Advertising gambling is tricky. You need to make sure your offers come from quality sources and run campaigns with certified platforms that generate legit traffic. You have to adhere to traffic source rules as well as local regulations where you are advertising. Otherwise, you can easily get banned.
The glitz and glamour of gambling, the win-or-lose-it-all atmosphere, and the addictive smell of fresh money are close to irresistible. People are naturally drawn to risk-taking.
But there’s a reason people risk it for this industry – there’s a lot of money to make. 🤑
Gambling industry stats
Before diving into the best traffic sources for gambling, here are some numbers…
The last few decades brought more online gambling than expected. The ongoing legalization of gambling-related activities (and loosening of existing regulations), expansion of the experience economy, plus the pandemic were the perfect ingredients to this mighty growth potion.
Online gambling’s global market size was estimated at $56.4B in 2021. The expected growth from 2022 to 2030 is expected to develop at an annual rate of 11.7%.
85% of Americans and 26% of the world’s population have gambled at least once in their life. About 30% of people believe that gambling can be trusted and games are fair, which is a satisfying result to be honest, given the many reservations surrounding the discussion about betting.
The top three largest markets for gambling include China, the US, and Japan. With a yearly revenue of 49.25B China is just a bit ahead of the United States with 47.32B. Japan generates around 22.01B. And the number one European country is Germany with about 6.84B in revenue.
So, that’s a good start for geos to get gambling traffic (keep in mind that most of these statistics include both brick-and-mortar along with online gambling). If you’re interested in more iGaming-specific numbers we have the perfect article for you right here.
Find the best traffic source for gambling
As all experienced marketers should know by now, no prosperous campaign can exist without three things: a profitable offer, a stable tracker, and the best traffic source.
For the purpose of this guide, we’re going to focus on the best traffic sources to use for your gambling campaigns.
These platforms are not only large traffic inventories. With their robust targeting features and dedication to iGaming offers, they strive to deliver the best quality traffic to this kind of advertising.
Among these industry moguls, you’re gonna find the traffic source you need. These platforms work for both desktop and mobile, and we all know how big gambling on mobile is becoming. These sources also offer traffic in the most significant and most relevant GEOs and ad formats that work great with gambling like banners, native, or pop.
Zeropark
Zeropark is a self-serve ad exchange platform with robust targeting options and competitive CPC/CPM rates. The platform provides high-quality traffic paired with an intuitive UI and great targeting options. To top it off, their optimization tools make Zeropark extremely recommendable for anyone looking to hone their campaigns for profits. And you’re going to be assisted by an account manager ready to spill useful tips and help with any issues related to your success.
Types of ads: Push, pop, domain
Top GEOs: US, GB, PE, FR, IN, AU
Key features:
| Fast Campaign Approval Zeropark’s team is working hard to get your campaign up and running as fast as possible. | Robust Targeting Options With Zeropark you can easily target your audience by geo, device/connection type, Os, browser, or keywords. |
| Advanced Anti-Fraud Solutions With both in-house and third-party solutions for automatic bot prevention, your ads will be safe and sound. | Rule-based optimization This is an automated optimization tool, so your campaign immediately adjusts when your criteria are met. |
Richpush
This traffic source is a leading push notification advertising network for marketers, affiliates, and agencies. The traffic source’s website is intuitive and after registration when you land in your account, all the campaign settings are visible, and you can easily accsess a tutorial about launching your first campaign. The minimum deposit of the network is $100, but depositing $250 will give you access to the help of a personal account manager, priority support, and service for making creatives. Doesn’t seem like a lot of money for that, does it?
Types of ads: push ads
Top GEOs: IDN, IND, BRA, THA, USA
Key features:
| Pre-built whitelists These pre-built lists are there to start you off strong; your account manager will provide you a whitelist specifically compiled for your GEO and offer. | Automated Optimization There are various options for managing campaigns like blacklisting or increasing/decreasing bids according to your performance. |
| Precise Targeting Richpush offers 17 different targeting options, so you can reach their traffic more precisely. | Fraud Prevention Their fraud prevention tech is based on big data thanks to proprietary algorithms with independent traffic verification by AdScore. |
Pushground
Pushground is one of the biggest performance ad networks specializing in push ads. The traffic source operates on a CPC model which means you’ll pay only when someone clicks on your ad, making the most of your budget.
