15Hours ago
Would you pay 3.5× more per impression if it meant cutting the cost of each target action by 38%? That’s what happened in this Paid Social campaign: 15,091 target actions at $1.16 each.
We’re continuing our Paid Social Traffic series with a campaign where the partner paid 3.5× more per impression than with Popunder, but got target actions at 38% lower cost — and 2.9× more of them.
The offer, platform, and 30-day testing period stayed the same. So what made Paid Social perform differently?
The Campaign Settings and Flow
The partner ran a CPA iGaming offer with a PWA funnel: preland → PWA install → target action inside the app. The campaign used CPA Goal, with the install set as the conversion goal. Both Popunder and Paid Social were tested simultaneously.
Here’s the setup:
Offer type: CPA, iGaming
Pricing: CPA Goal
Format: Paid Social, Popunder
Funnel: PWA – prelander, followed by PWA install and the iGaming product
GEO: mix
Device: mobile, Android
Schedule: 24/7
Spend (on Paid Social): $17,523
Volume: 183K offer impressions
Period: 30 days, June 10 – July 9
So, the flow looked like this:
With CPA Goal, you set the price you want to pay for a conversion, and the system delivers at that price. The partner, however, wanted to evaluate performance based on the second conversion: the action completed after the install.
So which format delivered better results on this deeper event?
Paid Social came in at $1.16 per target action, compared with $1.87 on Popunder. At the same time, performance varied across Paid Social zones: some delivered target actions at the desired price, while others came in significantly higher.
That’s how the winning combination emerged: Paid Social paired with the zones that reached the target cost per second conversion.
Zone Optimization and Scaling
Once the winning combination was identified, the partner increased the budget there while staying within Paid Social rather than moving to other traffic types. The largest share of spend went to the strongest-performing zones.
The conversion density then remained stable, with the cost per target action holding at $1.16 throughout the full 30 days. The result showed that these zones were consistently converting rather than delivering a short-lived spike that disappeared with higher volume.
Results
Popunder generated more impressions for the same spend, but it required more impressions to produce a single target action. Paid Social converted densely enough to offset its higher cost per impression: the target action was 38% cheaper, with 2.9× more actions overall.
Why did this happen? It comes down to the format. Paid Social ads run inside social feeds, where users are already browsing and interacting. Instead of interrupting that activity, the ad becomes part of it.
The traffic also comes from supply partners with their own custom setups and user journeys, so these users are among the most engaged you can buy.
Main Takeaways
Paid Social can come with a higher CPM while delivering denser conversions.
The target action cost was 38% lower than with Pop traffic.
The main pattern is clear: you pay a premium for audience quality, and that premium can pay off on offers where the payout depends on deeper events — deposits, installs followed by an action, or real registrations. If your payout depends on what users do after the click, CPM alone isn’t the metric to optimize.
Oleksandr Shovkun, Sales Team Leader at PropellerAds: A high CPM on Paid Social isn’t a reason to walk away – it’s simply what a better audience costs, so build it into your bidding strategy from the start. Just don’t judge this traffic by the conversion you set as the goal: the system aims for the same price everywhere, so all the zones look alike. Set up a second event, compare zones by that, and cut the ones where it costs too much. On offers that pay for something simple – a click or an easy lead – the higher CPM has nothing to earn back.
To Sum Up
Paid Social isn’t the cheapest option, but it isn’t designed to compete on CPM alone. In this campaign, its value came from the target action.
If your offer pays for something deeper than a click — a deposit, a real registration, or an install that leads to an additional action — evaluating traffic by that deeper conversion can show a different picture.
