Gambling Advertising Guideline

Promoting gambling offers isn’t just trendy — it’s profitable. According to the statistics of the resource Gambling Industry News, every year 4.2 billion people engage in gambling at least once a year.  Probably, tap into this promising niche, but a little later quickly retreated, faced with high competition, blocking accounts and high fraud. But don’t jump to conclusions — chances are, you just didn’t know how to properly promote gambling offers. In this guide, 888STARZ Partners experts will tell you how to choose offers and traffic sources, launch campaigns and create working bundles to get profit in the gambling niche. 

Advantages and Disadvantages of Gambling in 2025

The scale of the online gambling market is huge and continues to grow — according to the forecasts of Statista portal, in 4 years the active audience of the gambling industry will amount to 985.3 million people. With such volumes, revenue — only in the U.S. revenue online casino operators can reach $449.69 billion. Therefore, various CPA-networks offer a wide range of gambling offers. For attracting traffic to online gambling offers advertisers are willing to pay web at the highest rates, and the monetization of traffic occurs very quickly. 

However, everyone wants to grab their piece of this lucrative pie — these advantages also fuel intense competition in the gambling vertical. Experienced webmasters and media buying teams of all stripes literally swarm in the field of gambling, not allowing junior and middle webmasters to attract an audience to the offer. By the way, high rates are explained not only by the profitability of the niche and the generosity of advertisers, and the legal position of gambling. Gambling is in the gray segment of affiliate verticals, because in many countries gambling is prohibited or subject to strict restrictions on advertising and activities. Because of this, banner ads and profiles of affiliates are often blocked on social media and search engines.

How to Choose a Gambling Offer

Choosing the right type of gambling offer is key — it determines how complex your campaign will be, and, moreover, not always high complexity guarantees a high profile. To avoid falling into the trap of harsh and unfavorable traffic flow conditions, consider these criteria:

• GEO. Tier-1 GEOs are very competitive and the market itself will be very overheated, but the bids for traffic from these regions are the highest. Tier-3 regions, on the contrary, are characterized by low competition and an unheated audience, but due to the low solvency of the population, the rates are low. Tier-2 is an average variant. Cultural relevance matters too — approaches to Brazil will not attract traffic from Asia at all, and creatives for the USA will be met with a hostile reception.
• Payment Model. Typical payment models for the real-money gambling niche are CPA, RevShare and Hybryd. If you choose the CPA model, you will receive a one-time payment for each targeted player action (deposit, registration, etc.). The RevShare model involves receiving a percentage of the advertiser’s revenue for the deposits of players brought by you. The hybrid model combines CPA and RevShare: you get upfront payments plus a share of casino revenue. That said, the rates of the hybrid model are lower than shedding CPA and RevShare separately.
• Relevance. Irrelevant, hackneyed offers will not give the desired volumes of traffic. Pay attention to novelties — VR-poker with live dealers, API-applications in messengers with casino games, crash games with unusual themes to interest the target audience.
• Metrics. If the offer is already tested, the advertiser or affiliate network attaches the results of the spill, so that affiliates can clearly see the profitability of the product. Pay attention to conversion rates, EPCs and average traffic volumes to estimate your potential income.

Where to Get traffic to Gambling

Due to the specificity of the gambling niche, not all traffic sources will be suitable for promotion. Here are a few sources that can bring large volumes of quality traffic to spill to gambling:

• Push notifications. Promotional notifications that pop up on a user’s screen and lead directly to a gambling offer. Push notifications are cost-effective, highly targeted, and drive strong conversions compared to social media or search ads. But you should keep in mind that Push notifications are effective only when attracting a target audience of 35+ years old who are not yet bored with typical advertising formats.
• Contextual advertising. Ad banners on search engines like Google Ads. Context brings greater reach, but the cost of running contextual ads depends on the GEO and can be expensive. Popular contextual advertising platforms often restrict the promotion of gambling offers, so advertiser must use various methods to bypass moderation, which we will discuss below.
• SMM. Targeted advertising in social networks, such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. SMM brings no less large coverage than context, but often costs more, as well as social networks are strictly limited to gembla advertising. In addition, to run SMM advertising, you need to know the intricacies of setting up targeting to attract better quality leads.

