This story is about a media buyer who brings players from Europe to an iGaming operator. He uses a managed Adsterra account and often starts campaigns to get new users. This time, his biggest task was to stay within the monthly budget but still get more first deposits. He gave us important data and allowed us to share his results. Now, we can give you useful tips on how to get more iGaming conversions!

Campaign essentials

  • GEO: Romania
  • Product: Maria Gaming
  • Ad format: Popunder
  • Conversion flow: FTD (first-time deposit)
  • Traffic type: CPM
  • Monthly ad budget: $3,000
  • CPA limits: maximum $72 (desirable CPA $40)
  • Minimum deposit for players: $100

Results: skyrocketing conversions in iGaming

  • Monthly deposits growth: from 42 to 93
  • Profit growth: $11,100 instead of $5,700
  • Final CPA: $32.5

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Hurdles in growing iGaming deposits

Our partner had to get more first deposits in Romania but still keep the costs within the budget set by the advertiser. The biggest problem was to not go over the $16,000 monthly limit and not spend too much on just one country.

The goal was to keep the cost per deposit in Romania low (around $70), but the competition there was very strong.

Another problem was that we couldn’t track how well the ads were working because the advertiser didn’t use S2S tracking. Still, our partner and the Adsterra team faced all the difficulties and almost doubled the number of deposits—from 42 to 93—while keeping good-quality players (they kept playing and depositing).

Now, let’s share the strategies we used!

Better iGaming conversions: a winning method

Before we increased the number of first-time deposits (FTD), we needed to check how the traffic was working. Our media-buying partner could only share data from his analytics tool once every 28–30 days. Here’s what we could see:

  • Impressions
  • Clicks
  • Placement IDs
  • Registrations
  • Deposits
  • Dates

In the table below, you can see that deposits came from 12 placements in the Deposits column, while the other sources had no conversions. However, they still sent many impressions.

Seems like the data above shows everything we need to act on: just remove the poor-performing placements and move the budget to the best ones. Well, it doesn’t exactly work that way. Here’s why:

  1. We only had one Excel report with limited information, and no one could guess how the same sources would perform in the near future. But we had to act now.
  2. iGaming conversions may take time. Users may sign up but postpone depositing money.
  3. Sources that get many clicks aren’t always bad. If we exclude or blacklist them, we might lose good traffic that could convert later. Cutting these sources means we might lose possible profits.

Our partner agreed to try a new bidding strategy, but only if the budget stayed within the limit.

4 tips to drive more first-time deposits

1: Set and control your marketing budget: monthly, daily, hourly

You don’t want to spend half your budget in the first five days, so spread it! We did that so we could control how much we spent each day or even each hour. We made sure to divide the money equally over 30–31 days to stay within the budget and get as many ad views from Romania as possible.

This helped improve conversions and possibly get more player deposits. We also used more traffic sources, giving a second chance to ones that had many clicks but no deposits at first.

If you have a self-serve Adsterra account, you can set daily and hourly limits, along with the total campaign budget (see the screenshot above).

The “Evenly Distributed” option is only available for managed accounts. Our managers used this setting to avoid big spending fluctuations since we couldn’t see the full picture of how traffic was behaving.

2: Pick the best time for iGaming ads

Besides managing the marketing budget, we could test the best times to show ads. Players are active at different times depending on the country.

Romanian players might click your ad and visit the website at 3 AM, but they are not likely to register or deposit at that hour. Although it seemed like a small factor, we greatly improved the campaign’s performance by stopping ads during the night for the Popunder campaign.

3: Customize bids

We could only see reports from our media buyer every two weeks, so we couldn’t check in real time how placements turned into deposits. However, we got permission to keep traffic sources with no registrations but pay them less.

Adsterra Custom Bid allowed us to effortlessly add all the questionable IDs and set lower bids. It took some manual work, but it was worth it. Changing bids is a good way to reach the needed conversion cost without losing too much traffic.

In the end, we earned more money and used it for the best-performing placements, thanks to the Custom Bid tool. Since we didn’t remove all traffic sources that looked weak at first, we still got traffic. This helped increase the number of deposits from 42 to 93.

4: Blacklisting

Deleting ad placements too early can mean losing good traffic. That’s why we did this as the last step. After four weeks, we removed all sources that brought little or no conversions.

Final Thoughts

  1. iGaming conversions take time, unlike installs or signups. Even if a traffic source gets many clicks, you can’t know right away if it will work well. The best method — especially if you can’t check daily performance — is to lower bids for uncertain placements and keep testing traffic.
  2. Whether you run an iGaming business or an agency, you can control ad spending by setting daily or hourly limits. This helps avoid spending too much.
  3. In the end, most FTD Sports and Gaming campaigns work best with CPM traffic, while CPA traffic is better for leads and installs.

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