What is gambling and why is Facebook suitable for it?
Gambling is one of many verticals in traffic affiliate marketing. Why is it worth your attention? Because it is one of the most profitable verticals in the industry. At the same time, it does not depend on the season or events and is constantly growing and developing. New casinos, games, websites, geos, and affiliate marketing opportunities are appearing.
In simple terms, gambling refers to any activity where people bet their money with the hope of winning more money and experiencing intense emotions. This can take place in online casinos, sports betting, poker, slot machines, and other similar forms of entertainment.
Based on a report from Statista, the online gambling industry had a total worth of $63.5 billion by the end of 2022. It is projected that by 2027, the number of active users will surpass 230 million, making them the target audience for casinos. The United States is likely to remain the largest market for online gambling due to its strong economy and high internet traffic. Gambling has been present in the US for a long time.
After the US, the regions with promising potential for increased traffic include Asia and Latin America. These regions have rapidly growing populations that are relatively new to gambling, and the overall well-being of users in these areas has been steadily improving in recent years. Overall, this represents a huge market with immense potential for affiliate marketing and profiting from the emotions associated with gambling.
Social media platforms, particularly Facebook, continue to be a major source of traffic for the gambling industry. Facebook boasts nearly 3 billion users worldwide, making it the global leader in this regard. It offers a wide range of opportunities for reaching target audiences in any geographical location, as well as various formats for advertisements and offers. You can utilize Facebook Ads Manager to target specific audiences, or engage with relevant communities through thematic content.
When advertising on Facebook, it's important to adhere to the platform's guidelines. Facebook takes the content advertised on its platform seriously and employs strict and somewhat opaque moderation algorithms. However, this doesn't mean that you shouldn't advertise there.
On the contrary, advertising on Facebook can provide immense reach and exposure. The key is to set up well-targeted campaigns, use great ad creatives, and evoke the desired emotions in your audience.
How to set up successful gambling ad campaigns on Facebook
Successful ad campaigns should consist of several key elements, which we will outline below:
- Offer: The campaign should focus on promoting an online casino.
- Geo: The target geo/ country can vary, and it's important to thoroughly study the specific features and current legislation of each country.
- Ad creatives: The advertisement materials should emphasize emotions to capture the attention and interest of the audience.
- Traffic sources: Facebook is used as the primary platform for driving traffic to the campaign.
- Target users: The campaign aims to attract specific individuals who fit the target audience criteria.
From a marketing perspective, this campaign represents a sales funnel through which potential clients must navigate. It's important to understand that there are both positive and negative aspects within this process. A positive combination refers to a profitable outcome, where the campaign generates a profit. Therefore, it's crucial to carefully select all the elements, including creatives, analytics tools, and more. However, identifying the most effective approach isn't always obvious. It requires experience and testing, but many affiliate marketers are reluctant to share their successful case studies. Nevertheless, we will provide insights into what campaign approaches/ angles lead to good conversion rates.
Campaign approach showing casino hacking strategies:
Gambling becomes much easier when you know a secret strategy that other users don't. This gives you a higher chance of winning. Sometimes, there's information about how to "hack" a casino and win by following certain steps, like making a deposit and spinning the slot machine a specific number of times.
This information is usually shared in casino communities on Facebook, rather than in the actual ads. If users trust the person sharing the information, they might follow the steps mentioned. This type of traffic is called incentive traffic. Some people win, some lose, but the affiliate marketer always gets paid by the gambling affiliate program. Yes, this approach may not always be fair or transparent, but it can work quite well.
Campaign approach showing emotions from a big win:
Gambling is all about the excitement of winning big. People sign up at online casinos, deposit money, and claim bonuses with the goal of experiencing a range of emotions and having a good time. The thrill of uncertainty and the possibility of getting rich are the main motivations for players and gamblers.
When creating ads for gambling, short videos are often used. These videos show a person playing in a casino or spinning the reels of a slot machine. Users see the tension, excitement, and nerves as the reels spin, almost forming winning combinations. Finally, the jackpot is hit, coins pour in, and the player's face lights up with happiness and joy. The winning amount is instantly credited to their account, confirmed by an SMS notification from the bank. Anyone who has experienced something similar knows the feeling well. It's these emotions that attract people to casinos.
Campaign approach showing beautiful girls:
In addition to the thrill of winning, another approach is to focus on the appeal of beautiful girls. There's a common belief that you need a certain amount of money to catch the attention of attractive women. Online casinos can help users quickly and easily earn that cash.
