Trending GEOs in Affiliate Marketing (2022-2023)

If you’ve been reading us for a while, you must know by now we specialize in finding exclusive offers from local advertisers from all over the world. Which means - we know the trends. We believe in expanding your ‘GEO horizons’ and working in any country that has internet coverage. So today we want to talk a bit about what is trending now and what we can expect in the future. Buckle up and let’s go!

Why is GEO that important​

Tier-1 countries have always been the most expensive ones for media buying. Yes, a higher income level means a better conversion rate. But with each year it’s becoming increasingly hard to find a good approach that would work for these countries. And this gave birth to a new trend in 2022: discover Africa (which doesn’t seem that modern, but trust us - it is). At least, this is what many owners of affiliate networks are about to do.

So, new GEOs mean:

• New audience that is not familiar with offers and old, worn-out approaches to traffic. It’s less spoiled, thus, easier to work with that Tier-1;
• Less competition - higher conversion. You can test new GEOs in semi-private mode as a trusted partner of an affiliate network => less competition and adequate auctions;
• New offers and advertisers (or old localized ones). New slim products, casinos, betting programs, sweepstakes and others will be perfect (see point 1).

But don’t forget a simple truth: to make profit in new GEOs you should know the cultural and national peculiarities of the country. Especially, with the ones that are only opening up to the affiliate industry.

And this is what we’ll discuss in the next chapters.

MENA: Africa and Middle East​

Everyone is talking about MENA - countries of Northern Africa and Middle East with a combined population of 370 mln people. What’s so interesting about this GEO?

First, let’s have a look at what countries constitute MENA:



Now let’s see what these countries have in common and what we should take into consideration when we start driving traffic:

• The most relevant GEOs for media buying in MENA are AE, TN, SA, KW and BH. All these countries have lots of natural resources, higher level of income and a great number of migrant workers;
• The majority of the population use VPN because the region has some harsh censorship. Make sure to avoid any creatives with uncovered parts of bodies (except for the face and hands), any association with magic or esoterism, phrases or pictures that might offend Muslim values;
• Mind language peculiarities. In most cases it’s better to go for Arabic. You can go for English in AE, though, as 90% of the population are English-speaking labor migrants from Pakistan.
• Patriarchy rule in most regions. Even if the offer is targeting women, the creative should target men as well (since they are the ones having the last say in decisions);
• Creatives should display some details, numbers, facts with some bright memorable pictures in the background.

When it comes to traffic sources, the majority of the audience from 18 to 44 use: Youtube - 87%, Facebook — 81%, WhatsApp — 80%, Instagram — 67%, Facebook Messenger — 64%. They also actively use Google, Wikipedia and Khaleejtimes (a news outlet in English).



Don’t forget that in MENA they have their own national and religious feasts when traffic volumes fall dramatically. It’s impossible to give details on each country in particular in our review, so we would advise first learning the cultural code of the target country in great detail before starting working with it.

Here are some of the offers we have in this region:

LATAM: old but new​

A very definite trend that we could observe were LATAM countries. On a hunt for new unexplored markets advertisers have introduced this GEO group with more than 660 mln people.

Not long ago LATAM was confined to Brazil [BR], Peru [PE], Venezuela [VE] and Bolivia [BO]. But now media buyers can also work with:



Some important things to note while working with the region:

• Out of 660 mln people at least 70% of them already have access to the internet in basically every country. BR, VE, BO and PE still have the biggest traffic volume. What’s more, these countries have the highest living standards in the whole region.
• Not much desktop traffic. Mostly for internet access people use smartphones, which is great for our primary vertical - mobile subscriptions.
• In LATAM they speak Portuguese and Spanish, in some regions - French. The majority understand all three languages in reality. But it’s better to use the official language of the country while preparing creatives.
• Education is not great. Higher education is not available to all people, some haven’t even finished school. This is exactly the reason for a great CR for Nutra offers.
• One more characteristic of LATAM population - impulsivity and taking risks. Which means, gambling goes well here. And the advertising activity in the region is not really monitored closely.

When it comes to ad placements, the leaders are the same as in any other region: Meta and Google. Twitter might come as a bit of a surprise here: people don’t really trust things they hear on TV and prefer to learn about the news from this social media. There is also a strong competition between TikTok and Kwai.



Here is what we have for this GEO:

Southern Africa: new to affiliate marketing​

African GEOs have sparked more interest after the introduction of LATAM to the market. After seeing cases of publishing teams with hundreds of thousands of dollars in new regions, it became clear this new region will bring lots of profit too.

We’ve seen lots of offers from MENA countries, and now we see even more for Southern countries of the continent: South Africa [ZA], Botswana [BW], Lesotho [LS], Eswantini [SZ], Namibia [NA]. Even though the combined population of these countries is only 62,8 mln, these countries are members of Southern African Customs Union (SACU) which makes them more economically beneficial than their neighbors.



What you should know about these countries:

• 80% of the population - black Africans, 7.8% - white people and 8.8% - mixed population and the rest are Indian and Asians.
• They have more than 10 official languages: Afrikaans, English, Zulum, Ndebele, Kosa, Venda, Pedi, Sotho, Tswana, Swazi, Tonga. The most widespread are Zulu and Kosa. The majority understand English.
• Approximately the internet is used by 58% of the population in the region. There is no censorship in advertising, apart from explicit porn content on local websites.
• Dating, betting and casinos are perfect here. The most popular betting company has at least 30 mln people visiting their website. Gambling is the second most profitable venture, with profit getting bigger every year. And, to add to this, the region has more than 1k active dating websites.
• At least 75% of the population have bought something online.

The most popular traffic sources (apart from porn websites) are Google, Facebbook, and Youtube. On the sixth place are, obviously, websites of betting companies.



mVas offers for Southern Africa (+more offers for Central Africa, including Zimbabwe):

What you should do to get the new GEO to convert​

Once you’re set on the GEO, here are a few steps to take to have your profit skyrocket:

• Start with a needs analysis of the target audience. For example, for Brazil and Botswana it would be the need for welfare and prosperity. For Scandinavia - upgrading the level of comfort of living, health and positive emotions. Which means, in the first case the audience would respond better to some attributes of success, and in the second case - to the real benefit of the product/content.
• Go through spy-services to see how other affiliates work with cultural and religious peculiarities of the region. In Tier-3 the color of the clothes, buttons, lipstick, flower might play a crucial role.
• Make sure your creatives are translated properly. You can always find some services on the web that can get you a good translation from a native speaker for a penny.
• Don’t forget about carrying out your own tests. After the analysis make 3 to 5 creatives with different approaches and then work on optimization based on the data you get.

We at ADLEADPRO will be happy to share our own expertise for any GEO. If you want to work with a new GEO, talk to our managers and get all the tips you need to launch a new campaign.

As always, for offers in trending GEOs you can find us here:
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