Orchestrating Multi-Channel Online Gambling Ads for End-to-End Customer Journeys

Have you ever been on a ladder with steps missing?

You can gain some height, but then there’s going to be a point beyond which venturing is not safe. That’s where you’ll quit your upwards descent.

It’s not uncommon for a similar situation to present itself in digital marketing — irrespective of medium — where hot leads go cold all of a sudden. It may seem sudden to the marketer, of course, because they were already out of the loop on making contact with the individual.

When your funnel is complete and drawn across channels, potential customers go from warm to toasty and hot, all the time. This type of closed loop is possible to create through ads on digital channels as well. 

Click-through rates via digital ads are about 2x compared to those of other online industries. In 2022, reportedly 35% of online gamblers stumbled across new iGaming platforms through digital ads.

Wildly successful in outcomes, and equally broad in meaning, the term ‘digital ad’ refers to a lot of things. Let us first pin point what is being classified as an ad.

What Qualifies as Online Gambling Ads?

Meta is very clear on this: ads that promote “any product or service where anything of monetary value is included as part of a method of entry and prize” is considered “gambling and gaming” content. The formats the platform recognises are:

• Lottery
• Raffle
• Betting
• Casino Games
• Poker
• Fantasy Sports
• Bingo
• Sweepstakes
• Skill-based Games

Google takes a wider view, in sync with local understandings and framing of the issue. While it considers gambling to be “staking something of value on the outcome of events or processes determined by an element of chance with the opportunity to win something of value”, it also takes into account what local law uses as a definition. 

It characterizes the following as online gambling Google ads:

• Any content which directly encourages participation in gambling activities, 
• Such content which requires permission under local laws.

Social gaming is also covered, and forms a different subset under this  category.

These two definitions from two of the largest social media platforms reveals two clues about online gambling ads:

1. The definition of what counts as online gambling varies, and is guided by platform rules. This is key information when it comes to implementing player conversion journeys through established funnels for iGaming brands and operators.
2. Online gambling is a composite term which contains real-money gambling and social casino activities (where no money is exchanged). This means that even if your business doesn’t run on money being staked, you’re still going to have to follow guidelines laid down for the entire ‘online gambling’ category.

With this understanding in mind, let’s examine how effective funnels can be created through digital advertising for all the various activities under ‘online gambling’.

The Awareness Stage: Capturing Attention

The first touchpoint is where any new or unaware individual comes to learn of the brand, product or promotion (depending on what the objective of your campaign is).

Your communication at this stage is going to be:

• Broad-based, since the emphasis should be on reaching out to as many people as possible.
• Informative, aimed at letting viewers discover your product, brand or host of offerings.
• Simple to understand, so that even within a few seconds the main idea can be grasped.
• Design-heavy, to ensure that even without an offer or scroll stopping component, potential customers pay attention to it.

Which Online Gambling Ads Formats Should You Consider?

1. Display Ads

This type of advertising focuses extensively on well-designed, visually appealing banners and creatives. The idea is to earn a stop mid-scroll from otherwise unengaged users. The expected outcome: a slowly developed brand awareness that seeps into the subconscious of users, brought to light from time to time, whenever they come across other related media.

Let’s understand the formats in which gambling display ads bring the best recall:

• Interstitial Ads

These ads appear in the period a page loads or between screens in apps. What they provide is a ‘natural break’ between content, serving as an ‘ad break’, that is enough to arouse curiosity, but not enough to compel immersion.

• Pop-up or Pop-down Ads

Highly targeted messages can  be delivered to audiences, whatever they exist through these intrusive ads. Since they can be closed manually by disinterested users, they are more effective in gaining the attention of those who are interested.

• Rich Media Ads

Try video, audio and interaction-rich online gambling ads. Since they’re more dynamic, rich media ads, by their very nature, are able to capture attention.

The major advantage of display ads is built into the format: dynamic bidding and behavioural audience targeting. It allows you to seek out those specific people who will respond positively to your content. The results speak for themselves: better impressions, clicks and less marketing budget wasted.

Using advanced data analytics, you can further improve targeting and optimize marketing spends.

2. Native Ads

Initial brand exposure needs to be subtle and less direct. If it isn’t, people coming across it might feel their personal (internet) space being intruded upon. By fitting seamlessly into surrounding content, they’re more likely to get registered subconsciously too.

Which native ad types should you be using?