Preparing Promotional Materials

One of the most common mistakes when spilling on gembling is the wrong approach to make gambling content creatives. Many webmasters prefer not to bother and take other affiliates’ creatives from open libraries or from search engine results altogether. By using this strategy, you’re ruining the success of your ad campaign. Follow these tips to make your banners break records in terms of reach:

• Adaptation and localization for GEO. Obviously, creatives should be optimized for specific regions. But optimization should not be limited to the integration of the national flag and banal translation. Slang words, cultural features, local celebrities (if allowed) and other subtleties should be added to the creative. For example, for a strait to India, you can create a creative with a famous Bollywood movie actor, vivid imagery and lots of accurate numbers. And for a strait to Sweden it is worth using a more neutral design with an emphasis not on earnings, but gambling and elitism.  
• Strong CTAs. An effective call to action (CTA) will motivate potential players to make their first deposit, complete registration or perform any other targeted activity. Add to the CTA the effect of the urgency of the offer and exact numbers, for example, “Get a 100% bonus on your first deposit!” or “limited offer: +50 freespins for FTD until 19:00!”. The main thing is that the bonuses mentioned should be true, so as not to mislead players.
• A/B testing. Run several variants of banners, texts and CTAs.  Test even small details — button color, font, test blocks and other elements. This way you’ll find the most effective bundles and turn off ineffective creatives, saving your budget and increasing conversions.
• Video content. Animated banners and videos grab attention because of the peculiarities of human vision — moving objects immediately catch the eye. Use this to attract traffic to your offer, but don’t overdo it — too bright, fast video banners can be intrusive and distract attention from important information.

Toolset

In the field of affiliate marketing, as in any craft, specialized tools are required for work — trackers, analytics platforms, photo/video editors. Without them, you cannot effectively track metrics, create advertising creatives, or perform other operations to manage an advertising campaign. Below are the tools that are part of the arsenal of every successful affiliates:

• Trackers: Software or cloud platforms for tracking conversions, ROI, and other key metrics used to optimize advertising campaigns. They help identify unprofitable campaigns and scale profitable ones. Popular trackers: Binom and Keitaro.
• Postback: Software for transferring data about conversions and other metrics between affiliate programs and trackers. Postback automates reporting and simplifies campaign management. Can be integrated directly into the tracker, affiliate program, or used as a standalone platform.
• Spy Services: Tools for convenient viewing and analysis of competitors’ creatives without direct interaction. They collect data on competitors’ ad materials from various sources and systematize them for studying successful creatives. The information obtained can be used to create your own unique and competitive creatives. Popular spy services: AdSpy and Anstrex.
• Media Content Editors: Platforms for creating and editing advertising materials, such as banners, video creatives, and other content for promoting gambling offers. Popular media editors: Canva and Adobe Photoshop. AI services like Sora or Midjourney can also be used to generate creatives.
• Hosting & Domains: Platforms for hosting landing pages and registering domains. Popular hosting services: Google Domains and Cloudflare.
• Landing Page Builders: Services for creating single-page sites without programming skills — they use ready-made templates, and you can upload your own presets for target pages. Optimized for mobile devices and SEO. Popular builders: WordPress and Unbounce.

Bypassing Restrictions

Advertising gray niches is prohibited or strictly limited on most advertising platforms. But webmasters aren’t deterred — there are services and tools that help bypass gambling ad restrictions on social networks and search engines. Here are some of them:

• Cloaking: Services that replace the content of landing pages and banners to bypass moderation/algorithms of social networks or search engines. Moderators see approved ad materials, while real users see the target materials. Popular cloaking services: Cloak IT and Cloaking House.
• Anti-Detect Browsers: Browsers that mask digital fingerprints to use ad accounts on social networks and search engines. Used alongside proxies and VPNs. Popular anti-detect browsers: Dolphin{anty} and Octo Browser.
• Proxies & VPNs: Services for changing a user’s IP address to achieve anonymity and access blocked resources. Popular proxies and VPNs: Proxys.io and PrivateTunnel.
• Mirrors & Redirects: Platforms for creating clone domains with quick redirects to the working offer if the main landing page is blocked. Popular redirects: redirect.pizza and EasyRedir.
• Link Masking: Services to hide direct mentions of gray niches in UTM tags on offers. Popular masking services: Bitly and Short.io.

Conclusion

By using the recommendations from our guide, you’ll quickly improve your affiliate skills and start running traffic to the juiciest, most relevant gambling offers. And if you’re looking for a place to successfully test your newly acquired skills, check out the direct advertiser 888STARZ Partners. Our affiliate program offers gambling offers in over 100 high-demand GEOs with some of the highest CPA and RevShare rates on the market. For those who don’t want to waste time on preparation, we provide high-quality localized creatives, PWA apps, direct integration with Keitaro, and postback setup handled for you.

FAQ

Can I advertise an unlicensed casino?

No, advertising unlicensed casinos is prohibited — it violates laws in most countries and leads to account blocks, fines, or legal proceedings.

How to choose suitable GEOs for gambling ads?

Analyze regions where gambling is legal, has demand, and has lenient regulations (e.g., Latin America, Asia), considering local laws and the target audience.

What penalties apply for violating advertising bans?

Fines, website/account blocks, revenue confiscation, or criminal liability for business owners.

How to prevent ad account blocks?

Strictly follow advertising platform rules, mask prohibited content using cloaking and anti-detect browsers, and test different campaign variations.

How to evaluate affiliate program performance?

Through metrics like conversion rate, ROI, customer LTV, traffic source analysis, and A/B testing of ad strategies.