Why Carrier Traffic Converts Better than Wi-Fi Traffic

Our partners often contact us with questions about our offers and one question that we have received a lot recently is; 'Why does carrier traffic perform better than Wi-Fi traffic?'.

The answer is actually quite simple, so let me explain. The main reason for the difference is that the subscription- or payment flow for users on a 3G connection is more convenient and user-friendly. A Wi-Fi user has to enter his MSISDN (mobile phone number) or bank details before signing up. This is because it's impossible to automatically detect the info that is needed to bill a user who's visiting the website on a Wi-Fi connection. When the user is on a 3G or 4G connection (carrier traffic) we are able to detect their MSISDN (in most cases). This gives us the opportunity to bill the user by just a single click on the 'purchase' button.

Because Wi-Fi users need to enter their mobile phone number or bank details on the payscreen, the conversion rate will usually be lower than carrier traffic (where the conversion is just one click away). As a result, Wi-Fi traffic will generally be less valuable.

So this raises the question; is Wi-Fi traffic completely worthless?

We don't think so! Because it's still possible to get some good conversions out of Wi-Fi traffic, but in another way. Dating and Cost Per Install offers, for example, work very well on Wi-Fi connections. Wi-Fi traffic is usually more stable and faster than carrier traffic, which makes it more suitable for downloading applications. Also the flow for dating offers is often the same on both connections, since users need to enter their date of birth, gender and email address.

At Traffic Company we have developed a unique algorithm that scans every user that comes in for various parameters like connection type, country, device, source type etc. By gathering this data we can send the user to the best matching offer (the offer with the best ECPM for the given parameters). Our system has over 5K offers to choose from, so we can guarantee you that the best offer is selected for your users!