• In-feed Ads

Blend your advertising seamlessly within organic content so viewers take in branded messages, without getting distracted. This approach allows you to slowly breach the zone awareness gap and become ‘known’ to your target audience. 

• Promotional Listings

Contextual references are a welcome way of placing online gambling ads. You don’t push yourself into the consciousness of probable players. Instead, you embed branded content around related topics and if they’re intently searching, they will come to learn of you.

• Sponsored Content

Your ad placements can be less conspicuous too. Don’t bring players on to play games directly. Instead, you could be informing them about industry specific things such as responsible gameplay, platform features, how to avoid addiction and so on. 

Helpful content is also a crucial factor in trust building — the perfect zone for achieving two goals at once.

3. Online Gambling Commercials

We’ve talked at length about digital formats for brand salience. But what about the people who do use the internet, but are not avidly navigating the platforms where your content is placed?

Mass awareness and wider brand knowledge comes from using even more widespread media formats. Television (even CTV), video streaming sites, residential advertising and OOH are some mediums which can affect change at this stage.

Imagine this: someone on their way to run errands comes across a poster at a bus stop. They come across another one of your online gambling ads within a train in their local subway station. The final display is made in the form of a digital banner ad on the street along their bus ride home. That’s a fair number of instances — enough to reinforce the message, without irking them. 

While there is no way to track footfall or ‘impressions’ while using online gambling commercials, a rough idea can be gauged by using geofencing and mobile advertising IDs (MAIDs).

The Consideration Stage: Driving Interest and Engagement

Once a user crosses the awareness stage, they’re likely to become familiar with your operation or brand — thus entering the consideration stage. That’s when they’ll do either of these actions:

• Seek your specific brand out when they’re looking to engage with your offerings, or
• Look for generic terms within your industry, in the hope of locating either your website or a competitor’s website.

A lot of customer journeys end right here. It is easy to build awareness through simple online gambling ads campaigns but on its own, just knowing the brand is not enough. Taking action is what matters. And when users decide to act — whether it is the very next day or six months down the line — you need to be ready. 

Ergo, your play at this stage is absolutely critical. So, what should you be doing?

Search engine marketing or SEM through search ad campaigns. 

When a user comes looking for you, they won’t be typing your website’s URL into a browser. Instead, they’ll search for your name or your product offerings. They could also just be looking for “best online casino games” or “no-money casino games”.

That’s why you’re going to have to be on top of your SEM game to ensure the next stage of the funnel can exist and users can naturally flow into it. Here’s what this requires:

1. Intensive Keyword Research and Selection

Keywords underlie the entire SEM strategy. Without clarity on this aspect, any online gambling ads you run will simply be a waste of time and money.

• Here’s where you begin: identify the keywords you want to target for your search ads. Of course, branded keywords should be your first line of sight. But after that, the most relevant (and CPC-effective) terms — short phrases and complete sentences — should be present in your list.

• Purchase or conversion intent should also be considered when choosing which keywords ads should be run on. These terms will bring you the quickest results in terms of new user addition onto your platform. Think: “free sign up bonus betting under $100” or “free spins Spain online casino”.

2. Technical SEO Strategies

While SEO, even the technical kind, doesn’t come directly under paid marketing, such methods can boost the effectiveness of ad strategies. The usefulness of technical SEO becomes clear when you understand what it does:

• Website performance improvement by optimizing factors like page load speed, responsiveness, structured data markup and crawlability.
• Improve indexing and visibility for website pages to ensure crucial keywords rank for the most relevant website pages.
• Resolving issues like content duplication, redirect errors, Javascript and CSS issues and fixing all broken links to pages within and outside the primary website.

Such techniques are a great accompaniment to existing online gambling ads strategies, and ensure effectiveness of both organic and paid marketing.

3. Bid Management and Device Targeting

Who should your ads be more visible to? Is it the mobile-first individuals, or the desktop users? And what’s the region, timezone, gender and age group of the people who should definitely be seeing them?

All of this drives the outcomes of the consideration stage. 

Being in control of which specific placement your ads secure, and the associated filters for driving traffic, is what makes up an effective strategy for pushing aware users further — right into actually choosing you as an iGaming provider. 

4. Review of Performance and Optimization

Tracking performance allows you to know what works and what doesn’t, as it happens. The data inflow informs you of which consideration stage strategies are earning good responses, and which ones are going to need some tweaks.

