IGaming Insights.

May 18, 2020

Including all the available verticals that advertisers run on a Clickadu platform, Gambling has recently been achieving enormous growth of performance. Of course, the very first reason is the expansion of Clickadu in this direction. And of course, it's about the advertisers' interest in the direct sources. The last but not least, the crisis, that made people stay at home.

Certainly, not all newcomers are ready-made PROs in digital marketing and can easily catch up on our traffic and ad formats. On the other hand, product owners should also be able to customize their campaigns effectively within our platform and monitor the results of their work.

Therefore, we decide to give a helping hand to those who have issues with a campaign set up or cannot decide what ad format will work the best for a particular offer.

Let us carefully look at the ad formats you can use to promote your Gambling brand.

I. Popunder / Popup (SSP format name – onClick)

Pops are the easiest way to deliver your message straight to the audience, and the quickest one.

Pros are that users will see the offer itself without any intermediates.

Cons are that the user does not expect to get ads and his reaction is unpredictable.

In order to minimize the risks of losing the attracted users, use a landing page with the comprehensive info about the offer itself, its value for the user, and the information necessary for the target action (e.g.: registration).

How does it work?

Step 1 – a single page click redirected the user to your Landing page with an attractive presentation about your brand:

Step 2 – a 'Call to Action' button should be attractive user and make him move forward straight to the registration page or to the gambling website main page:

Another good move is to combine the attractive Landing page with the registration form.

Both versions are legit and worth testing separately. The last one is good enough when your brand is familiar to the users and simply offers some additional benefits for joining in.

You can always find information about how to set your campaign here.

To DO list when using onClick with Gambling vertical:

  • Pops are highly competitive for almost every country and it's vital to acquire 1st ad impressions for every user. Ask your manager for TOP bids on GEOs you want to aim;
  • Check your targeting options carefully. Do not make it too narrow – gather some data first, then optimize according to best-performing devices, OS, browsers, etc. For the pre-optimized setup – you should use all available sources including RTB (we have only trusted sources with HQ traffic for it). You can always use the Zone limitation setting to exclude sites that performing not well enough.
  • Analyze the incoming meta in a few days' runs. For some GEOs we can serve up to 400M daily traffic, therefore tests require some time and a budget to find relevant zones (traffic sources) with first apparent results.
  • Always keep in mind that our platform works on a live auction scheme, therefore bids can change (other advertisers can simply outbid you) – Keep your eye on current bidding and stay in touch with your manager to get that info (till our traffic inventory will be released).

II. Push Notifications

Push notification (hereafter – push) is arguably the easiest ad format to promote any type of offer. The biggest advantage of push is that users can get ad messages even when they are not browsing the web and at the same time with his regular notifications from the services he is subscribed for.

For users, it's the most 'native' way to get information fast and the capacity is enough to make decisions right away. It means that if you want to succeed with the push you need to create catchy and attractive notifications that can grab the user's attention and lead to further actions.

In contrast to pop's, push-notifications can lead to a registration page straight away, because your push is your landing page.

How does it work?

Step 0 – User subscribes to our publisher’s website notifications. The process is the same as any news or favorite shop notification. A subscribed user gets into our database and 'wait' for the ad notifications from our advertisers.

Step 1 – You need to create a Push Notification ad.

The title box allows 30 symbols, description goes with 40. The max resolution for an icon is 192x192px and for banner is 720x480px.

Creative settings are the most important part of the push campaign set up and here are some top tips from our creative team:

- Your creative should grab the user's attention by visual and textual parts both;

- There are many directions of approach in the gambling vertical as same as games that you can offer for each user – slots, casino, poker, baccarat, mahjong, roulette, bingo etc.;

- Keep in mind that different countries, audiences, groups, genders must go hand-in-hand with a completely different ad approach.

For example:

In EU people do have some spare funds and don't mind to gamble, like to spend their time with interesting and complicated gaming interfaces;

In US people like challenges so ads should contain an urging or challenging 'call to action';

In LATAM the audience is usually with a drastically lower level of payability, therefore the ad approach should contain more of a 'chance to get rich' or a 'real chance to win'.

Here are some illustrative examples for you:

Your creative may contain the exact offer's info or tease the user to further actions:

A call to action:

'Get your free spins now!'

