10
• Remaining balance upon card closure is returned to the wallet balance.

Fiat operations separate from the card: SBP withdrawal to phone—3.5%; QR payment—1-3.5% depending on country and amount; bank transfer withdrawal—3.5% (limit 1,500-59,000); card withdrawal—3.5% (limit 3,050-99,000); cash can be withdrawn in euros via the RIA network in 17 European countries.

Crypto top-up: 0%. Withdrawal: fixed fee of 4 USDT on TRC20, 3 USDT on ERC20, 2 USDT on BEP20, 0.5 USDT on TON, 0.0003 BTC in Bitcoin.

Registration is via the app or Telegram bot; full KYC is required for full functionality.

Halocard

Official website: Halocard

Halocard issues American virtual Visa cards and operates on a subscription model where card costs are already built into the plan. For arbitrage, the service has a dedicated page with cards for Google, Meta, TikTok, and other platforms, allowing spends of up to $1 million per day. The cards support 3DS, Apple Pay, and Google Pay, you can link your own billing address, and besides regular cards, there are single-use cards that close automatically after payment.

Team plans are tiered: Core at $29/month gives 30 cards and allows connecting 3 users, Growth at $99 offers 100 cards and 10 users, Scale at $199 provides 300 cards and 30 people, and Enterprise at $299 includes 500 cards and 50 people. Paying annually grants approximately two free months. Solo arbitrage professionals have personal plans starting from $12/month.

Halocard terms and commissions:

• Top-up with stablecoins USDT/USDC: 0%
• Top-up via SOL, ETH, or BTC: 1% with auto-conversion to dollars
• SEPA, UK, and Canadian bank transfers: 1%
• USD bank transfer: $20
• Payments in dollars: 0%
• Payments in other currencies: 1.5% for conversion
• First deposit: from $100, then from $50 depending on the plan.

Capitalist / CardsPro

Official website: Capitalist / Cards Pro

Capitalist / Cards Pro is a complete financial ecosystem for arbitrage and business. Beyond traffic funding cards, the service is suitable for bulk payouts, payment acceptance, crypto operations, bank transfers, and many other financial tasks.

The specific card-for-traffic direction operates through CardsPro. As with any other payment service, they can be used to link to advertising accounts, pay for services, hosting, subscriptions, and so on. Apple Pay and Google Pay are also supported.

CardsPro virtual card terms and commissions:

USD cards:

• Card issuance: $1.75-$2.95
• Card maintenance: $2.70 per month
• Top-up from Capitalist balance: 3-4.7%, minimum $3.50
• Transactions: $0.50
• Conversion when paying in another currency: 3.5%
• Transferring remaining balance back to account: $1

EUR cards:

• Card issuance: €2.65
• Card maintenance: €2.40 per month
• Top-up from Capitalist balance: 4.7%, minimum €3.50
• Transactions: €0.50
• Conversion when paying in another currency: 3.5%
• Transferring remaining balance back to account: €1

Maximum limits are $6,000 per day for USD cards and €5,000 for EUR cards, monthly top-up limit is 20,000 USD/EUR, yearly is 80,000, and the maximum card balance can reach 20,000. The limit for a single transaction and daily spend can also reach 20,000.

The main Capitalist account can be funded via bank transfers and crypto. BTC, USDT ERC20/TRC20/BEP20, and USDC ERC20/BEP20 are supported, with no commission.

Pay.Partners

Official website: Pay.Partners

Pay.Partners is a robust payment solution with an experienced team. Cards are issued in USD and EUR on high-quality Visa and Mastercard BINs with stable 3DS, suitable for Meta, Google, TikTok, and other sources. A single team can have up to 2,500 cards, with terms expanding individually for larger volumes.

Pay.Partners terms and commissions:

• First 10 cards: free
• From the 11th card: $1 each
• Crypto top-up from a partner provider: $0
• Top-up from an external crypto wallet: 0.5%
• Crypto to card balance conversion: from 3%
• Withdrawal to a crypto wallet: no commission from the service.

For teams, there are roles, limits, expense tracking at all levels, a user management panel with filters, and status control. Additionally, you can obtain agency Meta and Google cabinets here.

Adpos

Official website: Adpos

Adpos creates cards exclusively for arbitrage and covers perhaps the widest range of sources among specialized payment services: Meta, Google, TikTok, Taboola, Outbrain, Moloco, Unity, Telegram, Snapchat, and X. The service is used by 6,000+ webmasters. It features premium Visa and Mastercard BINs, including trusted American ones, along with bulk issuance and real-time billing.

You can distribute cards across advertising accounts, tag them, and group them—all of this is possible here. There is also auto-top-up, where the card automatically replenishes its balance to a required level, ensuring your campaigns don’t halt at 3 AM due to a zero balance while a bundle is performing well.

What Adpos offers:

• Premium BINs for advertising platforms
• Bulk issuance and group card actions
• Auto-top-up and tags for sorting
• Roles and financial control for teams
• Returning remaining balance from card to wallet
• Real-time billing
• Personal manager

Commissions depend on volumes and are tailored to the user; current rates can be viewed in the personal dashboard after registration.

Experts answer

Denis, COO of eCards

Why do some payment services operate stably for years, while others constantly face issues with cards and BINs?

I would specifically highlight team experience and service reputation. eCards has been operating since 2020 and has navigated various market changes and crisis situations, always prioritizing stable performance for its users.

This expertise allows us to minimize situations where a BIN suddenly stops working, forcing a team to urgently re-link hundreds of accounts. And if a non-standard case arises, specialized experts step in to help resolve the issue. It is precisely this stability and support that build long-term trust in the service.

PST.NET

Official website: PST.NET

PST.NET is one of the most well-known payment services in arbitrage, and its main distinction is that cards are selected for a specific platform rather than drawn from a general pool. For Google, the service has about 12 BINs, for TikTok—3, and for advertising in general—around 15. Cards are issued in USD and EUR on Visa and Mastercard with Platinum Credit status, with no limits on the number of cards or spend volume.

PST.NET terms and commissions:

• Card transactions: 0%
• Declined payments: 0%
• Returning remaining balance from card to account: 0%
• Refunds: 0%
• Withdrawing funds from account: 0%
• Account top-up: from 2.9%
• Ultima card issuance: from $7
• Top-up methods: USDT, BTC, as well as bank transfer and SWIFT.

Ultima is the service’s top-tier dollar card for paying for advertising in any source and even for regular purchases.

There is also PST Private—a subscription for those who run traffic constantly:

• 100 free cards every month
• 3% cashback on Google and TikTok advertising spend
• 22 private BINs across more than 20 card types
• Cards with 3DS and operation notifications
• Accelerated withdrawal from cards to balance
• Free API access
• Personal manager

And the most appealing part—Enterprise. This tier is connected via a manager and offers top-ups at 2%, unlimited card issuance and renewal without extra fees, cashback on advertising expenses, and exclusive BINs unavailable on other tiers.

As a little extra bonus, PST.NET has a built-in BIN checker called PST Pulse, allowing you to verify a BIN before issuing a card.

e.PN

Official website: e.PN

Behind e.PN cards are 36+ banks from the USA, Europe, and LatAm, so you can select a specific payment system and GEO for your task. Visa and Mastercard cards with 3DS link perfectly to accounts, do not decline when paying for foreign services from ChatGPT to Steam, and are even suitable for personal use. The tariff is tied to spend and decreases as it grows.

e.PN terms and commissions:

• Standard upon registration: top-up 6.7%, card issuance $4
• Silver from $1,000 volume: 6%, issuance $3.50
• Gold from $10,000: 5%, issuance $3
• Platinum from $50,000: 4%
• Black from $100,000: 3%, issuance from $2

You can manage everything entirely from your phone: transaction push notifications, 3DS codes, card issuance and setup, and team management. Apps are available in the App Store, on Android, and in AppGallery. Support responds around the clock via online chat, Telegram, WhatsApp, and WeChat. Such variety is rare even among top-tier payment services.

Spendge

Official website: Spendge

Spendge’s standout feature is its smart card selection, where the service handles all the difficulties. In the card issuance menu, BINs are filtered by source, advertising account GEO, and the presence of 3DS, with the most likely matches highlighted in a separate recommendation section. Next to each BIN, you can immediately see the card’s currency and a list of sources it will definitely handle, plus a tip on which GEO to specify in the advertising account settings.

Spendge’s pool includes 24 BINs for Visa and Mastercard in GBP, USD, and EUR, issued in the UK, Estonia, Ireland, USA, and Hong Kong. 3DS can be enabled at the individual card level.

The service is used by 17,000 arbitrage professionals, with over 300,000+ cards issued. Beyond Meta, Google, TikTok, and Bing, the cards are used to pay for trackers, anti-detect browsers, proxies, hosting, domains, and AI services.