Maintaining a review schedule is immensely important to ensure your funnel works in the present — and in the future. A biweekly or monthly maintenance cycle allows for adjustments and fixes in a timely manner, before something of importance actually breaks the flow. 

The Conversion Stage: Securing the Deposit

At this stage, you should be looking to close the loop, i.e. securing a registration from those who have moved through both previous stages of the funnel.

On average, a good paid marketing conversion rate stands at 2-5%. In the case of online gambling ads, you could be looking up to 20%, depending on time of the year and relevant event-based interest (for sports betting or fantasy games).

Your actions should at this point be three things:

• Highly targeted, since you are only looking for those individuals who have kept with you until this stage in the funnel,
• Persuasive, since the main objective at this stage is to ensure players in the funnel do convert, and
• Action-causing, to drive registrations and first time deposits on your website or app.

How can you define intent here?

Identify those individuals who have shown behaviours which can be construed as genuine interest towards your business:

• Multiple sessions on your website or repeated visitors,
• Registration abandoners,
• Post-registration but pre-FTD players, or,
• Those who have interacted multiple times with various ads you’re running.

The ads you develop and market at this stage should fall under the following categories:

1. Remarketing Ads

The most visible online gambling ads must be used in this funnel stage. We’re talking:

• Push Notifications, for those who have your app downloaded but have not acted yet
• Pop-unders, which reel users in even when they have closed the browser
• Native ads, which are set for pre-engaged audience groups only

The content strategy here must be primarily around ensuring every single impression delivers the expected outcome, i.e. an FTD or the first activity (a bet or a withdrawal). Your ads should focus on:

• Exclusive welcome bonuses
• Time-sensitive offers
• Incomplete action reminders

Why does it matter? Nurture touches in previous stages make the audience within the funnel more sales-ready, and therefore, more likely to convert.

Here’s a pro-tip for you to maximise results at this stage: segment your retargeting audience. 

Find out exactly where they dropped off, and create personalized campaigns for them, from that point on. It is a universally known fact that users respond best to messages that are meant specifically for them.

2. Incentive-driven Ads

The entire emphasis of this type of online gambling ads communication is to provide compelling enough offers, leading to a conversion on every single click. Every creative shared here should come with a bonus or some other enticing offer, which is hard for players to resist.

What promotions can you run here?

• Matched Deposit Bonus, wherein you match the deposit of the player on a 1:1 level. It also has an added benefit: increasing the playable funds available to the user. Sometimes, a limit is placed here to safeguard against instances of online gambling fraud. For example, “$100 bonus match up to $500”.
• Free Spins or Free Bets, where users are attracted by allowing them to engage in gameplay without risking any money at first. The reason this works is that potential players can test out the risk factor, winning probability and mechanics of play before they invest any actual money.
• Cashback Offers, a classic tool for conversion which works in other industries too. Players dive in knowing that even if they lose the amount they’re putting up, they will at least be getting something back for sure.

Beyond the online gambling ads formats alone, your strategy should be to optimize the landing page you’re running the ads on. Align your checklist to ensure you’re meeting the needs of a conversion-ready audience with:

• Cohesive communication that matches what the ads you’re running say.
• Auto-fill and minimum information in the initial page sign-up to ensure fewer forms are abandoned.
• Logos or badges, for trust building purposes, are prominently displayed. This goes for certifications, privacy, security measures and even user testimonials.

The Retention Stage: Keeping Plays Around

You’ve got new players in your kitty. That seems like the right place to end your intervention, right?

Wrong! This is where you ensure all the online gambling ad spend marketing spend invested into each of these user acquisitions continues to pay off. Long-term player associations require loyalty-driving marketing — and that’s exactly what you’re meant to drive at this point.

To keep players engaged over a longer period of time, here’s what you need to do:

1. Run Personalized Offers

Make use of player information, such as betting history, activity level, game preferences and more to direct specific online gambling ads to each player. In fact, here you can focus on diversifying your communication strategy and attempt in-app messages, emails, push notifications or social media ads. 

It works, as determined by a study from Accenture, which found that 91% of individuals prefer to buy from companies which give them personalized deals and offers.

2. Create a Loyalty Program

Include a loyalty program into your iGaming website or app, which users become a part of automatically. It can include real benefits beyond bonuses, such as:

• Dedicated account managers,
• Faster withdrawals,
• Exclusive games or tournaments.

