THE BURNING QUESTIONS REVEALED FROM THE ADVIDI DATING MASTERCLASS #2

The latest Advidi Masterclass was on “The perfect match between creatives and Dating offers”. For a second time, we brought together in-house and external experts to dive into the main ins and outs of this subject, and discuss how to choose and make the right creatives, how to pick the right offers according to your creatives, and the best way to test them. 

Advidi’s senior account manager Marina Baskaric and Ovation’s media buyer Ewa Galina, along with the webinar host Maja Mitrovic, program director at Advidi, went thoroughly through the discussion about what comes first – the creatives or the offer. They also discussed successful Dating creatives strategies and covered everything about formats, design, size, and GEOs.

If you missed the conversation, you can still watch the webinar here.

We did our best to make sure no stone was left unturned during the webinar. Still, plenty of questions came during the live webinar, and afterward. Below is the summary of the most interesting questions we have received about this topic:

 

Q: I heard that matching the images on the banner and the presell works well but I haven’t tested it. What’s your take on it?

A: In theory having the congruent flow should help with results, but that’s sometimes hard to keep with a big scale when rotating many different banners and prelanders. It really depends on your campaign strategy. If you’re following a more high-volume strategy (RON) in which you don’t focus on a single niche or segment, then, to be honest, we prefer to let data speak and you’ll see that having a rotation of banners and prelanders is perhaps more important (as there’s thousands of different websites and audiences in the mix), so you never really know what truly works in advance. However, if you do focus on a niche, keywords, or a category for example, then it might be useful to have a more congruent funnel.

 

Q: How important is using correct grammar or regional slang on your creatives actually?

A:  You could sometimes see creatives with poor language or typos working surprisingly well, but overall yes, good spelling/grammar is important, especially if you’re after good backend quality. You should aim for correct grammar and understandable language in order to increase trust – users usually beware of shady ads, correct language will make it more legit. When it comes to regional slang it is worth testing, especially if you’re going with a local angle. Because sometimes it’s worth it to be informal, getting the right slang will help you connect with the audience better and faster and not doing so might lead to disconnection with the audience (and losing the user).

 

Q: What about calendar traffic?

A: Calendar traffic is another variation of push notifications and works similarly. Users subscribe to a calendar and after that, they receive a notification from the calendar app on their phone in the form of event reminders. Unlike classic push, this format allows reaching iOS users. There’s not much to say about creatives in this format – when setting up a campaign you just need to provide short text to be displayed.

It’s important to be aware that calendar notifications are one of the most aggressive formats out there. As usual in the case of intrusive ads, you may potentially gain good profits in the short term, but quality could be very low. Running this kind of intrusive format may in the long term get your payout decreased or even cause being banned from running the offer. It could also potentially damage the brand of the advertiser due to complaints from users being annoyed with reminders. Be transparent with your affiliate manager about what formats you run and check if it’s accepted by the advertiser. To keep your quality satisfactory for the advertiser it’s always good to diversify and balance out lower-quality sources with others that provide higher quality.

 

Q: How strict are you with split testing? My background is in a different industry where we were strict on the statistical significance of A/B and multivariate testing, but so far I see that this vertical works a bit different…

A: Yes it does! And significance is exactly the point… because as you optimize, your audience gets smaller and therefore you need to be able to make quick decisions on smaller samples, meaning statistics are still important but so is taking calculated risks. Being lean and flexible is more important in this vertical than being “right” or using the “right” methods. Don’t rely on any single metric to make your decisions, take the flow as a whole and gather experience to take the best-calculated risks (along with good old statistics of course!). Next to that, talk to your affiliate manager about receiving consistent feedback. Ask about the type of metrics they use and the development of your quality.

 

Q: I’ve learned that different advertisers use different metrics to evaluate the quality. Could you introduce some key factors you know that the advertiser values the most?

A: Indeed every advertiser has different quality standards and expectations that are not always fully shared with networks, which is understandable. To bridge that gap, we would suggest talking to your affiliate manager about consistent feedback. Ask about the type of metrics they use, and the development of your quality.

 

Q: Did you notice any changes in GEOs due to the corona pandemic?

A: Actually yes, the virus has had a rather unequal impact around the world, both with restrictions and recovery, and that’s something that could be easily seen on both traffic and quality sides at times.

 

Q: We received multiple questions with regards to how to approach traffic sources and placements, in Tier 1 and Tier 2 GEOs with a 200-400 daily budget.

A: In this industry, there will always be competition to take into consideration, whoever is ready to pay more will take the premium traffic.

If you’re a smaller affiliate then focus on a more narrow segment. That might mean picking less competitive GEOs, or lower volume traffic spots, or putting more time on your creative flow, etc. In other words, don’t do what most people do: don’t start a RON (general) campaign in the US and expect to have a good return tomorrow. It takes time to optimize, so make sure to narrow down and have data quickly on those smaller segments.

There are many different spots available and it makes sense to try to find the one with the right balance of performance and affordability for you.

Also, the situation is dynamic, sometimes it’s hard to compete with someone with a winning high-performing offer and high budgets at that given moment, but it doesn’t mean that the situation cannot change from one week to another.

 

Q: I would like to hear your thoughts and personal experience on the profitability and ARPU of the new leads delivered after the new PSD2 European Law. Is it affecting the business hard, or you don’t feel its effects on your side?

A: We are aware of the new PSD2 European Law, luckily we didn’t really see the negative effects on the advertisers’ side in terms of profitability and ARPU of the leads.

Nevertheless, it’s something that we are monitoring constantly as it’s an important change.

Do you have more questions? Watch the webinar here, reach out to your AM or email webinar@advidi.com

Not an Advidi affiliate? Sign up today and we will match you with one of our affiliate managers.

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