Spendge terms and commissions:

• Card issuance and monthly maintenance: $5
• Crypto top-up: 1%
• Card account top-up: 3%
• International bank transfer: 0%
• First account top-up: from 300 USDT
• Single transaction limit: $20,000, but if urgently needed, you can discuss individual terms with support and have the limit increased the same day.

Teams with a volume of around $1 million per month have access to a separate tier: card issuance $1, card top-up 1.3%, crypto 1% + 2 USDT.

GCTransfer

Official website: GCTransfer

GCTransfer is a more serious solution where you are given a real account in a European bank, registered to an EU resident, with full access transfer to the bank, mobile app, phone, and email. You receive a full European IBAN for receiving transfers from foreign clients and withdrawing from payment systems and freelance platforms, which other payment services can hardly boast of.

GCTransfer tariffs:

• EU bank + VC LITE — $349: European account plus virtual Visa/Mastercard with full access
• EU bank + VC — $439: account with IBAN, issuance of 3 to 30 virtual cards, NFC, Apple Pay, and Google Pay, crypto top-up, and of course, advertising work.

The account is multi-currency, supporting EUR, USD, and GBP, with incoming transfers arriving via SEPA. The bank account itself comes with a 7-day guarantee; within the first day or two after issuance, you need to change the access credentials to your own following the service’s instructions.

Pay2.House

Official website: Pay2.House

Pay2.House is part of the Push.House ad network ecosystem, so transfers to the Push.House and Cloaking.House ad networks are commission-free—this is especially convenient if you already work with these products. The card tariff is maximally clear, with no fine print in the terms. Pay2.House offers 50+ BINs for Hong Kong, Estonia, USA, Canada, Singapore, and the UK.

Pay2.House terms and commissions:

• Account top-up via USDT TRC20: 0%
• Top-up via Capitalist: 0%
• Card issuance: $5
• Maintenance: $5 per month
• Funding card from account: 4%
• Minimum card top-up: $10
• Issuance of 100+ cards: 20% discount
• Transfers between Pay2.House accounts: 0%

ABCard

Official website: ABCard

ABCard’s tariff logic fits on a single line: you only pay for top-ups, everything else is free. Card issuance, operations, and maintenance cost nothing, and the exact top-up rate is shown at the time of the transaction. The service is explicitly positioned as an arbitrage tool, already boasting over 150,000 users and 1 million+ issued cards, with 9 out of 10 cards linking to any source on the first try.

What ABCard offers:

• Debit and credit cards with instant issuance
• A BIN database for Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Google that is constantly updated
• A shared balance—cards draw from a common account without manually funding each one
• Top-up via bank transfer and USDT with instant crediting
• No limits on the number of cards or spend
• Roles, buyer limits, and other team features
• Real-time analytics by department, employee, and company

Additionally, ABCard offers agency Facebook cabinets and funding for teams from its own pocket.

Brocard

Official website: Brocard

Brocard gives away the first 50 cards for free, after which issuance costs $2 per card. The pool includes 30+ BINs for Visa and Mastercard from the USA, UK, Europe, and Hong Kong, with cards in USD and EUR. All feature 3DS and are ready to use immediately after issuance. The service has a cashback system tied to the number of declines: the lower their share, the higher the cashback in real money.

Brocard terms and commissions:

• First 50 cards: free
• From the 51st card: $2 for issuance
• Minimum account top-up: $500
• Top-up methods: bank transfer, USDT TRC20/ERC20, Capitalist
• Direct withdrawal to Brocard from certain affiliate networks with a reduced commission.

Direct balance transfer from affiliate networks is a rare feature, as profits from the network drop straight into the payment service, saving you the hassle of figuring out how to reinvest profits back into circulation. You also save on commissions. Brocard’s API is one of the most detailed on the market: card issuance and filtering by BINs, teams, and tags, limits, auto-top-up with thresholds, micro-payment settings, and statistics by sources and declines. Teams get access to roles, budgets, a shared balance, and real-time reports. A new feature allows bulk payouts to employees via SBP, bank cards, accounts, and USDT.

Final thoughts

The question of “where to get cards for traffic campaigns” can be considered answered after this article. Before you are 24 reliable payment services with real commissions and working promo codes: all that remains is to choose a service that fits your volumes and vertical.

Start with a test. Many services in this compilation offer free starter cards or welcome bonuses, so testing a couple of payment processors can be done with virtually no investment. You will also see firsthand where cards link on the first try and where top-up commissions are the lowest.

 

 

 

Is it currently possible to hand over a portion of the media buying team’s workload to artificial intelligence to genuinely reduce expenses? During a major international conference for affiliate marketing, media buying, and digital technology specialists, G GATE CONF 2026, the CEO of Wildo Agency, Bogdan Right, broke down the system of AI bots that is already operating within his team. The main takeaways are gathered in this material.

Which artificial intelligence bots actually took root inside the team

Bogdan’s team began exploring automation in October 2025, and by November, they had already started implementing it. For six months, they tested various approaches in practice and developed several bots for different areas of responsibility. Following these tests, five agents were selected for key tasks.

The speaker explained how the system of AI agents is structured. Overseeing all the bots is Claude Opus, which acts as the orchestrator. Different neural networks are connected for specific tasks. According to the speaker, ChatGPT handles all text generation better, while Nano Banana creates images in various variations for different bots.

How automation allowed keeping one developer instead of a whole department

The first bot acts as a developer. It builds applications: From the initial project to uploading them to the Store, notifying the media buyer at every stage. This bot allowed the company to keep just one person in the department and achieve massive profit by reducing the budget for expensive development.

After successful tests, the team realized that applications also require designs. The bot was upgraded. At this moment, the same AI agent creates custom designs for PWA as well.

AI vs buyer plus AI: Results of testing two approaches

The bot for Facebook creates and purchases accounts, imports them into Dolphin Anty or any other anti-detect browser, acquires proxies, and creates auto-rules. According to the speaker, the latter is especially important. After all, webmasters working with Facebook know that auto-rules heavily depend on the postback setup. During development, the team utilized two strategies.

In the first strategy, the AI agent only advises the media buyer on what is effective and what is not. In the second strategy, the bot itself can launch and stop campaigns, as well as regulate all related processes. The algorithm directly sees the revenue in the tracker or affiliate network without delays, so its auto-rules trigger more accurately.

For the tests, each strategy was allocated $5,000 and an identical batch of previously tested creatives. The rules were simple: If the install or target action becomes too expensive, the campaign must be stopped.

The autonomous AI agent spent about $1,000 and stopped all campaigns in sequence, deciding that none of the creatives were any good. During its operation, the bot showed an ROI of 61%. The test turned out to be too isolated. The bot stopped all campaigns before it had time to gather any meaningful data.

In a bundle with a media buyer, the AI agent performed much better. The webmaster understands that if the registration cost was good yesterday but worse today, it is necessary to wait until tomorrow. As a result, the team managed to spend the entire $5,000 and achieve a lower ROI than in the first test. However, in combination with the bot, they managed to pay off all the creatives, which also cost money.

Bogdan concluded that an autonomous AI agent can be abandoned for the time being. The bot is a good assistant to the webmaster, not a replacement. The AI agent was trusted with only one exception: At night, it can stop a campaign if it becomes inefficient. This approach works in situations where any delay costs money.

What artificial intelligence cannot do and how much budget it saves the team

According to the speaker, the entire market can currently discard the idea of delegating video creatives until the time when artificial intelligence learns to make them properly. For the next few years, the bot will simply be a good assistant to the media buyer.

The main bot in the team is the application creator. In addition to the full development cycle, it helps save on graphics: About $30,000 per month. This is the market value of custom PWA designs that the team produced when the tool became fast, cheap, and simple. In reality, the team spent approximately $600. The other bots cover routine tasks.

Conclusions

As a result of the tests and the experiment on implementing bots into the team’s workflow, the speaker from Wildo Agency came to several conclusions.

1. An AI agent will not be able to completely replace a webmaster for several more years. It takes over routine and boring tasks, reduces infrastructure costs, saves time, and increases the number of attempts and tests. A media buyer can order an Android application for a rare offer or GEO, create custom PWA designs, but the final result still depends on a human;
2. Artificial intelligence excels at any development and adapts playable creatives perfectly;
3. Neural networks do not completely replace designers. Bots handle images well, but they cannot produce high-quality videos yet. Strong designers will remain in high demand.

 

With over a billion monthly users, Telegram serves not only as a messaging application but also as a robust search platform for chats, channels, and communities. Those who secure top positions capture the lion’s share of organic traffic and user interest.

