Best paid traffic sources: overview of 5 platforms for promoting the iGaming niche

Traffic is the foundation of affiliate marketing. The core of this industry revolves around moving users from one platform to another, which is how webmasters generate profit. But that raises the question — where does this traffic come from? Affiliates typically attract clients through three types of traffic: organic, free, and paid advertising. Today, on the 888STARZ Partners blog, we’ll focus on the paid option and share the top five traffic sources for promoting in the iGaming vertical.

What are paid traffic sources?

Before diving into potential paid traffic sources, let’s first briefly define the term. Paid traffic is a promotional method in which users are directed to a product or service via online advertising. This type of traffic is acquired through affiliate networks or by running paid advertising campaigns. It can come from ad networks, social media, push notifications, teaser networks, and more.

The source of affiliate traffic you choose determines the subsequent advertising expenses. Selecting the wrong source for the available budget may result in promoting an offer at a loss. To avoid this, at 888STARZ Partners you may consult your personal manager, who will help identify the most suitable traffic source based on their advertising budget and assist in developing an effective campaign strategy.

Advantages and disadvantages of paid traffic

Now that we’ve defined paid traffic, let’s break down what exactly webmasters pay for and why paid traffic is often a better choice than free or organic alternatives. Here’s what sets it apart:

Advantages:

• Precise targeting

Paid traffic allows you to target specific audiences based on GEO, age, gender, and more. For example, you can configure your ads so that casino and betting promotions appear only to visitors of online slots and sportsbook websites. This ensures that your campaigns reach the most relevant audience for your Gambling and Betting offers.

• High traffic quality

The likelihood of traffic being irrelevant is much lower compared to using free traffic sources. As a result, you’ll achieve higher conversion rates. Moreover, paid sources allow thorough audience segmentation and ad customization based on user interests and behavior, increasing both conversion rates and the overall ROI.

• Time savings

With paid traffic sources, you can generate leads much faster than with organic traffic methods. Since you’re tapping into an existing audience, there’s no need for lengthy research or platform testing. For example, PPC advertising can start delivering leads within an hour of launching a campaign.

• Efficient budget management

You can adjust ad spend by setting limits on clicks, impressions, and display intervals. Platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads allow you to establish daily spending caps, exclude ineffective placements, and target only specific regions — minimizing budget waste.

• Ease of use

Paid traffic is ideal for newcomers, as launching ad campaigns doesn’t require deep targeting knowledge — The more you invest, the more leads you get. Additionally, platforms like TikTok or Instagram user-friendly interfaces, ad templates, and built-in guidance, making setup easy for almost everyone.

Disadvantages:

• High cost

Depending on the source, paid traffic can range from very affordable to extremely expensive. If targeting is poorly configured, ad spend may take a long time to recoup.

• Potential bans

Promoting “gray” affiliate offers without proper setup (e.g., cloaking) can lead to ad account bans. If a campaign gets blocked, you may lose your investment with no option for refunds.

5 best paid affiliate traffic sources

Solo webmasters and media buying teams often rely on Google Ads and Facebook Ads to promote iGaming offers. This is no coincidence — these traffic sources for affiliate marketing are among the best for affiliate marketing, offering access to millions of users across Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 regions. However, paid traffic isn’t limited to just these two platforms. Below, we’ll explore five proven and highly effective sources of targeted traffic for iGaming campaigns.

Google Ads

Google Ads is the most widely used advertising network globally, covering Google Play Store, Google Search, Google Display Network, and partner websites.

Google Ads offers free registration and convenient targeting. However, due to sanctions, some users face several challenges when creating an account and linking payment systems, making it necessary to use special tools to bypass restrictions. Nevertheless, this platform allows you to reach a massive audience and generate a large number of leads. Here are the pros and cons of this traffic source:

• Massive reach.

Google’s browser and platform services are used by 5 billion people worldwide, allowing you to reach a massive audience and achieve high conversion rates through search traffic. Moreover, paid platforms like Google Ads and Google UAC enable advertisers to tap into both search and display traffic, placing ads on thousands of websites.

