Online gambling is the way where a smart advertiser can introduce the thrills of gambling to new audiences thanks to the wonders of the Internet. The technological advancements made this form of entertainment more accessible, what generates new opportunities and new challanges.
People don’t need to purchase a plane ticket to Vegas or Atlantic City and stay for the night in an overpriced hotel just to get a chance of hitting the jackpot. They can do it from the comfort of their own home.
Provided that a smart advertiser will familiarize them with an offer on online casinos.
Here’s where you come in.
iGaming as a marketing vertical has some uniqueness to it. No other offers are tangled up so much in sometimes contradictory legal interpretations. Yet, at the same time, they are mainly about entertainment. The rush. The social aspect.
A smart marketer has to include all these aspects in their advertising.
A quick characterization of the iGaming vertical
The name ‘iGaming’ refers to the ‘Internet Gambling’. This causes a lot of confusion, since people tend to mix iGaming with video games. This vertical is sometimes referred to as online gambling, a less confusing and more self-explanatory name.
But, admittedly, with the advancements in graphics and GUI of online casinos on the one hand and the presence of random rewards (loot boxes) in some popular video games, the lines between those two blurs.
To keep everything simple, let’s define iGaming as a game where the results depend mainly not on the skill of the player but on chance. This includes gambling and betting, so:
- Online casinos
- Sport betting
- Esport betting
- Horse racing betting
- Online poker
- Mobile gambling
State of the industry
iGaming has come a long way since the first online gambling site was established by Microgaming in 1994. As of 2024, it is a $100 bln industry capitalizing on the newest tech advancements.
When talking about this industry, there are two aspects to focus on:
- Legal framework. This is a complex topic that, especially in the US, is a constant back and forth between coordinated efforts to make online gambling legal in selected or all states and a legislature trying to limit access to such services. You should always make sure that you know the current legal status of online gambling in the GEO you advertise in.
- Technology. Tech is used both to make iGaming more secure, attractive and approachable to new customers, especially younger generations. The latest idea for added security is using blockchain as a universally trusted ledger that contains information on all transactions.
On the other hand, VR is making its way to iGaming with promises of bringing the full experience of being in a casino wherever you are.
This was a brief dive into a complex and evolving industry. But a digital marketer doesn’t need to go into all the details of legal proceedings. They only need to understand how to find the best angle for advertising such offers.
Advertising iGaming offers
Let’s now move to the crème de la crème of this article, so how to advertise iGaming offers like a champ.
1. Find a good offer
Online gambling offers can be found either in some affiliate networks or on iGaming platforms that run their own affiliate programs and have the whole dashboard dedicated to such offers.
Popular places to find such offers are:
- 22Bet
- TonyBet
- LeoVegas
- YetiCasino
What you will get from these places is an offer link and some advertising materials, like banners or other creatives.
You can obviously advertise your own offers as well. In that case, you should still define what amount of money you are willing to spend for a given result (such as a signup). Setting an optimal cost per action will help you determine if your campaign is profitable or not.
2. Define your audience
If you have a preconceived notion of how an online gambler looks, throw thar out the window. Or at least add some variations to it.
There is no one ideal ‘persona’ that you should target. Different generations look for different things in online gambling.
Attracting younger people is the industry’s big challenge. While boomers and millennials are usually familiar with the experience, gen Z is often not. On top of that, the youngest generation:
- Often doesn’t have disposable income
- Is more rational in their choices
- Is skeptical of online ads
- Prefers the social aspect of gambling over the rush of taking risks
If you can’t target your ads by age, you should still decide who you want to attract and adjust your message accordingly.
3. Pick the right advertising channel
There are various ways, paid or free, that allow you to put your advertising message out there to the public. You have probably already made a decision about which channel you will use, but nevertheless it is worth knowing about all of them – you may want to choose to expand your advertising to additional channels.
Organic advertising
This is a free option, provided that you already have a page (for example, a blog), a YouTube channel or Facebook group that attracts a lot of visitors.
If not, you can of course build your online presence from scratch but be aware that getting to a level where the amount of traffic that would allow you to make a living out of advertising on your page will take you a lot of time and effort. We are talking about months, years even.
To get some traction, you need to produce a lot of content: publish weekly, optimize your content, write guest posts. Your time isn’t free, it is worth as much money as you would earn if you were doing something else.
We don’t want to discourage you from doing it, we just want to inform you about what to expect. Having your own source of traffic opens up a whole bunch of possibilities to monetize it, like advertising, partnerships, sponsored segments, etc.
If you are already there and have a page with content that is thematically related to iGaming (like gambling, online entertainment, money making opportunities, digital trends, etc.), half of the work is done. What happens then is the optimization of your content toward search engines (SEO) and placing an advertising message smartly in your content.
Social media marketing
Social media is a great way to promote these types of offers, provided that they are not prohibited. In the case of Facebook, it is only allowed after getting written permission from them.
Why is social marketing great for these offers?
