Optimize-it-all: Advertiser’s guide to Whitelists and Blacklists

Looking for a way to filter traffic and get higher ROI from your offers?

Then whitelists and blacklists are exactly what you need. With this optimization method, advertisers like you can easily focus on top-performing zones and protect their budget with minimum hassle.

We’ll take you from A to Z of white- and blacklisting, covering the basics alongside some advanced strategies from Galaksion’s top experts. Trust, you’ll want to try these for yourself. 

Study the full guide below, sort your traffic sources like a pro, and boost your next ad campaign with us!

What are Whitelists and Blacklists?



In simpler terms, you can think of it as traffic sorting based on data and performance. Let’s start our deep dive with a typical scenario we’ve all been through. 

You launch your ad campaign with a broad directory of ad zones. 

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Your tests vary: some zones generate conversions, others overspend your budget. 

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You want to prioritize profitable ad zones and exclude weaker ones without stopping the campaign altogether. 

Solution? Easy: use the testing data to create whitelists and blacklists.

This way, you can evaluate each zone individually and assess its quality for your specific offer.

If you organize your traffic sources, you can hit your targets and manage your budget more precisely. 

Whitelists and Blacklists: five key benefits



Now that we’ve covered the basic concept, here’s what you will actually gain by mastering this optimization method.

1️⃣ Maximum results from your traffic.

If you use both whitelists and blacklists for your offer, you will get traffic almost exclusively from high-performing ad zones that match your exact case. 

2️⃣ Your budget will be under control.

Blacklists will let you cut off ineffective placements right away, thus saving your investments at an early stage.

3️⃣ Streamlined optimization. 

A whitelist will clearly highlight the best zones of your campaign (we can even say: the best of the best). 

So you can identify the crème de la crème more quickly, run a separate campaign for these zones, and boost them even further. 

Moreover, if your vertical shows strong results on traffic from Galaksion, you have the option to request whitelists from our managers. 

These verticals include:

• Utilities;
• VPN;
• iGaming;
• Streaming + VOD;
• E-commerce;
• and more.

You can register and start with optimized lists almost right away. As always, data takes the crown!

4️⃣ Gaining a deeper understanding of your offers. 

You’ll clearly see what works and what doesn’t, analyze the effectiveness of your strategies, and can use this knowledge in your future campaigns. 

5️⃣ Higher ROI overall. And who doesn’t want that?

All these benefits translate into a VERY desired outcome for us all: bigger earnings. You will preserve your budget and manage the traffic sources more wisely. 

In short, whitelists and blacklists significantly increase your chances to profit.

Navigating them can be a bit tricky for beginner affiliates. But it’s just as rewarding: this tactic rightfully often ranks among the best among advertisers.

We’ll walk you through the process, focusing next on definitions and key differences.

Whitelists



A whitelist is a curated list of ad zones that consistently generate conversions and high-quality leads. These are the zones you definitely want to scale further. 

Zones get sorted and selected based on:

• how well they match your offer, 
• higher conversion rates, 
• and regularly stable performance.

This approach ensures maximum traffic relevancy. So with a whitelist, you reach your target audience more accurately and see better results overall.

Blacklists



By contrast, a blacklist is a list of underperforming ad zones you would like to exclude as traffic sources. Perfect for exploring new zones in your RON (Run on Network) campaigns. 

If whitelists are about maximizing the potential of well-performing zones, blacklists are more about guarding your budget. You can prevent your ads from appearing in zones that don’t meet your performance goals in terms of clicks, conversions, or revenue.

When you detect a zone with negative ROI, you can block it individually using the zone ID number. 

Early identification is key to avoid overpaying. That’s exactly why you need to closely watch your ad campaign. 

Intro to zone analysis: key points to monitor



The next question is, when and what do you actually need to observe? Timings and metrics matter. 

Timings:

Testing → 2–3 days

Target broad to collect enough data, then analyze and sort the zone IDs based on the results. If you have “gray” zones, give them a couple more days.

WLs and BLs renewal → every 2–3 weeks

If you’re working with high-performance verticals such as iGaming, make sure to refresh your lists more frequently. 

Most importantly, remember that the market fluctuates. You need to be two steps ahead and catch green zones turning red and vice versa. 

Metrics to watch: 

• ROI;
• Conversions;
• CR (conversion rate);
• CTR (click-through rate);
• Traffic costs;
• Bids;
• GEOs;
• Verticals;
• Formats.

