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does the dating vertical suck during the pandemic? (51)

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Hi,

MY QUESTION: did anybody notice conversions fall off a cliff in the last 24 hours??

Was monitoring my campaigns, noticed conversions fall off a cliff. Like it went from 15% conversion rate to 1%

This was the past 5-10 hours.

I noticed it first in my "mainstream push" campaign (I'm doing push, not adult, but my question is the dating vertical which is dominant in the adult traffic source). I had a really good funnel, I was excited to start pushing it to other traffic sources, but then the funnel died, it went into loss by 5x payout.

Then I REALLY noticed it in my "adult push" campaign, where it was converting at 1%.

I'm running this dating campaign in the United Kingdom, where they just reported the first coronavirus death in the last 24 hours.

It's possible it's an advertiser problem, but when I thought about it more, I realized the pandemic might have something to do with it.

If it's the pandemic, OH WELL, time for me to start that sweeps vertical that I wanted to try out. People will still try to win iPhones during a raging pandemic!

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...and wankers will still be wankers

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OK, ya, but this is for a dating website.........my dating angles are around the idea of "hey you might get to have sex with her tonight"

Except oops, it's a pandemic.......

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My question is legit, right? I don't wanna be one of those people who say "this vertical sucks". This is a legit question, right?

The assumption behind a dating site is you get to meet her for dinner and then some sex, but if there's a pandemic, who in the world is going to go out?

There are many Chinese cities like ghosttowns.

UK is going to be the same way.

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Many of the dating websites you promote on CPA networks are not really meant for dating.

They are rather there to keep users signed up and pay money to buy tokens or similar so that they can chat with "girls", send PMs and exchange pics and such stuff.

Many guys there wouldn't even appear at a real date because they are too shy or whatever.

They just stay on these sites for a good feeling and affirmation that they chat with a "hot girl".

Basically to boost their self-confidence.

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Interesting. But the pandemic WOULD explain why my general angle of "meet a girl for sex" just suddenly started tanking, right? lol

Hm OK, I guess I got a few new angle ideas to try out.

Wasn't there a couple big dating sites that are legitimately...meet people in person?

Like AdultFriendFinder was one big one I read about.

As well as AshleyMadison

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Sure there are also legit dating websites where users can find real dates.

But that doesn't change the situation that many users there don't even want a real date.

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I have not noticed any performance differences in my campaigns.

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I think it is more likely that the offer started tanking. It's not uncommon for offers to start performing badly all of a sudden.

You can always validate both hypothesis by testing more offers

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No. Men will always get boners.

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In fact targeting Wuhan citizens with some teasing stuff makes them maybe more eager to click, since they are locked up for weeks already. I wouldn't suggest dating tho' ;-) or adjust your current angle drasticly indeed.

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I've been running dating for the first time ever, for about three weeks now.... mainstream senior dating, in my case.... I keep expecting conversion rates to go down but so far they haven't...

Still think they will though eventually if the pandemic keeps expanding like it has been... For instance I would imagine Northern Italy would not be seeing good conversion rates on mainstream dating offers right now, but until the geo's I'm working in follow suit I'm gonna keep hitting them hard...

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'mainstream senior dating'...

Is that a thing?

I'm not seeing any changes... but I did overhear a girl in a (UK) cafe today say "my sister's cancelled her 30th birthday party because of corona virus".

Never underestimate the stupidity out there...

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Yeah it's by far the biggest dating vertical on native ads at least...

Originally Posted by rugster

I'm not seeing any changes... but I did overhear a girl in a (UK) cafe today say "my sister's cancelled her 30th birthday party because of corona virus".

Never underestimate the stupidity out there...

I wouldn't say that's stupid at all... a little overzealous perhaps but not by too far a stretch... this Coronavirus thing is a big deal... the estimated mortality rate overall is 3.4% and among the elderly and those with compromised immune systems it's even higher... so if you have elderly family members at home or you work among the elderly or in healthcare, it's definitely good to be cautious. HOPEFULLY the whole thing will end up blowing over... but there's a lot of very smart people out there who think otherwise.

I primarily follow Zero Hedge for updates on it + everything, and while Zero Hedge is notoriously paranoiac/contrarian/pessimistic/etc, what alarms me is that their not having to find "prepper blogs" and the like to get pretty scary info on the pandemic, but rather very mainstream epidemiologists and statisticians.

So yeah, I hope I'm wrong, but I am firmly on the "this is indeed a big deal' side of the issue... Hope I am wrong though!