The challenge lies in the fact that Telegram has rarely clarified how this ranking is determined. Over the past three years, the search algorithm has undergone multiple revisions, and alongside spam, legitimate channels have occasionally been removed from the results. Together with insights from industry practitioners, this guide examines what is definitively known, what is supported by practical experience, and the actual costs of securing a top position.

How global telegram search works

First, it is necessary to distinguish between two distinct search mechanisms that are frequently conflated.

• Global search for entities — this involves finding public channels, groups, users, and bots by their name or username. This is typically where entities attempt to secure top positions for commercial queries.
• Search for public posts — a separate “Posts” tab introduced by Telegram in 2025. It scans for relevant publications from public channels, including those the user does not follow.

This distinction is crucial because the content of publications can directly influence a specific post’s visibility in the “Posts” tab, but one cannot assume that identical keywords in posts will elevate the channel’s overall position in the global entity search.

“The primary advantage of this traffic source is that the user actively inputs their desired query into the search bar. Consequently, you are no longer dealing with a completely cold audience, but rather with an individual who already possesses a specific interest or need,” notes the BoostTelega team.

Official documentation regarding the ranking algorithm does not exist. There is only one comment from the messenger’s founder and a few indirect confirmations.

September 2023. Pavel Durov described a shift in the underlying principle: previously, channels with the highest subscriber counts ranked higher, but spammers began to abuse this system. Consequently, the algorithm was updated to consider only real, active subscribers. According to his statement, channels with a higher proportion of Premium subscribers generally rank better, but if a single Premium account is subscribed to an excessive number of channels, it provides negligible ranking benefits. He also separately noted that the search primarily displays results relevant to the user’s country.

A public username is essential for basic discoverability: the Telegram FAQ explicitly states that a public username allows an entity to appear in global search results.

August-September 2024. Administrators observed that channels and groups, which previously appeared when searching by name or username, suddenly vanished from the results. Throughout September, the outcomes fluctuated constantly: entities would disappear and then reappear. On September 23, Durov confirmed that the search mechanism had changed—a team of moderators, assisted by artificial intelligence, had removed problematic content from the index.

A critical detail for risk assessment: entities that had not violated any rules were also caught in the crossfire. The @tginfo editorial team described how their own channel disappeared from search results multiple times and reappeared, despite its content not falling under any prohibited categories. During this period, users also encountered issues where newly created accounts and bots could not be found via their public usernames.

There is no official appeal process. The official @SearchReport bot only accepts complaints regarding prohibited content, and among the other available contact methods, none are suitable for inquiring about a shadowban. There is no guaranteed method to restore an entity to the search index once removed.

What else is important to know about the mechanics

Search results are personalized by country. The algorithm matches the geographic location (GEO) of the searcher’s phone number with the country of origin of the channel. Therefore, reach is determined not so much by the language of the content, but by the country associated with the SIM card linked to the account owner’s profile.

Language primarily influences results through the match between the query phrasing and the name or username, as well as the geographic distribution of the audience.

The search index updates as characters are typed. A user sees results before finishing the word and clicks on them. This means a portion of the traffic arrives via abbreviated query forms rather than the full phrase.

Hashtag search is ranked chronologically rather than by relevance, and it has long been saturated with spam. It is ineffective for promotional purposes.

How to check the position

Checking the search results from one’s own working account is useless: the algorithm for searching within chats one belongs to operates differently than searching for external entities. Verification must be conducted from a separate account, registered with a phone number from the target GEO, after clearing the search history. Furthermore, checks should be performed multiple times, as positions in Telegram fluctuate frequently.

Ranking factors: what works, what is probable, what is overrated

Confirmed	Probable	Overrated
Exact keyword match in the name. Without this, the entity will not appear in the results.	Audience engagement. If subscribers are merely nominal and do not read or react, positions will drop.	Total subscriber count alone. Since 2023, only real, active subscribers are considered.
Exact keyword match in the username. This secures positions at the tail end of the results.	The age of the entity. Newly created bots and accounts may remain unsearchable by username for a certain period.	Hashtags. Results for these are sorted chronologically and are heavily spammed.
Presence of a Premium audience. The weight of a single account diminishes if it is subscribed to too many channels.	Keywords within the posts themselves. Practitioners note that the algorithm increasingly resembles traditional SEO.	One-time renaming. A keyword in the name grants entry into the index, but does not independently elevate the position.
The country of the owner’s account and the country of the searcher.	External transitions and mentions in other channels.
	Homogeneity of the audience’s GEO.

A separate note on Premium, as it is the most debated factor. Approximately 15 million users hold a subscription out of an audience exceeding a billion—roughly 1.5 percent. The resource upon which this ranking relies is inherently scarce. This scarcity is precisely why an entire market of services has been built around it.

What telegram search provides and what to know about channels

First, consider the nature of this traffic. It is not a feed impression or a push notification: the individual is actively searching for a specific topic, group, or channel. Consequently, the conversion rate to a target action is higher than that of cold reach campaigns, although the overall volume is lower.

Second, consider the size of the search results. Global search returns a maximum of ten results, and the top line may be occupied by a sponsored advertisement. This means there are actually fewer than ten organic spots, and the primary competition is for the top three positions.

Third, and most crucial for planning: channels and bots are ranked using different logic.

For a channel, the algorithm evaluates a combination of criteria, ranging from keyword inclusion to audience engagement and geographic location. For a bot, the picture is simpler: it primarily considers the number of users and the exact keyword match in the name or username.

Following the September 2024 update, promoting a channel became more difficult, leading a segment of the market to adopt the “bot as a bridge” strategy. In this

setup, the bot captures the search query, and its description or initial message directs the user to a channel, website, or landing page.

This introduces a strategic divergence in top search promotion.

	Channel	Bot
What the algorithm evaluates	Name, username, Premium audience, engagement, country, content	Number of users, exact keyword match
Speed of appearance	Weeks	Days
Entry cost	Higher	Lower
What the user receives	Content to subscribe to	A scenario and a link in the description
Stability	Higher, provided the audience is active	Lower, depends on maintaining activity
Who it suits	Long-term projects that are actively managed anyway	Rapid testing of a niche and query demand

A bot is not a replacement for a channel, but rather a cost-effective method to validate a hypothesis: whether there is demand for a query and if it converts. If the test proves successful, a decision can then be made regarding investment in a channel.

How to choose a query

Here lies the primary peculiarity of Telegram: search frequency data is nowhere to be found. Neither in the search interface nor in the advertising cabinet. No one will display how many times a specific phrase is entered daily.

Work must be conducted indirectly:

• Wordstat provides phrasing, not numbers. It indicates demand on Yandex, and these figures cannot be directly transferred to Telegram. However, it remains a useful source for generating query variations.
• TGStat and similar services provide a niche dictionary: they reveal how competitors name themselves, what they write in their descriptions, and which categories they fall under.
• The Telegram search itself is the primary verification tool. Manually enter the query and observe: if channels and bots appear, the query is active and people are searching for it. If no results appear, either no one is searching for it, or they are using a different phrasing.

Verification takes about half an hour and eliminates approximately half of the candidate queries.

Rules that save budget

One to three words. Users in Telegram search using short forms. They type “arbitrage” or “traffic arbitrage,” but rarely enter “complete guide to traffic arbitrage for beginners.”

Different spellings equal different queries. Telegram does not consolidate word forms like traditional search engines. Cyrillic, Latin, transliteration, combined words, spaced words, underscores, singular and plural forms, and different cases—all constitute separate keys with distinct search results.

Do not add a city without verification. A short key without geographic modifiers often yields better results, as locality is already determined by the account’s language and country settings.

By verticals

Search demand in Telegram exists where users are accustomed to finding communities and services within the messenger itself, rather than in a web browser: iGaming and betting, cryptocurrency, financial products, dating, nutra, local services, and education.

General rule: the closer a query is to a specific brand or product, the more active it is. Informational queries like “how to become a programmer” often yield empty results in Telegram, as users seek such answers on Google.

How to prepare a channel or bot

Specific examples illustrate the necessary steps when working with a channel or a bot.

1. New channel for a query. The keyword is placed at the beginning of the name, with the same keyword in the username. The owner’s account should be registered with a phone number from the target GEO. Before launching, several thematic posts and a pinned navigation post should be added.
2. Existing channel with an audience. Renaming must be done cautiously: the keyword is appended to the existing name, not replacing it entirely. A sudden change in name and theme can trigger restrictions in the search index.
3. New bot. The keyword is placed in the name and username, with a short username to accommodate more keywords. One must be prepared for the fact that a fresh bot may remain unsearchable for a certain period.
4. Aged bot. This exits the search index much faster. The name and username are rewritten to match the keyword, and the description is optimized for the offer and the target link.
5. Channel removed from search. Verify from a clean account in the required GEO. Since there is no appeal process, one must examine obvious factors: theme, complaints, and the geographic composition of the audience.