Targeting in WL/BL campaigns:

When creating your lists, make sure you build separate ones for different GEOs, verticals, and formats. Since we’re doing detailed zone assessment, a grouping approach like this can have a negative impact on your earnings. 

So stay alert, react fast, and always keep in mind that no parameter is set in stone. 

8 tricks from our optimization team



Believe us, we at Galaksion have seen thousands of whitelist- and blacklist-campaigns during our 11 years in the industry.

We summarized this experience into easy-to-follow recommendations that suit any offer, GEO, or vertical you can think of.

For Whitelist campaigns, 



1️⃣ Set bids and frequency caps higher than recommended for your GEO. 

❗When launching a ROS (Run on Sites) campaign, you MUST keep your rates competitive. Many advertisers will want to win traffic on top-performing zones, so your bids have to match the strong demand. 

Galaksion’s features such as Traffic Volumes and Custom Rates will help you manage these bids more effectively. For whitelist campaigns, refer to rate recommendations as your starting point and set bids higher than suggested to stay ahead in the auction. 

See how it looks in the Traffic Volumes section:

And here’s our tool Custom Rates that helps to increase or decrease rates in one, two, or any selected campaign zones. All in the settings of your campaign!

2️⃣ Run a separate ad campaign for your most profitable zones. 

Whitelists are made for one thing only: to boost your offer’s performance. So make sure to spot your gold mines and treat them extra special. 

All it takes is some performance analysis and filtering for top results. 

Keep in mind that if your separate whitelist campaign is short on zones and you’re working with only a handful of them, your rates must be high. Otherwise, you won’t be getting as much traffic as you would like due to competition and a narrow pool of sources. 

3️⃣ Switch back to broader targeting if your results drop. 

As we already mentioned, the market moves fast, and your whitelists can become outdated every couple weeks. 

But there’s always more fish in the sea: new zones appear in our ad network on a daily basis. You’ll have fresh opportunities for ROI once you update your list. 

4️⃣ Keep your whitelists distinguised and unique.

Each offer is different. Don’t blindly copy some other advertiser’s whitelist and don’t duplicate your lists across multiple offers, GEOs, or verticals. 

Objective to keep in mind: your ad campaign should buy traffic exclusively from zones that truly match your offer. Not your advertiser friends’; YOURS. 

For Blacklist campaigns, 



5️⃣ Use Zones Tumbler Switch for your RON campaigns. 

Blacklists help you discover new profitable zones without the fear of overpaying. 

Even if you have a whitelist, we always recommend to keep a RON campaign running on the side. Galaksion’s Zones Tumbler Switch feature will allow you to easily exclude low-performing zones and form a blacklist more quickly. 

6️⃣ Retest your black and grey zones. 

Just like with whitelists, it’s better to revise your sortings after a few weeks. Who knows, maybe the metrics will recover, and you will want to add these zones back to your ad campaign.

7️⃣ Don’t go overboard with blacklisting.

Aggressive blacklisting can prevent your ad campaign from scaling further. Remember: guarding your budget doesn’t mean cutting off your profit sources. In addition, you can also try lowering your bids instead of blacklisting the zone altogether.

For maximum benefits, 



8️⃣ Work with both whitelists and blacklists for your offer.

A winning approach is to run your whitelist and blacklist campaigns side by side. You’ll be boosting profitable zones while actively hunting for new ones! 

How to create your whitelists and blacklists on the platform



You can either:

— Ask your Galaksion manager for whitelists

Suits best if your verticals rank among our top-performers or if you have already run campaigns on our traffic. 

Feel free to provide your offer’s details and mention the ad formats, GEOs, and verticals you’re interested in. It will greatly help our support team to assemble your list! 

or 

— Manually sort your zones based on performance

Done after the testing phase (2–3 days). Green zones should go to a whitelist, and red ones to a blacklist. 

Once you analyze performance, you can assess the zones in your campaign setting. 

Go to “Campaigns” → click to edit your campaign → scroll down to “Targeting” → input your zone ID picks. 

Once again, our features can help you save time and effort. Use Custom Rates for a more streamlined whitelisting process, and Zones Tumbler Switch for blacklisting. 

That’s it! Now you’re all equipped with the whats, the why, and the hows. 

We’re sure you’ll love the benefits of working with whitelists and blacklists.

Ready to power your campaigns? Register and try this performance strategy.

Note: this article is the first installment in our new series Optimize-it-all.

Brought to you by Galaksion’s optimization experts, our guides exist to boost your ROI with data-driven scaling. 

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