A simple definition: a pre-lander is the page someone sees after clicking an ad and before the offer page. Its job is not to sell but to prepare: explain the problem, show a solution, handle objections and hand an already interested visitor over to the landing page. The landing page is the offer's own page, where people submit a lead or pay for an order. In affiliate marketing a pre-lander is also called a prelander, a pre-landing page or a bridge page.
The difference in one line: the pre-lander warms up, the landing page closes. Below: why this extra step is needed at all, which types exist, what a good pre-lander looks like and how to check honestly that it makes money rather than eats it.
What a pre-lander is in affiliate marketing
An affiliate funnel usually has three links: the creative (the ad), the pre-lander and the offer landing page. The creative grabs attention, the pre-lander explains, the landing page takes the lead.
The pre-lander grew out of a simple observation: someone who was scrolling a feed and clicked an ad by chance is not ready to fill in a form right away. They were not looking for the product, do not know why they need it, and on a landing page with a form and a price they simply close the tab. An intermediate page gives them context: an article about the problem, a quiz, a personal story, a comparison of options.
Pre-lander vs landing page: the difference
| Pre-lander | Landing page | |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Prepare, spark interest | Get a lead or a sale |
| Whose | Usually yours (or a ready one from the network) | Usually the advertiser's or the network's |
| Target action | Clicking the button, moving on | Filling in the form, paying |
| Metric | Click-through to the offer (LP CTR) | Conversion to lead or sale |
| Format | Article, quiz, review, comparison | Sales page with a form |
| Required? | No, depends on traffic | Yes, it is the offer |
How the sales page itself is built is covered separately in the piece on the affiliate landing page.
When a pre-lander helps and when it hurts
A pre-lander is one more screen where some people will drop off. So it is justified only if the warm-up outweighs the losses.
- Helps: cold traffic from social media, native, push and pop; a product that is complex or new to the audience; offers where the decision requires trust (finance, health, education).
- Rather hurts: hot search traffic where someone is looking for a specific product; simple offers with an obvious benefit; mobile subscriptions with a short path.
"Do we need a pre-lander?" is settled not by argument but by a test: one branch with a pre-lander, another straight to the offer. How such a test works is described below.
Pre-lander types: format examples
There are many formats, but almost all come down to four main ones. Below is what each is, when it works and where people usually go wrong.
Article (advertorial)
Text in the form of an editorial piece: problem, causes, solution, transition to the product. The most common type. A pre-lander example in article form: "Why your back hurts after working at a computer: five habits worth changing", with a product block near the end and a "Learn more" button.
Where people go wrong: designing the piece to look like a news site or a well-known outlet it is not, and signing it with a made-up "doctor". This is plain deception, and platforms reject ads for it.
Quiz
A few questions: "How old are you?", "How often do you…?", "What matters more to you?". At the end, "the option that suits you" and a link to the offer. A quiz engages: the person has already spent a minute answering questions and is more likely to see it through.
Where people go wrong: the result does not depend on the answers, and the questions lead nowhere. If someone notices that the "personal match" is the same for everyone, trust is gone.
Review or personal story
A first-person account of how someone solved their problem. It works through emotion and recognition. The honest version is a real customer review published with consent, or a story told by the brand and clearly marked as an example.
Where people go wrong: inventing a hero, using a random stock photo as a "real customer", showing impossible results.
Comparison and review
An "option A vs option B" table, a review of several solutions, a "what to look for when choosing" guide. Suits e-commerce, services and finance, where people have a choice and need help.
Where people go wrong: a "review" in which everything except the advertised product is deliberately made to look bad. Attentive readers see through it.
Other formats
You will also see calculators ("work out how much you overpay"), wheels of fortune and giveaways (in sweepstakes) and video pre-landers. The mechanics are the same: short engagement and a move to the offer.
Pre-lander structure: what a good pre-lander is made of
The type can be anything, but a working pre-lander usually has the same blocks.
- A headline that continues the ad. The person clicked on a specific promise, and the first screen must confirm it. If the creative is about sleep and the pre-lander opens with blood pressure, the person leaves.
- The problem and recognition. A couple of paragraphs about a situation the reader recognizes.
- Explanation. Why this happens and what actually helps. This is the most valuable part: it gives the person a reason to trust the page.
- The solution and the product. A move to the offer without a sudden change of tone.
- Handling objections. Price, timing, delivery, guarantee: what the person will ask themselves before clicking.
- Call to action and button. Clear, visible and repeated in several places on a long page.
- Disclaimers and legal links. Privacy policy, contacts, warnings for sensitive topics.
Tip. Build the pre-lander for phones first. Almost all social and native traffic is mobile: long paragraphs, small fonts and heavy images kill read-through there.
A separate word on speed. Every extra second of loading on a pre-lander means people lost before they even saw the offer. Compress images, remove unnecessary scripts and counters, and test the page on a slow mobile connection.
