Case Study: Canada, Gambling, CPL Offer. +$5000 (ROI ~$140%)

Our today’s case study shows how to run successful gambling campaigns based on CPL. Check out the link below for more.

Hi everyone! It’s been quite a while since I posted my last actionable case study on ZorbasMedia. The reason behind this is that there is not much to share. We are doing the same stuff as everyone else, i.e. making creatives, warming up ad accounts, launching and optimizing marketing campaigns, and, of course, earning money. This seemingly simple formula soon gets overburdened with integrals and differentials that we generally call attendant circumstances. When it comes to affiliate marketing (especially on Facebook), these circumstances are often negative rather than positive and may have a destructive effect on your advertising efforts.

However, you can get a lot of experience dealing with challenges, both big and small, and become stronger and more resilient in the process. You will also start to appreciate it when all is going smoothly and brings you profit.

Today, I’m going to tell you about one such circumstance.

P.S. In the case study below, you will find an insight into optimizing your campaigns, as well as some tried-and-true tips on how to promote gambling offers.

Campaign time period: 12.08.2020–30.09.2020

GEO: Canada

Affiliate network: Advidi

Offer: OneCasino — CPL

Money spent: $3,989

Money earned: $9,585

Profit: $5,596

ROI: ~$140%

By way of introduction, I am perfectly aware that this case study can’t boast 6-figure profits, but it’s not about numbers at all. As I said earlier, the choice of an offer and a campaign strategy was dictated by circumstances. Hopefully, this article will help you reconsider some of your marketing efforts and give you a broader perspective on what you can do as an affiliate.

So, let’s get down to business. OneCasino is an online gambling brand that enjoys widespread popularity in Western Europe (DE/AT/CH, etc.). I promoted it some time ago in such GEOs as DE/AT. There is one issue, though: the advertiser generally pays affiliates based on CPL (meaning that you get paid for signups), and our today’s case study is no exception.

I think that running CPL offers is not as advantageous as it is believed by many, and I’m going to explain my viewpoint below.

CPL — is it worth the game?

A lot of affiliates (and especially newbies) see CPL offers as a lucrative opportunity to earn money quickly and optimize their campaigns in the easiest way possible (you just leave those placements and creatives that generate the most signups and cut out the rest). Although this is undoubtedly true, there is a flip side to everything:

First of all, if you work in a media buying team, you may have difficulty in scaling up your CPL campaigns because of offer caps that allow advertisers to limit the number of conversions you can drive to their offers.

Second, you need to remember that promoting gambling is not just about money spent and money earned, as there are a lot of different factors at play, such as your KPIs.

If you are getting paid for a deposit, you “only” have to keep track of such metrics as avg. FD, avg. RD, FD-RD, RR, etc. If you are running on CPL, you will also have to analyze your Reg2Dep rate.

I wasn’t running this offer directly with the casino but via the affiliate network Advidi. I have been working with them since 2017, and my affiliate manager advised me to promote the OneCasino offer in Canada. 

Advidi is a global multi-vertical affiliate network based in Amsterdam and showcasing a wide range of offers, including in-house dating products. It has been a pleasure working with this network, as the team is always willing to meet you halfway. I highly recommend signing up on their platform and giving some of their offers a try. Today, when affiliate networks come and go every once in six months, having a reliable and trustworthy business partner has become even more important. Those of you who want to join Advidi can reach out to a good friend of mine on Telegram: @stas_advidi. He will help you get your account approved and launch your first campaign on Advidi.

As I know that OneCasino has long been introduced to the market, I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about it. However, my manager told me this gambling product had barely been promoted in Canada before, and so I decided to put it to a test.

Well, no sooner said than done. I launched a test campaign and started waiting for results.

Campaign optimization

The initial results were rather poor, but it had nothing to do with the offer. The install prices were too high and reached up to $7-10, although the creatives that I used were pretty standard. 

I left only a few ad sets that were generating installs at a reasonable price and cut out everything else. The next day, I relaunched the campaigns I disabled the day before and continued to closely monitor my ad sets. Once the install price reached about $5, I stopped the campaigns again and left only those that were bringing profit. In three days, the Facebook algorithm finally figured out what I want from my marketing efforts and the install prices settled at the $1.5-2.5 mark, which allowed me to get a decent ROI.

Expert tip: before jumping to conclusions, consider running your campaigns for at least 2-3 days, stop those ad sets that generate installs at too high a price and launch them once again the next day to see the full picture.

Targeting settings, campaign set-up, and creatives

Here is where the most (or the least) juicy stuff begins… 

Whenever people ask me about gambling creatives, I always tell them that videos featuring slots and provoking an emotional reaction are guaranteed to generate decent results.

If you don’t get any, then you should probably change some other campaign element.

Targeting settings: 25-54, males. Placements, both OSs, automatic bidding. The campaign’s objective was to drive installs (we have our own apps).

Carefully monitor your traffic quality if you want to promote this offer in the long run. Remember that although an advertiser can pay you for leads, deposits, and even for clicks, they assess your traffic quality based on LTV, deposits, and retention rate. To run CPL campaigns and secure sustainably high results, you need to maintain the required KPIs.

Tips and tricks

1. Be patient, you can’t climb into the green immediately if you promote gambling offers, leave your campaigns running for at least 3-4 days, and your CR will increase gradually;
2. Make about 10-15 creatives and launch them all at once, test new creatives, and scale your campaigns in real-time if they prove to be profitable. If 4-5 out of 10-15 creatives are effective, make new creatives similar to those that generate a high CR, etc.
3. Request data on your traffic quality and offer from your affiliate manager a few times per week. This way you will know for sure when to start scaling up your campaigns and what creatives you need to stop running. This will also protect you from losing your money;
4. Choose your targeting settings wisely. Targeting males and females aged 18+ to make a quick buck is not a viable strategy in the long run;
5. Don’t send traffic to no-name affiliate networks. Pick up your partners carefully!

P.S. So, here’s how circumstances actually helped us secure a good profit in a month and a half.

Thanks to @advidi for their support and commitment. For those of you who want to join the network, follow this link for a quick sign-up and reach out to @stas_advidi to get your account approved and start sending traffic to Advidi.