Scaling paid traffic for AI companion offers

AI companion offers behave differently from classic dating or cam offers on paid traffic. The user is not signing up to meet a person. They are trying a product, and the product itself (custom characters, memory, image and video generation, voice) is the hook. That changes which creatives work, which pre-landers work and how fast you can judge a campaign. This guide is the operating playbook for running Secrets AI on adult paid traffic.

Pick the right format for the stage

Adult display and banner networks

Placements on adult tube and content sites. Large volume, broad audiences, mature tooling. Good for testing creative angles quickly because the audience is already in an adult mindset. Start with banners from the shared asset library your affiliate manager gives you access to, then test your own. Track each creative in sub3, never in sub1, which is reserved for your click ID.

Native

In-feed ad units on adult and mainstream-adjacent sites. Native lets you tell a short story in a headline and thumbnail, which suits the "make your own character" angle. Usually needs a pre-lander.

Push

Push notifications to opted-in subscribers. Cheap clicks, low intent per click, fast feedback. Push suits short, curiosity-led messages and works best with a pre-lander that does the explaining.

Popunder

Full-page traffic with no creative to click. Volume is high, intent is low, and the landing page carries all the weight. Popunder is a pre-lander and landing page test bed. Only run it once you know which landing page converts.

Ask your affiliate manager before trying anything outside these formats. Paid social, display, native, push and popunder are accepted; unusual sources should be cleared first.

Creative angles

Test angles, not just images. An angle is the reason someone clicks. Angles that fit Secrets because they reflect real features:

• Make her yourself. Custom character creation. Show a character and the idea that the viewer could design one.
• She remembers. Persistent long-term memory. Works well in native headlines.
• Hear her voice. Voice and audio calls.
• Ask for a picture. Image generation inside the chat.
• Anime or realistic. Anime-style and original characters. Separate creatives for each audience.
• Story-led. Secret Shorts dramas and scenarios, for viewers who prefer narrative.
• Native language. Creatives in Spanish, French, German or Japanese for those geos, since the product is localized.

Rules to hold: no misleading creatives, so no fake chat notifications pretending to be a real person, no fake system alerts, no claims the product does not make. Creatives must be 18+ and must follow each network's own content policy.

Pre-landers

A pre-lander sits between the ad and the offer landing page. For AI companion offers it usually earns its place on push, native and popunder, and is optional on display.

Pre-lander types to test:

• Character picker. Two to four character cards; clicking any one goes to the offer. Gives the user a small choice and sets expectations.
• Quiz. Three short questions about preferences (style, personality, language), then the offer. Keep it short.
• Feature explainer. A short page with three features and screenshots, then a button.
• Age gate only. A minimal confirm-18+ page, which on some sources filters bot traffic and improves downstream quality.

Every pre-lander must pass the incoming query string to the outbound link. If your sub-IDs or click ID are dropped, your optimization data is gone. Test with Affiliate clicks not tracking.

Geo tier logic

CPA on the Secrets AI affiliate program is geo-tiered: Tier 1 countries earn the most, and your affiliate manager confirms the per-tier rates. That should shape your launch order.

1. Start with Tier 1. Higher payout per paying user gives you more room to find a working angle before you run out of budget. Click costs are higher, but the data you get is also cleaner.
2. Expand to localized geos next. Spanish, French, German and Japanese speaking markets get the product in their own language. Translate your creatives and pre-landers before you launch there.
3. Test lower tiers last, with proven creatives and landers only. Lower tiers forgive less experimentation.

Split campaigns by geo, or at minimum by tier, so bids and creatives can be tuned per market.

Bid strategy

• Launch at or slightly above the network's suggested bid so you get enough volume to learn. Starving a test of impressions wastes the test.
• Use whitelists and blacklists by placement (zone, site or source ID). Pass the placement ID into sub4 so you can see it in Everflow.
• Bid down or block placements that spend a multiple of your target cost per paying user without converting. Set the multiple before launch, not during.
• Bid up on placements that convert below target, in small steps, and watch whether volume and conversion rate hold.
• Separate mobile and desktop campaigns when volume allows. Conversion behavior differs.

Postbacks for optimization

Most networks optimize better when they know which clicks converted. Everflow supports server-to-server postbacks, so you can fire a conversion back to the traffic source.

How to wire it:

1. Get the network's postback URL template and its click ID macro.
2. Put the network's click ID macro into sub1 on your Secrets tracking link. sub1 is the Click ID field, and it is what postbacks return.
3. In Everflow, open Postbacks, add one with delivery set to server-to-server, and paste the network's URL with {sub1} in its click ID slot. Add {payout_amount}, {transaction_id} or {offer_id} if the network accepts them. Macro names are case-sensitive.
4. Run a test conversion with your affiliate manager or confirm the first real one shows on both sides. Reporting → Postback shows whether it fired and got a 2xx response.

Everflow auto-deactivates a postback after 10 consecutive failures within 72 hours, so fix errors quickly and re-enable it once the destination returns 2xx. Google, Meta, TikTok and Reddit do not accept a plain GET postback: they need authenticated POST requests through their Conversions APIs, so route those through a tracker.

Once postbacks work, use the network's automated rules or smart bidding against real conversion data. Check which conversion event your postback fires on with your manager so you know what the network is optimizing toward.

Sub-ID scheme for media buying

Field	Meaning
Source ID	Traffic source, such as push_network_a or native_network_b
sub1	Network or tracker click ID (reserved, returned by postbacks)
sub2	Campaign or geo
sub3	Creative ID
sub4	Placement, zone or site ID
sub5	Optional extra, such as pre-lander variant

Compare landing pages in the Flex Report by Offer URL, with a Clicks > 300 filter so thin rows do not mislead you.

Scaling rules

Scale what is proven, in steps, and watch the right number.

• Scale only after a campaign is profitable over several days, not a single good day.
• Raise budgets in increments rather than doubling at once. Large jumps push you into lower-quality inventory on most networks.
• Scale horizontally first. Clone the winning setup into a new geo in the same tier, a new network, or a new format before you push one campaign's budget hard.
• Refresh creatives on a schedule. Ad fatigue shows up as falling click-through rate at a stable bid. Keep two or three new variants in testing at all times.
• Watch downstream quality, not just signups. If paying users per click falls as you scale, you have moved into weaker inventory.

When to switch from CPA to hybrid

CPA pays on each qualifying paying user, up to $70 depending on geo. It suits early testing because you get paid fast for what you send.

Ask your affiliate manager about a hybrid deal (CPA plus RevShare) when:

• Campaigns are stable and you expect to run them for months.
• Your traffic shows good retention, meaning users keep paying after the first purchase. Your manager can help you see this.
• You want part of your upside to grow with the lifetime value of the users you send.

Pure RevShare is 40% lifetime on every purchase a referred user makes. It is usually a better fit for content and community traffic than for paid buys that need fast cash recovery, but a hybrid lets media buyers have both. See /commissions.

Next steps

• Set up postbacks with /onboarding.
• Build your optimization routine with Conversion rate optimization.
• Fix tracking gaps with Affiliate clicks not tracking.
• Ready to start: apply to the Secrets AI affiliate program.