AdsEmpire decided to share with you a case study from one of its partners. Hope you find it useful!

In this case study, I want to share with rookie affiliate marketers my experience in the promotion of dating offers using native ads. I’ll show how I managed to make almost $2000 in 3 weeks. Let’s move on to the details.

  • CPA Network: AdsEmpire
  • Offer: SOI Dating Offers
  • Offer payout: $4 – $5
  • Traffic source: TrafficStars
  • Ad format: Native Ads
  • GEO: Germany
  • Period: 01/06/2022 – 21/06/2022
  • Costs: $1486
  • Total profit: $1953.5
  • ROI: 31%

Dating is an evergreen niche and one of the most popular in the affiliate marketing industry for several reasons. Firstly, this is suitable for rookie marketers as the entry threshold is low. $100 is enough to understand from experience how it works. Secondly, there are no problems with finding a suitable offer since there are plenty of dating affiliate programs with offers for any GEO. You can generate leads at any time and with any ad format, including native ads. And I’ve been working with this vertical for years. This time, I combined dating with native ads in TrafficStars, and, as you can see, it brought me a good profit, so let’s get down to it.

Offer and payouts

In this case, I took several dating offers from the AdsEmpire network. These are mainstream SOI conversion flow dating offers, so I get paid every time a user leaves their email. I don’t even need confirmation. Payout per lead depends on an offer and varies from $4 to $5.

I combined these offers in one link through the tracker. I know that AdsEmpire has a dating smart link, but I prefer to do it the old-fashioned way and analyze the results myself.

Here are my stats from the affiliate network by offers for the period from June 1st to June 21st.

Performance stats

Click on image for full size

Source: AdsEmpire

I ran both mobile and desktop dating offers targeting Germany. As you can see, native mobile traffic brings me around 95% of traffic and profit.

Traffic source targeting

I have run campaigns in several ad networks and I can say with confidence that the native ad format in TrafficStars is one of the most profitable for me. I created separate ad campaigns for mobile and desktop devices to better control the bid and campaign performance. In addition, I have excluded proxy traffic to reduce the likelihood of receiving irrelevant user clicks.

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Pro tip: Split your ad campaigns by device type to better control their performance.

Pricing model

I bought traffic on a CPM-viewable model. What this means is that you still pay for impressions, but unlike the standard CPM, site visitors are guaranteed to see your ads. I set a bid of $0.01 for the mobile campaign and $0.005 for the desktop one. When choosing a bid, look at the recommended bid. It depends on the competition on the target you have chosen and shows the most optimal bid for the campaign to receive traffic.

Ad creatives tips

I can’t reveal ad creatives I use for obvious reasons. However, I can share one important piece of advice – offers regarding “dating mature singles” work best in Germany. Use real-life pictures of older women 40+ and add relevant headlines. For example:

  • We have found 31 singles in your area
  • Meet Singles Over 40+ in your city
  • Top Dating Site in Germany

Also, add a simple CTA in the brand name. Consider the following:

  • Try Now for free!
  • Sign Up for Free
  • Find Your Love

Pro tip: Ad creatives featuring older single women perform best in Germany.

I got the most conversions from creatives with older women. By the way, this also applies to other European countries. Well, sadly, there is no age targeting, otherwise, I would have easily surpassed my earnings in this case study.

🔰 Set the frequency cap to 3 per day. This frequency is the most optimal so as not to annoy the user and not waste the budget.

🔰 Add macros like {city} to replace users’ location and increase CTR. But if you mention something about the location, then include it on the pre-landing page, otherwise, it might mislead users.

🔰 Use emojis in the headline to grab more attention to the ad message.

CTR and campaign optimization

After the first week of testing, I refreshed the ad creative pack. I used 10 in each campaign. I left the ad creatives that brought leads. Some of them had a low click-through rate but generated registrations. And this is the most important thing.

Pro tip: Refresh your ad creatives to achieve best results.

CTR of native ads from mobile devices is generally much higher and, in my case, reached 0.25%. While desktop struggled to achieve a CTR of 0.06% for native ads. These are not benchmarks that you should adhere to. CTR depends heavily on the traffic source, targeting, and vertical. So, I recommend using this metric to compare creatives to each other in the same campaign.

Regarding adding sources to white or black lists, I set up auto-optimization rules in my tracker, so underperforming ad spots were blacklisted. After two weeks, I collected a white list of sources that brought the bulk of traffic and leads. By the end of the third week, the amount of traffic as well as the number of conversions had both dropped significantly, so I stopped the campaigns.

To sum up

  • The dating vertical is great to get started in affiliate marketing.
  • Bet on mobile traffic, its volume and conversions are significantly higher.
  • You need to understand your audience in order to create relevant ad creatives.
  • TrafficStars have a great traffic volume of native ads, and its quality is one of the reasons to keep working with this ad network.
  • AdsEmpire provides quality offers with high CR and tempting payouts. This is definitely one of the top-notch affiliate networks on my list.

Hope you found this case study useful. If that’s the case, head over to AdsEmpire and start making money!