Ok, here's my take... pop and redirect traffic is always a rollercoaster, some days it hits, some days it vanishes like your budget never existed. you hit a good spot last month, but now it's a ghost town. the thing is, this traffic is super sensitive to algo shifts but also to the sources and how well you juice the creatives and the landing pages. you're right to be skeptical about the secret sauce, most of that is just smoke and mirrors. the real juice is in constant testing and adjusting, especially in this vertical. if you're seeing your CR dropping from 3 to 1 percent, you're probably missing some tweaks. maybe the offers are stale, maybe the geo mix is off, or the algo just decided to be a pain today. honestly, if you rely on open networks for pop and redirect, you're just asking for trouble. the future is direct publisher deals, not open traffic pools that get slapped around by algo whips. keep testing, keep optimizing, and don't be scared to cut losses when it feels off. traffic's still alive if you know how to juice it right, but yeah, it's a grind.