Initial indexing issues may arise if: closed communities are created (as they are not indexed at all), the traffic has a mixed GEO, there is a SCAM label, or the landing destination is generally empty.

Promotion mechanics: boosttelega case study on binary options

Next, an examination of a strategy tested in the binary options niche. The objective was to push a bot to the top of the Telegram search and redirect that traffic to a target channel.

Scheme

Step 1. Acquired an aged bot. Telegram does not index fresh bots immediately, so instead of waiting, an old, unused bot was acquired and repurposed for the task. The @manybot constructor was connected to it, which would be necessary for the third step.

Step 2. Acquired Premium users. The “Premium Bot Start + Active” service was utilized. The second part is crucial: activity is required so that users do not merely start the bot but continue to remain active within it. This ensures the bot remains in the search results for a longer duration.

“Activity is necessary so that users do not just start the bot, but continue to remain active inside it. Because of this, the bot will stay in the search results much longer,” notes the BoostTelega team.

Step 3. Launched a broadcast via @manybot. The initial broadcast is required so that Telegram correctly processes and registers the audience within the bot. The text content is irrelevant; the act of sending is what matters.

Step 4. Waited 24 hours and launched a second broadcast. Following this, the bot began appearing for the target queries.

Why the broadcast steps function in this specific manner remains an open question. A logical hypothesis is that Telegram recalculates a bot’s audience composition upon interaction, rather than merely upon the initial “Start” command.

Step 5. Optimized the description. The bot’s description was updated to include the offer and the link directing the user further—to a channel, website, or other target page. From this point, the bot functions as an intermediary node between the Telegram search and the final product.

Result

The bot reached the top-1 position for the queries “Pocket Option” and “Spot trading.”

The traffic is monetized via RevShare, meaning profitability is generated not only from the initial deposit but also through the subsequent activity of the acquired users. Following the test, the client decided to scale the strategy and increase the consistent volume of traffic from the search.

“The client was satisfied with the result, and after the test launch, a decision was made to scale the bundle and increase the constant volume of traffic from Telegram search,” states the BoostTelega team.

What the test highlights and what it does not show

Highlights: internal search provides highly targeted traffic, entry costs tens of dollars rather than thousands, and the strategy is reproducible.

Does not show: how long the position lasts without ongoing support and how the economics behave at scale. This is normal for a pilot, but when planning, one must keep in mind that a position is not purchased once and for all.

Where traffic and search efficiency are most often lost

Fake bot inflation and mixed GEO. Mass injection of dead accounts from random countries does not elevate the entity; it hinders ranking. What matters is not the quantity, but the composition and geographic location of the audience.

Competitive attacks. Unscrupulous administrators inject bots into rival channels to force them out of the search index. The defense against this is a filter bot that monitors sudden growth spikes and unnatural activity, automatically blocking suspicious profiles.

Relying on keyword spam. A keyword in the name grants entry into the index. Beyond that, the Premium audience, activity, and country determine the position. A channel with five keywords in its name and nothing else will not reach the top.

An empty entity. A top position merely brings the user to the door. Everything else is determined by the description, the first screen, and the user scenario.

Expecting a static position. The search index is constantly reshuffled, algorithms change without announcements, and there is no place to appeal a removal.

However, it is important to understand that the market evaluates these losses differently. Some platforms claim that Telegram is more lenient than others and does not ban for suspicious audience growth. Others report shadowbans specifically for artificial inflation.

In any case, there is no mechanism to appeal these decisions. Consequently, the cost of an error is higher here than in sources with transparent moderation.

What else can be used for top search promotion

Telegram search has a direct paid equivalent: the Search format in Telegram Ads. An advertisement appears above the organic results with a “Sponsored” label, directs users to a channel, chat, or bot, and is purchased on a CPM basis.

It is available exclusively through euro-denominated reseller cabinets; the minimum bid at the format’s launch was 1€, and the current rate must be checked in the cabinet, as it fluctuates.

	Search in Telegram Ads	Organic promotion
Model	Pay per impression	One-time investment plus maintenance
Speed	Immediately after moderation	Several days
Manageability	Keywords can be changed between launches	Position depends on the algorithm
What happens upon stopping	Impressions cease immediately	Position holds as long as metrics are maintained
Limitations	Unavailable in Pro cabinets, targeting cannot be edited after launch	No guarantees and no appeal process

Practical conclusion: these are not competitors, but two entry points into the same demand. Search ads quickly reveal whether there is actual volume for a query, making them ideal for reconnaissance before investing in organic promotion. Organic promotion is cheaper over the long term but requires continuous maintenance.

Conclusion: What to consider realistic

Telegram search provides precision, not massive scale. Expecting hundreds of leads per day from this source is unrealistic. Furthermore, entering a narrow query costs tens of dollars, while competitive queries cost substantially more, with prices rising alongside competitor activity.

Positions require maintenance: injecting users without subsequent activity will be futile. No one can offer guarantees. Anyone promising a permanent top position is selling something that does not exist.

The primary advantage of this source is that the individual actively inputs the query. You are not working with a cold audience, but with someone who already possesses a specific interest. Beyond that, everything depends on the niche, the offer, and how effectively the monetization is structured.

 

Ten myths around geo that hinder business promotion in ai search

With the rapid development of generative neural networks on the web, numerous tips have emerged on how to increase a website’s visibility in ai search. The problem is that many recommendations are not yet confirmed or are based on myths that have gradually started to be perceived as proven facts.

In this article, experts from click.ru:

• analyzed popular misconceptions about promotion in neural networks;
• found out where they came from;
• looked at what can actually influence a website’s visibility in generative search.

Myth 1: SEO and GEO are the same thing

What the myth is There is an opinion that geo (generative engine optimization) is simply a new name for traditional seo. Some believe that search engines have changed slightly, neural networks have been added to them, but the principles of promotion remain the same. One can do the same things as before, just call it by a new name.

Where it came from Geo and seo do indeed have a lot in common. Firstly, generative optimization grew out of search optimization. Secondly, the basic principles of optimization have not disappeared. High-quality content, technical soundness of pages, their accessibility to search engines, and a clear structure remain important. Generative neural networks often use the regular search index. For example, google forms ai overviews based on the same page quality assessment and search systems that work for traditional results. Hence the opinion arises that it is enough to occupy high positions in the search results, and visibility in ai will appear on its own.

What is actually true Seo can be called the foundation for geo, but their goals are different. Classic seo helps to improve a page’s position in search results. Geo increases the chances that a neural network will choose content from a specific website for its answer and mention the brand. At the same time, seo and geo should not be opposed to each other. Technical optimization, high-quality content, and normal indexing are an important base for promotion in generative search.

Myth 2: It is unknown how neural networks work. it is impossible to perform geo tasks

What the myth is One of the common misconceptions sounds like this: “neural networks are a black box, which means it is impossible to understand why they choose some sources and ignore others. Consequently, it is also impossible to optimize a website for ai.”

Where it came from Google, openai, anthropic, and other companies indeed do not disclose all the nuances of how their models work. They do not provide the formula by which gemini or chatgpt select certain sources for an answer. However, there is a nuance: people confuse two concepts: the principles of operation of ai search engines and the architecture of the model. Only developers know the exact parameter values in gemini, gpt-5, or claude. But this does not mean that the entire system works unpredictably.

What is actually true In recent years, researchers have actively studied the stages a user query goes through. And here is what was found. In most cases, a neural network works as follows:

• finds relevant indexed pages;
• evaluates the content based on its relevance to the query;
• extracts useful information from the pages;
• generates an answer based on the found information. This approach is called RAG (retrieval-augmented generation). To date, this is the industry standard for ai search. Geo is not an attempt to guess the logic of a neural network. It is working with the structure and quality of content, information disclosure, the digital reputation of the brand, and the authority of the source.

Myth 3: AI services work with all information that exists on the internet

What the myth is Neural networks confidently answer almost any question, so it might seem that they have access to all existing pages on the internet. Hence arises another misconception: if a material is published and open to search robots, it will sooner or later definitely appear in ai answers. In practice, everything is more complicated.

Where it came from The reason for the misconception is a misunderstanding of how llms (large language models) obtain information. Many ai services know how to use search, and from the outside it seems as if the neural network instantly scans everything on the internet. In reality, it works with a more limited set of data.

What is actually true Neural networks do not read everything on the internet with every query. They work with a pre-collected package of data that is updated every couple of months. During an online search, an llm does not refer to all existing websites, but to pages indexed by yandex and google. From the found materials, the neural network takes only fragments that are relevant and meet other criteria. There is another limitation: the context window. This is the maximum volume of information that a model can process at once. Even modern llms can only interact with a finite number of tokens, so they are physically incapable of analyzing millions of web pages simultaneously.

