English offer LPs for non-english speaking traffic...what gives? (6)
English offer LPs for non-english speaking traffic...what gives?
The more I delve into sub tier 1 geos the more I notice that a substantial proportion of the offer LPs are in English, and even if the offer is in the local language, the Ts and Cs are usually in English too. What's the rationale behind this? Is it done deliberately by the merchant in order to target the 'elite' segment of the population that learned English in school?
This has got me thinking as to whether I should run split tests of all my LPs right off the bat in English and the language of the offer...How are more experienced affiliates dealing with this?
Seems like a bit of waste of time to run an English LP on Brazilian traffic (for example), but the merchant could very well know something I don't...
Bump
Test it! I noted on a current MY campaign that a lot of users had their browsers set to English rather than Malay, so I served landers according to browser settings (in my case the data dictated that I revert back to Malay).
Browser settings can be a hint but many people simply set english because they are used to the basic menu items names and want to keep the same across all programs they use. In some languages, the translations are horrible, for example in my native language "slovak" I simply cannot stand some of the translations so I always set my browser lang to ENG and even the windows instalation is set to ENG.
This doesnt mean I could positively respond to english language landing pages in all cases. Lets take dating for example, this is a thing you have to play localy, if I want to date someone, I certainly wont look for women from US, I want locals and the lander has to reflect that. Same for sweeps, I probably wont expect some Canadian company to send me free iphone just for taking a survey about canadian market 
On the other hand, there are niches where it makes sense - for example some "very special brain inflating nutra shit" that is only available in the US because the overregulated EU banned it after the corrupt pharma industry bribed them to do so ... Here its expected to be shiped from US so english would mot mean a problem. Translated version would most likely yield better results but you know what I mean with the example, right?
English also makes sense in case of GEOs with a ton of languages used. Think about India for example, there are so many languages used, that the english language simply serves as the best possibility.
Another example where english makes sense is when you are going for super cheap clicks by making your creatives blend with the site layout. So if its a site in english, you simply have to make the creatives in english too. Think banners like : Click Here, Download ... etc Then a LP in english is ok too.
But very often, the only reason for the offer pages or LPs being in english, is the lazyness of the advertiser or the low income possiblities in the GEO. So they are willing to take the traffic but they know its not really worth to translate it all so they simply use english. Another reason is, that they expect the better educated part of the population to be more wealthy.
I personally always used to test english LPs too, but in was majority of cases the localized version outperformed the ENG version. These days I only use ENG in geos where there is too many languages, in really small geos that I want to quickly test without investing into translations or in GEOs where english is considered pretty much an official language. This is my experience, but you should run a few tests to see if you see the same results anyways.
Very elaborated answer matuloo.
As explained, for some offers/verticals/niches using an English LP has some rationale behind it. But usually when I see an offer with an English LP for a non-English speaking country I assume its out of laziness of the advertiser/publisher. It can also be that the offer is international and the advertiser just uses an English LP as its an international language.
So I would say a LP that uses the local language is preferred (not only the language itself but other stuff like general UI/UX).
As always, you should split test local and English LP`s to see which performs better.
1 very important thing to remember when using a local language LP (or any language for that matter if it isnt your own native one) is that the translation needs to be accurate and correct. Using a LP with inaccurate translation or wrong spelling is worse than using a LP in English...
Usually laziness, but not always.
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