Bumper
A bumper is a technical intermediate page in the chain between an ad click and the final landing page or PWA, and its job isn't to warm the user up — it's to solve a specific technical problem, such as satisfying a platform's link format requirement, adding a check, or splitting display scenarios. Unlike a prelander, a bumper isn't trying to build interest, just to pass the user along.
What a bumper is for
A common case: an ad platform requires a separate clean URL for review, distinct from the real address the user actually ends up on, and a bumper keeps those two paths apart. A bumper can also serve as an extra checkpoint in a cloaking chain, or as a short technical delay before the PWA opens.
Bumpers in PWA arbitrage
Every extra bumper in the chain is another hop, and therefore another bit of load delay, so it's worth keeping only where it actually solves a technical problem, not adding one out of habit. APEX custom domains with one-click rotation cut the need for some of these stop-gaps entirely — for instance, cases where a bumper existed only to swap out a banned address quickly.
FAQ
- How is a bumper different from a prelander?
- A prelander exists to warm up and interest the user before the offer, while a bumper solves a technical problem in the chain, such as a platform's link format requirement, with no intent to engage anyone. Visually it can be nothing more than a blank page with no user-facing content at all.
- How many bumpers can a chain carry before conversion suffers?
- There's no universal number, but every added bumper increases time to the final page and, with it, the risk of losing traffic on a slow connection. The practical rule is to use a bumper only when the specific technical problem can't be solved without one.
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