Glossary
Media buying
Buying ad impressions or clicks from platforms and networks and sending that traffic to offers, so that the payouts exceed the ad spend. The affiliate side of media buying lives on the margin between the two.
Also called: paid traffic, buying traffic.
A media buyer pays an ad platform for attention: clicks on Meta or TikTok, push notifications, native placements, pops. That attention goes to a landing page and then to an offer. If the offer pays more than the clicks cost, the campaign is profitable.
The craft is in the details: picking a GEO and a source that match the offer, writing creatives that pass review and still convert, testing landers, cutting the placements that lose money and scaling the ones that win.
In CIS markets the same activity is often called traffic arbitrage. On this site it is media buying.
Related terms: Affiliate marketing, Traffic source, Ad campaign, Profit, ROI.