A mainstream dating offer run into the Philippines through native ad placements over four weeks — 980 verified sign-ups at $1.35 CPL, $1,323 total spend.
The task
The client had tested the geo on their own and landed on an unstable result. We needed to launch a mainstream dating offer in the Philippines for a mobile audience and get around strict Meta moderation of dating creatives.
We worked the "Dating" vertical in the Philippines market. Payment model — CPL per confirmed sign-up, main sources — native ads, Facebook Ads.
How we did it
We built the buy around four decisions.
- Built the funnel mobile-only from the start — no desktop landing page and no desktop traffic, matching the market's young mobile audience.
- Built creatives around recognizable, mildly humorous everyday scenarios (the commute, breaks, group chats) instead of a generic "find your match" message.
- Switched to native ads instead of Facebook, since dating creatives in this geo get blocked by Meta moderation far more often, and rejected ads mean lost testing speed.
- Translated landing pages into Tagalog instead of English.
What went wrong
Not everything went according to plan. Dating creatives in this geo get blocked by Meta moderation far more often, and rejected ads mean lost testing speed — cycling through many creative variants quickly on Facebook wasn't working.
Switched to native ads with lighter moderation, which allowed cycling through eight creative variants in the first ten days instead of two on Facebook. Tagalog-language creatives raised conversion by roughly 30% compared to the English-language control.
The result
Once stabilized, the campaign held the following numbers. Over the four weeks: sign-ups — 980, cpl — $1.35, spend — $1,323.
980 confirmed sign-ups at $1.35 CPL and $1,323 spend over four weeks; humorous everyday scenarios delivered roughly 2.3x the CTR of the generic "find your match" message.
What we took away
- Lighter native network moderation can be a decisive factor for testing speed in dating on moderation-sensitive markets.
- English-language landing pages shouldn't be treated as a safe default even in geos with high English literacy.
These numbers belong to one specific setup, geo, and buying period. Economics will differ on another offer or in another season — we always recalculate them before launch.