Jakub Chour  0:08  
Welcome to the WHAT the data?! podcast with your host Mitch and Leo,

Lior Barak  0:17  
hello to all the data lovers and this is another episode of what the data and today with us is Jakub. Jakub. How's it going?

Jakub Chour  0:27  
Hey, guys, happy to hear you are you can hear me.

Lior Barak  0:31  
We are so excited to have you today on the podcast. To the one of you doesn't know Jakub is located in Czech Republic is a consultant and Jakub. Maybe tell us some words about yourself.

Jakub Chour  0:44  
Thanks. So I'm consulting, growth and pricing right now only for mobile apps. My performance is very my background is performance marketing. I've been doing it for like, last 10 years. I started desktops and last four years only mobile apps data growth. Now pricing.

Lior Barak  1:06  
So Jaco, we actually met when you were working for a dating app back? what was it 2017. Already, some time ago,

Jakub Chour  1:18  
I think, as the 18 18,18.

Lior Barak  1:21  
And what we are going to be talking about today, is your experience with marketing data and dating apps in general. What is your starting point when you actually using the data from dating? how sensitive is it actually,

Jakub Chour  1:39  
it's very, very sensitive, like compared, like, the whole holiday thing is especially sensitive. And we got even more the topic of which is LGBT dating. So basically, gay, lesbian and queer woman. So it was presented for all the participants and at the time. We also haven't got that many requests for removal. It wasn't known that much. But the I've seen a search of death requests from like 2018 to 2020. Right now. I don't know like 100%, maybe, maybe even more, or 100%. Each, right now might be each day, someone asking us for removal. So it's very essential that people are aware of that.

Lior Barak  2:31  
So people became much more aware to privacy issues, then.Is it limiting the way that you can do actually retargeting Facebook and Google?

Jakub Chour  2:40  
 No, no that, to that extent, as I think that basically, Google and Facebook, don't care very good data. So if we, if we were doing it at a time, I wouldn't say it was limiting for us. No, no, I don't think it's anything at all right now do didn't know another way is that it's very hard to do online dating in general on Facebook, at least, because Facebook wants to regulate it relatively hard. And it's hard to be profitable on it out there better networks to be at 

Lior Barak  3:24  
Facebook are still open for advertisement, they're not really limiting you in any certain way. But what events? Are you actually sending them? What are you allowed to send them? Are they actually having any events that are not allowed?

Jakub Chour  3:38  
Events , Events, okay, you can send anything, basically, Facebook, or Google don't care too much. But you can only you can only select certain targeting, like, you can be only targeting people who who are single, which is like, I don't know, like 2% of people select their relationship status to single, or you can even target those who are like undecided. So not those who are in relationship, etc. And also, especially if it's LGBT community, or LGBT rated, you need to be whitelisted for the ads, or ability to show your ads. And also, if even if you do, then you probably need to be prepared for ads disapproval, much more often than regular advertisers. Who is vers, 

Lior Barak  4:33  
when you're collecting data internally, or are you collecting any data internally when when a dating app is launched? So are you sending a lot of events to the back end? Are you storing it? Or you don't even touch it? You don't even look at it? What are the main events that

Jakub Chour  4:50  
I will say that when I worked dating apps, I would say we approach that Same similar as every other app. So yes we do. We aggregate data and work with the data. Every other app, the wouldn't be after any particular user behavior like, like, or to any part of the user. You are just curious, if users are swiping How much are we getting expect. And the biggest, biggest thing we had to resolve was not the user's behavior. And by the scammers behavior, that was the most difficult thing to find out, like, who's a scammer, and who's not just what we revealed? Was that there for every dating app, not just for everyday the gap, there are some scammers who are trying to move their users to another platform, like little chats or whatever, and then try to push them to click on links, which either take them somewhere they don't want to, or they're never actively asking them for money, various ways. So either like, one way is, Hey, I would like to be your sugar daddy, or Mama, or a little bit more sophisticated ways, like, Hey, I really like you. I really do send me some photos. And then after some days, hey, my whatever, my puppy died, my grandmother died, hey, send me some money, because I'm four. And I don't need, you know, like, and what what's really interesting is that we have you get Dutch, with some some former scammer or spammer guy, who did it for money. He showed us like how much money he did was like, I don't know, three in a good day. So it's like $300 a day, the bad days. It's like 20 in the back today. And he did it through some online, basic on an online platform, which was, which was used for exchanging those those links, and for basically affiliate ID scheme. So he would take links, but specialized, some dating segment like LGBT segment, and made money from the clicks he used. So this was really interesting to go after those people who weren't really, really who didn't want to date but only one they wanted to scan.