'Grab your luck and start winning!'

'Register and start winning!'

Yes=success (make your users always answer you with YES):

'Wanna get rich?'

'Do you want to know her success story?'

'Looking for a better life?'

Brighter future:

'Your luck is on the way'

'Discover new ways of moneymaking'

'This prize is beyond your dreams!'

Boost of confidence and status:

'Exclusive terms for your bonus!'

'This is a game of millionaires!'

'Only top players have access to this…'

Open up a secret:

'Treasures lie beyond!'

'Closed deals just for top 10 players'

'Limited access available only today!'

Challenging task:

'You won't beat that slot machine!'

'Will you get to the top?'

'Compete with the world-class players now!'

Ol' papa's advice:

'John started to win – do the same'

'Don't wait for a better chance'

'Why to save if you can earn'

etc.

III. Instant text message

This ad format is something pretty rare in ad networks around the market. It is similar to push-notification by its visual components but the drastic difference is that users are getting 'text messages' without subscribing to publishers' notifications.

A system-like message box is simply popping in front of the user's screen, yet it's much friendlier than, for example, a popunder ad.

To DO list if you want to succeed with Instant Text Message:

  • Think over a good textual creative.
  • Set up proper targeting for your campaign.

Perfection in simplicity. Here are a couple of examples, how you can benefit from this ad format:

And that is what your user will get it in front of his device:

IV. Banner ads

Most wanted and most well-known ad format for the industry. We have header and mid-section 300x100 and 300x250 px sizes which perfectly match any mobile device. The majority of the websites we place banners on are our exclusives where we have an almost 100% fill rate, which can guarantee a wide audience coverage.

Statements you should always keep in mind:

  1. banners are reasonably cheap and cover both visual and graphical parts of the content, therefore - they can be used for the offers without an additional landing page;
  2. banners have high visibility index (esp. on mobile devices) - mobile header banner will always hold right in front of the users above the main content;
  3. CPC setups requires creatives with high CTR in order to sustain for longer in Rotation;
  4. CPM/SCPM pricing models are way better in terms of scaling and testing large volumes (also it can help you to save budget VS CPC if you have high CTR);
  5. We have an option to set multiple creatives (up to 5 per campaign) and several options for visuals - static pic., gif banner, mp4 banner. Most recommended are gif banners - they are not as "heavy" as mp4, but provide the same amount of visual content and info;
  6. Depends on the geo you wanna run banners for, keep in mind 3 huge factors - competition, budgeting and traffic volume for the targeting
    1. сompetition is not something new for the industry, but some GEOs are really heavy on similar products. In order to beat that you need either to set very narrow targeting according to your funnel to start with;
    2. allocate budgets accordingly (for example, for VN alone, we have about 50K$ worth of traffic daily only for pops, not to mention other ad formats) - 100$ a day for a test won't show much data;
    3. several approaches can work out for the targeting setups - from large-scale to narrow optimization or from a narrow funnel to wide coverage. This part is completely up to your and your budgets;
  7. Make sure your ad set will be complete - creative + landing page (if you'll use it) + offer (registration page) should follow each other visually (color, text, promos) and composure-wise;
  8. Work around your users - each and every click counts (cuz you pay for it). If you simply drag traffic to your Landing page or registration - you won't get much success. Differences between an efficient approach and a waste of money/time are very tiny. Push-notification sub on the page, promo or bonus to FTD, freespin, easy registration flow (FB sub, or messenger subs), client support window, user's follow up with the call-center and emails;
  9. Payment options for players - the more you have the better. If you wanna localize your product to a specific geo/market - you must have local payment processors.

Summarizing:

You can pick any of the mentioned ad formats and it surely gonna bring you results. Just keep in mind the difference in creativity and user approach. Research the market on your direct competitors' actions to get more profitable bundles.

Our top geos for iGaming products are АРАС (VN, JP, TH, ID, SG, PH), US (legal states), LATAM (BR), Nordics, MENA.

Hope this article will help you to enhance your gambling offer performance or at least will inspire you to try one. This ain't the last vertical we'd like to reveal, so we'll get back to you in the nearest future.

Ready to give it a try? Well, go for it.

The article is proudly presented by George M.

Clickadu Team