Deep links served English to my German traffic — 4 nights before I noticed

[gateofolympus]

Hi all, first post here. I've been running paid push traffic to a German slots landing page for about a week and just found something that cost me four nights of budget. Posting it in case it saves someone else the same mistake, and because I'd like to know whether this is common.

My setup: German-language pre-lander, push traffic, Germany only, mobile only. Four nights, roughly $150 spent, zero registrations.

I assumed the pre-lander was the problem and spent two days A/B testing layouts. It wasn't the pre-lander.

The affiliate programme gave me two link types — a registration link and a game deep link. My ads say "play [game name]", so the deep link seemed like the obvious match. Testing properly from a German IP with a German browser, here's what each one actually served:

Registration link -> same-domain/de German, registration form Game deep link -> same-domain/en English, LOGIN dialog

Same casino, same mirror domain, same device, two different languages. So German users clicking a German ad were landing on an English login form for an account they didn't have.

The affiliate manager's first explanation was that the site auto-detects device language. It doesn't, at least not on all offer types — the language appears to be set per offer, and nobody had checked the deep links.

Two things I'd do differently:

1. Test every link type from an IP in your actual target country. My own testing was routed through another country for days without me realising, and gave me completely misleading results. That was my own fault and it wasted a lot of time.

2. Check whether the link opens a register or a signin dialog. Even in the right language, a login form is the wrong destination for cold traffic.

Questions for anyone who's been doing this longer:

Is this a known thing with deep links, or did I just get unlucky with this programme? And do you routinely test every offer link from the target geo, or is there a faster way to catch this kind of thing?

[universal4]

I have never been a fan of direct to registration links.

Cases where it might be ok is from an extensive review where the visitor is fully sold and ready to sign up immediately.

The direct to game page might have been ok if that is the keywords you were targeting, but obviously either the geo targeting not working as you mentioned was hurting or the offer itself failed.

One problem some deep links have is a lack of easy ways for the visitor to get back to the main home page, promotions pages themselves or the terms pages. (This is not an issue with all deep link pages but some).

I usually prefer sending the traffic to home pages, or specific landing pages for game types like say slots, or live games if you are targeting that. Again only if the landing has the regular navigation etc to see the rest of the operator site.

Rick
Universal4

[eenzoo]

If you promote (aka your ads show) one particular game and your prelander shows the same, the "Reg form" is the way to go all day long.
In your case, I would check your tracking software first. Is it real GER traffic, or bot or VPN ... what tracking software do you use?

Sending prequalified traffic to a "home" is wasting money at big scale.
Check you traffic source and your tracking setup.
Maybe u just booked bots instead of Germans

[gateofolympus]

Thanks both — Rick, the point about deep links having no way back to the rest of the site is one I hadn't considered.

eenzoo, to answer your question directly: I wasn't using a tracking suite at all. After losing four nights I built server-side logging into my own pre-lander — a small endpoint that records every pageview and every outbound click along with the traffic source's click_id. Ad blockers can't suppress it, which mattered: my client-side analytics was only seeing about a third of what the server log recorded.

And you were right to ask about bots. Of 50 recorded click events, only 36 were unique click_ids. Ten fired more than once, and three fired three times within the same second, which no human does. They clustered in two specific source lists. Both are now blacklisted. So yes — I had booked some bots.

That logging also gave me per-source data the ad network doesn't show. The source ID sits inside the click_id, so I can measure engagement per source instead of waiting for conversions. One source sent 368 visitors and produced zero clicks to the offer — against my overall 1.4% rate, roughly a 0.5% chance of being bad luck. Also gone.

On reg form vs home page: my ads name one game and the pre-lander shows that game, so eenzoo's condition applies and I'm staying on the registration link.

A third option turned up today though. The programme also has demo links — the player lands directly in the game, in German, playing for free, with a register button right there. No login wall, and unlike the deep links they actually work. Has anyone tested demo-first against reg-form on cold paid traffic? My instinct is that free play might satisfy the itch and kill the registration, but I'd rather hear from someone who has measured it.

Last question, and the one I most need answered. Two registrations so far, zero first deposits. I don't have the volume to tell whether that's normal or a broken funnel. For those of you buying traffic — what share of registrations turn into a first deposit, and how long does it usually take? I'm trying to work out whether to plan around 5%, 15% or 25%. That difference decides whether paid traffic can ever pay for itself at my cost per registration.

[davetremblay]

This is one of those problems thats easy to miss for days if you only look at clicks and conversions. I would probably start checking the final landing URL by GEO once in a while especially after an operator changes something. A working link isnt always the right link