I should add that I'm NOT pessimistic re: our livelihoods and internet marketing- indeed things getting worse like this would likely just make our skillsets even more valuable...

However, the health + economic aspects are where my concern lies.

I have one foot pretty heavily planted in the investing/economics sphere, and the smart people I tend to trust are primarily pointing to the fact that even if the transmission rate and mortality rate are only 10-20% of what we think they are, the whole thing is still going to have a massive impact on our (very un-robust) infrastructures and economies.

But yeah, here's the sites I primarily follow for the economic picture on everything (ranging from small blogs of very intelligent dudes to massive daily news sites like ZH):

https://www.zerohedge.com/
https://capitalistexploits.at/market-insights/
https://adventuresincapitalism.com/

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'What alarms me is that their not having to find "prepper blogs" and the like to get pretty scary info on the pandemic, but rather very mainstream epidemiologists and statisticians.'

And that's what makes me cry wolf (Bird Flu/Swine Flu/This Flu/That Flu... and for 2020!...)

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No conversions are still very strong :-)

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I didn't notice much of a difference either, but you're right, if situation get's out of hand a lot, there might be some effect.

Even though a large party of the users join these sites out of curiosity and for the chats, there is still some % of people who plan to meet in real life and these would probably not signup in case of a large scale panic.

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We run a lot of dating traffic but don’t see a decrease in leads since the start of the virus. As some other members already mentioned, there will always be traffic from tube websites (and maybe even more, as soon as they are going to work from home or aren’t allowed to leave their homes anymore). The spend in the back-end might be a bit lower if the pandemic hits a country hard, but it’s too early to say much about it.

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Hey guys, does anyone run casual dating in IT? Because I have seen a small decline in the last couple of days...

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I expect huge rise of clicks coming months, any vertical. Lockdowns all over the place.

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Indeed, people will need to get busy with something. They will end up spending their days on various sites to spend their hours and maybe willing to optin on more offers.

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Online casino’s have great months coming up!

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Whole of Italy is under lockdown.


Sent from my iPhone using STM Forums mobile app

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Actually, how much of a decline? The entirety of Italy has pretty much stopped going out.

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My senior dating camps are still doing about the same... have maybe seen a 20% reduction in cvr the last couple days but it could be a statistical anomaly... network says backend conversions are still at normal level overall...

I think @platinum is right - that there could be a paradoxical effect where even though "real" dates happen far less frequently, people spend even more time on dating sites because they are 1) bored, 2) lonely, 3) "romantically malnourished", etc.

And if click costs go down it could make it doubly likely for the vertical to keep working.

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I see some decline now, but nothing dramatic yet... it's still to early to tell how much of an effect the pandemic will have on the various verticals. Large parte of Europe is pretty much panicking now, so it's guaranteed to influence certain things... on the other hand, when people stay at home, they simply have to kill time somehow so internet traffic will be likely up. We shall see in a week or two.

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Actually, it is not as bad a I thought when I did that post,we are still running profitable, but there is a small decilne in profit

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Just to update this, I've definitely seen a drop off in conversion rates over the last 2-3 days on senior dating campaigns (all in Northern Europe or the Commonwealth countries).

At the same time, I've been inundated with higher volume and cheaper clicks than usual.

Am guessing its all the people suddenly staying at home more, as well as people reading up on the Coronavirus related news on various websites, leading to greater volumes overall (although with lower conversion rates as well).

Just lowered bids on most of my campaigns as a result and am hopeful this will help.

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Traffic volumes are definitely up from what I can see in my campaigns and I also see better prices in some campaigns.

More and more people are staying at home so it's not a surprise at all.

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It's gonna be interesting... shut-downs, people avoiding contact etc. But yeah, lot's more guys bored at home online, so I reckon maybe it'll balance out.

I've got two offers ATM, one on picking-up strippers, that I'm going to pause spending on (strip clubs are shutting down) and one on dating younger women, that I'll keep running for now.

I'm going to sell on the 'survival lust' angle (which is a real thing), and hope that cancels out the inevitable decline in actual dating etc.

But looking around... jeez.

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I still have not noticed much difference in my campaigns, even in countries that have cases of coronavirus.

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Are you running anything in Italy?