Types of ads: Push ads, in-page push ads, calendar
Top GEOs: US, IN, SA, JP, FR
Key features:
| Easy experiments You can easily set up complex A/B tests with up to 10 ads at once. | Auto-Optimization With Pushground you’re always one click away from directing your traffic from your worst to best performing ads. |
| Cost-effective pricing Operating on a CPC model means that you only pay for the users interested in your offer. | Speedy campaigns With Pushground’s real-time data aggregation you can see impressions/clicks/conversions as they happen. |
ExoClick
This traffic source is one of the largest ad networks on the market providing targeting solutions that allow advertisers to find the best audiences on premium entertainment sites. The platform supplies its advertising services via web, mobile, tablet, and smart TV.
Types of ads: Banner, pop-under, interstitial, instant message, video, native, and more
Top GEOs: Global
Key features:
| Contextual targeting Exoclick’s advanced engine will deliver traffic most relevant to your product. | Easy approval The time of approval for new campaigns is under 30 minutes. |
| 24/7 customer service Access the help of professionals any time to keep your campaign on top. | Keyword targeting Reach specific and small niches with precise keyword targeting. |
Popcash
Popcash is a market leader for pop traffic. Even though pop ads are deemed annoying by a lot of users, the format is still beloved by many advertisers most likely due to being budget-friendly.
Popcash is a reliable network with highly responsive customer support and its simple interface makes the traffic source easy to use – but Popcash isn’t just for newbies with its many optimizations features, seasoned advertisers will find it easy to dive into a much deeper analysis for future media buying strategies.
Types of ads: pop-under
Top GEOs: Global
Key features:
| 24/7 Dedicated Support You can easily access customer support through Skype or email. | Easy set-up Setting up a campaign in Popcash takes as little as 10 minutes with a deposit of only $5. |
| Performance-focused Wide range of targeting options makes optimization simpler. | User-friendly interface The platform’s interface is simple to use on both desktop and mobile. |
Traffic Junky
Traffic Junky has been around for a while. Since its launch in 2008 Traffic Junky’s team remains focused on innovation and helping you improve your performance. This traffic source provides online marketers with versatile, and intelligent CPM-based advertising solutions. Their self-serve ad network is designed to help advertisers achieve their most ambitious online marketing goals by serving cost-effective, large volumes of traffic for web, mobile, and tablet.
Types of ads: banner ads
Top GEOs: US, GB, FR, CA, PL, DE
Key features:
| Bidder Set a target CPA, and the platform’s algorithm will automatically optimize your auction bids. | Multiple audience filters You can apply multiple filters for precise targeting like gender, language, device, ZIP code, and more. |
| Auto-bid optimizer Import your banners into the platform and test variants automatically while preserving your budget. | Campaign schedule Schedule your campaigns for preset periods of time and make the best of your budget. |
Less obvious gambling traffic sources
Social media and Google are powerhouses when it comes to creating exposure and generating traffic. Unfortunately, advertising online gambling is tricky, there are a lot of regulations on those platforms that seem to leave marketers going around in circles trying to come up with clever ways to advertise… without being too straightforward.
Thankfully, advertising gambling offers on these platforms is possible, you just have to get your creative juices to start flowing.
Google Ads
Advertising on Google is most of the time a no-brainer, it does get a little tricky though with online casinos and games. Google has a strong stance on promoting gambling responsibly and strictly abiding by local laws. If you want to cash in on Google’s potential you’re gonna have to stay within that lane.
You need to be certified by Google to launch an online gambling campaign, in order to get your certification you need to go through a course (available on Google Skillshare), and then you need to pass an assessment. And then you can advertise online and live casinos, but only if you also follow certain guidelines. For instance, you cannot ever target minors (obviously!), a landing page with information on responsible gambling is required, and you can only advertise in approved countries. Among those are Germany, France, Denmark, Egypt, and the USA, the full list can be found here.
Those are the requirements from Google itself, but you need to make sure that you’re also complying with your targeted country’s laws. Here you can find more specific information.
For a long time, advertising gambling was a no-no. Luckily, gambling campaigns are now okay in countries where online gambling is legal – very reasonable. But, advertising that involves anything with monetary value (prizes, sign-ups, etc.) is only allowed with Facebook’s written permission.
Requesting approval seems fairly easy, you just need to fill out a form that is linked here, the page also details guidelines like a list of approved countries, and targeting. The important thing is approvals are granted for specific regions and ad account IDs, and you’ll have to provide ad URLs (including app store URLs) So in case you want to expand and use the same ads in new places you’ll have to submit the application all over again.
