[Case Study] How Social Traffic Type + iGaming Generated 5996 Conversions

This post is also available in: ES

How did a media buying team achieve 5996 conversions for their iGaming offer using our new Social Traffic Type feature? We were curious to know, too. That’s why we talked to the guys to learn all their magic media buying tricks and discuss their experiences with social traffic targeting.

Bear in mind that iGaming is a challenging vertical to approach due to high competition, especially in South Africa and Nigeria, where our case study takes place.

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The Campaign: Mixing Up Traffic Sources

The team works with a licensed iGaming brand, directly through the brand’s official affiliate program.

Since the guys have launched a whopping number of ad campaigns – 300 (!), we decided to structure all the essential information about their offer and campaigns. Here you go:

• How the media buyers are paid: They operate on a RevShare basis, and a conversion is a registered lead. Therefore, they take all the risks and handle the optimization on their side. All the traffic optimization is based on leads.
• Landing page & flow: Users are taken directly to the official website, the registration page to be exact.
• Campaign period: June – July 2024.
• Traffic Sources: The team decided to mix up the sources by using traffic from PropellerAds, Facebook, and Google ads. According to the guys, PropellerAds offers great quality, which is why the volume they get from Propeller is even higher compared to other traffic sources.
• Ad Formats (Propeller): Onclick / Popunder and In-Page Push. iGaming advertisers typically choose these formats due to the highest performance of Popunder and In-Page Push. (Although other iGaming advertisers report that push notifications also perform well).
• Target audience & GEO: Users from South Africa and Nigeria interested in iGaming. This advertiser also used interest targeting – sports.
• Tracking: own, in-house tracker.

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How does iGaming differ in South Africa and Nigeria?

One of the peculiarities of iGaming campaigns in African countries is the fact that the average deposit is comparatively low. Smaller deposits are typical for Tier 3 countries, but the frequency of deposits is much higher.

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iGaming Creatives Used

What angles did they use?

We all know how hard it is to come up with something new when it involves iGaming, but the guys tested some subtle twists on the typical creatives.

1. Adding a date of the game

It doesn’t seem like much, but it’s a strong call to action. In a way, it helps create urgency because the user knows when the deadline is. And yes, it performs well.

Compare:

Please note that these are not the actual creatives used in the case study. The team didn’t want to share their visuals, so we created something very similar for demonstration purposes.

2. Who’s playing?

Creatives are not a guessing game. Seriously, instead of an abstract call to register, you can directly tell which teams are playing.

Yes, we would love to reach a broader audience by using more generic creatives. However, generic prompts tend to miss the mark and fail to resonate with an audience.

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Setup and Optimization

With all the details out of the way, let’s see what this media buying team did regarding campaign settings and conversion optimization.

Remember when we said there were over 300 campaigns? Clearly, the team did a great job testing various targeting options: creating new campaigns and pausing the ones that didn’t live up to expectations.

Here are some of the experiments conducted by the team:

I. Testing Regular Popunder Traffic VS. Social Traffic Type

The team decided to compare our good old Popunder traffic to the Social traffic type and see if it helps reduce conversion costs.

In fact, the Social traffic type indeed lowered the conversion costs. 

Stats for June 1 – July 1, 2024

Campaign	Impressions	Conversions	CR	CPL
Social Traffic only	61 639	58	0,09%	8.01
Regular Popunder traffic	96 707 232	5 938	0,01%	11.6

As you can see, Social traffic type has much lower traffic volume and tends to be more expensive, but the results are impressive right from the start. It turns out to be more cost-effective compared to regular traffic.

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II. Wider targeting

Another decision the team made was to target a broader audience rather than trying to narrow it down.

This strategy allowed for much higher conversion rates and, therefore, a higher ROI, even though the deposit amounts were lower.

In addition to a broader reach, there was also a significant reduction in daily budgets. A daily budget ranged from $500 to $1000. This budget range was sufficient to maintain a steady flow of conversions.

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III. Optimization

Despite the fact that social traffic targeting had shown stellar results from day one – the team decided to try to improve those results. After all, no one can say no to wanting more. Can they?

They went through the usual optimization routine that they have been using for iGaming campaigns for years: whitelists, blacklists, playing with creatives.

However, these actions did not prove to be effective, and the conversions remained at the same level. How come?

As our optimization expert says, it could be because social traffic is already cherry-picked and consists of very active and engaged users. In other words, targeting social traffic doesn’t usually require any additional optimization.

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The Bottom Line

Here are perhaps the most important takeaways from this case study:

• Don’t shy away from Tier 3 GEOs. Yes, the deposits are lower, but the frequency makes up for it.
• The number of leads and deposits really shows the effectiveness of your ad campaign (especially if you’re getting paid on RevShare). The number of leads is the parameter that allows you to analyze the quality of traffic and zones.
• Popunder and In-Page Push tend to be the most effective formats for iGaming campaigns.
• For your creatives, test the subtle tweaks we mentioned: adding exact dates, teams playing, and showing money.
• Finally, test the social traffic type and don’t narrow your audience too much.