65K Conversions for Chinese iGaming Advertiser [Case Study]
Today, we are bringing another stellar success story, and this time, it’s about our iGaming partner from China. He achieved 65K conversions in just one month, but the main thing is that he also managed to reach a 20% lower conversion price, got the desired ROI, and was completely satisfied with the results.
Want to know how he achieved such results? With the help of smart optimization, testing, and his account manager’s guidance, of course. Continue reading to find out the juiciest details!
Basic case study details:
- Campaign period: July – August 2024
- Ad formats: Interstitial, In-Page Push, Push, Onclick
- GEO: Philippines
- Pricing models: CPC for Interstitial, Smart CPM for Onclick, CPA Goal for Push and IPP
- Budget: first tests – about 100 USD daily; further – up to 8K daily
- Tracking: first he didn’t use any and then opted for Adjust tracker
Humble beginnings and mistakes fixed
And now the story.
Our Chinese advertiser used to work with Facebook before. When he switched to PropellerAds, he started with a modest budget, because he didn’t know our platform and wanted to see if he could benefit from our traffic.
We show you the initial stats so that you can compare them with the further budget:
| Date | Impressions | Conversions | Profit | CPM |
| 2024-06-28 | 6 046 | 93 | $1.21 | 0.20 |
| 2024-06-29 | 41 506 | 740 | $8.30 | 0.20 |
| 2024-07-01 | 196 811 | 2 945 | $29.52 | 0.15 |
| 2024-07-02 | 1 | 29 | 0.00 | 0.15 |
| 2024-07-03 | 1 | 7 | $0.00 | 0.15 |
| 2024-07-04 | 55 320 | 0 | $21.40 | 0.387 |
| 2024-07-05 | 15 801 | 0 | $9.28 | 0.587 |
| 2024-07-10 | 49 180 | 0 | $19.67 | 0.40 |
| 2024-07-11 | 664 576 | 0 | $300.28 | 0.452 |
| 2024-07-12 | 272 883 | 0 | $142.88 | 0.524 |
| 2024-07-13 | 7 614 | 0 | $6.08 | 0.799 |
| 2024-07-14 | 2 863 | 0 | $3.18 | 1.111 |
But no spoilers, first things first!
Mistake 1: Wrong creatives
Our advertiser started with an Interstitial format on the CPM model, but he chose a creative that didn’t reveal the essence and main benefits of his offer. And here is what Natalie Gudimova, his account manager, said about this:
“You need to pick creatives related to your campaign. For iGaming offers, it is very important to have engaging creatives with information about deposit bonuses to attract players.
You also need to regularly add new creatives to avoid the so-called banner blindness, when visitors get used to the same banners and stop noticing them.”
Mistake 2: Wrong pricing model for the chosen ad format
As Natalie adds, “Interstitial can be called a visual banner format – it has a huge space for pictures, it’s the strongest side of it. Interstitial aims at catching users’ attention efficiently and usually brings numerous impressions and not all of them will end up with a conversion. So it’s better to run it cost-effectively on CPC to pay only for clicks.”
After this attempt, our advertiser continued with an In-Page Push campaign, he added only two creatives and they were identical.
Later, he switched to Onclick on the Smart CPM model, which turned out to be a great idea for testing and seeing objective results with his $500 test budget.
Mistake 3: No postback
Also, our advertiser didn’t use any postback features at the beginning, which limited his campaign analysis and restricted his opportunity to use our platform at its fullest. Namely – with no postback, it’s impossible to use some of our auto-optimization features and most winning pricing models.
So, shortly, he finally set up the Adjust tracker (the most popular tracker among Chinese advertisers) and had to struggle with it for a while, since neither he nor our account managers team had enough experience with it at that moment. Natalie says:
“It was quite a challenge at the beginning, but we did it! Now we know how to make it work and have an actual guide created by the affiliate marketing community on how to set up Adjust with us. That’s a result of this struggle, and you are welcome to check it here.”
Luckily, all of these mistakes were corrected with the help of Natalie Gudimova, and the results of our advertisers started to change for the better. And better.
Further campaign management or… Time to grow!
After seeing the first results, our advertiser decided to increase the volumes to get even more deposits and boost his ROI. The next week, he adjusted his daily budget to $1000 daily and was running a Smart CPM Onclick campaign with an average CPM of 0.55:
| Day | Impressions | CPM |
| Totals (6) | 11 662 109 | 0.536 |
| 2024-07-15 | 1 371 737 | 0.525 |
| 2024-07-16 | 2 944 126 | 0.51 |
| 2024-07-17 | 1 357 449 | 0.572 |
| 2024-07-18 | 2 706 017 | 0.554 |
| 2024-07-21 | 1 036 175 | 0.631 |
| 2024-07-22 | 2 246 605 | 0.49 |
At this point, our advertiser finally set up a postback to decrease his manual optimization efforts, and stabilize the FTD (first-time deposit) cost.
Creatives with the highest CTR
Now, the creatives! First, let’s take a look at the results. Here is how three top creatives performed:
| Impressions | Clicks | Conversions | CTR |
| 15 173 100 | 510 186 | 688 | 3.362 |
| 2 098 680 | 57 765 | 91 | 2.752 |
| 6 510 871 | 152 770 | 357 | 2.346 |
And let’s see what made them stand out. We use samelike creatives as examples to show the main principles and smart decisions that worked for our advertiser.
- If your offer comes with bonuses, highlight this in your creatives
Translation: “50% Bonus for FTD, Don’t miss your chance to win”.
This creative is in the Filipino language to ensure that 100% of the PH audience will get it.
Juicy bonuses are always attractive and can motivate users to act immediately, so offer some perks to your clients and mention them in your iGaming creatives – it works!
Namely, a similar creative with highlighted bonuses brought the highest CTR of 3.36.
- Localization + specifics
Translation: “Your chance to win 10 000 ₱, Try your luck here”.
So, the right language and specific bonus mentioned in the Filipino peso. Super-local!
And the emojis might have also added some clickability, so it makes sense to experiment with them if you haven’t tried yet.
A little effort and a CTR of 2.75 reached easily.
- Classics
Translation: “Feeling lucky? See how large a bonus could be!”
Wheel of fortune is classics, which can add interaction and gamification to your ads. And this is a sure way to attract attention!
The similar creative brought our advertiser a CTR of 2.34.
As for the landing pages, our advertiser together with his account manager tested five versions to see which one will work the best. Test various versions of landing pages, as well.
Optimization advice that worked
In conclusion, Natalie Gudimova shared the optimization strategies that worked for this campaign:
- Creating white and black lists helped our advertiser reduce the deposit costs significantly.
- Testing different prelanders and landing pages is a must – you never know which will work better until you try.
- Also our advertiser adjusted his targeting settings. At the beginning of his journey, the targeting settings were too broad, so he narrowed them by browsers and mobile carriers to reach better relevance.
- He also tested different bonus approaches, like various types of fortune wheels and the right messages about bonuses on his creatives.
- Postback along with the added Target CPA on Smart CPM campaigns ensured auto-optimization, which led to impressive results – conversion price decreased by 20%!
- Being inspired by great numbers and ROI, our advertiser decided to scale and launch more campaigns on different pricing models, like CPA Goal for Push and In-Page Push.
- He tried Survey Exit traffic for one more separate campaign (Finance giveaway offer) and this giveaway brought the best results in terms of registration/deposit CR.
- So, early optimization, especially black/white listing and narrowed targeting, as well as well-tested and relevant creatives led our advertiser to improved performance.
- What about launching your campaign with PropellerAds and reaching the same and even cooler heights?
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