Myth 4: There are technical techniques that guarantee inclusion in ai answers

What the myth is As soon as geo became actively discussed, the market was flooded with numerous promises and tips:

• “add llms.txt, and chatgpt will definitely read your website”;
• “rewrite texts using a special template for neural networks”;
• “insert prompts on the page”. All recommendations share the idea that there are some technical tricks that guarantee a website’s inclusion in ai answers.

Where it came from The myth appeared for several reasons:

• Geo is a young direction. There are no established standards in the market yet and very few confirmed cases, so guesses and hypotheses often take the place of proven practices;
• Simple promises are easier to sell. It is much easier to offer a client a secret setting to get into chatgpt than to explain that promotion in ai is complex, comprehensive work that takes time and affects not only the technical part of the website.

What is actually true There is no technology that will guarantee with 100% certainty that a website will appear in the answers of chatgpt, alice, ai overviews, gemini, and other ai services. Moreover, search systems do not recommend looking for such secrets. For example, the official google help states that there are no separate technical rules for pages to appear in ai overviews beyond the usual requirements for search optimization. This does not mean that geo does not work. The chances of a website appearing in ai answers can indeed be increased, but not with one trick, but through systematic work. It includes:

• a strong seo base;
• publication of unique and up-to-date content;
• increasing brand trust and expertise;
• creating a logical and clear structure of materials;
• using structured data, faq, tables, and lists;
• including direct and unambiguous formulations, facts, and figures;
• expanding digital presence and gaining mentions in authoritative independent sources. Difficulties often begin with the first point: the seo base is often either weak or practically non-existent.

Myth 5: For geo, it is enough to write “correct” texts

What the myth is Some companies perceive geo exclusively as work with content. It is enough to write and format the text correctly, and neural networks will start adding the website to answers more often. At the same time, the technical part, brand reputation, and other factors remain unattended.

Where it came from The misconception has two main reasons:

• For a long time, text in seo was one of the main ways to convey information about the page’s content to search engines. In addition, the first recommendations for geo were indeed mostly related to content;
• Modern llms work in text format. They receive a query and generate a text response. Therefore, it is easy to assume that one can only influence the choice through text.

What is actually true High-quality text is important for geo, but it is not enough. Neural networks and search engines take into account not only the content of a specific page, but also the information field of the website and the brand. The following matter:

• the technical state of the resource and its accessibility to robots;
• structured data that helps ai and search systems better understand the essence of pages;
• brand reputation and its mentions in authoritative sources;
• infographics, images, videos, and other types of content.

Myth 6: Only top websites can get into ai answers

What the myth is The logic of the myth is simple: if a website is not in the top positions in google or yandex, the neural network will not see it. Allegedly, ai primarily uses materials from the top of the search results. At first glance, the assumption seems logical, but there is no direct dependence here.

Where it came from Generative search is indeed closely related to traditional search engines. For example, google ai overviews uses the google search infrastructure, and alice uses yandex search technologies. Hence the opinion arose that the neural network simply takes information from the first pages of the results and retells it to the user.

What is actually true High positions can increase the probability of getting into an ai answer, but being in the top is not necessary for this. There are several reasons:

• Generative systems are not limited to the top ten results. They can refer to multiple pages, select suitable materials, and compare data from different sources;
• The value of information is important for ai. Original research, proprietary statistics, an official document, or unique expert material may turn out to be more useful than a page from the top and get into the answer, even if it occupies a lower position. Studies already show that search results and ai answer sources do not always coincide. According to Ahrefs, only 38% of the pages that google cites in ai overviews are in the top 10 of the results. In another ahrefs study, the match of cited links in chatgpt and gemini with the top ten of google results is about 8%. More than 80% of the sources used do not rank at all for the corresponding queries. It turns out that good positions in search give an advantage, but they do not guarantee citation by themselves. Conversely, the absence of a website in the top 10 does not mean that the neural network cannot use it as a source.

Myth 7: llms.txt is necessary for geo

What the myth is If one reads materials about geo over the past year, it might seem that without llms.txt, a website is unlikely to get into ai answers. The file is often called “robots.txt for neural networks” and it is advised to add it immediately when optimizing for generative search. Because of this, many website owners feel that llms.txt is a mandatory part of any geo strategy.

Where it came from The idea appeared in the autumn of 2024, when web standards specialist jeremy howard proposed the llms.txt format. It was assumed that a website owner could place links to the most important pages and documentation in a separate text file to make it easier for language models to navigate the resource structure. The concept quickly became popular. Plugins appeared for cms that automatically create llms.txt, and some seo services added recommendations to check for the file. The popularity of the idea led to llms.txt being perceived as a mandatory industry standard.

What is actually true Google states directly that it does not use llms.txt for ai search functions and google search. The company notes that the file is not needed to appear in generative services. This does not mean that the idea is completely useless. In the future, individual ai services may indeed use llms.txt as an additional source of information about the website structure. But today, there is no confirmed influence on geo.

Myth 8: Structured data is a guarantee of success in geo

What the myth is There is an opinion that microdata, schema.org, xml sitemaps, product feeds, and other technical elements are necessary primarily so that gemini, chatgpt, and other ai services can better understand the website. Sometimes bolder statements are encountered: it is enough to implement structured data, and the chances of getting into neural network answers will noticeably increase.

Where it came from Generative models indeed find it easier to work with well-organized data. Structured content is easier for both search engines and ai to interpret. But many often confuse cause and effect. The schema.org standard was launched back in 2011 so that search engines could better understand the content of pages. The main goal was the same as it is now: to make the information on the website machine-readable. Over time, useful technical advice began to be perceived as a universal solution. In many geo checklists, microdata began to be called one of the main factors influencing a website’s inclusion in neural network answers.

What is actually true Data structuring is indeed an important part of a high-quality website. But it does not provide an automatic advantage in generative search. Google and yandex have long recommended using schema.org. With the advent of ai answers, the advice has not changed. The official google guide separately emphasizes that there are no new markup requirements for generative search.

Myth 9: Mass publication of articles can replace brand development

What the myth is With the growing interest in geo, some companies began to act according to a familiar scenario: mass publishing of press releases, reviews, and promotional articles on dozens of platforms. The calculation is that the more often a brand is mentioned on the internet, the higher the chances of appearing in the answers of chatgpt, gemini, and other ai services. The logic seems simple and clear: if a neural network searches for information on the network, it means you need to fill it with content about yourself as densely as possible.

Where it came from The approach came from the times when search algorithms were simpler. Mass content placement did indeed increase a website’s visibility in search.

What is actually true For generative systems, it is not the number of mentions that matters, but the authority and quality of the sources. This is confirmed by research. For example, according to Resonate labs in the geo white paper v5.0, about 84% of the links used by ai systems come from independent publications. Paid content is cited noticeably less often. In geo, it is important not just to increase the number of materials about the brand, but to achieve mentions in authoritative media, specialized publications, and professional communities.

Myth 10: Only an seo specialist can handle geo

What the myth is Work on brand visibility in neural networks is often completely handed over to the seo team, since geo is related to search promotion. Therefore, it is the seo specialist’s area of responsibility.

Where it came from This approach is quite understandable. An seo specialist is already responsible for technical website optimization, page structure, internal linking, working with content and links. That is, for many factors that are also important for geo.

What is actually true Ai answers are influenced not only by the content of the website. Brand reputation, reviews, mentions in authoritative sources, research, publications in the media, materials from conferences, and other signals outside of classic seo are important. Geo is the result of work in branding, product management, pr, content marketing, seo optimization, and other areas. Geo is not a set of secret tricks. Neither llms.txt, nor microdata, nor mass publications guarantee inclusion in neural network answers by themselves. The task is not to please the neural network, but to become a noticeable and reliable source of information for it.

When viewed through the lens of a media buyer, the traditional utility offer model appears straightforward: purchase an install, guide the user to a trial or initial payment, calculate the CPA, and compare it against the payout.

However, the subscription economy only truly begins at this stage.

In 2026, the final outcome is simultaneously influenced by trial duration, pricing tiers, initial renewals, subsequent charges, voluntary cancellations, failed payments, geographic regions, and even the specific storefront through which the user pays.

Concurrently, the payment infrastructure of Google Play is evolving. Starting June 30, 2026, Google began separating service and billing fees in the US, EEA, and the UK, while providing developers with more alternatives for external billing and payments. Consequently, the primary question regarding a utility offer is no longer “what is its CPA?”. Instead, it is: “what CPA can this offer genuinely sustain when evaluating the entire user lifecycle rather than just the initial purchase?”

Google play changes billing, but what exactly changes for offer economics?

Google has begun separating service and billing fees. Simultaneously, it is expanding payment options: developers can now utilize alternative billing methods or direct users to their own websites for purchases. With alternative or external billing, the additional fee is not applied. For utility offers, this is significant not because Google lowered its commission as an abstract fact, but because the mathematics of every subsequent transaction are changing.

