How to optimize an advertising campaign in the iGaming niche?
Optimizing a casino advertising campaign is a challenging yet essential step for effectively driving traffic. No affiliates can launch a maximally profitable and successful affiliate marketing iGaming campaigns on the first attempt, as there’s always room to increase its performance and address weak points. However, many newcomers and even experienced advertisers often underestimate the importance of optimization, resulting in missed profit opportunities. To help you avoid these pitfalls, the 888STARZ Partners team will share insights on how to best optimize affiliate marketing campaigns for Betting and Gambling verticals.
What is advertising campaign optimization?
Before diving into how to optimize a marketing campaign, it’s important to clarify what this term means. Campaign optimization involves a series of actions aimed at improving your promotional strategy, boosting conversion rates (CTR), and enhancing other key metrics. This process typically takes place after test ad campaigns, once specific metrics have been gathered and weak points identified.
Experienced affiliates often conduct a single optimization after brief A/B testing (from several days to 1-2 weeks). However, the number of strategy adjustments may depend on various factors, including top verticals, GEO, and the offer itself. For instance, when targeting Tier 1 and Tier 2 in the Gambling and Betting niche, regular campaign optimization is necessary to keep your product or service competitive in the market and maintain strong conversion rates.
Ways to optimize advertising campaigns for Betting and Gambling
Now that we’ve defined what ad optimization entails, we can move on to methods used in our target niches — Betting and Gambling. Let’s start with the target audience:
1. Studying target audience
At first glance, the iGaming ads audience might seem straightforward, with clear needs and motivations. However, the reality is more nuanced. The audience for online casino and sports betting ads is highly diverse: some users are looking to make extra money, others crave the thrill of the game, and some simply place bets for entertainment.
The specifics of your target audience will influence the aspects you need to focus on. But how do you determine your target audience? To do this, ask yourself the following questions:
- Are you targeting avid gamblers or casual, less-engaged users?
- Does your client seek excitement, profit, or just support their favorite team?
- What social media platforms, websites, or traffic sources does your audience use?
Based on the answers, you can better understand your audience and make your campaign more effective. For example, you might adjust the landing page design, emphasize specific visual elements, or choose the most suitable traffic source.
A deeper understanding of your audience’s psychology can also open the door to innovative strategies, such as leveraging the psychology of colors:
- Red: evokes strong emotions and excitement, suitable for thrill-seekers;
- Gold: symbolizes luxury and profit, appealing to players looking to earn;
- Black: elegant, refined, ideal for bettors not solely focused on profit and with substantial budgets;
- Green: subtly hints at money and luck, making it a versatile choice for all player types.
Notably, red, gold, and black are signature colors of 888STARZ Partners. If you’d like creative assets in this style to drive traffic to our profitable offers, contact your personal manager. They’ll provide high-quality, eye-catching, and most importantly, high-converting creative that align with our unique branding.
2. Optimizing social networks
In most cases, social media is often the go-to traffic source in the iGaming ads niche due to the sheer number of users, making it easier to find your target audience. However, if you use the same ad formats across different social platforms, you are unlikely to be impressed with the final results of your marketing campaigns. Ads need to be tailored separately for each social network to remain competitive for a specific case.
On Facebook, it’s important to focus on visual effects, audience interaction, and creating a user community. Avoid overly gambling-related creatives to prevent bans, and use cloaking to bypass moderation.
X (Twitter)
Share valuable tips, predictions, and current news with your audience, and retweet popular niche influencers. Don’t forget to engage with your followers.
The Instagram audience prefer vivid and eye-catching visuals from sporting events or depict the luxurious lifestyle of those who’ve profited from betting on sports. Creating engaging captions with stickers to make posts more dynamic and appealing is equally important.
TikTok
Leverage the latest TikTok trends and keep your videos short, vibrant, and visually captivating. Focus on creativity and originality to stand out.
If you face challenges optimizing an iGaming advertising campaign on one of these traffic sources, we recommend checking out the 888STARZ Partners knowledge base. Here, you will find detailed guides on social media promotion and other traffic sources, as well as a wealth of other useful information about affiliate marketing in the iGaming niche!
3. Imroving landing page
Only after filtering out underperforming creatives should you move on to optimizing the landing page where your online casino traffic will be directed. Your landing page must clearly reflect the lobby of the sportsbook or online casino you’re promoting so that your target audience understands which platform they’re being invited to.
Additionally, the landing page should be user-friendly and free of unnecessary features or elements that distract from the primary goal — getting players to take the desired action. So here’s a quick guide to help you improve your landing page:
Response speed
The landing page should load as quickly as possible, with minimal delays for any actions. To achieve this, compress all images, use a content delivery network (CDN), and minimize the site’s code wherever possible. After improving the response speed, test the page to ensure all functions work properly.
Optimization for different devices
Your landing page must be adapted not only for PCs but especially for smartphones, as nearly 65% of users access the internet from their phones. Therefore, make your design responsive — use larger buttons and text for better visibility on touchscreens, and place key information in the upper sections of the page.
Clear call to action (CTA)
Your call-to-action must be precise, convincing, and create a sense of urgency, triggering FOMO (fear of missing out) among users. It’s important to keep your call to action subtle and inviting, as an overly aggressive approach could discourage users.
Trust signals
If users doubt the security of your offer, particularly when the target action involves filling out a contact form, they’re likely to leave your landing page. Consider adding trust signals, such as licensing information and positive reviews, to reassure users of your offer’s reliability.
Visual appeal
Improving the visual appeal of your landing page is another critical aspect of optimization. Make it visually pleasing by removing unnecessary elements, adding high-quality images, and refining the text.
Need help with creatives and landing pages? No worries! If you’re generating traffic with 888STARZ Partners, our team is ready to provide ready-to-use creatives and landing pages tailored to each partner’s individual needs. Simply reach out to your personal manager to get access to top-notch promo materials for Betting and Gambling.
4. Testing creatives
Landing pages and creatives are two interrelated elements critical to the success of your iGaming affiliate marketing campaigns and the efficient use of your budget. Even if you believe you’ve made a perfect creative, it shouldn’t be used in your ad campaign until it’s thoroughly tested, ensuring its effectiveness.
Neglecting this step, even with a seemingly successful online casino ad campaign, risks significant budget losses or even ending up in the red. That’s why it’s important to disable payment for less effective creatives and focus on those driving the most traffic to your landing page.
5. Experimenting with formats
Affiliate marketing is an incredibly competitive field, especially in the iGaming niche. Because of this, affiliates must regularly adapt to market realities, promptly change strategies, test different traffic sources, and, most importantly, use new advertising formats. At first, this may seem daunting, but such experimentation isn’t just a useful option—it’s a necessity to remain competitive in the Betting and Gambling niche.
Try different ad formats, increase your advertising budget, target various audiences, refine your text and visuals — through trial and error, you’ll discover a brand-new strategy that, once polished, can deliver significant income across all your iGaming advertising campaigns.
If you lack the time or resources for various experiments, 888STARZ Partners in-house media buying team is ready to share proven and profitable approaches for promoting sports betting and online casino ads.
Conclusion
Optimizing online casinos and betting ads isn’t as complicated as it may seem at first glance. By following the optimization methods outlined in this article, you can improve your affiliate marketing campaigns, ultimately boosting your overall profit from Gambling and Betting offers.
If you face challenges while optimizing ad campaigns for traffic flow, you can always reach out to your personal manager at 888STARZ Partners for support. Our program specializes in affiliate marketing within the iGaming niche, covering over 100 countries and offering an unlimited number of offers tailored to each region. Contact us to receive a package of available offers for affiliate marketing in your selected GEO.
