Ask Me Anything [Case Study]: Dating + Latin America = ROI 53%

Disclaimer: Please note that this case was provided by one of our clients, and the views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of PropellerAds.

Hi there! It’s ZeDDy. I talked about the case studies that targeted exotic countries previously. And today I will go on with my review of the Latin American market. So off we go.

In short

• Traffic source: PropellerAds (Push Notification)
• Affiliate Network: Cpamatica
• Offer: OneAmour — Mobile [MX, DO, EC, GT, NI, HN, PA, PE, SV, CO] SOI 25+
• Payout per lead: $0.15
• Landers: 4974: 49m_v2 , 5033: For males 3
• GEO: MX, DO, EC, GT, NI, HN, PA, PE, SV, CO
• Total spent: $1657
• Total Revenue: $2531
• Net profit: $874
• ROI: 53%
• Campaign period: Nov 24, 2018 – Jan 29, 2019

Offers and landing pages
According to PropellerAds policy, adult landing pages are prohibited in push notification campaigns, so I had to choose from «Mainstream — Dating» (just usual datings without any nude photos, creatives, and hints about quick sex).

First of all, there aren’t that many dating offers to choose from in LATAM (Latin America), and much less when it comes to just mainstream offers. So it all came down to selecting the landing page (according to your preferences + previous experience with the same offer but with different GEO).

I used these two :



Landing page #1: 4974: 49m_v2



Landing page #2: 5033: For males 3

About campaign settings
In the dating category with push notifications I usually use these 2 approaches:

• Directly mentioning the dating website
• Mimicking real-life users’ messages

First one. If you say in ad copy «this is a dating site», «Meet someone in your city», or «A beauty in 1,5 km away from your location is waiting for you», the user will have no doubt whether this is an ad. And then he’ll expect to see some kind of a dating website and registration after the click. Such ads have low CTR, but higher conversion rate, because users already know what they are looking for.

Read more: Choosing a Perfect Dating Offer

These offers convert well with CPC bidding. We don’t care about the number of impressions, because those who are genuinely interested in dating will click anyway.



Here’s an example: ads found with SPY-service adfind.io

The second option – disguised as real user messages that look like as if they were coming from messengers. This kind of push notifications has high CR and converts well.

A user is trying to get through the registration process to reach the user, who allegedly sent him a message.

Read more: How to get approved by a CPA network

But in this case, a user can be puzzled. He is expecting a different outcome when clicking at the “real” message, but then end up in the middle of nowhere or a website registration form. So it’s better to use something like interactive landing pages or engaging pre-lander (that will help heat up the interest); otherwise, the user might simply leave.

Due to high CR, it’s much more efficient to use CPM bidding with these “chat” ads.



Examples found with SPY-service adfind.io

My strategy
The payout per lead was only $0.15. The lowest cost per click (CPC) for these GEOs (with pay per click advertising model) is $0.005.

So to make a profit, the conversion should be at least 1 per 30 (0.15/0.005), that’s actually possible but very unlikely.

CPC or CPM: How to Pay Less for Push Notification Traffic

So I chose the second method (disguised as a real user) with CPM bidding, hoping to get a lower cost per click by taking advantage of higher CR.

The ad settings
Franky, I’m quite a lazy dude and usually set the campaign rather carelessly, without a postback and don’t even split it for different GEOs. On top of that, I confused Paraguay with Panama, and this GEO wasn’t even in the offer description #epicfail.

Luckily, Cpamatica sent all this “wrong” traffic to the mainstream dating Smartlink, and it actually converted, so I haven’t lost much.



Payout (CPM)

I used only one ad, here’s how my push notification looked like for all GEOs.





My laziness caused me even bigger trouble. I didn’t run separate campaigns for different GEOs (even though they all have different costs and level of competition). And also used Paraguay instead of Panama #welldone.



I didn’t bother with these settings as well, although in a few weeks I’ve blacklisted some ad zones that didn’t convert well.

The outcome
Now, let’s talk about money. Since day one I’ve spent $1657 on this campaign.



There were more than 1 million clicks: 1 085 868 for $0.00153 each (instead of $0.005 CPC), that is 3 times cheaper!

I got $2531 from the affiliate network.

The campaign was running for a long time, and there were a lot of clicks, so I had to split the stats into many screenshots.



$243.75 (24/11/18-30/11/19)



$580.35 (01/12/18-10/12/18)



$635.37 (11/12/18-20/12/18)



$204.6 (21/12/18-25/12/18)



$129.12 (26/12/18-31/12/18)



$313.08 (01/01/19-07/01/19)



$281.28$ (08/01/19-15/01/19)



$70.71 (16/01/19-29/01/19)



And here is Paraguay that shouldn’t even be in the list

$72.96 (24/11/18-30/01/19)

So here’s what I got:

243,75+580,35+635,37+204,6+129,12+313,08+281,28+70,71+72,96= $2531,22

And the net profit:

2531,22- 1657,93 = $873,29

The bottom line
You can make money even in the most exotic countries. Don’t ignore offers with low payouts. Sometimes it’s worth using CPM bidding, reducing the cost of traffic from PropellerAds.

As my example shows, even if you do everything wrong, you still have a chance to make a profit