Sweepstakes: Spring-Summer 2020 Trends in Vertical (19)
(Note by Vortex: This was posted with permission from moderator @stickupkid because it's quality content. Please note that vendor content is not usually permitted outside of the "Vendors" subforum.)
What's killing it right now? Here is one of the most important and common questions affiliate marketers ask their managers. We can’t say for the whole industry, but as far as here at LetsCPA we are 100% focused on CC Submit sweepstakes, we would like to share with you some info on recent trends in the vertical we see in our stats.
To get everything clear from the very beginning, let's clarify a few important points:
- The spring-summer 2020 season refers to a period spanning from March 1st to June 15th, 2020 (so the data given below is still relevant).
- Statistics for 2019 (including as compared to 2020) are given for the same period a year ago: from March 1st to June 15th, 2019.
- All the data refers exclusively to CC submit offers.
Operating systems
Let's start with the less interesting data: operating systems. Over this period, 51.7% of our partners' profit accounted for Android traffic, while iOS made up 37.6%. Windows and Mac OS traffic constituted a mere 7.7% and 1.5% respectively. Contrary to what experts had previously believed, we didn't see any increase in the share of desktop traffic. Almost 90% of the turnover made on sweeps can be attributed to mobile devices.
However, when compared to 2019, the 2020 data reveals noteworthy insights: in 2020, the share of the desktop (Windows + Mac OS) and Android traffic fell by almost 40% and 30% respectively, while iOS traffic saw impressive four-fold growth.
The explanation behind this is pretty straightforward: in 2019 a considerable part of the turnover in the sweepstake market was generated on push traffic dominated mostly by Android devices. By the end of the year, however, this traffic source began to decline and its share decreased several-fold. Parallel to this, other sources were coming to the spotlight such as Facebook where the distribution of operating systems is more balanced, which undermined the dominance of Android devices.
So for now we can say that push traffic has been sidelined by other sources. Although push notification ads are still converting well on sweepstakes, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a traffic source with huge volumes of high-quality (fresh) traffic.
Top 10 countries
Here's where the juicy stuff begins: geography and volumes by country. The top GEOs based on the spring-summer 2020 data are listed below:
Although we are running sweeps in more than 50 GEOs at the moment, almost 80% of the turnover comes from the top ten countries, many of which have traditionally performed well on sweepstakes and are always included in the top lists. Another noteworthy fact is that the combined share of the first five GEOs accounts for 56.24%, more than half of the total volume, while Italy and France together made up almost a third of the entire turnover.
Although only one Asian country has made it to the top ten list (Malaysia), Japan ranked among the first GEOs in other periods. Japan performs well to this very moment, and the main difficulty for those who run this geo lies not in the conversion rate, but in traffic sources.
Even though the CC Submit sweepstake niche is notoriously unstable conversion-wise, 8 out of 10 countries from the 2020 top list were also included in the 2019 rating. The traffic distribution was different, however. A year ago, our top list of countries looked like this:
The first thing that catches your eye is the huge share of Italian traffic, which decreased more than three-fold a year from that moment (from 45.71% to 13%). It may seem that this GEO has been burned out completely and that there's no money left there, but the truth is that only certain traffic sources were exhausted, while the country itself continues to perform rather well. For instance, in 2019, about a third of Italian traffic accounted for push notifications, which made up only 1/20 of the total share in 2020.
In any case, traffic distribution by countries that made it to the 2019 and 2020 top lists has changed considerably:
Offers
CC submit offers fall into the three main categories for us, such as iPhones, Samsungs, and everything else (MacBooks, AirPods, shopping vouchers, gift cards, etc.). At the same time, the latter category accounts for a mere 1% of the total share, at least in our case. Some affiliates report that their gift card campaigns perform the best, but as a rule, they are less scalable than others, and therefore account for only a small percentage of the total traffic volume.
The lion's share of traffic in the spring-summer 2020 season is driven to iPhone offers. They generally convert much better than Samsungs and are dominating the sweepstake market right now. However, offer distribution varies from geo to geo. Some affiliates are seeing a higher EPC on Samsung offers, and so in some countries, their share can reach up to 50%.
Below, you will find a chart showing offer distribution by the top 10 geos in 2020. For the sake of clarity, we have omitted traffic driven to non Samsung/iPhone offers (and actually those are amounted to zero percent in some countries).
Our findings may seem obvious to some, but we don't think so. For example, in 2019, things were exactly the opposite, and Samsung offers accounted for almost 84% of the entire traffic volume. Only time will tell what changes the year 2021 is going to bring
Landing pages
No big deal here. The best-performing landings were iPhone 11 Pro, iPhone 11 Pro AMZ (Amazon-style), and Samsung Galaxy S20. The total share of Apple's current flagship phone made up almost 75%.
Interestingly enough, the second position in the 2019 rating was occupied not by iPhone Xs (Apple's most popular model back then), but by outdated Samsung S9 / S9+ that accounted for an average of 30% of the total share. That was the case, outdated Samsungs outperformed new iPhones by almost 3.5 times
Rates
It would be wrong of us not to mention the average price per lead in the spring-summer 2020 season. The rates vary from advertiser to advertiser, and the terms are often changed, but the averaged data should still help you get a general understanding of the pricing in the top 10 countries.