Lior Barak  7:39  
So if we, if we're looking at the data, when you're looking at that, at least the finger interesting Gilmore is is it a scam? Or not? Rather than? Is it a good user a bad user? For me?

Jakub Chour  7:50  
Yes, exactly. Because it's, if it's good or bad user, it's really hard to tell, especially on dating apps, it depends where you download the app, if you are in the middle of Alabama, and there's no one around you, even the the app itself is great. No one will want to stay and stick with it. Because there's no one around you don't want to swipe. And if you are in the middle of New York City, then of course, there's plenty of users. So it was hard to tell what the user is good and what was not. And even harder to tell who is going to pay about scammers, it was for some time, it was a bit easier. And also, scammers were number one complain for us. And I believe it is still number one topic for most of the users. Now, of course, the dating industry.

Lior Barak  8:50  
If we look at the dating app, what are the top KPIs you're looking at in the morning, so when you wake up and you're driving to the office,

Jakub Chour  8:59  
definitely number of number of new signups number of paid or like new subscriptions, and then just you're just after if everything's right, like the number of swipes, number of messages, there are like those, those those things were usually fine. And they were just after some like, huge, huge steps in the traffic. So we know that everything runs right. But basically those unless something was really fucked up those users, those numbers didn't change that much. So the star metrics, say our two new signups and subscriptions.

Lior Barak  9:43  
And then do you do you check conversion? So how many of them actually leaving the app after a while? Are you? Do you care about it when you actually retargeting these users?

Jakub Chour  9:52  
No, because we didn't retarget those users at least not paid. We did some retention operations, but we didn't retargeting ads exist on the ad networks. So we have error on the sending messages and emails, for example. But again, it goes back goes back to the to the question that you need to estimate. Or you need to know where the user is to, to actually tell if it has the potential to be a quality user or not. Because if you're, if there's no one around you, you won't be sticking around.

Lior Barak  10:26  
Because I'm really always fascinated about dating app. And I'm thinking that this is the most interesting field to work at. And when you're looking at the creatives that you're creating, how much for actually you need to put inside it? What is the real effort that goes into thinking how you promoting your app? Is it a hard task in the sea of dating apps that existing out there or is it will just need to find your niche and then figure out which creatives are working best for them,

Jakub Chour  11:00  
I would say you are fairly limited of what you can say and promised in the app, and the ads. So because for example, if you are facebook, facebook checks the ads and says, Okay, this is too much, you can say you will find someone, you only can say you meet someone, for example, like it's a dumb example. But you need to be aware of some limitations. And I wouldn't say it's about the ad, I would say it's about finding the right channel. Because for example, for us in the past, we weren't able to get whitelisted in the Facebook for a very long time, because we had no connections there. So we are running, for example, only Google ads. And this wasn't success at any level. And right now, what I'm hearing is, Facebook is them basically for most of the data gaps, it's really hard to to get your niche, find your niche and get any reasonable amount of spendings. there to get profitable. So now I'm hearing Tiktok is very hard. Because on Tiktok. And it's also caused by the fact that you cannot show ads on Tiktok, and it's like made ads, which are like, it should look like, it looks like an ad, you need to be cooperating with creators to actually show some something which doesn't look like an ad, but like in real, uses a greater story. And then you can take the video and show it as an ad about the whenever, whenever any, any ad dog has some gold relation at the end, they download the app now or whatever, it doesn't really work. And I participated in some campaigns. And this was exactly like you, you really need to try hard for your ads not to look like an ad. So that that's the main one of the main differentiators. So the less it looks like an ad, the better. And if you have this kind of videos, because it has to be a video, of course, you have a chance to show and an image there but useful swipe it immediately. So you can take those videos back to Facebook and try or what whatever, whatever platform also, Snapchat might work for you. Again, back to the back to the tick tock the way we if found works for some apps. No dating in general. But right now for like more apps journal is that the creative is the one and targeting the broader the better. Because if you if you're using look like audiences, or even targeting on some interest of your audience can have, it's usually usually get worse than if you're just using the demo. So just man or woman and maybe age also depends. That's it. So the more bros and less it looks like an ad might be for you to try networks like and how do you measure it? 