In the current scenario, Google specifies a 10% service fee for the first $1 million in annual revenue, plus a separate 5% billing fee when using Google Play Billing. With alternative billing, the additional 5% fee is waived.

Consider a hypothetical $39.99 subscription. With a combined 15% fee, approximately $33.99 remains. With a 10% service fee and no additional billing charge, roughly $35.99 remains. On a single transaction, the difference is about $2. However, a subscription does not end there. If a user renews multiple times, this difference compounds on every transaction. Therefore, the shift in the billing model can affect not only net revenue but also the maximum CPA an offer can sustain.

One cannot simply conclude that because Google lowered its commission, the CPA can be mechanically increased by 5%. The final outcome depends on the number of renewals, the percentage of users who reach them, refund rates, and the specific pricing scheme. In other words, Google’s new rule makes modeling the entire subscription lifecycle far more important than calculating just the first transaction.

Why the store itself is already part of unit economics

Examining data from RevenueCat reveals that the disparity between the App Store and Google Play is even more pronounced. Globally, the Revenue Per Install (RPI) is $0.42 for the App Store compared to $0.16 for Google Play—approximately 2.6 times higher. In North America, for instance, this gap widens further: $0.65 on iOS versus $0.26 on Android. This does not mean every iOS offer is automatically more profitable than every Android offer. However, it does mean that an identical CPI cannot be assumed to be equally effective across different platforms.

Imagine two campaigns with the same CPI. If one drives users to iOS in North America and the other to Android in the same region, the subsequent revenue per install will likely diverge significantly before retention is even factored in.

Therefore, in 2026, it is far more logical to evaluate a utility offer model at least across the matrix of: GEO × store × subscription plan. Only after this segmentation should CPA and LTV be compared.

What makes a utility user expensive

According to Adapty, a utility user who initiates a subscription via a trial generates an average revenue of $68.90 in their first 12 months—the highest 12-month trial LTV among all categories in the study. The average LTV across all plans in this category is $46.30, while the 12-month Install LTV stands at $1.09. Furthermore, utilities lead in first-renewal retention at 58.1%.

The Install LTV metric is particularly intriguing here. CPA indicates how much was paid for a user who completed a specific action. Install LTV reveals how much revenue the acquired install generates on average over a set period. This creates a much more practical performance sequence: CPI → Install LTV → acquisition ROI. From there, Install LTV can be broken down further: install → trial → payment → renewal → subsequent payments. This clarifies why two offers with identical CPIs can have vastly different acceptable acquisition thresholds.

How this looks on a real utility offer

WPS Office by CIPIAI is a direct Android utility offer with CPI pricing, available across 242 GEOs. According to company data, in Vietnam, the offer achieved a 0.4% conversion rate and a 30% ROI on pop-under traffic without a pre-lander, directing users straight to the advertiser’s landing page.

This serves as an excellent example that a web-to-app funnel does not necessarily require numerous intermediate steps. If the sequence of traffic source → advertiser landing page → install operates efficiently, adding a pre-lander does not inherently improve the funnel.

For a media buyer, the critical question is: which stage genuinely increases the probability of installation and subsequent monetization, and which merely adds friction between the click and the product? Thus, Install LTV becomes an invaluable companion to CPI, allowing evaluators to assess not just the cost of an install, but the average revenue that specific install generates.

Why weekly is sometimes more interesting than annual and why price cannot decide this

In the utility sector, weekly plans generate the majority of the category’s revenue. Conversely, annual plans demonstrate the strongest long-term retention: after one year, 22.1% of users on annual plans remain active, marking the best retention rate among all categories in the Adapty study.

In essence, weekly and annual plans solve different problems. A hypothetical $5.99 weekly plan might yield numerous consecutive transactions if the user continues to perceive value. A $39.99 annual plan delivers a larger sum upfront, but the user makes a different purchasing decision and follows a different renewal logic. Therefore, simply comparing $5.99 against $39.99 reveals nothing about true efficiency.

A more revealing metric is the total revenue each user generates over the entire lifespan of the subscription. Here, another crucial detail emerges: the price itself is changing.

Adapty data indicates that annual utility plan prices in Europe surged by 70.5% over two years—the largest increase among all category and region combinations in the study. The global median subscription price in 2026 is $7.48 for weekly, $12.99 for monthly, and $38.42 for annual plans.

Consequently, historical maximum CPA benchmarks cannot be mechanically carried forward. If the subscription price has increased, the user’s potential revenue has changed. However, user behavior may shift alongside it: a more expensive plan does not necessarily maintain the same renewal coefficient.

RevenueCat illustrates this clearly: on annual plans, the median first renewal rate is 37% for the low-price segment, compared to just 24% for the high-price segment. By the third renewal, this gap nearly vanishes. Thus, a higher price might yield more money from a single purchase, but it simultaneously increases early churn.

Price is not LTV. Price is merely one of its components.

How this works in the revshare model

The distinction between first-time conversion and long-term economics is especially visible here. MacKeeper by CIPIAI is a direct utility offer operating on a RevShare model, available in 243 GEOs. For this model, user value is not realized in a single initial transaction, but in subsequent payments that accumulate into the partner’s total income.

For a media buyer, this is a crucial practical consideration: RevShare cannot be evaluated using the same logic as CPI or CPA. If the payout depends on the user’s ongoing monetization, retention and accumulated LTV become intrinsic parts of the payout itself.

Therefore, when comparing a RevShare offer to a fixed CPI/CPA offer, it is vital to look beyond the first conversion and assess how much the user is capable of generating over the entire subscription lifecycle.

Why the market shortens trials, although data says the opposite

The situation with trials is even more fascinating. According to Adapty, the proportion of utilities utilizing trials grew from 78.0% to 84.7% over a single year. This indicates it is no longer an optional mechanic for a subset of apps, but rather a standard monetization component for the category. Simultaneously, the market is broadly shifting toward shorter trial periods. RevenueCat notes an increase in trials lasting up to four days, rising from 42.1% to 46.5%. Meanwhile, the share of 17–32 day trials slightly decreased to 5%.

This creates a paradox. Short trials are becoming more popular, even though longer trials convert better on average. For trials lasting up to four days, the median trial-to-paid conversion is 25.5%. For 5–9 days, it is 37.4%. For 17–32 days, it reaches 42.5%. Thus, a longer trial period converts approximately 17 percentage points better than the shortest option and roughly 1.7 times better in median conversion.

Why, then, does the market continue to shorten trial durations? Because early conversion is not the sole objective. A short trial yields results faster, shortens the experimentation cycle, and allows teams to determine if a bundle works much sooner.

However, this speed comes at a cost. For three-day trials, 55.4% of cancellations occur on day zero. For seven-day trials, this figure is 39.8%; for 14-day trials, 35.7%; and for 30-day trials, 31.1%. Notably, 84% of cancellations for three-day trials happen within the first 24 hours. Therefore, concluding that a three-day trial “converts better” is overly simplistic.

The correct question is: does it genuinely guide the user to the goal faster, or does it merely rush them to the cancellation point?

Furthermore, trials can impact partner risk differently. For instance, FlickVPN iOS by CIPIAI operates on a CPT model across 26 GEOs. This offer utilizes a trial model on iOS and, according to CIPIAI, performs exceptionally well with push traffic in the US, CA, and AU. The key distinction here is that the partner receives a payout simply for the trial being initiated, not for a subsequent renewal.

This demonstrates why an identical user journey can possess entirely different economics for a partner. In a classic subscription model, the media buyer assumes the risk that the user will not renew after the trial. With CPT, the billable event is the trial start itself. Consequently, comparing such an offer to a RevShare model cannot be done based on a single CPA. They have different points of result fixation and, consequently, different risk profiles.

Why geography matters, not just trial length

Another reason to avoid using a single benchmark for all campaigns is geography.

RevenueCat data shows that the median trial-to-paid conversion in North America is 34.2%, whereas in Western Europe, it is 29.7%. For comparison, in India and Southeast Asia, this metric drops to 15.2%.

The gap between North America and Western Europe is nearly 5 percentage points at the trial-to-paid stage alone, and these discrepancies compound further down the lifecycle.

For weekly subscriptions, the first renewal rate is:

• 55% in North America;
• 42% in Western Europe.

For monthly subscriptions:

• 55% in North America;
• 55% in Western Europe.

For annual subscriptions:

• 26% in North America;
• 28% in Western Europe.

Thus, GEO influences not only acquisition costs. It can fundamentally alter the shape of the LTV curve. Therefore, extrapolating campaign results from the US to Western Europe simply because both are Tier-1 regions is an unreliable modeling strategy.