Because any kind of human activity, no matter how niche it is, has a dedicated social media group for it. Use this to reach a truly engaged audience or think outside the box and advertise in social circles not directly related to iGaming: video game enthusiasts, youngsters, etc.
Paid ads
This is the quickest and surest way of getting results. Paid marketing offers targetable traffic with a clearly defined price. The benefits of paid advertising include:
- Lots of targeting options: buy only traffic that has a high chance of converting (for example, traffic from a specific GEO and/or concrete device types)
- Clearly defined costs: The costs of launching your own blog are hard to measure, while costs of launching paid campaign are known upfront and can be factored in
- Speed: You can start advertising in no time, without preparing loads of content
Influencer marketing
The same principle of people having dedicated groups for even the most niche hobbies that applied to social marketing applies also to influencer marketing. With a small change: there are no groups, but influencers that talk or write about any topic imaginable.
Reach out to them and offer some form of partnership for promoting your iGaming offers.
4. Select the right ad format
There are different ways you can show your message and each one has its own benefits and problems. Let’s go over each of them quickly.
Native ads
They are a great way to advertise things that benefit from the trusted content they are displayed in. Additionally, native ads give you a lot of space for content in the form of an advertorial page that is usually displayed after clicking on an ad.
This ad format works best for brand awareness campaigns or when you want to introduce an offer that requires lots of reasoning and argumentation.
Push ads
They create a sense of urgency and may bring great results with people that like sudden stimuli and an accompanying rush of adrenaline. If your audience is in online gambling for strong emotions, you should try push ads.
The plus is that people who see these ads are prequalified, since they allowed for this type of ads in the first place, which may result in higher conversion rates.
Display ads
The decision about playing an online game is very often a sudden one and dictated by emotions. Hence the multitude of banners and popovers advertising casinos. They are cheap to run and if you target well and use specific publishers, you should get good results.
5. Prepare several ad variations
There is no universal way of advertising iGaming offers. Different aspects of it resonate with different audiences. You may choose to emphasize the following features of your offer:
- Ease of access to the platform
- Security of gambling
- The thrills of online casinos
- An option to win money
- Opportunity to meet other players and enthusiasts
- Discounts and special offers
- Nostalgia trip – Vegas in the 60s
Prepare different ad variations (at least 3) for each offer and check which one works best with your audience. And that brings us to the next point.
Online casinos and poker advertising
When advertising online casinos, put the name of a game first, above the name of your iGaming platform. Advertise game perks, security or special deals. With iGaming, people don’t follow casino brands, but concrete games. Tell them why they should play at your place.
Sport betting advertising
Sport betting combines the emotions that usually accompany sport events with the thrill of placing a bet. This is a powerful mix. Tap into both sources of these emotions: use logos of a famous football team or a character of a beloved player.
This type of iGaming offer is usually the quickest one to legalize, so you can count on the biggest audiences.
Mobile gambling advertising
If you are advertising mobile gambling, you are talking to the younger generation. They don’t necessarily feel particularly nostalgic or amazed by the lights of Las Vegas or similar places. They want ease of access, nice visuals, and social aspect. Tell them how many other people are playing, show them that you can all socialize.
6. Track your traffic
You are not successful until you are proven to be successful by correct measurements and analysis. There are so many moving parts that can – and should – be optimized. At the end of the month, it is often hard to say if you are successful.
Ad trackers can not only tell you that but can also increase your success (or turn failure into one) by showing you exactly where your advertising strategy shines and where it comes short.
- Is your audience responding well to your landing page? If so, which part?
- Are your ads better than your offer? Lots of clicks on an ad and still no conversions?
- Maybe a variation of your landing page will help? What does A/B testing show you?
The truth is that the platforms where you buy traffic from and platforms where you get your offers from provide a rudimentary tracking solution. A very, very basic one.
They don’t provide a more detailed view. They don’t allow creating in-depth reports with groupings and drilldowns. They don’t support switching landers or offers for A/B testing.
What you can get from a modern ad tracker like Voluum are:
- Detailed reports on 30 traffic characteristics
- Automation in the form of auto-rules
- Integration with popular traffic sources that synchronizes cost data even if the cost token is not supported
- Sophisticated AI for automatic A/B testing of offers and landers
Young people and iGaming
Gen Z is a crucial demographic for the future of iGaming. They’re digital natives comfortable with online transactions and in-app purchases. Unlike previous generations, they might be less interested in traditional casino games and more drawn to social and interactive features within the iGaming platforms.
Mobile gaming is a huge preference for them, so ensuring a seamless mobile experience is key. Responsible gambling practices and inclusivity are also important to Gen Z, so highlighting safety measures can be a plus.
By understanding their preferences and tailoring the iGaming experience accordingly, advertisers can effectively reach this tech-savvy generation.
Never gamble with your business
While gambling is fun as a hobby, it should be treated with utter seriousness when it is a business. Don’t gamble on the outcome by guessing what works, what is profitable and what is not.
Voluum partners with many renowned iGaming brands and offers templates with tracking tokens already configured for easy setup.
Check what Voluum has to offer now!
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