Basics · also called media arbitrage, click arbitrage
Traffic arbitrage
Traffic arbitrage is paying to bring visitors to a web page and earning more from those visitors, through ads or sales, than it cost to bring them.
Traffic arbitrage is the umbrella term for any business that buys website visitors and resells their attention at a profit. The buying happens on a traffic source such as a social network or a native ad network. The selling happens on the operator's own page, where the visitor earns money through search ads, display ads, an affiliate offer or a lead form.
Search arbitrage is one branch, where the earning side is a search feed. Ad arbitrage is another, where the earning side is display advertising on a content site. Affiliate arbitrage earns a commission when the visitor buys something.
All branches share the same maths: revenue per visitor (RPV) must be higher than cost per visitor (CPC). They also share the same weakness. The operator owns neither the place the traffic comes from nor the place the money comes from, so a policy change on either side can wipe out the margin overnight. This is known as platform risk.
Think of it like this
Think of a bus company that pays for adverts to fill its seats, then earns from the roadside restaurants that pay it to stop there. It only works if the restaurant fees exceed the advert bill.
Related terms
Search arbitrage
Search arbitrage is buying visitors cheaply from one ad platform and sending them to a page of search ads that pays more per visitor than they cost.
Ad arbitrage
Ad arbitrage is buying visitors with cheap ads and earning more from the ads those visitors see or click on your own pages.
Arbitrage
Arbitrage is buying something in one market and selling it at a higher price in another, keeping the price difference as profit.
Traffic source
A traffic source is the platform or channel that visitors come from, such as Facebook ads, a native ad network or a search engine.
RPV (revenue per visit)
RPV is total revenue divided by the number of visits to the landing page, showing what one arriving visitor is worth on average.
Platform risk
Platform risk is the chance that a company you depend on, such as Google, Microsoft or Meta, changes its rules, prices or products in a way that damages your business.