Honestly I think there's a middle ground here. Yeah chasing exclusives often leads nowhere and most of the offers are recycled garbage. but I also think some of these so-called 'special' deals are just AMs trying to fluff their inventory or test new angles on the down-low. It's not all smoke and mirrors, sometimes they do have hidden gems if you know how to sniff them out. What really works for me is building relationships with a handful of AMs who actually know their stuff and are willing to share real insights. You gotta get past the hype and dig into their pipeline, find the offers that haven't been blasted all over the network. It's risky, yeah, but I've scored better conversions that way. Whitelists and owned traffic are solid but they don't replace the thrill of actually finding something that's still under the radar. Just my two cents, but I think there's a bit of truth in both sides.