Honest promises and ad platform rules
In the platform's eyes, a pre-lander is part of the ad. Meta, Google, TikTok and others review not only the creative but also the page it leads to, and the requirements for that page are the same as for the ad itself.
What usually counts as a violation:
- Unrealistic claims: "lose 10 kg in a week", "guaranteed income", "cures it for good".
- Impersonation: designing the page to look like a well-known outlet, a government body, a bank or a brand you are not.
- Fake reviews and experts: invented doctors, celebrities without permission, fake comments.
- Mismatch: the pre-lander promises one thing, the offer delivers another.
- Restricted categories without authorization: gambling, finance, health and crypto require licenses or certification; more in the article on restricted ad categories.
The main rule is simple: the platform's reviewer and an ordinary user must see the same page. Platforms explicitly forbid showing reviewers one thing and people another, and treat it as circumventing their systems, with the account and related accounts suspended. So build the pre-lander so that you would not be embarrassed to show it to a moderator. How to phrase promises and disclaimers is covered in ad creative policy compliance, and the requirements of a specific platform, for example, in Meta advertising policies. Always check the current version of the rules in the platform's own help center.
How to test pre-landers: split tests and metrics
There is no way to guess in advance which pre-lander will work. A quiz that did well in one geo may flop in the neighboring one. So pre-landers are tested the same way as offers: at the same time, on the same traffic, counting money all the way to the bottom of the funnel. The general method is in the article on split testing offers and landing pages.
Which metrics to watch
| Metric | What it shows | The trap |
|---|---|---|
| LP CTR (click-through to the offer) | How well the pre-lander motivates people to move on | A clickbait pre-lander gives many clicks and few leads |
| CR to lead | How many visitors submit a lead | Misleading without approval data |
| Approval rate | What share of leads is confirmed | Hold stretches the result over days |
| EPC and ROI | How much money a click brings | You need to wait for statuses from the network |
The decision is made on money, not click-throughs. A pre-lander that sends fewer people onward may bring more approved leads: it filters out those who do not need the product. How to calculate the result is covered in how to calculate ROI, lead statuses in conversion statuses.
Clean traffic is a condition for an honest test
If some visits are bots, they "visit" the pre-lander and sometimes even click the button, but they never buy. Bot traffic is spread unevenly between variants, and one pre-lander may lose simply because it got more junk. Before drawing conclusions, cut at least the obvious data centers, proxies and robot browsers; more in how to filter bot traffic.
Pre-landers in ArtisanClo
In ArtisanClo a pre-lander is a separate destination in the flow, on a par with offers. It is available in tracker modes (Tracker and Cloaking + Tracker); which features come with which plan is on the pricing page.
How it works:
- The pre-lander card looks like an offer card: name, URL, display mode (Redirect by default).
- Where it leads: By weight among offers or to a specific offer.
- The button on the pre-lander must point to the
{click_url}macro. If there are several buttons leading to different offers,/2,/3are appended to the URL.
https://your-prelander.com/?go={click_url}
- Pre-lander split: with two or more pre-landers, each gets a Weight, and traffic is split by weight. The Auto weights button splits it evenly.
- Visitor pinning: you can set a period during which a returning person sees the same pre-lander and the same offer, so they do not get confused and do not skew the statistics.
- Tags: each pre-lander has its own set of Link parameters rules if it needs its own parameter names.
Results are visible in the Money by slice report: the pre-lander breakdown (under the More… button) and the LP clicks, LP CTR and To offer columns, with conversions, revenue, profit and ROI alongside. That way you see not only which pre-lander sends people to the offer better but also which one actually brings money in the end. If you need to split the audience not at random but by country or device, use branches; each branch has its own offers. An overview of other features is on the ArtisanClo features page.
Common pre-lander mistakes
- The pre-lander does not continue the creative. The person clicked on one thing, saw another and left.
- Too long. On cold mobile traffic, hardly anyone reads five screens of text.
- No button on the first screen. Some people are ready to move on right away; do not make them scroll.
- Testing on low volume. A conclusion from a couple of dozen click-throughs is almost always chance.
- Judging by CTR instead of money. Clickbait brings click-throughs, not leads.
- Promises the offer does not keep. That means call center rejections and trouble with the platform.
- One pre-lander for all geos. Translation is not localization: examples, currency and everyday details should be local, not just translated.
Summary
A pre-lander is the page between the ad and the offer that prepares a cold visitor to buy. The main types are the article, the quiz, the review and the comparison; a good pre-lander continues the creative's promise, explains, handles objections and loads fast on a phone. Whether a particular funnel needs one is decided by a test: several pre-landers and a variant without one, the same traffic, judged by profit. And most importantly, a pre-lander is as much a part of the ad as the creative: its promises must be real, and the page must be the same for the user and for the platform's review.