The visuals for this approach showcase the excitement of playing, winning, and then being noticed by attractive women. This strategy is also used in other industries to attract male audiences, who make up the majority of players.
Campaigns linking to mobile applications:
Playing casino games in apps is convenient, so this aspect shouldn't be overlooked. Progressive Web Apps (PWA) allow regular websites to function like apps. When users click the install button, the app appears on their home screen like any other app.
The main advantage of this approach is that PWA technology doesn't require approval from app stores. You don't have to go through their strict review process, which is getting stricter over time. This means there's no risk of your app being banned.
For this approach, the visuals can be similar to those used for regular apps: showing emotions, attractive women, slot machines, and users winning and receiving money.
While affiliate marketers debate about the best gambling advertising networks we recommend starting by driving traffic through reliable advertising networks like MyBid. MyBid provides a fully managed system where each affiliate gets a personal manager. This manager not only shares their expertise but also helps with any questions that come up during the advertising campaign.
Case studies of driving traffic from Facebook to gambling offers
In this next section, we'll highlight two real-life success case studies of affiliate marketers who successfully drove traffic from Facebook to gambling websites. We'll also provide insights into the creative strategies and approaches these affiliates used to effectively promote the casinos.
Case Study 1: Earning $22,000 per Week
The DMCPA team shared their amazing success story. They specialize exclusively in the gambling vertical and only generate traffic from Facebook. They believe that focusing on a specific vertical is the best way to become an expert. And their latest case study proves that this approach is indeed effective.
Here's a quick summary of the case study:
- Offer: Stellar
- Location: Italy
- Rate: $160 for the first deposit
- Expenses: $22,730
- Income: $44,800
- Profit: $22,070
- ROI: 97%
The Stellar offer paid $160 for each first deposit. It was really successful right away, so the affiliates decided to fully use DMCPA's capabilities. They spent over $22,000 to bring in more people to the website, using tools like new fan pages and Ukrainian farmed accounts that had two BMs, each with 10 auto-registered accounts.
They ran their Facebook campaign with the following targeting criteria:
- Targeting male users
- Age group: 27-48 years
- No specific interests required
- Ads shown in Facebook feed
- Optimizing for deposits
The last point turned out to be the main factor behind their success. Optimizing for installations in the past six months didn't yield good results, but optimizing for deposits worked wonders.
The casino advertising creatives they used had the following features:
- Highlighting the popularity of chicken slots in Italy
- Prominent display of the offer's name
- Classic elements showcasing emotions, big wins, and a luxurious lifestyle
Facebook campaign results in just a week:
- 17,964 installations
- 3,113 registrations
- 280 deposits
This approach generated a profit of $22,070.
Case study 2: Making €55,470 in profit by promoting a gambling offer in Brazil
The Syndicate affiliate team shared their successful experience of driving traffic to three promising online casinos in Brazil using Facebook. They did their homework and considered some important factors for a successful approach. They took note of Brazil's growing population, the love for football, and the presence of famous players. To catch the attention of Brazilians on Facebook, they created eye-catching casino ads using the colors of the national flag and played up the passionate nature of the people.
They went even further and studied the most popular slot games in Brazil. Here's the final list:
- Aviator
- Gates of Olympus
- Crazy Time
- Crazy Coin Flip
- Plinko
- Mines
- Sweet Bonanza
- Spaceman
- Auto-Roulette
Analyzing the casino ads, they found that people were most interested in real gameplay, the thrill of winning, and patriotic colors. They made sure to highlight these aspects in their approach. They also added an icon representing the country's main payment system, reassuring potential customers that they wouldn't face any issues when withdrawing their winnings.
For targeting, they focused on the following parameters:
- Location: Brazil
- Age: 23-50
- Gender: 75% men, 25% women
- Operating System: iOS
The results of the three-week NineCasino Brazil campaign were impressive:
- 1,194 clicks
- 802 conversions
- 145 sales
- 18,214 registrations
- Conversion Rate (CR): 12.14%
This approach generated €55,000 in profit.
Conclusion
The gambling vertical is full of promise and growing quickly. This is because, even during tough economic times, people in developing countries are seeing improvements in their overall quality of life. As a result, they have more money to spend on casino gambling, seeking excitement and the chance to strike it rich.
Facebook is a fantastic way to reach these potential gamblers, as it provides a reliable source of traffic. Additionally, the strategies we discussed, in this case, study can also be applied in push notifications campaigns, as long as you choose a reliable push notifications advertising network without any bot traffic. Luckily, at MyBid, we own 90% of the websites we get traffic from, so there is no way we can include bots within our traffic in that regard.