In case it is an opt-in program, you can run ads for your existing users to become members. Actual benefits can be pitched, along with a sign-up offer, such as “first 50 sign-ups get $200 bonus”.

3. Re-target Dormant Users

Not all players are active all the time, or incredibly engaged from the get go till the very end of their association with an organization. For this sub-set, you’ll have to make additional efforts and bring them back to the platform.

Here’s are the mediums through which you can make this happen:

• Email marketing
• SMS marketing
• Retargeting online gambling ads (which take us back to the first retention strategy)

Research suggests new player acquisitions are 5x more expensive for businesses. That’s why retention is a cost-effective and frankly, clever strategy to ensure your one-time marketing spends goes farthest.

4. Cross Promote

There are some offerings on your platform, which are sure to be the most conversion generating. But new games, products and play types are introduced from time to time. These too need to be promoted to existing customers — to make them aware about such items, and to get them to try.

The easiest way to do this in-app or in-website is through banners, pop-ups and more that don’t require an external platform to show up.

Regulatory Concerns around iGaming Ads

Navigating the landscape of online gambling can be quite challenging — even when it comes to advertising a business within the industry. Making a note of what is okay and what isn’t, i.e. the legality of online gambling ads is a good starting point.

The definitions and variations in advertising guidelines from Meta and Google mentioned at the outset of this article show you just how varied the rest of the norms in this space can be. A step-by-step approach can help you note all the aspects which should be considered while optimizing your ads for compliance.

1. Consider Jurisdictional Variations

Rules vary across countries. What is valid in one country, may not apply to another. For that matter, these rules could also apply to states differently, which is the case in the USA. For that matter, ads on Google are also permitted only in Lagos — not the whole of Nigeria.

Your iGaming ads strategy should be informed by such distinctions.

2. Focus on Promoting Responsibly

Regulatory bodies and major ad serving platforms, both require this. But beyond basic checklist items, you should ensure responsible gaming is something that exists on all ad-related media with your branding, irrespective of whether you’re running the online casino ads or your affiliates are.

3. Note Some Common “No-No’s”

While minor details may vary, the major restrictions with respect to online gambling ads remain fairly consistent:

• Avoid using misleading claims or false information to attract traffic
• Don’t target vulnerable or underage players
• Unlimited play must not be promoted in your ads
• Ensure your content and landing pages come with disclaimers about harmful behaviours

Maintaining basic hygiene as a matter of strategy is going to bring your promotions better outcomes and allow users to trust you more easily.

4. Monitor New Developments

As with all rules, the permitted actions in ad running are also liable to change. Keeping up is crucial to ensuring your account doesn’t get suspended and you’re able to keep the funnel you’ve created running without extreme levels of regular intervention.

If you’re struggling to even keep your ads up, you’ve got more important problems to worry about than simply your ad creatives.

How to Make this Journey Seamless?

Let’s start by contemplating what not to do. Here’s what a Reddit user had to say about the quality of online gambling ads they have encountered.

The first checklist item, therefore, should be a good content marketing strategy. Bad creatives equal bad user experience, and nobody wants that.

The next thing to keep in mind is: 

1. Having an Integrated Data Strategy (or CRM)

It is crucial to know what actions each user is performing on your platform and in regards to your ads. Without it, how do you know which calls-to-actions need more work or which creatives should be replaced immediately? In fact, having a codified CRM tool or format is going to ensure your retention game remains top-notch, since you’re always in the know about what’s going on with each user.

2. Evaluating Cross-channel Attribution

Multi-touch attribution is the bedrock of the entire funnel approach. If you’re marketing a business, the touchpoints are going to be embedded across platforms and media formats. Not staying in the loop simply means you’re flushing money down the toilet. The key to optimizing online gambling ads budget is to know which journeys are creating the right outcomes, and which ones need to be put down yesterday.

3. Continuous A/B Testing

Sometimes an ad creative just works, and it keeps delivering outcomes over months (and even years!). But that is just sometimes.

Usually, you’re going to have to try one thing and then reiterate. Then maybe it works for sometime, till it doesn’t. A/B testing allows you to keep experimenting, and exploring the length and breadth of what works at a given point in time, and what is never going to work.
The essential thing, however, is that end-to-end customer journeys are a work of science. But they’re also a work in progress. Your ‘persona’ user today is going to be an artifact tomorrow. Adaptation and consistent improvements in implementation are the only factors that matter, when you’re dealing with real, human consumers.