Social to search arbitrage is when you buy traffic from for example TikTok (via paid ads) and direct that traffic to a monetization page with relevant search results. The monetization page will display a few different results, and each result will send the user to the website of the business running search engine campaigns. Usually, the TikTok advertiser would get paid each time a visitor clicks on one of these search results.
These search results are displayed by search feed providers. Search feed providers are Google, Yahoo, or Bing partners. We will dive deeper into search feed providers in a moment.
This process of buying and selling traffic is commonly referred to as “traffic arbitrage”. It’s extremely effective for conversions, because it ensures that each visitor is qualified twice - firstly, when they click on the ad, and secondly, when they click on a specific result on the monetization page.
Instead of buying traffic from TikTok, you can buy it from essentially any advertising platform, such as Meta, Google, Taboola, Outbrain, and more. So, why are we focusing on TikTok to search arbitrage?
TikTok has become one of the fastest growing platforms within the search arbitrage space over the past two years. Being a relatively new platform, the cost of buying traffic from TikTok is lower than most other platforms at the moment. TikTok’s smart algorithm, advanced targeting options, and unprecedented high engagement rates, are also attracting more and more search arbitrage marketers to join the platform.
Do you have your TikTok ad account and your Tonic account ready? Now, it’s time to learn how to set your campaigns up for success. The campaign setup will dictate how the data will flow from TikTok to Tonic, and what type of information you will be able to track.
There are two general ways to set up your campaigns - the direct flow (without a tracker), and the tracked flow (with a tracker).
With the direct flow, the visitor will go directly from the TikTok ad to the link provided by us.
In this case, you will usually have to build the campaign link manually. You will need to append the required tracking information to the links provided by us, and use them as destination URLs for your campaigns.
Although the direct flow is simple to implement, it comes with its own limitations, especially when it comes to tracking. Your tracking capabilities will be limited to the tracking & reporting capabilities of the search feed provider. That means that you will have limited access to detailed visitor data, which makes optimizing your campaigns more difficult.
This is why most search arbitrage marketers run their campaigns using the tracked flow.
With the tracked flow, a third-party tracker is added between TikTok and us.
With the tracked flow, instead of using the tracking URL you get from Tonic as the destination URL for your campaigns, you will need to use the tracker generated campaign URL.
There are plenty of affiliate trackers out there, but ClickFlare is one of the only trackers that has a direct integration with major search feed providers.
Social to Search can be very profitable, but you need to have the right tools and setup in order to succeed. You will need to find a search feed provider, decide on a campaign setup flow, master Social ads strategies, and deploy the power of automation tools to scale faster.