Lior Barak  14:28  
So how do you measure success?

Jakub Chour  14:30  
In CTR, of course, and then ROAS, the money you can get back from the advertising spend from the subscriptions for example, the cost of so so basically you put some ads in the platform and see what works the best the same way you would do on Facebook, tick the platform as like a lower chance of like making things difficult like you have only a few options to earn on that So it's much easier to see success like what, what, what works and what's not.

Lior Barak  15:06  
As we arriving to the end of the episode, will, you'll be able to give your tips to people who wants to entering the dating apps space. And maybe also, which KPIs are recommending them to look at, what are the most important fees to check? Okay, so

Jakub Chour  15:26  
if we are going into the space, my first advice is, don't, unless there's something really game changing negative videos, one to one videos are something which is really hot right now. And I can see some really good apps coming in. So So and maybe the combination of like, social network and dating, like you can, you can get to like one to one, one to many. There's one up on it. I can't remember his name, but it's really hot right now. Coming in, it's okay, that was really good idea. But this just the swiping, or grid mechanisms of dating, like, with us for like, really long time, I dont we need more, just like that, even for a really niche, like, for threesomes, or for Muslims forever, for whoever it's like, the space really full of the competing APPS. So that's, that would be my, my first question. The second is, if you really want to do that, I suggest that you will try to advertise it first. Because in the app stores, there's like a zero chance of success, unless you have a way to scale it. paid marketing. So definitely, you need to be trying creators on Tiktok, or Snapchat, maybe I mean, like clusters, and then using the chat or some other networks. So that would be my second advice. A third, be aware of scammers, like dose, if you are huge enough, like from, I don't know, 20 k a month and more active users, you get some scammers and dos scammers have ability to send you really down with writings, so have some mechanisms to actually find the scammers and some mechanisms to improve ratings as much as possible, because that's what the only thing to differentiate because the competition's fierce.

Lior Barak  17:37  
Interesting. And then if we're looking at KPIs, what are the let's say three to four months, look KPIs for dating app,

Jakub Chour  17:47  
probably cost per install. Mainly You will be after United States. So cost per install of the app, because they're active user, at least like you can, but you can expect basically is that users will stick with you generally in dating for one, two, maybe three months, if they are paying maybe a bit more if they don't. But it's very hard to see they're sticking with you for like six plus months period. So expect really low LTV compared to two different apps. So monetize them early. So firstly, monetization is the key name in here. And yeah, that's that's our customer. It's like it's not difficult. It's just really hard to do, right. Like, you have your limited, you have limited options to work with. It sounds like the churn is very high on it is user it is you can get like 5% of users after week one. It's like no better scenario. Well, that's no. Yeah.

Lior Barak  18:59  
So Jakub, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate you joining here.

Jakub Chour  19:04  
Now. That's awesome. Thank you very much.

Lior Barak  19:06  
I think it's a great episode. If you liked it, please subscribe and like us. And of course share it with your friends. Thank you, everybody. Bye bye.

Jakub Chour  19:26  
Thank you for listening to the what the data podcast

Transcribed by https://otter.ai