The difference between Tier 1, 2 and 3 countries in affiliate marketing

What are Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 countries in affiliate marketing?

Tiers in affiliate marketing are terms applicable to geos that simplify some characteristics: payouts, audience penetration, solvency and the difficulty to effectively approach the users. While traditionally all geos within the affiliate marketing area are sorted into Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3, there’s also a Tier 4 category, which includes the countries of no interest to advertisers. They simply can’t be measured as there is either no traffic or no publishers operating.

Also, a Tier for a region correlates with a conventional distinction into developed, developing and underdeveloped economics within those countries.

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The difference between Tier 1, 2 and 3 countries

Since a Tier indicates the overall wealth of the country’s audience, it’s reasonable to claim that the higher the Tier of a geo — the higher the payouts and audience solvency but harder to approach it. Also a Tier can be attached to certain specifics while advertising particular verticals, for example, online casino and betting audiences from lower Tiers play to earn easy money, while the users from higher Tiers geos perceive gambling as entertainment. Plus to that, depending on a Tier, expected budgets, effective creative approaches, funnels and even online payment availability might vary!

Below, you will find what geos belong to each Tier according to affiliate marketing categorising, sorted for you by RichAds ad network!

Tier 1 countries

The regions of Tier 1 are the most lucrative for affiliates, since the audience there is wealthy enough and brands are ready to give high payouts on advertised offers. At the same time the users from such countries are way harder to engage. Despite many publishers operating within such regions, Tier 1 countries are also a place for fierce competition which affects CPC and CPM bids for advertising, thus demanding higher budget to enter.

The Tier 1 consists of the most developed countries of North America, Europe and Oceania.

The full list of Tier 1 geos in affiliate marketing:

Tier 2 countries

The geos included into Tier 2 are considered to be decent countries that possess somewhat wealthy audiences across various verticals, so the brands consistently explore and expand over there. The average payouts are slightly lower than at Tier 1, but still are pretty high. One noticeable difference between Tier 1 and Tier 2 regions is that in the latter the audiences are easier to approach, so the competition is not that fierce. The amount of publishers covers all the marketers’ needs, so the traffic itself is both high quality and affordable.

The Tier 2 classification can be applied to some relatively rich countries of Eastern Europe, CIS, Latin America, East Asia and Middle East.

The full list of Tier 2 geos in affiliate marketing:

What is RichAds?
🔝 High quality push and pop ads,
🔼 domain redirect and native traffic source,
🔝 buy push ads at $0.005 (CPC), pop ads at $0.5 (CPM),
⏫ domain ads costs start from $1.5 (CPM), native ads — from $0.001 (CPC),
⏫ ad network offers large volumes of traffic in more than 200 geos from Tier 3 to Tier 1.

Tier 3 countries

The geos that belong to Tier 3 are the most populated regions yet with low solvency audiences, hence the lowest average payouts among all Tiers. The extreme amounts of traffic drive many brands towards such regions while it’s well-known that a large part of users will be sorted out in the process. The audience in Tier 3 countries is the easiest to approach, yet usually struggling in terms of solvency and available payment methods. The competition among marketers for such geos is intact yet less intense, as the amount of potential clients and publishers exceeds the amount of offers.

Tier 3 regions also pose certain challenges for advertising some verticals due to local laws and regulations on particular products, such as online casinos, betting and financial platforms. This Tier consists of almost all the developing and underdeveloped countries not included into higher Tiers from Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia and Oceania.

The full list of Tier 3 geos in affiliate marketing:

Conclusion

Now you know the meaning of Tier 1, 2 and 3 attached to various countries in affiliate marketing. The Tiers help marketers evaluate the approximate payouts, traffic volumes and audience engagement rate in a geo, so they can be used to orient among the regions to advertise offers in. In some cases, a Tier might also indicate a specific feature while promoting certain verticals.

We at RichAds have been providing marketers with quality traffic on various formats for years now, exploring the best practices of advertising affiliate offers. Now our platform allows to launch campaigns on 5 powerful ad formats in over 220 geos from Tier 3 to Tier 1, while all top-notch tools to optimize are in-built and easy to access for advertisers. Start an ad campaign at RichAds platform right now!

What is RichAds?
🔝 High quality push and pop ads,
🔼 domain redirect and native traffic source,
🔝 buy push ads at $0.005 (CPC), pop ads at $0.5 (CPM),
⏫ domain ads costs start from $1.5 (CPM), native ads — from $0.001 (CPC),
⏫ ad network offers large volumes of traffic in more than 200 geos from Tier 3 to Tier 1.