Do you know what the next year will look like? Can we predict the future? If we follow the logic, trends, and conclusions from 2021, we may actually be successful in figuring out a special formula of profit that will definitely work next year. Our iMonetizeIt team, together with experts from Dating Vertical, decided to look behind the scenes of 2022 and find out what to expect from Dating after all and how to make a profit on the evergreen vertical in affiliate marketing.
1. What to expect from the popularity of Dating? Could we expect a drop and significant changes in statistics? What trends should be searching right now?
Roman Kirianov, TL performance of IMI team
Dating continues to grow every year:
Many international analytical agencies report that the market is expected to grow up to $24 billion in 2022, as well as market leaders, such as Match.com and Badoo, which show growth in revenue and active users in their quarterly financial reports. The pandemic continues. 2020 showed vividly that Dating has become a safe haven, increasing traffic by 1.5 times. Users, deprived of other entertainments like travel, restaurants, betting, and sometimes even ecommerce due to delivery problems, easily switch to social networks. In turn, Dating is adapting to the realities, offering users new features in the form of online dating, private chats, collaborative online games, vaccination badges, etc.
Alex Follow
The popularity of dating helps us a lot. It's not trendy to get acquaintance offline now, so increasing the number of growing target audience should have a positive effect on stats. As for trends, I would look towards additional monetization of traffic, as well as its pushing through push/retargeting/remarketing, for some reason, still few affiliates use these marketing techniques in their funnels. I often see *white* apps in the Play Market and App Store, with monetization through a subscription model or simply with paid features. I would advertise on those kinds of offers as applications
Max Dovolnyy
Niche is not disappearing, every year you can see how funnels are improving and personalizing due to the large number of tests and analyses by advertisers/networks. I don't think we should wait for a drop, but I see a decrease in the proportion of traffic from free traffic in socials and a switch by webmasters to paid traffic. Trends - I believe in the development of meta universes, which set Musk, I'm sure it will have a high-quality effect on Ad. Games.
Oleg Shaporenko
I don't see objective reasons for the drop. Even the mass outflow of people from remote mode to a more usual mode of work shouldn't affect the outflow of activity from Dating. First of all, for the simple reason that more than 85% of users prefer mobile devices. On top of that, there are fresh products coming out that engage much more actively than the old ones. I'm betting on continued growth and technology trends in Dating. There will be a fair amount of innovation and explosive bursts of activity in 2022.
Andrew Sidorenko, CEO of TrafficHunt
The popularity of Dating in the current affiliate ecosystem in 2022 should not decrease, on the contrary, there are only tendencies to grow. Since the original Dating is generally recognized as a "green vertical," its popularity is unlikely to increase in 2022. If we look at major trends in examples of traffic sources, my predictions are follows:
• Advertising networks as one of the main tools of the marketer; I don't think that network will have a big boost in terms of volumes, the market has long been formed, as well as the major players in the context of publisher/advertiser, so from the super new here can only expect new opportunities within the targeting, or updates within the limits, or permissions of creatives in marketing funnels of advertisers.
• Spam in social networks or messengers. This type of traffic mining, in my opinion, will always show growth, given the current realities and influence of messenger segments in general, and we should not forget about Facebook/TikTok as the main headliners within the scope of growth of this segment.
2. Top-3 of webmasters mistakes in working with Dating Vertical at the moment and how to avoid them in the future?
Roman Kirianov, TL performance team IMI
1) Absence of audience segmentation. Most publishers have no idea about the age, gender or demographic composition of their traffic. And most advertisers are still targeting male 35+ native speakers of the relevant GEO.
2) The disconnect between promotion and product. More often publishers haven't an idea what pre-land will send to users or on landing page. This is why they use very aggressive creative materials, often with false CTAs in order to attract the maximum number of users, which has a very negative effect on the traffic. Thus, with a viral video in TIK-TOK and with an appeal to continue watching the link is really possible to gather a wide audience, but the quality of traffic will be extremely low.
3) Chasing high rates. Most publishers continue to ignore the tracker and relative performance rates, hoping that the higher the PPR, then better advertiser they found, which leads to the final drop in the effectiveness of monetization.
3. Which Geo's are worth to look at in 2022? The main discovery of 2021 is GEO.
Roman Kirianov, TL performance team IMI
Brazil, Russia, Israel - these countries are showing excellent growth since the pandemic began and are firmly anchored in the Top. The number of advertisers continues to grow, which increases competition and, accordingly, rates.
4. Thoughts about free traffic from socials? Will it be alive with all the restrictions?
Luke Kling, owner of Afflift forum
Spam is bad. I just stay away from it. Blackhat methods are short term. Focus on more long term opportunities
Max Dovolnyy
I think that, the very small sources will remain; or the whole niche will evolve to working in teams and a greater focus on the management of all activities. So, in my opinion, the classic $100 daily solo plan is going to die out.
