Volume-based bidding: why it fails and what smart marketers do instead

Allan Stone, CEO at Intelitics, says that volume bidding is showing its cracks amid rising acquisition costs and the need for increased accountability, with a value mindset now required for the best results

Volume-based bidding has long been the default approach in performance marketing with marketers focusing on more clicks, more installs and more traffic.

The idea behind this being that the more scale you can generate at the top of the funnel, the more conversions you will achieve downstream.

In the past, this approach did make some sense. Platforms were less mature, attribution was simpler and growth often came from sheer expansion.

But the market has changed – user acquisition costs are sky high, consumer behavior is fragmented and finance teams now demand accountability beyond surface-level metrics.

In short, the approach of pushing more traffic into the funnel and letting scale do the rest no longer works.

Today, volume-based bidding doesn’t just under-perform, it actively hides inefficiencies that prevent sustainable growth.

The illusion of scale:

This is because volume-based activities are optimized for activity, not outcomes. If you measure success by clicks, impressions or installs, campaigns can look healthy on the dashboard but with incredibly poor real-world performance.

Clicks, impressions and installs mean nothing if they don’t ultimately lead to conversions. And this means they are quietly failing the business.

These are just some of the deeper structural issues that volume-based bidding can hide:

• Low-intent users that never convert
• Inflated acquisition costs downstream
• Poor retention and lifetime value
• Volatile and unpredictable revenue performance.

Essentially, volume creates motion but not momentum.

But it’s momentum that needs to be used as the true indicator of success as it provides the ability to translate acquisition spend into measurable and repeatable business outcomes.

However, this requires actionable intelligence and not vanity metrics – this is the only way operators can make smarter decisions and ultimately acquire high-quality players.

Why cheap traffic is often the most expensive:

This also means moving away from “cheap” traffic – one of the most common traps in volume-based bidding is the pursuit of lower-cost acquisition metrics.

Reduced CPCs or CPAs can feel like progress, but they frequently correlate with lower-quality users who churn quickly or, worse, never generate meaningful value.

Platforms will do what they are incentivized to do, so if your bidding strategy rewards quantity over quality, you’ll get more of the cheap traffic, regardless of its intent, engagement or long-term contribution.

The result is an all-too-familiar paradox where marketing teams pay less per click but far more per meaningful outcome, regardless of whether that’s a first-time depositor, repeat customer or sustained revenue.

Volume breaks when budgets tighten:

And this invariably happens when volume-driven campaigns fail to deliver – when budgets are scrutinized and economic pressure increases, marketing leaders are forced to ask harder questions like:

• Which channels actually drive FTDs?
• Which partners generate long-term value and not just short-term activity?
• Where is spend being wasted and why?

Volume-based models usually struggle to answer these questions because they lack the clear line of sight into downstream performance.

Without such clarity, optimization becomes reactive rather than strategic, and scaling feels risky instead of repeatable.

​​The attribution gap: why most bidding strategies are blind:

One of the main reasons why volume-bidding fails is not intent – it’s visibility, or, rather, the lack of it.

Most acquisition strategies are built on incomplete or delayed data. Platforms optimize to the signals they can see fastest – clicks, installs first events.

But the metrics that actually matter – FTD, repeat behavior, lifetime value – come days, weeks or even months downstream and are disconnected from the bidding logic that drives the traffic in the first instance.

This creates a deep and fundamental attribution gap.

When bidding decisions are made without reliable downstream feedback, marketers are effectively optimizing in the dark.

Channels that look efficient at the top of the funnel are scaled, while those that drive real value but convert later are deprioritized or cut.

Over time, this leads to three compounding issues:

• High-performing sources are misclassified as under-performers
• Low-quality traffic is repeatedly rewarded
• Budget allocation becomes more disconnected from real revenue impact

Without closing the loop between acquisition activity and downstream outcomes, even well-intentioned optimization effects reinforce the wrong behaviors.

Issues with volume-bidding identified, but what should marketers do instead?

What smart marketers are doing instead:

Leading performance marketing teams are moving away from volume-based bidding and towards value-driven decision making instead.

But that means reorienting acquisition strategies around signals that reflect real business impact.

What does that look like? Instead of asking “What traffic did we buy?”, ask the following:

• Which users convert downstream?
• Which campaigns drive repeat behavior?
• Which sources contribute to long-term value?

The shift doesn’t mean buying less traffic, it means buying better traffic. Traffic that aligns with business outcomes and not just platform and vanity KPIs.

From volume to value:

Today, the most successful acquisition strategies aren’t built on bigger funnels, they’re built on clearer ones. When teams understand user value beyond the first click, bidding becomes more precise, spend more predictable and growth more sustainable.

Volume-based bidding fails because it optimizes the wrong goal while value-based thinking succeeds because it aligns acquisition with actual outcomes.

As performance marketing continues to evolve, the real question isn’t how much traffic you can buy, it’s how much of that traffic actually delivers.

At Intelitics, we are building value-based technology that connects acquisition activity to downstream performance, helping operators move from noise to insight and from scale to sustainability.

For teams looking to evolve beyond volume and unlock smarter growth, this shift has already begun and we are here to support them in making that transition.