As 8 out of 10 countries from our top 2020 list were also included in the rating last year, we can also show you how the rates changed dynamically. So, Italy is seeing the most drastic decrease in the average lead price, while Switzerland is witnessing the sharpest growth in rates. However, Italy's case is not particularly representative because one of the advertisers who offered payouts of up to $36 simply left the market altogether. Given the fact that other advertisers in Italy pay about $15-17 for a lead, this has immediately reduced the average lead price, although the EPC in this GEO hasn't changed that much.
Traffic sources
As mentioned earlier, push traffic has been sidelined by other traffic sources. At the same time, we see a rise in the volume of SMS traffic. This traffic source serves as a viable alternative to Facebook, especially if you know where to get data for your campaigns or have a reliable data provider. The pop traffic market has a high entry barrier for new players but offers favorable conditions to those who have long been around.
Facebook still remains one of the main traffic sources despite numerous difficulties and stricter policies affiliate marketers came across in late March-early April. At the time of writing, Facebook traffic has slightly dropped in volume, as it has become increasingly difficult to launch new ads and avoid account bans. However, a lot of solo affiliates and media buying teams are still making about $XXXX — $XXXXX a day on Facebook traffic despite all troubles.
New partners often ask us what geos they should advertise in to reach up to $XXXXX a day on Facebook traffic. Below is a screenshot of our partner's stats for March 30th, 2020 showing traffic volumes per country. Almost all countries are from our top 10 list. Is it a mere coincidence?
In general, a lot of Tier-1 GEOs can be successfully scaled up to $4-6K daily, and even more (and not only on Facebook traffic). So, the only thing you need to do to get $10K daily is to scale up 2-3 top countries. According to our partners, however, it requires a lot of intellectual (developing marketing strategies and the technical side of campaigns) and mechanical (launching multiple ad accounts) labor to achieve these results.
Conclusion
The CC submit niche is extremely volatile and unstable in terms of conversion rate and the overall market situation. If an advertiser is ranked among the first in a particular country today, he can be easily replaced by somebody else tomorrow. Statistics not surprisingly show that there's more money in Tier-1 geos. However, Tier-2 and Tier-3 regions also hold a lot of potential for affiliate marketers. This can be attributed to competition between advertisers that prompts them to continuously work on holding their position on stable markets and also explore and test out new geos. Moreover, a statistically insignificant share of traffic from lower-tier geos can become a solid source of profit for individual affiliate marketers. Therefore, it might sound archaic but it is very important to stay in touch with your manager to be updated on new offers and geos that are killing it right now.
P.S. Running CC submit sweeps on FB/SMS/EMAIL? PM us or sign up here
P.P.S. All the information is also available in Russian on CPA.RIP and actually this thread is an English full edition version of the article we posted there few weeks ago.
Thanks for this, great post.
But All the images are broken for me?
Sent from my Mi 9T using Tapatalk
Ok just Tapatalk they aren't working on. They are ok on the regular website.
Thanks!
EDIT: WORKING ON EVERYTHING NOW
Sent from my Mi 9T using Tapatalk
Originally Posted by manchester
Thank you so much for your alert
Originally Posted by letscpa
It was just fine on web but something was wrong with pics on the STM app. Updated the post, looks good now.
Thank you so much for your alert
Thank you so much for your alert
Sent from my Mi 9T using Tapatalk
Originally Posted by manchester
That's some nice data, thanks
This post is amazing. This is the kind of information I always yearn for. Thanks!
Really insightful and interesting post! Thanks a lot
Most excellent post sir.
Fantastic post!
Awesome content! Thanks @letscpa for your contribution!
Amy
... and another good question we're being asked pretty often is "What are your best countries in terms of EPC?"
To be honest we don't like answering this question since it's really easy to get fooled by averages and in our opinion the best countries are those which generate the most of the profits (no matter what their EPC is). Anyway, please see below our top 10 countries in terms of the average EPCs in July 2020
Originally Posted by vortex
Amazing points!
@letscpa
Nice post, tho
P.S. Running CC submit sweeps on FB/SMS/EMAIL? PM us or sign up here
Originally Posted by johner911
Thanks!
For example, in 2019, things were exactly the opposite, and Samsung offers accounted for almost 84% of the entire traffic volume.
...but as far as here at LetsCPA we are 100% focused on CC Submit sweepstakes...
It´s better to master one thing instead of being mediocre in dozens of different things.
Same with food delivery services, mostly the quality is much better on a service that only has a very small but good menu than a service that offers Italian food, Chinese, Indian, Greece and whatever all at once.
Sorry when it was already answered but are these your own in-house offers?
Looks similar to Casino or Crypto EPCs that it´s mostly the small countries with low volume that have highest EPCs.
It´s a good example why EPC is not everything, in the end it´s mostly the geos with high volume that are on top of revenue stats.
Originally Posted by twinaxe
Originally Posted by twinaxe
Originally Posted by twinaxe
The volume of in-page push traffic is too low to change the game (in our case at least).
Was just curious
We're a network focused on CC submit sweeps and services for our affiliates. We cooperate with the strongest advertisers on the market so we don't need to create any in-house solutions to provide the EPCest offers to our partners
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