i have a traffic source thats all over the map geo wise, tier 1 through tier 3 in one bucket, and i keep going back and forth on routing it. direct offers pay better on the geos they accept but reject or pay nothing on the rest, so i leak a lot. a smartlink monetizes everything but the tier 1 payout feels soft compared to a direct deal. where do you draw the line between carving out the good geos for direct and dumping the rest into a smartlink?
carve the top two or three geos that actually have a direct offer worth it, smartlink the long tail. do not try to hand place every country, the tail is not worth your time and a decent smartlink squeezes more out of it than you will by hand anyway.
the line moves with volume. at low volume dump everything in the smartlink and let it sort, not worth the management. once a specific geo throws off enough clicks to matter, pull it out into a direct deal. let the data tell you when, do not guess upfront.
one thing people miss, a smartlink is also your fallback for when a direct offer pauses or caps out. i keep the smartlink wired as the default and direct offers as overrides on top, so when a direct caps mid day the traffic falls back instead of hitting a dead redirect.
tina that fallback framing is the piece i was missing, i had them as an either or and kept getting dead clicks when a direct offer capped. smartlink as the floor with direct overrides on the good geos is cleaner. redoing my routing around that.
and test more than one smartlink provider on the same tail traffic before you commit, the payout spread between them on tier 3 is wider than you would think. same clicks, noticeably different back, worth a two week bake off.
yeah i have only ever run one smartlink, never bench raced them. adding a second to split test the tail. appreciate it, this untangled something i had been stuck on for weeks.