Where LTV actually begins: The first renewal

Now, for the most critical segment. Assume a user has already purchased a subscription. For a basic report, a checkmark can be placed—CPA is achieved. For the business, it is still too early. Adapty indicates that utilities boast a 58.1% first-renewal retention rate, a defining metric for the category. RevenueCat simultaneously illustrates the overall renewal curve based on subscription length.

For weekly plans, the first renewal sits in the 35-54% range, while the second jumps to 68-81%. For monthly plans, the first renewal is approximately 53-61%, and the second reaches 65-77%. For annual plans, the first renewal is significantly lower, around 23-40%, but the metric subsequently climbs to 44-64% on the second renewal and 56-70% on the third.

The primary takeaway here is not the specific percentage. The first renewal is the critical bottleneck of the funnel. After this point, the users who remain form a noticeably more stable cohort. RevenueCat records a surge of 18-27 percentage points between the first and second renewals, depending on the subscription length. Therefore, for a media buyer, the first purchase and the first renewal represent two entirely different tiers of traffic quality.

Conceptually, CPA1 represents the cost to secure the first payout, while CPA2 represents the ad spend allocated per user who reaches the second billing cycle. The latter metric aligns far more closely with the true economics of a subscription.

What happens after the first payment

The complete lifecycle of a utility user unfolds as follows: click → install → first launch → onboarding → paywall → trial → first payment → first renewal → further renewals → voluntary churn → failed payment → recovery → refund → final LTV. Each stage answers a distinct operational question.

Install → first launch The user has been acquired by the ad but has not yet paid. The alignment between the advertising promise and the actual product is paramount here. If the ad promises a specific utility function, but the user encounters a different scenario post-install, the problem manifests before the paywall is even reached.

First launch → paywall → trial This stage determines whether the application can demonstrate its value quickly enough. RevenueCat indicates that the vast majority of trials begin immediately, making the first session absolutely critical.

Trial → first payment Here, the familiar CPA metric emerges. However, it still reveals nothing about the long-term quality of the user.

First payment → first renewal This is where the commercial offer faces its true test. If the user does not perceive sufficient value by the next billing date, the initial purchase fails to evolve into sustainable LTV.

Why the second payment is sometimes more important than the first purchase

Consider two hypothetical offers. Offer A: 1000 installs → 100 trials → 30 first payments. Offer B: 1000 installs → 100 trials → 25 first payments. Initially, Offer A appears superior. However, introduce the first renewal metric. If a smaller proportion of Offer A’s users reach the second payment, while a larger proportion of Offer B’s users do, Offer A’s early advantage may completely vanish.

This is precisely why reporting should track not just: CPI → trial → first payment, but rather: CPI → trial → first payment → first renewal → second renewal → Y1 LTV. Furthermore, this must be segmented by GEO, store, and subscription type. This introduces a fundamentally different acquisition evaluation logic: not “what CPA does the offer provide,” but “what CPA can a user with this specific recovery curve sustain.”

This is clearly illustrated when comparing three real utility offers from CIPIAI with different payment models: WPS Office, FlickVPN, and MacKeeper.

• WPS Office is a direct Android utility offer with CPI pricing, available in 242 GEOs. Here, the partner’s point of result fixation is the install.
• FlickVPN is an iOS offer with CPT pricing in 26 GEOs. Here, the partner is paid for the initiated trial, not the subsequent renewal. The fixation point is further down the funnel: the user must not only install but also start the trial.
• MacKeeper operates on RevShare across 243 GEOs. Here, the partner’s economics are even more heavily dependent on the user’s ongoing monetization; value is not capped at an install or trial start, but unfolds through subsequent payments.

This yields three distinct models of the same utility funnel:

• WPS Office: install → CPI payout;
• FlickVPN: install → trial → CPT payout;
• MacKeeper: install → further monetization → RevShare payout.

Consequently, comparing these offers solely on first conversion is inaccurate. They possess different result fixation points and distinct risk profiles for the partner. In CPI, the result is the install; in CPT, it is the started trial; in RevShare, the partner relies on continued user monetization.

While existing data is insufficient to definitively calculate which of the three offers will yield higher LTV or profit—such a comparison requires actual payout sizes and downstream funnel metrics—the payment model itself reveals the core truth: an identical user journey up to the install does not guarantee identical offer economics thereafter.

There is another type of loss: The user did not want to leave

Not every user who stops paying voluntarily canceled their subscription.

RevenueCat estimates that approximately 31% of cancellations on Google Play are linked to involuntary churn, meaning payment failures (compared to roughly 14% on the App Store). These are fundamentally different scenarios. In the first, the user states: “I no longer need this product.” In the second, the user implies: “I am still subscribed, but the payment failed.” In the latter scenario, a portion of these users can be recovered.

Google Play utilizes a grace period and account hold to restore subscriptions. Since December 2025, the standard account hold duration for new and eligible existing plans is calculated automatically: the initial formula is 60 days minus the grace period length. Google explicitly links this change to providing more time to resolve payment issues and reducing involuntary customer churn.

At the lifecycle level, Google separately tracks subscription transitions between active, grace period, account hold, canceled, and expired states. For the current subscription status, Google recommends using Subscription Purchase V2 as the source of truth.

Apple employs a similar principle: the grace period allows users to retain access to paid content while Apple continues attempting to process the payment. Subscription grace periods are available in 3, 16, or 28-day increments, though for weekly plans, the actual period is capped at six days if longer settings are selected.

Consequently, a failed payment is not always churn. It is a distinct funnel segment that warrants separate measurement: failed payment → recovery → recovered revenue.

Why billing recovery must also enter the economic model

Imagine two identical offers. Both possess:

• Identical CPI;
• Identical trial conversion;
• Identical first-purchase CPA;
• Identical first renewal rates.

However, for one product, a significant portion of failed payments is successfully recovered, while for the other, users permanently abandon the service after a payment error. At the CPA level, they appear identical. At the LTV level, they are not. Therefore, the realistic model no longer looks like: CPI → trial → CPA → profit, but rather: CPI → install → activation → paywall → trial → first payment → first renewal → further renewals → voluntary churn → failed payment → recovery → refund → LTV. It is precisely this final segment that can explain the divergence between two offers that appear identical in their early stages.

Another nuance: Not all users after churn are lost forever

RevenueCat separately highlights that a portion of churned subscribers eventually return.

For monthly plans, the median reactivation rate is approximately 20%, for weekly plans it is around 9%, and for annual plans, it is about 5% within a year. The variance between categories is substantial. This serves as another reason not to view churn as an absolutely terminal event.

For weekly and monthly plans, there is considerable room for win-back campaigns. For annual plans, reactivation is significantly weaker, meaning a canceled user is far more likely to be permanently lost on a one-year horizon. In an LTV model, this implies that churn should also be segmented: voluntary churn → reactivation, and involuntary churn → payment recovery. These represent distinct user return mechanics and separate sources of incremental revenue.

Conclusion: The main formula of a utility offer

If all of this is distilled into a single concept, it is quite straightforward.

The flawed model: CPI → trial → CPA → profit.

The functional model: CPI → install → activation → trial → first payment → first renewal → further renewals → voluntary churn → failed payment → recovery → refund → LTV.

Layered on top of this chain is the matrix of: GEO × store × subscription plan × trial period.

Only then does it become clear why two offers with identical CPIs can possess entirely different economics. One rapidly drives the user to a first purchase but loses them at the first renewal. Another has slightly higher acquisition costs and lower early conversion, but its users remain loyal much longer. A third maintains excellent retention but loses a portion of revenue to failed payments. A fourth might underperform against a global benchmark but excel spectacularly within a specific Tier-1 GEO and on a specific storefront.

Therefore, the media buyer’s question in 2026 is gradually shifting. It is no longer: “What is the offer’s CPA?”

Instead, it is: “What CPA can a user with this specific GEO, store, plan, trial, and recovery curve sustain?”

It is precisely at this intersection that CPI and CPA cease to be the final evaluation of an offer and become what they truly are: mere data points within the complete economics of the user lifecycle.

Typically, a webmaster earns a commission from every purchase a user makes, not just the initial one. A person might buy a game key, top up their Steam wallet a week later, and pay for an artificial intelligence subscription a month after that. If the user clicked the same referral link for all three transactions, the webmaster receives a commission from all three purchases.

When repeat purchases are factored in, a single user is worth approximately four times more than they appear to be based solely on their first sale.

At gglead, analysts calculated where a gaming user goes after their initial purchase. The following sections explore how to work with this data effectively, what to place as a secondary link, and where a mono-product platform inadvertently hands revenue over to competitors.

Why the term “gaming traffic” is outdated

The term usually implies a simplistic solution: if the audience is interested in gaming, one should only sell them gaming-related items. This category traditionally includes game keys, Steam top-ups, and in-game donations.