What doesn’t require permission is the promotion of land-based casinos, entertainment events, or streaming of offline poker tournaments, provided that the ad/landing page does not promote or facilitate online gambling. So you can invite people to a tournament in Vegas as long as no one can participate in it online.
Meta’s guidelines also allow for gambling companies from both online and offline to place ads on Facebook and Instagram if they comply with two requirements:
- Staying in line with local laws of the country where the campaign runs.
- They get Facebook’s approval, as mentioned before.
So there’s a bit of hustle in placing gambling ads on Facebook and it’s a challenge especially given how fast gambling offers change, manually adjusting them might not be worth it. But who knows, maybe it could make sense for some?
For Instagram, the advantage is you get to focus more on images, not just written content, and on top of that, make some influencer connections. If you strike a collaboration they can basically advertise for you by posting stories from events or reels with some free tips. There’s space to get creative with it.
TikTok
Gambling ads on Tiktok are a new trend and, with a huge audience of more than 1B daily users, it’s easy to spot the possibilities for gaining traffic.
The rules surrounding gambling ads on TikTok may not require special permissions or come with crazy restrictions. And even though you cannot advertise gambling-related gadgets or any vouchers or coupons, you can certainly still use TikTok content to attract your goal audience. Make sure to check for the specific guidelines, and stay within them. We can give you some tips on how you can use your content on the platform to advertise your gambling offers in an effective way:
- Use luxury lifestyle content – you may need some fancy cars, a mansion, and well…maybe even a yacht. Making that sort of eye-catching and fun content is, and with enough time and imagination you can stage a luxury background, and you can make it seem like you’ve got it all thanks to incredible gambling wins.
- Show scratchcards in your content – the big reveal is especially exciting. Use it for your campaign and show a big win that’s just a few scratches away. Keep it simple though and keep it fun.
- Create a news-like feed – this one is not a very popular approach but you can advertise by creating videos based on a news-like approach and celebrate big gains by sharing happy news of lottery wins for example, with your followers. This can help incentivize your audience to try for themselves. Just remember to have fun with it.
What TikTok doesn’t approve of:
- Remember that flaunting money in your video can prove a little tricky and in some cases could get your content rejected.If the moderator spots that in your clip it could get banned.
- The same might happen if you decide to use music with curse words or vulgar lines.
- Blurring out portions of your video, flaunting money, or bank names could lead to rejection.
You found the right source and what now?
Apart from a good offer you’re also in need of a reliable tracker.
The immediate benefits of tracking are impossible to miss: it will allow you to better understand your campaign performance and targeted audience.
Many traffic sources come with built-in analytics features for reporting and even optimization that’s true – but a lot of the time, they’re not as in-depth as a professional and precise marketer needs.
With a specialized tracker, like Voluum, you’re going to access data based on 30+ metrics, and features that will transform the way you optimize campaigns.
Oh, and did I mention already that Voluum partnered up with several iGaming offer providers? All of them come with templates in our dashboard to make adding an affiliate network easy.
Understanding what people respond to, where said traffic comes from, and what aspects of your funnel resonate better will ultimately grow your revenue.
By tracking, you’re empowering your advertising. Check out Voluum’s best features and see for yourself how paramount using a good tracker is.
How to not get in trouble
Gambling is beset with many legal restrictions which make advertising online gambling an obstacle course, and in a way it is. Every country has a different set of laws around gambling, and some of them apply to advertising too.
How to keep your campaigns out of trouble, or rejected before they even kick-off? There are actually a few very simple steps you can take to prevent this:
1. Make sure you promote offers from trusted providers. Quality affiliate programs and networks should hold a license to run specific offers, and always provide you with both acceptable and/or prohibited GEOs.
2. Choose your traffic source wisely and simply make sure that they accept both the offer and targeted countries. Though it may seem like a tedious task, the easiest way would be to simply contact the support team or check the available compliance guidelines.
3. Don’t forget to check the advertising policies and make sure to follow them…obviously.
Still, the dull part of the process is keeping up with those regulations. They’re pretty dynamic in nature. So, simply double-check and keep checking out guides like these.
Takeaway
Hopefully, you now have a better overview of which traffic source to choose for your gambling campaigns and the restrictions that could come your way.
This industry is full of opportunities and big money is always just around the corner. Dive into the riches and glamour and may the best poker face win. 😉
But when it comes to tracking…
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