How to run dating offers through Outbrain: exploring examples from Brazil and South Africa

The Cpamatica team shares an effective method for getting traffic for dating through Outbrain. We chose this platform because it has a recommendation system, doesn't prohibit clickbait headlines, making it suitable for promoting niches that perform well with clickbait and emotional advertising. Dating, in particular, is one of the verticals that respond well to clickbait advertising. 

 

Where do we direct the traffic? 

For a clear result let's consider two guides:

 

 

Let’s figure out how to run it. Spoiler: for pros, we'll reveal many tricks right away. Part of the campaign is dedicated to setting up Outbrain's automation. The texts and creatives may seem quite standard, but they still deliver an equally effective result.

 

Images or banners after all?

Long story short: no banners, only photos. By the way, Outbrain has a cool feature - it adapts photos for ads, and you can use the preview.

 

 

What's important for photos? As silly as it may sound, when you're running traffic in a specific region, make sure you have photos of girls from that region to avoid any awkward situations.

 

 

The more clickable the text, the better the results 

Outbrain's platform offers spaces for publications where it competes with other viral ads. This should be taken into account when creating ad text, sometimes resorting to clickbait headlines in pursuit of user attention.

 

Here are some examples of ad text for South Africa: 

 

• Want a girl? South African Dating Site That Really Works in 2022
• Want a girl? South African Dating Site That Really Works in ${city}$
• South African Dating Sites That Really Work in 2022
• South African Dating Sites That Really Work in ${city}$

 

Call to action:

 

• Learn more - more native for review sites and quizzes
• Register now - native for landing pages

 

Don't forget an important detail! If we want to get traffic from Brazil, what do we do? We use texts in the language native to our audience, which is Portuguese. For example, here are the texts translated into the local language, which we used above for South Africa

 

• Quer uma garota? Site de namoro brasileiro que realmente funciona em 2022
• Quer uma garota? Site de namoro brasileiro que realmente funciona em ${city}$ 
• Sites de namoro brasileiros que realmente funcionam em 2022 
• Sites de namoro brasileiros que realmente funcionam em ${city}$ 

 

Call to action:

 

• Saber Mais (Learn more) 
• Registrar agora (Register now) 

 

And now a step-by-step guide

We’ve told you the general algorithm, and now let's dive into the details:

 

Step 1: upload photos, check the preview. If you read the text above carefully, you can see that the photos are already compressed by the service, which is nice :)

 

 

We look at the picture and see all three preview options for the advertising.

 

Step 2: Campaign Setup. Here we look at the magic:

 

 

1. Name - any, the main thing is not to get lost in your campaigns later.
2. Goals - Conversion.
3. Format - standard. We tried videos with carousels, but we weren't impressed with the results. Besides, carousels are more of an Instagram format. 
4. Devices: Smartphones. Did we test desktop? Of course. But desktop users are much more affected by banner blindness due to larger displays and the old habit of only looking at target content.

 

After the basics, we move on to the nuances…

 

— We set the budget, don't forget to click on the button for CPA automation.

— Choose the type of conversion. 

— Insert the click price. Attention! 10 cents is more than enough; throwing a dollar and a half per click in dating is not worth it. 

— Set the daily budget. Done! 

 

AB or BA?

Here, let's not reveal all our cards and tell you exactly how we arrived at the creatives that interested us, how many mistakes were made before showing you the truly effective results.

 

However, it's worth noting that in the settings for creatives, there's something like an experiments section, which allows you to test a hypothesis with a small budget. And what's even more important, you can allocate the budget among different creatives, see their statistics in AB mode, and then redistribute the budget to the most successful creative.

 

Certainly, these are all minor details, and not particularly important ones. But, you have to agree, it's nice when the platform takes care of you, and some of the manual routines are simply packed into the interface!

 

 

What about the TA?

Outbrain doesn't offer flexible settings for:

 

• Audiences by age.
• Interests.
• Gender.

 

But there are two nuances. 

 

Firstly, people are gradually being weaned off cookies, which prevents the collection of information about them. Secondly, with its clever and secretive algorithms, Outbrain still manages to reach the target user, as we’ll see later…

 

Independent offers, independent geo - equally good results... In this section.

Originally, we just wanted to leave two screenshots here. So, that's exactly what we'll do!

 

 

The first one and the second. 

 

 

And you could already figure out the metrics on your own, see how much money is being invested, and how much is coming in.

 

What’s the conclusion? Outbrain allowed you to create several effective campaigns with minimal investment in creatives and settings. There's only one task left for the arbitrageur to solve independently: choosing the GEO. Based on our experience, both Brazil and South Africa produced positive results. I guess that's all for now. We wish you successful campaigns and a positive ROI