“Gaming audiences purchase not only gaming goods. There is a noticeable overlap with messengers, social networks, subscriptions, AI services, and software. This allows gaming webmasters to expand their content and offers into adjacent digital categories.”

The same trend is evident in the Deloitte Digital Media Trends 2026 study. Researchers surveyed 3,575 individuals, focusing not just on gamers, but on “fans”—those who identify with at least one fandom. Such individuals make up approximately 80% of the population.

Among fan-gamers, 75% are active gamers, while among other fans, the figure is 52%. Fans purchase paid gaming subscriptions more than three times as often: 39% compared to 11%. For music subscriptions, the gap is 67% versus 40%.

The same individual pays for games and virtually all other digital services.

Consequently, the label “gaming traffic” limits not the audience itself, but the available assortment. To rectify this, a webmaster does not need to change their traffic channel or seek new subscribers; they simply need to add another link pointing to a product that might genuinely interest the user.

Where the journey begins with a purchase

What a person buys first depends less on their personal identity and more on where the referral link is placed.

Platforms like Twitch and YouTube drive buyers more frequently than other sources, as they possess their own distinct target audiences. However, once a webmaster focuses heavily on a specific product, the performance difference between traffic sources nearly disappears. There is no single, universal entry category for gaming traffic.

Age demographics also diverge significantly:

“The younger demographic arrives from video content, while the older demographic comes from text-based placements.”

Younger users engage with video content, whereas older users are drawn to SEO and text placements. Consequently, the content packaging must differ. In video formats, the offer capitalizes on impulse, whereas in text formats, payment methods must be detailed comprehensively.

The schemes by which gglead webmasters attract users include:

1. Pre-lander: An SEO site drives contextual traffic to its own curated top lists or showcase, from which the user proceeds to the platform.
2. External resources: Indexing in search results (with assistance from gglead), followed by content containing an embedded link.
3. Banner: Directs the user straight to the merchant site.
4. Native: Utilized only for fixed placements and via video. The user seeks a specific product or searches for a deal.

Ultimately, the first purchase dictates everything. It acts as a trust test—determining whether it is safe to make payments on the platform or not.

“In every product category, first purchases are distinct. If the first purchase goes smoothly, the second one definitely will.”

What they buy next: the transition matrix

To place a secondary link effectively, one must know what the user is likely to buy next. At gglead, analysts calculated who remains within their original category and who migrates to adjacent ones.

• AI services: About 40% stay within their category. The rest migrate to Steam, Apple gift cards, and other AI services.
• Software: The primary direction is Steam top-ups, accounting for up to 20%. Afterward, the user often returns to software and explores adjacent areas, such as Microsoft 365.
• In-gaming: 50-60% remain within their category and adjacent donation categories. A small fraction moves to Steam and Telegram.
• PC gaming: Almost 80% either stay within top-ups or proceed to choose new games. There is movement, but it remains entirely within the category.
• Console gaming: Up to 80% stay within the console ecosystem. Up to 5% venture out to Steam top-ups.

There are no dead-end categories; an exit to an adjacent category exists from every starting point. It is crucial to consider the nuances of each transition.

What can be placed as a second touchpoint:

Entry category	Second touchpoint	Why this works
AI services	Steam top-up, Apple cards, adjacent AI services	Only 40% stay in their category; the rest naturally migrate to adjacent ones.
Software	Steam top-up, followed by office subscriptions	Up to 20% transition to Steam, making it the most massive direction.
In-gaming	Donations in adjacent games, Steam top-up, Telegram	50-60% stick to their own and adjacent donation categories.
PC gaming	Game selection, add-ons, pre-orders	Almost 80% do not leave the category; it is too early to lead them out.
Console gaming	Depth within consoles, Steam top-up	Up to 80% remain inside; up to 5% venture out.

Categories are divided into two distinct types:

• From consoles and PC gaming, almost no one leaves; about 80% stay inside. The second link here should remain within the same theme.
• From AI services and software, more than half leave. Here, it makes sense to build a long conversion chain.

Steam top-up serves as a common entry point. Users transition to it from software, in-gaming, and consoles.

Important: The transition percentage and the revenue generated from it are different metrics. Up to 5% of console users might transition to Steam, which seems small. However, Steam is topped up regularly, meaning a link with a small transition percentage can ultimately generate more revenue than one with a large percentage.

Which users return more often

Major releases, cult classic games, and everything that operates on a subscription basis (AI services and software) yield the best return rates. However, their return mechanisms function differently.

• Subscriptions return by calendar: In a month, the subscription needs renewal. The date is known in advance, allowing a promotional post to be scheduled accordingly.
• A release returns by news hook: A new game launches, and users arrive specifically for the key.
• Other categories return quickly but unpredictably: A person might return in two days, but for an entirely different product.

What this means for content strategy: subscriptions provide steady income between major releases, and a single monthly reminder is sufficient for them. A release creates a revenue peak, but between these peaks, the platform needs a baseline income, and it is best to establish that foundation in advance.

Where webmasters lose money

The average income of a webmaster promoting two or more categories can reach $757.62, compared to a mere $1.01 for a webmaster restricted to a single category.

“Platforms working with multiple categories are significantly more effective than those limited to a single category.”

The mechanics of these losses are clear:

1. One product for the entire platform: A user returns a week later needing something else, but the platform does not offer it. The user searches independently and clicks a competitor’s link.
2. Content does not adapt to retail: The same presentation is pushed across all placements. In contrast, for major partners, gglead assembles separate showcases and closed hubs tailored specifically to the channel’s theme.
3. Income is counted per post: This method only reveals the first purchase. The remaining three-quarters of the user’s lifecycle do not appear in the report, making the second category seem like unnecessary extra work.

How much of the fourfold growth comes from adjacent categories versus repeat purchases within the same category is not visible from general industry figures. This can only be calculated by analyzing one’s own specific audience.

How to restructure content

The conversion chain is assembled from the transition matrix, and for the two types of categories, the strategy differs.

For consoles and PC gaming, the chain is short and remains entirely within the theme: top-up, game selection, add-ons. Attempting to direct such an audience to AI services on the very first touchpoint is futile; 80% will not convert.

For AI services and software, the chain is long. From these starting points, a user naturally moves to adjacent sections; the only variable is whose referral link they will use.

Three formats for the second link

Steam is the most frequent second step from almost any category. It can be integrated into content in the following ways:

• Release-specific compilation: A post about an upcoming game where the purchase and top-up method is embedded in the text as part of the instruction, rather than presented as a blatant offer.
• Top-up guide: This addresses the primary objection when buying digital goods. At gglead, analysts note that exactly this type of content converts best: content that details payment method choices and explains how the transaction is secured.
• Showcase or pinned post: A permanent destination where a user returns voluntarily, and where subscriptions and software are displayed alongside games.

“Here, all content formats can convert; the main thing is to know what to lead the user to and with what unique selling proposition.”

Why the conversion chain ultimately decides the outcome: according to Deloitte, 52% of fans learn about new content primarily from social media, and among Generation Z, this figure rises to 73%. At the same time, 44% discover content on social media but complete the purchase elsewhere. The webmaster is present where the person learns about the product, but the person pays wherever a convenient link happens to be at hand.

What to ask from the affiliate network

The conversion chain is best built around one’s own audience, and this is exactly what can be requested from the affiliate network.

• Analysis of own purchases: At gglead, analysts examine what the specific partner’s audience has purchased and provide recommendations on unique selling propositions.
• Closed hub or separate showcase: Tailored for the channel’s specific theme. These are assembled for partners who already generate a large volume of traffic.
• Adaptation of creatives and bundles: Customized for a specific platform.
• Custdev data and budget insights: Information on where the affiliate network is directing its largest marketing budgets.

“We provide all requested materials, and we also create retail setups and closed hubs individually for the partner and the channel’s theme.”

Conclusion

A platform that counts income strictly per post is only capturing a quarter of its potential revenue. The rest is claimed by whoever the user turns to for their second and third products.

The broader market is moving in the same direction. According to Newzoo, in 2025, the gaming market exceeded $200 billion for the first time. Simultaneously, acquiring a new user is becoming more expensive, prompting developers to focus increasingly on monetizing the audience they already possess. The platform operates on the same logic: it is far cheaper to extract additional value from someone who has already made a purchase than to acquire a completely new customer.

At gglead, growth is expected across all digital goods categories, and within those categories, the products that receive focused marketing attention will see the most significant spikes. Partners are given hints about where large budgets are flowing to prevent overlap in advertising campaigns.

A gaming offer is most often not the final sale. It is merely the user’s first contact with the entire ecosystem of digital goods. From that point forward, everything depends on whether the platform has a logical next step to guide them toward.