ANT Forum

Hey guys, I've been messing around with pop traffic for a couple of side projects lately, and something's been bugging me. A while back I ran a small campaign without any frequency caps at all—figured more impressions = more chance someone clicks eventually. Turns out the long-term quality tanked hard; conversions started looking good for a week or two then just dropped off a cliff. Same thing happened when I ignored referrer checks and let in all kinds of sketchy sources. Anyone else notice how these settings actually play out over months instead of just the initial spike? Wondering if anyone’s got real experience seeing sustained ROI when you dial those in properly versus going wide open.      

Pop traffic has this weird lifecycle where everything looks promising at first glance. You get those bursts of attention, then slowly the audience starts tuning out or the ecosystem shifts. It's kind of fascinating watching how the same sources can go from hot to basically worthless depending on how the delivery feels to end users. I've noticed over time that certain patterns repeat across different niches—initial excitement fades, and whatever's left is what really matters for sticking around longer. Just an observation from staring at dashboards way too much.      

Yeah, I've seen pretty much the same pattern on a few verticals I test. When you slap on reasonable frequency caps—like once every 24 hours or even tighter for mobile—it keeps the user fatigue way down, and the traffic feels fresher months later instead of burned out. Referrer checks help filter out the junk bots and forced redirects that look okay short-term but poison your backend stats over time. These days I usually point some of my cleaner flows through something like https://www.olneysaloon.com/ just because their setup lets you tweak those controls easily without overcomplicating things. It's not magic, but I've noticed the drop-off isn't as brutal after the first month compared to raw unfiltered pop sources. Still experimenting though—what's your sweet spot for capping?