Oleg Shaporenko
Again, if we take note not only of old products/sources, and take new ones, it becomes obvious that there will be fresh TA locations. At the same time absolutely for sure they will not introduce all the necessary measures of protection from the free traffic, but will do it step by step, getting bumps in the road, as always... That is why my prognosis is definite - the growth of the free traffic from socials in new traffic sources.
Alex Follow
Free traffic from socials, despite the improvement of anti-spam systems, is alive and will survive. You can still advertise from almost any source. You just need to use your head, be careful and not trigger admins with your thoughtless actions.
5. The main difficulties of 2021 (offers, smartlinks, traffic sources, fraud)
Luke Kling, owner of Afflift forum
2021 has been a pretty good year for the affiliate marketing industry. Coming into this year, we had massive concerns about push notifications, pops, and just overall concern about what Google might do. Competition in push did increase while supply decreased a bit, which led to some higher CPCs, but overall we seemed to see higher quality.
Overall, I think 2021 was a great year for the affiliate industry!
Oleg Shaporenko
The main and most massive phenomenon, which hit the Dating this year - the flow of traffic from Google UAC and Tik-Tok. The problem was that everyone who has seen the cosmic ROI, have rushed to all efforts and began to advertise almost mindlessly and uncontrollably with large volumes of traffic, knowingly unsuitable for advertisers. Only with time I've got prepare right funnels, rebuild processes and understanding inside partners about this traffic and improve targeting inside both sources.
Alex Follow
No difficulties, everything is stable
Max Dovlnyy
Personally, for me there is no difficulty, the market is moving and moving in the right direction. I would like a little more in-house offers and custom products with personalized funnels for a particular girl.
Roman Kirianov, TL performance team IMI
The spring wave of fraud, which peaked in April;
New requirements of payment systems in France, which were only solved by the summer;
Problems with Facebook from the start of November.
6. The main metrics you should keep monitoring. Why?
Igor Kovalevsky, CEO of AdsBridge
The main set of metrics for each vertical will change slightly. Among all the analytics metrics, it's worth highlighting such as: CPM/CPC, CTR, CR, ROI. Everyone works with them on a daily basis and pays maximum attention to them. These haven't changed for many years. I think there are the key metrics in traffic on which decisions are made.
Roman, Kirianov, TL performance of IMI team
On the side of affiliate marketing, there is only one essential metric - EPM, it shows the profitability per lead. Of course, to be confident in this metric you need to use a tracker. The rest of metrics - clicks, CTR, CR, EPC, unic, etc - remain the concern of chosen affiliates.
7. Traffic prospects from TikTok in 2022?
Roman Kirianov, TL performance team IMI
TikTok audience continues to grow and, just as importantly, to be mature. Аffiliates have already tested a lot of approaches and this sorce is firmly entrenched in the total volume, exceeding the mark of 15%, so we highly assess the prospects of the source.
8. What's the formula of a profitable creative/pre-land? What works and doesn't work in creatives? Tell us the secret
Luke Kling, owner of Afflift forum
My best creatives for dating incorporate a man or woman from the actual offer landing page. If the offer registration form has a picture of a beautiful blonde girl, I include that girl in my creative on my ad as well as my pre-lander. This creates a comfortable flow for the user.
For dating, I recommend trying to find amateur photos if you are not going to use one from the offer landing page or dating site. Professional photos you find online will not perform in most cases as well as an amateur photo.
Alex Follow
There is no secret. I have a pre-land stub with the question "are you 18?" it works fine in my free traffic. All phases of the funnel I use photos of the same girl: profile at the source, AD, message, pre-land and everywhere else there is photo content that I can edit.
Max Dovolnyy
We're moving away from the vulgarity "******* me" style. In our tests, we're going toward the softer "looking for a man for one night, lots of work and no time for a relationship." Funnels - pump your funnels. Bots, sophisticated site surveys, non-trivial approaches - that's where all the money and the whole conversion are.
Oleg Shaporenko
Realism is the oldest, most proven and most long-term secret. The fastest the user will believe in the creative, the greater it will be. The trick is to find the right audience, namely to evaluate the specific audience which the creative will be shown to, and to "guess" the degree of realism required to make the user believe it. Generally speaking, for older men, it's okay to use creatives with glamorous girls. And for young people it won't work, they will only believe simple unprocessed selfies of girls whose appearance also corresponds to the area as an example.
Roman Kirianov, TL performance team IMI
- language adaptation - creative in the language of the user's browser;
- work with unic clicks - change the creative depending on the user's login number;
- backbuttons;
- organic funnel - the funnel is a user-friendly way to the user, each next step is a logical continuation of the previous one;
- gamification - new interactive elements allow you to change the user's usual flow and increase his involvement;
- trends - event creatives increase the effectiveness of the funnel.