• User-friendly targeting.

Google Ads offers a straightforward targeting system. You can define not only age, gender, and user interests but also pinpoint GEO locations with high accuracy—even down to specific city districts. While this feature is more relevant for local business owners than webmasters, the targeting itself is highly convenient. For example, when setting up an ad campaign targeting users aged 25 to 45 in Canada, you can reach a financially capable audience for your iGaming offers.

• Increased risk of account bans.

Google Ads enforces strict advertising policies, banning even semi-grey niches. Gambling and betting promotions are often restricted, requiring workarounds such as cloaking, account farming, anti-detect browsers, and other affiliate marketing tools to avoid detection.

• High costs.

Running ads on Google Ads is more expensive than on other traffic sources, with CPC rates reaching up to $2. This makes it less suitable for beginner affiliates with limited budgets. However, the high entry cost is offset by traffic quality and flexible settings. Smart Bidding strategies, for example, allow you to optimize ad spend for specific goals like conversions or profit maximization.

• Fierce competition.

Google Ads is dominated by experienced affiliates and large media buying teams, making it challenging for solo webmasters to compete when running iGaming offers.

Everyone knows Google Ads isn’t beginner-friendly — not just because of the high campaign costs, but also due to the platform’s complexities. To help you prepare for launching ad campaigns on Google Ads, we recommend checking out our detailed guide, where we break down ad account management and advanced targeting settings.

If you face difficulties and need assistance developing a promotion strategy for betting and gambling offers, reach out to your personal manager at 888STARZ Partners affiliate program. We’ll do everything possible to help you start running profitable campaigns using relevant affiliate marketing traffic sources tailored to your Betting and Gambling offers.

Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads is a social media platform with a massive audience of 3 billion active users. It hosts countless interest-based communities where affiliates can find their target audience for promoting iGaming offers.

Key features of Facebook Ads include:

• Ideal for white offers.

Facebook is an ideal choice for promoting white-hat offers since its large audience ensures demand for various products and services. While grey offers are officially banned, they can still be promoted using specfic tools.

• High-quality traffic.

Facebook delivers pure high-quality traffic. However, running campaigns requires significant investment and technical expertise, especially when dealing with gambling-related offers.

• Complex setup.

Targeting on Facebook Ads is far from simple. Even minor mistakes can lead to low impressions, poor conversion rates, or high fraud levels — all while your ad budget is being spent.

Driving traffic through Facebook Ads is no simple task, even for experienced affiliates. However, with the right skills and knowledge, you can generate high-quality leads in your target GEOs. Want to learn more? Check out our in-depth article on Betting promotion via Facebook, where we cover all the intricacies of working with this traffic source.

Teaser advertising

Teasers are a type of ad content characterized by clickbait headlines. For example, “This casino offers a bonus on your first deposit” or “Get predictions for this spring’s sporting events”.

Here are the key features of teaser advertising:

1. Intrigue.
   Teasers create intrigue by using bold phrases and ambiguous creatives to draw users in. This approach works particularly well for attracting a more trusting audience, such as those aged 45 and older.
2. Platforms.
   Teaser networks often place banners on websites with sensational news, pirated content, or adult material. However, they also appear on other “white” sites. This means you can reach a broad audience and promote nearly any type of offer, including Betting, nutraceuticals, Gambling, or e-commerce products.
3. Lack of trust.
   While teasers have a strong effect on older demographics, younger audiences often recognize that these banners usually lead to landing pages with dubious offers. Despite this, teaser ads still provide good conversion rates at a relatively low cost to run the campaigns.

Push notifications

Push notifications aren’t as clickbait-driven as teasers, but they still have the potential to generate a lot of impressions, clicks, and conversions. Push notifications are messages sent from various websites through a search engine when a user has consented to receive them.

Typically, a push notification includes a small image, up to 90 characters of text, and an “avatar.” The goal of this straightforward ad is simple — quickly attract the user to an offer. Here are some key features of push advertising:

• High reach.

