When planning an advertising campaign, one of the most important decisions is choosing the right payment model. Should you go with CPM, where you pay for impressions, or CPC, where you pay for clicks? The answer is not universal. It depends on your goals, the product you promote, and the advertising network you choose to work with.

CPM, or Cost per Mille, is all about visibility.
 You pay for every thousand impressions, regardless of how many clicks your ad receives. This model is perfect if you want to buy traffic at scale, maximize reach, and make sure your brand, product, or offer is seen by as many users as possible. With CPM, traffic delivery is predictable, scalable, and fully under your control because you are buying pure exposure. CPM campaigns also allow you to start building optimization tools very quickly.
After only one or two weeks, once enough data is collected, you can create your own whitelists and blacklists. This lets you clearly see which sites deliver quality popunder traffic and which ones should be excluded.
 

At Trafficshop, this model powers our SSP popunder traffic and skimmed traffic. It gives advertisers reliable volumes and a clear way to plan campaigns. If you buy through RTB, XML, or JSON, you can also run these same placements on a CPC basis. The flexibility depends on how your own ad network or platform is set up and optimized.
 

CPC, or Cost per Click, works differently.
 You only pay when users interact with your ad by clicking on it. This makes CPC campaigns very attractive for performance-focused advertisers who care about measurable engagement and conversions. It is easy to test creatives, compare GEOs, and optimize budgets for segments that deliver results. At Trafficshop, our banner and native formats are available on CPC, giving advertisers complete control over performance without spending money on unengaged impressions.
 

This model is very performance-friendly but it makes volumes harder to forecast. Even with many impressions, if CTR is low, the campaign may struggle to spend. CPC campaigns often rely on platform algorithms to decide where to show ads to generate clicks. For the advertiser this can feel less manual but also less predictable.
 

So which one should you choose? If you are confident in your creatives, trust their clickability, and know that your offers perform well on banner and native traffic, then CPC is the logical choice. You will pay only for real engagement and can focus on optimizing for conversions.
 

If your goal is to capture the bigger picture and test what the most popular and high-volume traffic types can bring you, then CPM is the smarter solution. It lets you buy traffic in large volumes, collect data faster, and build the foundation for long-term optimization.
 

At Trafficshop, we offer both options. Whether you want to buy traffic for branding, conversions, or testing, our advertising network gives you the reach and control you need. CPM and CPC are not rivals but complementary strategies. Each has its benefits, and the real value comes from knowing when to use one, the other, or a mix of both.

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