Old marketing tricks don't work: countdown timers, geolocators, exit js, full screen buttons.
9. Tell your predictions for the coming year in Dating Vertical.
Luke Kling, owner of Afflift forum
I am optimistic that Dating is going to continue to grow in the affiliate space. Both mainstream and adult dating in our industry are strong. It’s fairly easy for advertisers to monetize which means high payouts for affiliates. Good converting traffic can be found throughout the industry. It’s one of my strongest verticals so I hope it keeps growing! (it’s almost very popular on affLIFT)
Max Dovolnyy
I would like to see more connection from advertisers and affiliate networks with webmasters to get better and more advanced information based on data volume analytics. I guess in 2022 we may see more "fresh" GEOs, like we had with nutra, when remote Tier-3s open smoothly, and of course more "fresh" offers on current Geos.
Oleg Shaporenko
I am confident that Tik-Tok will consolidate, significantly improving targeting opportunities. Reels, Shorts and other players in the segment of short quick videos will follow. In other words, there will be an accent on virality. And in terms of products - technology and new features in the functionality within, through which it will be easy to increase retention and pull in new segments of the audience.
Alex Follow
I don't think anything will be critical or significantly changed.
Roman Kirianov, TL performance team IMI
1) New markets. Having successfully tested brands in the USA, advertisers are actively moving to new locations in Europe, Asia, Latin America and even Africa. Where due to the expansion of Internet coverage, growth of mobile users and popularization of western brands you can quickly and inexpensively get millions of new users. A striking confirmation of this is Match.com's string of purchases of local brands around the world this year.
Technology. Advances in technology and the trend towards the increasing use of data about the user - is making digital marketing more and more personalized. And in spite of the fact that Dating used to advertise "on the wide," the world famous brands continue to launch niche products, focused either on a specific age group, or on the general interests of users.
2) Technology allows for better and better targeting of traffic and show only those advertising messages that are specific to him, which means that the "correctly" product at the end of the funnel, will be able to increase profitability from the user and more efficiently dispose of budgets.
3) The lines get blurred. In affiliate marketing, we used to clearly separate white and casual Dating and not only because of content, user’s morality level, presence/absence of bot accounts, monetization models, but also in terms of value brought to the user. So these 2 poles of Dating are moving towards each other every year. Thus, we already clearly understand, that even in white Tinder, most users come for hookups, and the level of bots steadily continues to grow. In turn, Casual Dating, is softening the aggressiveness of creatives, beginning to attract users of both sexes and applying new, less aggressive monetization models. Only increased regulation can limit the growth of Dating. Every year we see more and more news about Google and FB restricting the promotion of data products. More and more talk about new payment system restrictions that at first sight negate standard product monetization models in the use of personal data. But to each such challenge, digital marketing and Dating, in particular, responds with a new solution to attract even more traffic.
10. Your plans for 2022 and wishes for the audience
Luke Kling, owner of Afflift forum
My plans for 2022 are similar to what I had planned out for 2022. I am going to launch as many campaigns as possible so I can test new opportunities every week.\
I am going to be releasing a course on how to run dating with push traffic on affLIFT so make sure to keep your eye out for that!
My hope for everyone is that their trackers glow green!
Alex Follow
I want to develop the market and develop myself, which is what I wish for my subscribers.
Max Dovolnyy
My plans are to develop my own white products in Dating and near-vertical. What I would like to wish - do not be afraid to test, often the profit is very close. And don't forget to analyze your attempts, from experience I can say that only by analyzing the competent links and approaches you can earn +30%)
Oleg Shaporenko
The plan doesn't change from year to year. As much as possible, increase the effective presence in the market, while gradually raising the level of the Dating vertical within the affiliate-marketing in general. That is why I honestly wish everyone who works with marketing in any format to develop professionally and increase their profits by building competencies and pumping up their skills!
Roman Kirianov, IMI team TL performance
Turn over the market of smartlinks, putting personalization and the use of personal data in the construction of funnels at the core. Offer to publishers new monetization models. Give partners new sections of statistics, allowing them to analyze the quality of their traffic. Launch new channels of additional monetization.
Despite the fact that most affiliates devote themselves completely to mining/purchasing traffic, I want to improve their knowledge of targeting, building funnels and analyzing statistics. These little things hide the effectiveness of your funnels, and thus the success of your affiliates activities.
Growth, development, new markets and big plans - that's the only way we can describe the future of Dating Vertical in 2022. And judging by the recommendations of our experts, the best way to profit -- testing! So test it, pump your skills and collect all the laurels of success in affiliate marketing: high CR, stable ROI and a lot of valid leads!
Good luck!
Your iMonetizeIt team
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