Question for the dating-traffic buyers. When your traffic is mixed geo (tier 1 plus a lot of tier 2/3), do you run a smartlink that auto-routes by geo/device, or pick direct offers per segment yourself? Smartlinks are lazy-easy and monetise the junk geos you’d otherwise waste, but you give up control and margin. Direct offers pay more per good lead but you leave the odd-geo traffic on the table unless you build the routing yourself. Where do people land?
Both, layered. Direct offers on the geos and devices I know convert, smartlink as the fallback catch-all for everything else so no click is wasted. Sending your tier-1 desktop dating traffic into a generic smartlink is leaving money on the table, but sending your random tier-3 mobile into a picky direct offer just wastes it. Segment, then route.
As the affiliate-manager voice: talk to your AM before you assume the smartlink is worse. A good network will set you a custom smartlink weighted to their best-paying offers for your exact geo mix, which can beat a direct offer you picked badly. The lazy default smartlink is what earns the bad reputation, not the concept.
Contrarian bit: for push and pop dating traffic specifically, I’ve had the smartlink beat my own direct picks more often than my ego wants to admit, because the routing reacts to fill in real time and I don’t. Test it honestly with a real split, not a vibe.
smartlinks vs direct comes down to your geo mix. tier1 i run direct, the long tail i hand to a smartlink.
for mixed-geo dating i send tier1 direct and the rest go to smartlink. work better than using one approach for everything.
direct where you know it converts, smartlink the tail you can’t be bothered to tune. the second you treat it as either/or you’re leaving money on both sides. run them together.
mixed geo is where the smartlink actually earns its keep, but only on the geos you’re never going to tune. the moment one shows real volume, pull it out and run it direct.
sounds like a sales line but it isn’t. a decent am will straight up tell you which geos to smartlink and which to run direct, because a smartlinked whale is worth less to them too.
for my push dating traffic the smartlink also did fine, better than i think it would. but my clean geos still win when direct. so i do like the others say, direct where i know, smartlink the rest.
layered is where i landed too, after doing it wrong for ages. i smartlinked everything out of pure laziness and my good AU traffic got underpaid the whole time. split it out and the direct side jumped.
the trap with mixed geo is trying to optimize the whole blob at once. segment first, then decide per segment. some geos want a direct offer, some want the smartlink, and averaging them just hides both.
optimising a mixed geo blob as one thing is how you bleed money slowly and then blame the offer. i run tier1 direct, dump tier2 and 3 into a smartlink, and stop pretending one setup covers both.
it’s where everyone sensible ends up. smartlink to catch the messy long tail geos you’ll never hand optimize, direct offers on the geos and devices you actually know. on revshare specifically i run direct where i trust the program’s retention and smartlink the rest, because the smartlink won’t give me the rebill data i care about. layer it, don’t pick a side.
you have to segment by geo first. a blended number hides your good geos behind the dead ones so it always looks mediocre. the top ones usually do better going direct, leave the rest on the smartlink. it’s for the long tail, not your main traffic.
it’s underrated because it sounds obvious and almost nobody actually does it. your AM can see which of your geos and offers are converting on their side, data you’re half blind to, and will often move you to a better direct offer than the smartlink default. sometimes a two minute conversation gets you a deal that beats the smartlink on your best traffic. ask before you assume.
agree, is where smartlink earn its keep. my push dating traffic is many geos at once and i cannot optimize each one direct, is too much work. so smartlink for the mess, direct for the two or three geos i know well. is not one answer for everyone, is both together. people who say smartlink bad usually run one clean geo where direct is obvious better.
from the network side that’s exactly how we see the good affiliates operate. the ones who send us a blended blob and complain about EPC are hiding their bad segments in the average. the ones who segment and go direct on their winners while smartlinking the tail make more, and are easier for us to optimize with. segmenting isn’t just your win, it makes the whole relationship work.
the smartlink versus direct debate is a false binary. the answer isnt one or the other, its segment your traffic and route each slice to whatever suits it, your strong geos and clean traffic to hand picked direct offers, your messy mixed geo tail to a smartlink that can sort it. the people arguing it as an either or are both half right and both leaving money on the table, because the best setup uses both on different segments. dont optimize the whole blob at one payout type, split it and optimize each piece.
yes exactly, this is the segment where i stop fighting and let the smartlink do its job. my clean tier1 traffic i route to the offer i pick myself, but the mixed geo dating tail, fifty small countries i cannot hand optimize, the smartlink handle that blob far better than i could one by one. is not that smartlink is better or worse than direct, is that they are for different segment, and mixed geo is smartlink territory. i learn to stop trying to hand tune the messy geo and just let the smartlink sort it while i put my direct effort where it pay.