PPCmate has put numbers on a part of media buying that rarely gets transparent pricing. The self-serve ad platform published country-level averages for pop-under and push traffic on October 30, covering what advertisers actually paid between September 30 and October 29.
The headline gap: US pop-under inventory averaged $5.31 per thousand impressions, while Pakistan averaged $0.19. That is almost a 28-to-1 spread across 15 countries.
What the data shows
Beyond the US-Pakistan gap, the UK came in at $1.88 and Germany at $0.77. The median across the 15 country averages was $0.47. On device, mobile pop-under inventory averaged $2.09 CPM, desktop $1.34, and tablet sat in between. Push notification clicks were priced separately: the US led at $0.069 per click, with Nigeria the cheapest at $0.016.
- Pop-under CPM: $5.31 US, $1.88 UK, $0.19 Pakistan.
- Device split: mobile $2.09 CPM, desktop $1.34 CPM.
- Push CPC: $0.069 US, $0.016 Nigeria.
- Window: September 30 to October 29, 2026, with quarterly updates promised.
PPCmate says it included only countries with at least three advertisers and excluded impressions it flagged and did not bill. That makes the data cleaner, but it still comes from a single marketplace, with no impression volumes or advertiser counts published.
Why this matters for media buyers
Pop-under and push pricing is usually guesswork. PPCmate is positioning this as a correction to rate-card lists. For marketers who run these formats, that is useful: country-level floors are hard to find.
But the benchmark also has limits. It cannot show how much of the mobile premium comes from the device versus the country mix, and it does not reveal how much traffic was removed by fraud filters. PPCmate’s own advice is the right frame: a cheap market that never converts is more expensive than an expensive one that does.
How to use the numbers
Treat the country averages as a starting floor, not a target. PPCmate says bids below the published averages mostly win leftover inventory. That is a practical rule for a first campaign, but the real optimization signal remains cost per conversion.
Keep country bids separate instead of blending a $5.31 market with a $0.19 market into one CPM. PPCmate’s new suggested bid and missed traffic tools point the same way: adjust at the source level, not the whole campaign.
For context, this is a very different pool from mainstream display. Adjust put US app advertising CPMs at $20.54 in the first half of 2026, and recent coverage put ChatGPT ad CPMs as low as $25. PPCmate’s top pop-under market is modest by comparison, and most of its countries trade below a dollar.
Source: PPC Land
