How CPA/CPL ads actually works?

I made an app for a local market and would like to monetize it. I figured out that ads by CPA/CPL pay more. But for me, it looks super fraud. I spend half of the day to find information about it and still not sure in my knowledge.

For example, 1000 users will click on an ad and will be redirected to the advertiser they made purchase/level up(anything). But how "ad seller" (network) can be sure that every successful action/lead was handled? What if they disable POST-back request/or webhook for some time? In result, advertiser got actions/leads and I get nothing. How "networks" identify that I will get everything?

It looks quite sketchy, yes.

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I ran some media buying experiments once upon a time using porn ads, because at least in that niche you can buy ad space for cheap (depends on the county…I ran ads in countries I didn't know existed). In other words, instead of offering the ad space, I was buying it.

I didn't do it for long, mainly because I wasn't exactly into making porn ads all day…not to mention the fact that when I would imagine the people signing up for the sites I was promoting - which usually had some ridiculous landing page ("Where are you, and how do we f*ck!?")- I kept imagining some lonely person who would be better off NOT signing up for that site.

In my experience, the media buying space is kinda sketchy, or at least confusing. It always seemed that a lot of the people making money by way of media buying were sharks, and trying to turn a profit anyway they could. Take a look through blackhatworld and you'll get some idea.

I don't think CPA/CPL is bad through and through, but like anything else, if you want to present your users with content/ads/whatever that are actually relevant, you have to put the legwork in and make sure it's all up to par.

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Maxim Dzhuliy Author

@alex, ok in this point for example you were able to not send POST-back request that user signed up. How affiliate network handled this case?

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I'm not sure I understand the question - I didn't really handle anything aside from creating ads, setting campaign spending amounts, and choosing where to run ads.

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