The ZBS team recently shared a case study with us where they generated $27,000 in profit by promoting a gambling affiliate offer through Progressive Web Apps (PWA) in Lithuania, a GEO with a population of 3 million.
ZBS has been operating exclusively and privately, driving traffic to gambling offers that target European GEOs. However, over the past year, they heard rumors that more and more affiliates were driving PWA traffic and earning a significant amount of money from it. As a result, they decided to try out campaigns in this format.
Keep reading to learn how they were able to start this campaign from scratch and generate a 90% ROI.
Campaign summary
Affiliate Program: Huffson Group
GEO: Lithuania
Period: 12/01/2022-01/31 /2023
Offer: GG Bet, Ice Casino
Payout: $150/180
Apps: PWA Group
Income: $56 520
Traffic costs: $29 578
Profit: $26 942
ROI: 91.3%
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Let's dive into this article...
To start their affiliate campaigns, the media buyers at the ZBS team decided to run a test campaign with GG Bet (CPA) and Ice Casino (CPA) offers in Lithuania. The decision was made based on a recommendation from their affiliate manager at Huffson Group, a trusted partner with whom they have been working for the past two years.
The initial payout for the offer was $150, which seemed like a lucrative opportunity to promote these offers to their target audience.
Why Choose Lithuania?
For a team with rich experience in the Russian market, the similarity of the target audience and a considerable percentage of Russian-speaking users proved to be a significant advantage to the media buyers of the ZBS team, and for this reason, they did not shy away from testing some gambling campaigns in the Lithuania GEO.
After analyzing GEO statistics, demographics, and device usage ratios between Android and iOS, they decided to test the campaigns using PWA.
Age-sex graph of the population of Lithuania for 2022
Attachments for this campaign were assembled using the PWA Group constructor. They chose this service due to its all-in-one dashboard, which includes a database of app templates for various verticals, auto-translation of elements into multiple languages, push notifications, a tracker, a built-in clocker, and more.
The main advantage of working with PWA, in this case, was the ability to create any app design they desired, enabling them to hit their target audience with precision. For example, they could present a super-duper branded casino or other enticing offerings.
Targeting Options, Ad Creatives, and Apps
Let's dive into the campaign itself now that we've covered the backstory. The targeting strategy was exclusive to men aged 25 and over, based on their affiliate network manager's recommendations. This targeting strategy was important in the campaign's success, which was primarily focused on Facebook and Instagram feeds, as the graph above illustrates.
To capture our target audience's attention, the media buyers utilized a classic ad creatives approach, incorporating video format creatives that highlighted the excitement of slot machines, evoked emotions, and emphasized receiving an instant money transfer from the bank.
However, they quickly realized that the best results came from ad sets featuring ad creatives that clearly communicated promotions and maximum bonuses from the casino. As a result, they optimized their ad sets accordingly.
It's important to note that the call-to-action manager's recommendations and creative accents played a crucial role in making this campaign profitable. Whenever we deviated from these guidelines, we saw a noticeable drop in both quality and conversion rates. We are still running successful campaigns with these creatives in the Republic of Kazakhstan, but we haven't yet included them in our case study.
Regarding the add-ons, the media buyers wanted to create a visually stunning application card that would appeal to their target audience. Their designers developed only three design options that prominently featured the casino brand and recognizable characters from popular auto brands. Here are two examples of those visually appealing creatives:
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2.
To increase credibility, the ratings, ads, and comments were carefully crafted with attention to detail. However, they made a mistake by copying comments from other real applications on the Play Store and removing the negative reviews which made it very obvious to the users who were about to download the app.
They added about 20 comments using popular Lithuanian names and surnames. The comments were in both English and Russian languages.
They auto-translated some of the comments and by doing this, the users spotted more faults which made the app lose another star on the Play Store ratings. However, to fix this issue, they found a native freelancer from Lithuania who rebuilt them and made fresh translations.
Campaign Statistics
Their campaign started with a zero default rate, but thanks to the quality of their traffic, they were able to quickly increase their payout to $180. As a result, they're now seeing a steady increase in their profits.
They've included screenshots of their affiliate network statistics and various accounts for transparency. At the time of writing, their campaign has generated 314 deposits totaling $56 520, with a total spend of $29 578 across all campaigns.
Conclusion
In conclusion, we'd like to emphasize that often the GEOs and approaches that many have abandoned can still generate good ROI with the right analysis of the target audience and maximum adaptation. However, it's crucial not to overlook the recommendations of a personal targeting manager. When creating creatives, it's essential to focus on bonuses and promotions offered by the casino and to thoroughly work out the application.
While other affiliate teams are left wondering when Google Play will ban 90% of all Webview apps again, others are continuing to squeeze out traffic from even the smaller GEOs through PWA and profiting from it. Not too long ago, PWA was hated by many, but now we are not dependent on inbound ban waves and can catch the best traffic from Facebook through target design.
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