What is cloaking in affiliate marketing?

Experienced webmasters use various tools to automate tasks and attract traffic — in particular, when working with iGaming offers. In this material you’ll learn what is cloaking and why it is necessary to promote such offers. Let’s get started!

What is cloaking?

First, let’s define the cloaking term: it means to cover or hide something. Nowadays cloaking is a tool that allows you to display different content depending on your audience. In the context of affiliate marketing, it is used to show a white landing page to moderators while displaying the real “gray” offer to your target audience.

Cloaking allows you to bypass moderation services and, as a result, avoid possible bans due to casino-related offers. There are two main types of cloaking:

1. “White”:
   In white cloaking, content is shown to different users based on their characteristics such as geo, age, gender, interests, etc. For instance, you might show customers from the US advertising products that are only available in this country, and specify that they should be men between 25 and 40 years old;
2. “Black”:
   In black cloaking, content is shown to different users based on their actions, such as clicking on ads. For instance, you may present users who haven’t bought anything with an offer for a comparable item at a lesser cost.

Likewise, it works for online betting — thanks to such a black hat SEO approach like cloaking, iGaming offers do not violate advertising policies and reach end users.

Affiliate marketing involves using a number of technical methods to change how different users see the content of a web page. One of the best working practices is IP, where the displayed content is based on the geographic location of the user. For instance, if the system detects a request from a social network or search engine IP address, it shows one set of data. Although, for a normal user, it displays a different page to present the offer.

Another important technique is user agent cloaking. In this case, the server analyzes the User-Agent line that identifies the visitor’s browser and device. Based on this information and a predetermined list of values, the system selects the appropriate version of the landing page to display.

The role of cloaking for iGaming

Cloaking is particularly relevant in the gambling and betting industry for several reasons. Firstly, it is due to the heavy regulation and restrictions that many countries and regions place on this activity. Secondly, cloaking provides an opportunity for targeting the most valuable audience segments during advertising campaigns by showing them attractive offers that may not meet strict standards. 

The algorithms of many leading platforms and social networks such as Facebook strictly prohibit ad-offers in the iGaming and other profitable markets. Webmasters who don’t want to give up working with these offerers only have two ways: resort to other traffic sources, or try to outsmart the system and make a white landing page.

But that’s not all. One interesting thing is that with cloaking, your content will be unavailable for: 

• Competitors.
  Your successful case studies won’t be seen by other webmasters;
• Spy tools.
  Cloaking settings prevent ad creatives from getting into other hands;
• CPA networks.
  Cloaking hides offers from affiliate programs;
• Customers.
  Advertisers don’t always want to keep track of their product re-links, even in the case of high conversion rates.

To make it clear where we have bots and moderators, and, on the other hand, users and potential leads, you need a database with IP addresses and other necessary information. Having this data, cloaking automatically transfers organic traffic to the website or page with a white offer. If the identifier is not in the database, the customer is directed to the original page with the offer.

In the gambling and online betting industry, cloaking is triggered through several proven methods to avoid possible restrictions and increase the efficiency of advertising campaigns. It can be done by:

Hiding affiliate links

One of the key techniques is hiding affiliate links. This strategy allows webmasters to hide real links that lead to casino or betting websites behind seemingly innocent URLs. By doing so, they avoid being blocked by Google search engines and advertising platforms. 

Typically, this is accomplished by employing server-side scripts or redirects that alter the visible URL for particular users or bots, making it appear completely authentic.

Cloaking content in particular geos

Cloaking is also heavily used to hide content from users from undesirable geos or organizations such as regulatory authorities. For example, a website may analyze a visitor’s IP address or use geolocation data to determine their geo. 

If the request comes from a region with strict gambling regulation, the user will see a legitimate version of the website that does not contain prohibited content. Similarly, if the system determines that the request originates from an IP address belonging to a regulatory authority, engine crawlers or advertising platform, it may display a separate version of the platform that complies with regulations and standards.

Benefits of cloaking for affiliate marketing

Cloaking is used in the iGaming affiliate marketing sector for the following reasons:

1. To bypass moderation:
   Major advertising platforms such as Google Ads and Facebook have strict rules regarding ad campaigns for certain types of products or services, which include online casino and sports betting. Cloaking allows you to show them to your target audience without violating moderation requirements. The platform’s algorithms will not see or reject prohibited content, so it will easily reach its destination.
2. To increase conversions:
   Cloaking allows you to show your target audience more aggressive content that pushes them to take action. For example, if a person needs fast money — then you can show this audience more enticing creatives with colorful images and text that will encourage them to bet on sports. Cloaking helps you show the most relevant and attractive content to your target audience, bypassing restrictions, e.g. with hidden text.
3. Testing creatives and landings:
   It’s always interesting to see which versions of offers and landing pages are the most effective in terms of conversions.
4. Targeted display offers:
   Cloaking gives affiliates a direct path to the target audience according to geo, language, device, etc.
5. Protection from untargeted traffic and bots:
   Thanks to cloaking, requests are filtered, so only real users will have access to the page.

To experience all the benefits of cloaking without going into technical details, turn to the experts at 888STARZ Partners for help. We offer a 100% cloaked product, so working with us you don’t have to worry about setting up your tracker or anything else!

General recommendations on how to cloak a website

To maintain a website cloaking campaign correctly, you should at least understand the moderation algorithms of popular platforms and websites. No one guarantees that one day an affiliate will not get banned. Lastly, a couple of recommendations:

1. Don’t use a personal account, brand name, first name. Fake accounts are acceptable for gray offers, but it’s preferable if they appear genuine.
2. For one advertising campaign use a single account. In the case of a ban, everything associated with the page, including the wallet, can be blocked.
3. Select the appropriate budget for a cloaked offer. Giving up big quantities of money is always painful.

In general, test different cloaking services and choose the one that shows the best outcomes!

Conclusion

The main advantage that cloaking gives to webmasters is the ability to bypass moderation on advertising platforms and show those ads that you need. However, to use it, you must have a technical understanding of how to set up the tracker and so on.

In case you have any questions or need professional advice, you can always contact 888STARZ Partners for support. We are affiliate marketing specialists that have been in the business since 2020, thus we are well aware of all the problems that come with cloaking. For more information, contact your manager right now!