Push notifications can reach a massive audience, especially if the campaign is launched across many GEOs. However, achieving such results requires precise campaign setup and a significant budget for targeting multiple regions. Additionally, it’s important to consider the cost differences in clicks and conversions across GEOs: in developing countries, the cost per 1,000 impressions can range from $0.50 to $1, whereas in Tier-1 regions, it can rise to $3-$5. This requires careful ROI analysis for each target market.

• Affordable price.

The cost of push notifications is much lower compared to other best traffic sources for affiliate marketing, depending on the regions where the campaign is launched. This makes it a good option for campaigns with smaller budgets. In low-competition regions, the cost per click can start as low as $0.01, making it affordable for small budgets. However, in high-competition countries, prices can increase several times.

• Low quality of traffic.

Traffic from push notifications tends to be of questionable quality, resulting in potentially high fraud rates. Nevertheless, the enormous reach can help offset the fraud, enabling significant conversion rates. Push traffic is especially effective for niches like gambling and betting, as these ads often face fewer restrictions regarding the types of offers promoted.

Setting up push campaigns is something even beginner webmasters can manage. However, despite its simplicity, there are nuances that, if overlooked, could derail your campaign. To avoid these pitfalls, we recommend reading our detailed guide on the specifics of launching push campaigns.

Pop-ups and pop-unders

Pop-up and pop-under ads are considered some of the most annoying, yet highly converting, types of advertising — and there’s a reason for that. A pop-up is an ad format that opens above other tabs in a browser. While pop-ups are extremely intrusive, they allow you to extract the maximum from your creatives.

A pop-under is almost the same as a pop-up, but it opens beneath the current webpage that the user is on. Both pop-ups and pop-unders have the following characteristics:

• High effectiveness for CPM (Cost Per Mille).

Pop-up and pop-under ads are often used to drive traffic when payment is based on CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions). These ads cannot be ignored, as they automatically pop up when a user visits a website, gathering a lot of views. You can earn substantial profits by getting paid for every 1,000 views, and launching such campaigns is relatively cheap (around $0.50 per 1,000 impressions).

• Not suitable for all products.

Pop-up and pop-under ads aren’t ideal for promoting larger offers due to their aggressive nature and low-quality traffic. Additionally, many advertisers don’t accept this type of traffic because of the high level of fraud associated with it.

• Negative ranking impact.

Websites displaying pop-up and pop-under ads are often penalized in search engine rankings. As a result, such ads may achieve low visibility, particularly for smaller or niche websites. Additionally, overly aggressive ads risk restrictions from search engines, leading to reduced user trust and deteriorating SEO performance — ultimately killing the affiliate traffic potential.

• Bot traffic.

Since pop-up and pop-under ads open automatically, there’s a high chance of collecting significant amounts of bot traffic, which gets filtered out during the hold period. In some cases, the volume of bot traffic is so high that the affiliate marketer ends up in the red after the hold. For this reason, it’s important to choose the right platforms for placing these types of ads.

Conclusion

We’ve outlined just 5 sources of paid traffic, but in reality, there are countless other places where you can purchase web traffic — including email marketing, native ads, and many popular, niche, and private ad networks. The choice of which platforms to use for buying CPA traffic is entirely up to you, but it’s important to stick with trusted and reputable sources if you don’t want to waste your advertising budget.

That said, traffic doesn’t always have to be paid. There are also conditionally free traffic sources that can help you attract a large number of users with minimal spend. However, this approach requires specific skills and knowledge, so it’s not ideal for beginners.

Want to stay updated on the latest trends and best practices? Check out the 888STARZ Partners blog — here, you’ll find guides on various types of traffic, recommendations for targeting top GEOs, tips on working with trusted sources, and much more! And if you’re ready to scale your traffic for Betting and Gambling offers, get in touch with your personal manager to unlock exclusive conditions that will take your campaigns to the next level!