[Case Study] iGaming on Paid Social Traffic: 46K+ Sign-Ups at $0.81 Each
How about a fresh ad format, 2 smaller GEOs, and likely limited competition for either?
Sounds tempting indeed, and that’s why this media buying team decided to give it a go when PropellerAds launched Paid Social Traffic in June. Just 6 days later, they had iGaming campaigns running in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
As it was a completely new format, the team expected few buyers to be bidding on social traffic in these markets yet. So, the opportunity was totally there; the question was how much traffic the team could turn into registrations at a workable price.
Over the next 4 months, this strategy delivered a whopping 46,500 registrations. Not bad at all, right?
Read on to see how the team tested the new format, adjusted its bids, and found room to spend more.
Campaign at a Glance
| Vertical | iGaming |
| GEOs | Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan |
| Ad format | Paid Social Traffic |
| Bidding model | CPA Goal, optimized to registration |
| Tracking | S2S postback for registration and deposit |
| Targeting | Android from day one, iOS from mid-July |
| Period | June 26, 2026 – Present |
| Results: July to October | $37,850 spent, 46,500 registrations, $0.81 per registration |
Why Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan
Okay, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan probably aren’t the first GEOs that come to mind for iGaming.
But 2 small CIS markets with few media buyers competing for social traffic? That sounded like a good place to start. Traffic was affordable, and the team had room to test.
The catch? Smaller GEOs mean less traffic. One overly enthusiastic source can eat up your daily budget before lunch. And yes, that happened here. We’ll get to it.
How the Campaign Was Set Up
The team had two things to watch: who signed up, and who actually put money in. Here’s how they tracked both.
- Registrations gave the algorithm something to work with. Every sign-up automatically triggered an S2S postback to PropellerAds, giving CPA Goal more data to work with. It used that data to look for more traffic likely to register at the target price. To start with, the team set that target at $1 in both GEOs.
A quick heads-up here: setting a $1 CPA Goal doesn’t mean you pay a dollar per sign-up. You still pay for traffic; the CPA goal tells the algorithm what registration cost to aim for.
- First deposits showed whether those sign-ups were going anywhere. A postback also automatically reported each first deposit, so the team could track cost per depositor. In Kyrgyzstan, they initially aimed for $20-25 per first deposit.
Of course, you might wonder why they didn’t just optimize for deposits from day one. Fair enough. But the first week of testing brought 17 deposits across both GEOs. That didn’t give the algorithm much to go on. Thousands of registrations a month provided a lot more.
If you’ve ever picked deposits as your CPA Goal event in a small GEO and then watched the campaign barely spend for days, this setup might look familiar.
Give the algorithm a more frequent event to work with, then watch how many of those users actually deposit, and what you’re paying to get them there.
Early July: Sign-Ups Looked Good. Deposits? Less So.
The team started with one campaign per GEO, a $4K test budget each, and a $500 daily cap. They also tested a third GEO with a $3 CPA Goal per registration.
And the sign-ups came rolling in. On July 5 alone, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan brought in 1,940 registrations for $1,880. Between July 4 and July 11, daily spend ranged from $430 to $1,880.
Kyrgyzstan went past its $500 cap on July 4 – 6, mostly through one ad zone, so daily limits for individual zones were added on the network side.
Pretty good so far, until the team checked the first deposits. By July 7, Kyrgyzstan had 13 deposits for $4,030 of spend. Tajikistan did better, but not by enough: 37 deposits from July 3 to July 14 for $3,970.
In both markets, each deposit cost far more than the team was willing to pay, and Kyrgyzstan was the furthest off. Time to hit pause. The third GEO’s budget was slashed, and its campaigns were switched off completely by the end of August.
Tajikistan slowed down too while the team reconsidered its bids. From July 15 to July 21, neither of the two main GEOs spent a cent on Paid Social Traffic.
That could have been it for Kyrgyzstan. But the team wanted to see whether lower bids could make the numbers work, so they gave it another go.
July 22: Let’s Try That Again
On July 22, Kyrgyzstan was back. The team also adjusted the Tajikistan campaigns, with three changes to the setup:
- Lower bids. They restarted the existing campaigns with lower bids and a $500 daily cap per GEO.
- More traffic sources. They added social supply partners with a $100 daily budget per GEO, giving more sources a chance to bring in traffic.
- Hello, iOS. Until then, the campaigns had only targeted Android. Adding iOS gave the team more users to reach with the same offer and funnel.
July wrapped up with $9,860 spent and 10,280 registrations at $0.96 each. That made it the priciest month of the four, largely thanks to the spending rush in the first week.
August: Lower Targets, More Sign-Ups
On August 7, the team duplicated the campaigns and gave them new CPA Goal targets: $0.70 per registration in Kyrgyzstan and $0.80 in Tajikistan.
Lower targets sound good, but would the campaigns still get enough traffic? They certainly kept spending: daily spend in August ranged from $280 to $2,110, giving the test its second busy stretch.