I'm not, but would like to hear what are the conversions in this GEO right now, they are the most affected country right now, so I'd expect some changes... even traffic could be down, as one doesn't browse adult sites that much when the whole family is around

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But there´s also lots of family and incest porn online

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As for tier 1 countries, especially for US, we haven't been noticing big difference so far. And there might be a quarantine-angle here - to push live webcam chats available for users (if there is an option)

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Thanks for sharing your view, you guys got a lot of data to look at so it's much appreciated

Do you see some GEO that shows a bit more dramatic decrease?

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I run some stuff in Italy and have not noticed a difference really.

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Interresting, I'd expect a decline in this particular GEO. Thanks for sharing your experience my man!

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I think the age range that would sign up for dating sites are like 20-50, and this is not really the age range heavily impacted health wise by coronavirus.

Sure they are stuck at home and maybe can't go out, but I don't expect their browsing of adult sites to go down now that they are basically stuck at home

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This is what I'm a bit surprised about, when you think about it, surfing adult sites requires some sort of privacy, which should be hard to achieve now, when the whole families had to stay at home... But obviously, people always find their ways Smartphones are helping it a lot I guess

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All of our ECOM is affected in Eastern EU geos where primary payment method is CASH ON DELIVERY.

People are panicking, they are holding onto money and not spending. We've seen roas go from average 3.5x to 1.6-1.8, which means we're at loss, we need to be at around 3-3.1 to be at ZERO if we calculate all the costs including the cost of toilet paper for staff (just a joke, but that's also true). These EU geos are very weak on credit and credit cards; most people just have debit cards or cash.

BTW, We didn't run in USA, but i heard it's not as bad there as long as people got money on their CC's to burn.

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We run dating campaigns on FR, ES, UK and we have noticed an increase of performances overall.

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Denmark, Norway, New Zealand and same thing - the last week has probably been the best for us so far (started early Q1). Definitely up and down on a daily level but overall the the lowest CPA week thus far, which seems paradoxical given the Coronavirus... just goes to show things don't always end up like you would think they should!

Expanding to Sweden, Finland, Australia next so we'll see if can keep the streak up...

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To much drama in the World, no drama in traffic For North America countries (which are focusing on) it is around 10% decrease in traffic.

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i'm running adult dating in some geos and i like to add some of what i'm facing :

Italy , big decrease in CR and overall performance , had to stop it for now as it went from good green to red now
UK , still doing good even the virus is spreading there . so "stable geo"

i can tell there is overall increase in traffic volumes obviously , and this will lower some costs for sure as i see so far and CR will get lower as people are not in the mood to do such things of registration and playing around dating vertical
that's at least my point of view so far

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propellerads reported dating not doing so well.. maybe some offers where there is no actual meeting the person.. or virtually only, first.


hmmm.

smth just clicked in my head, gtg do some researches.






Sent from my SM-G975W using STM Forums mobile app

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Quite a lot of dating sites are actually providing nothing more than a virtual experience and a surprisignly large % of the users are ok with it, seems like the "naughty chat" opportunity is what many of them are after

BTW: live cams are working better now, based on the info I got from one large cam affiliate, I'm not personally pushing cams so can't confirm this, but it would make a lot of sense for these products to perform better now.

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gotcha matuloo!! thanks for additional info, appreciate it!

i never was in dating vertical, but honestly, i always believed those sites, actually connect people also in real life. i was so wrong lol =)

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Some of them do for sure, it's not like all of them are just running chatbots... after all, each of them are getting thousands of new members per day from the affiliates. The problem is the male-to-female ratio, it's mostly just guys... that's why they use chatbots to simulate activity. But there are still "real" dating sites out there for sure... victoriamilan, ashleymadison, match, adultfriendfinder and a lot more.

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Yes, BIG difference ... (but you know.... T1 EN....). I mean it depends on the conttext, what you are doing, what geos, how, what sources, what format etc etc..... The question is too broad.

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A piece of info from my dating advertiser:

Two of my dating advertisers said that they had noticed the different traffic behavior and the sales rate dropped in the GEOs which are affected the most by COVID. The traffic is growing but the conversion to sales rate is dropping. So they started to do optimization (lower the payout) more often.

I myself found that the bid price is moving very quickly, which may due to the payout adjustment.

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This makes quite a lot of sense ... the people are stuck at home so they browse the net and join the sites out of curiosity, but since they are locked up and know that nobody is really willing to meet now, they don't try to contact the people that much.

If it's true, the traffic prices will start to fall soon. So far I did notice some difference, but nothing major yet.

Does anyone see a big difference in CPMs in the GEOs you're targeting?

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