Expert review by Gemma Heathcote.
The gambling vertical is one of the most popular and well-paying affiliate marketing verticals. Profits are increasing year by year. This is due both to the general improvement in people’s standard of living and to the unquenchable human desire to win something without putting in much effort.
The gambling vertical includes various online casinos and games on which players can make a decent profit.
Vertical is in high demand because of the gaming nature of its product. In a world where everyone is looking for entertainment, and there is also money to be made here, the niche looks particularly attractive to potential customers.
Passion and excitement are what the multi-billion dollar online gambling industry is all about. All you have to do is find your player.
Put yourself in the place of a potential casino player that you have chosen as an offer. Evaluate the convenience of the registration form and deposit, as well as check the functionality of the integrated payment system. Remember: the smaller the initial deposit at the casino, the more conversions you can get.
Very often, users evaluate the casino they are going to play in by the availability or lack of bonuses. Usually, preference is given to projects that offer generous welcome bonuses, as well as special bonuses for regular players.
When choosing an offer, you should not pay attention only to the rating of the offer in the affiliate program. Often, when working with push notifications, EPC (Earnings-Per-Click) value is much more important.
Choose offers where you can get push traffic, even if these offers have low ratings. If you only get registrations as your first results, contact your affiliate manager. You can usually work with this data to optimize your campaign later.
Carefully check the KPIs of an offer at the start, so that you don’t get unexpected hitches when the company is already up and running and the ads are spinning off. Some of the offers have strict restrictions, which can significantly cut into your audience. For example, a ban on female players or strict age restrictions (like 26+).
Do everything you can to make the user feel your customer focus. Do a good job of researching the audience of the offer as well as the specifics of the chosen GEO:
Use the user’s native language in your creatives and on your branding, especially for countries where the majority of the population does not speak English. Also consider browser language targeting and geolocation macros.
There are other country-specific features, for example, Tier 1 is characterised by strict legal regulations on advertising and a demanding audience.
In Tier 2, little-known brands do not perform well and localisation of creatives is particularly important.
In Tier 3, the low ability to pay and the development of technology must be taken into account.
Proper target audience profiling helps you to launch a campaign and scale it up in the future.
First of all, pay attention to the gender of the users. Not only men are into gambling, but also women, so they should not be excluded.
In order to understand your audience in as much detail as possible, it is necessary to test creatives, according to the results of which it will be quite easy to calculate the “pains” of the audience. Ideally, it’s better to run campaigns with 5-10 creatives and weed out non-converting options later.
What approaches to the titles of gambling creatives should be used to attract users?
If you run out of ideas for titles, and the current options do not convert, contact the manager of the advertising platform you are working with for advice.
Add money to creatives, big wins, as well as items that you can buy for this money. Happy winners on creatives will never be superfluous, the main thing is to use the most vivid photos, untouched by Photoshop.
Pushes that look like the beginning of the game work great. For example, you can show its characters or functionality to attract users.
A pack with examples of icons for the gambling vertical can be downloaded here.
It’s worth experimenting with different landing and pre-lander options to see which approach works best for a particular campaign. Perhaps, in one case, a direct link to the landing page will be optimal, while in another case, you will need to use a pre-lander.
3-4 landings for one campaign is an ideal option that will help you determine the most effective creative and conduct a/b testing if the ad network allows it.
On landings, spinwins convert perfectly, in which you can win a bonus in just a few seconds. After such a game, the user must go to the registration form and fill it out.
Agree that users are not always in the mood for gambling. For example, they are unlikely to do it at work. That’s why it’s so important to set up a campaign schedule. At the most profitable times, the number of conversions will increase.
Casinos are usually played at weekends, but the early mornings before work or late afternoons after work should not be ruled out.
When it comes to self-isolation and quarantine, the campaign can be wound all day long during this period. Already during the optimization phase, you can choose the right time period.
How to calculate the test budget? We recommend calculating it using the formula CPA*4. For example, if you get $100 per deposit, the test budget should be $400.
Although it is recommended to start with higher rates to get better traffic, this does not mean that the CPA will turn out to be higher. Usually the opposite is true.
Also, don’t forget to track the smaller conversions (registrations, clicks on a landing page), which will help to get the first results faster and start optimising the campaign earlier.
P.S. You can find push, pops and native traffic for your offers on the RichAds platform (RichPush, RichPops and RichNative products) and at the same time get even more tips from the experts.