August wrapped up with $11,840 spent and 15,690 registrations. That’s 20% more spend than July for 53% more sign-ups, at $0.75 each. Not a bad trade.
The team gave the campaigns more room to spend, raising daily caps from $500 to $1K, then $1.5K. Tajikistan was bringing in more volume, so they took it a step further: $2K a day.
September: Small Budgets, Cheap Sign-Ups
September slowed things down. The campaigns ran daily on tight budgets of $20-$190, closing the month with $2,620 spent and 3,540 registrations.
At $0.74 each, these were the cheapest sign-ups in the case.
Cheap sign-ups? Yes. But the campaigns were also buying much less traffic. A bigger budget means reaching more users, and those extra registrations may cost more.
October: Off With the Caps
October started at September’s pace. Then, on October 16, the team removed the daily caps.
Things picked up quickly: from $80 on October 15 to $1,520 on October 19.
For the rest of the month, daily spend stayed around $270-$1,460. October finished with $13,530 spent and 16,990 registrations at $0.80 each.
And Kyrgyzstan, the GEO that got paused in July? It came out on top in October.
The Numbers, Month by Month
| Month (2026) | Spend | Registrations | Cost per registration |
|---|---|---|---|
| July | $9,860 | 10,280 | $0.96 |
| August | $11,840 | 15,690 | $0.75 |
| September | $2,620 | 3,540 | $0.74 |
| October | $13,530 | 16,990 | $0.80 |
| Total | $37,850 | 46,500 | $0.81 |
The test week from June 26 to June 30 added another $140 and 210 registrations on top.
| Market | July | August | September | October |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kyrgyzstan | $4,750 · 4,840 reg. | $3,370 · 4,840 reg. | $1,200 · 1,690 reg. | $7,450 · 9,830 reg. |
| Tajikistan | $5,110 · 5,440 reg. | $8,470 · 10,850 reg. | $1,420 · 1,850 reg. | $6,080 · 7,160 reg. |
October’s registrations cost $0.76 in Kyrgyzstan against a $0.70 target, and $0.85 in Tajikistan against $0.80. A little over? Yes, and that can happen: CPA Goal aims for your target, but doesn’t guarantee that price. If an extra five cents would eat up your margin, give yourself some room when setting the goal.
Of course, cheap registrations are only part of the story.
Deposits, revenue, and ROI would tell us how well they paid off, but the team is keeping those numbers private.
The Team Adds a New Offer
In October, the team added a second iGaming offer alongside the original. Same GEOs, same traffic – let’s see how this one converts.
By the end of October, they’d made their choice: keep only the second offer. It converted better.
So while you’re busy tweaking bids and testing traffic, give the offer some attention too. This team found a better fit without changing the GEOs or the traffic.
What You Can Borrow From This Setup
- Give CPA Goal enough to work with. Registrations supplied the data; deposits helped the team judge the results. In a small GEO, a more frequent event can keep things moving.
- Check deposits before celebrating sign-ups. Early July looked great for registrations. The cost per deposit still got Kyrgyzstan paused.
- A pause doesn’t have to be goodbye. Kyrgyzstan came back with new settings and topped the results three months later.
- Give the budget room to grow. The team raised caps in steps before removing them completely. No need to go from a small test to unlimited spend overnight.
- Put another offer in the mix. The second offer converted better with the same GEOs and traffic. Bids aren’t the only thing worth testing.
FAQ
It’s an ad format in the PropellerAds Self-Serve Platform that gives you direct access to users active on social feeds, sourced through our supply partners. Your landing page is all you need: no separate social platform accounts, no third-party integrations, and no extra creatives. Learn more on the Paid Social Traffic format page.
You can run Paid Social campaigns on CPA Goal, SmartCPC, or CPC. If you track conversions with an S2S postback, CPA Goal lets the algorithm buy the traffic most likely to convert at your target price. You still pay for traffic, not per conversion.
Pick the event that happens often enough for the algorithm to learn from. In this case, that was registration: thousands a month, against 17 deposits in the first week. Track the deeper event, like a first deposit, as a second goal and judge the campaign by it yourself.
Yes. Users, prices, and conversion rates differ from market to market, and one shared campaign averages them out, so you can’t tell which GEO is paying off. With a campaign per GEO, you can set a bid that fits each market and pause the one that doesn’t work without touching the others. The same logic applies to operating systems: keep Android and iOS in separate campaigns too.
Make the Test Worth the Spend
“This GEO works” or “this format doesn’t convert” tells you surprisingly little. Every result comes from a particular mix of traffic, offer, audience, and settings. Give the whole GEO credit or blame, and you might miss what actually made the difference.
Leave your next test with a clearer buying decision. What deserves more budget, what needs another attempt, and what have you seen enough of?
Join our Telegram Chat and swap testing notes with fellow buyers.
The figures above describe one advertiser’s campaigns over a specific period. They are not a forecast, a rate card or an offer, and no comparable result is guaranteed.
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