How to Create an Effective Ad Strategy for US iGaming: Affiliates and Operators

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In the last few years, online gambling has already overtaken both the sports and movie industries in America combined. In fact, the iGaming industry as a whole is predicted to earn over $200 billion in total revenue by 2023. However, ads for online sportsbooks, fantasy sites and casinos are now common across all media platforms and every device, leaving the space for advertising quite saturated. So, the question for affiliates and operators remains – how do you make your brand or website stand out in this market?

In this article, we explore the behind-the-scenes strategies that can help make your US ads more targeted for a better ROI. Keep reading to learn more!

Tailor the Approach

As we’ve touched on before, understanding that each state in the US should be treated as a unique region is the first step in creating your ad strategy. Players from California and New Jersey will, for example, have varying preferences in how they bet and how they see online gambling ads. Aspects like the teams they support, the platforms they bet on, the games they enjoy and even the ways they deposit and withdraw funds are key when building new ads.

“The US iGaming market will only continue to boom over the next few years, especially as additional states come into play. This leaves a lot of opportunity for both operators and affiliates as the market matures and becomes clearer.” Click here to learn more.

Identify Audience

Now that we know to approach each state on its own, we can begin to identify the right audience for your ads. Remember, this is a preliminary step and will take some time, but it is crucial to ensure that your ad budget is spent effectively.

For operators, this involves looking at which products you offer – if your brand’s main product is an online casino, then you’ll want to explore which games are popular and who is betting on those games. This can be done by analyzing competitors, researching online, and using tracking tools to see audience details. For your website, tracking tools like Google Analytics can already show audience insights such as age, gender and time of site visit, all valuable information when it comes to creating targeted ads.

For affiliates, identifying the audience is often the same process as for the operator, as both are looking to drive users to a betting platform. However, affiliates can also investigate what people like to bet on across different verticals – for example, is sports betting more or less popular than online casino in your state? By understanding which betting niches are preferred and the users who look for them (the operator audience), affiliates can see a clearer picture of the ads that will more likely convert users.

Understand Interests

Now that you know exactly who your audience is, it’s time to dive a little deeper and learn more about them. By getting an understanding of how your audience operates, you can deliver ads in an efficient manner.

For both operators and affiliates, the same tracking tools used to identify an audience can be used to conduct further analysis. Many free web traffic analyzers enable you to see important audience metrics for your site; these include which device someone used, how and when they arrived at your site, which pages they visited, their time spent on pages, other interests they may have and much more. Revealing data like this is extremely helpful as it will let you build an ad strategy that gives increased reach and higher engagement.

Implement Strategy

Using the steps outlined above, we can start to imagine how to create effective and targeted ads.

Operators: Let’s take an example of a sports betting brand – through initial study of the state, we know that sports betting is popular and that the NBA and NFL are the most bet-on sports. Following this, competitor research confirms that the key demographics for this niche are men between the ages of 20-35. By conducting traffic analyses next, we see that most users visit our site from their mobile device and after 5pm. With this, we can draw that ads could work well on social media channels or with in-app ads, especially if they are tailored to a younger audience and scheduled to deliver later in the day.

Affiliates: If we are running an affiliate site, we would begin by identifying the popular betting niches where we are licensed to promote. In this example, our initial research shows that online casino games and sports betting are popular, but the audience is mainly men aged 20-40. We see that most of of this group visits our site after seeing TV ads for sports and sponsored website ads (banners) for online casino. We also know that these users visit after 12pm and all day on the weekend. Our conclusion is to run social ads for sports that utilize similar imagery as the TV ads, and PPC ads for online casino that share keywords and other assets as the banners from operators. For both verticals, the ads would be scheduled to show during the day and increase in frequency during the weekend.

Takeaways

To boost the performance of any ad campaign, especially in the US market, it’s clear that your strategy should be targeted to reach the right audience and spend efficiently. Knowing the full potential of the market and narrowing from there will enable you to develop the best ads to bring and convert more users. By isolating which groups are likely to click on your ads, and then identifying how and when they interact with your brand, you can see great results with your next ad campaign.

We hope to see your ads in the near future and look forward to the continued growth of iGaming in the US!