How To Choose The Best Gambling Traffic in 2024?

Are you a casino or sportsbook operator looking for a viable and trustworthy way to get the best gambling traffic for your brand? Then this article is for you!

So, you have already completed the first step to achieving success in your sportsbook/casino project by creating a website. Now, how can you ensure your business gets the best gambling traffic?

In this article, we will walk you through the main objectives when choosing the best gambling traffic for you, as well as present viable options to help you achieve your goal in no time.

First things first, we need to address the following question:

What to pay attention to when choosing gambling traffic?

Choosing a way to create and maintain profitable gambling traffic can be a real challenge that would require thorough research and a deep insight into the gambling and marketing industries to solve. Luckily for you, we have simplified your task by collecting the key points to focus on.

There are 7 key factors to pay attention to when choosing gambling traffic:

• Source of the gambling traffic
• Quality of the gambling traffic
• GEO of the gambling traffic
• Volume of the gambling traffic
• Pricing
• Listing Fees
• iGaming Affiliate Networks 

The Source of the gambling traffic

When choosing a traffic provider to partner up with, be it a relevant affiliate website with an interested audience, a high-end casino comparison website, a social media promoter, or an email enthusiast that spreads newsletters, it is crucial to thoroughly analyze the pros and cons of each method in order to make the best partnership choice for your casino brand.

Affiliates are typically run by experienced and insightful individuals, who have an existing target audience to whom they can promote your brand, and the promotion will be relevant, hence, creating organic gambling traffic to your website. Affiliate marketing has proven to be quite successful over the past little while in the gambling industry, as it has been able to deliver unmatched levels of efficiency and performance for iGaming operators all around the world.

Affiliate marketing offers operators many benefits, such as an easy and simple way to get started and monthly payments proportional to the quality of the traffic they received. However, as an operator, you must keep in mind that many affiliate websites require listing fees, which we will break down in more detail further in the article.

However, affiliate marketing is not perfect and has a few common challenges operators will have to deal with to take advantage of its excellent benefits. One of these challenges arises when operators wish to greatly expand their partner networks and takes the form of managing hundreds or sometimes thousands of affiliate partners at once. Fortunately, gambling companies can make use of specialized affiliate management solutions that will help them effortlessly manage their partner networks. Check out our guide on iGaming affiliate management to learn more about the topic.

Casino-comparing websites are a type of affiliate websites that have proved to be an effective way of stimulating gambling traffic of potential customers that are actually interested in the industry and desire to engage with operators. Nevertheless, to join these websites, as an operator, you will usually have to pay some amount of money, which rests on you to decide whether it is worth it or not.

Social media promotions are also an option. This is when individuals, for a sum of money, promote your business on their social media accounts. However, if the said promoter’s audience is not your target audience, the promotions risk being irrelevant, and barely (if any) real, potential customers will end up visiting and staying on your website.

Some iGaming affiliates make use of social media platforms as well, which helps them increase their gambling traffic volumes while maintaining a high standard of quality. Social media affiliate marketing can be utilized for a wide variety of gambling companies, such as casinos and sports wagering operators, and can enable iGaming firms to make use of the expansive world of social media while also taking advantage of the benefits of affiliate marketing.

Newsletters are another method of creating gambling traffic, but perhaps an outdated one. Some traffic providers use email to spread newsletters about this and that casino to their partners. However, emails tend to be less effective and memorable than, let’s say, a good comparative article on a well-known website. Newsletters also present a more substantial barrier to entry to new readers, as interested gamblers will need to go through a signup process, which can sometimes involve age and identity verification depending on the user’s location. This results in lower conversion rates for these newsletters, which makes them a subpar option for reaching vast audiences. However, they are an excellent option in markets where untargeted gambling marketing is prohibited and can help operators enhance the engagement rates of their existing player bases.

The Quality of the Gambling Traffic

Getting high-quality gambling traffic is crucial to the success of an operator in the crowded iGaming space. One of the largest factors driving the quality of gambling traffic is its relevance.

As mentioned in our last point of discussion, only traffic with a high degree of relevance can help an operator grow, as directing people who have no interest in the company’s offerings can even hamper its growth. Because of this, it is paramount to assess the quality of traffic offered by prospecting partners before advertising with them and to work with only the best iGaming affiliates.

High-quality iGaming traffic can be identified by its effect on an operator’s website, which will usually involve an increase in new active users, along with an increase in first-time deposits. Lower-quality iGaming traffic, on the other hand, will usually not only have no positive effect on an operator’s user base but is also likely to cause a spike in the website’s bounce rate, potentially harming its rankings on various search engines.

Additionally, as the gambling industry keeps expanding at pace, it is also important to work with reputable partners to avoid having to deal with iGaming affiliate fraud, which can have quite a few negative effects for affected operators.

The GEO of the gambling traffic

The GEO is yet another crucial point iGaming operators have to focus on when looking for a traffic provider. Since players from different regions have different values for operators, for cultural and socioeconomic reasons (i.e.: players from 1^st world countries would be wealthier than those from 2^nd and 3^rd world countries), the choice of gambling traffic provider should be examined correspondingly.

Additionally, the GEO of the gambling traffic is vitally important for operators that target players in a specific region or country and only offer their gambling services in those areas. These operators often employ various localization techniques, such as by offering local payment solutions and local languages to their players, which will often not be well suited to international audiences.

To adequately assess the required GEO of your traffic, it is important to answer a few questions. What markets do you want to enter? What countries and language groups do you want to target for your website? The answers to these questions will of course vary depending on the localization settings, available payment methods, licensing status, and many other relevant variables of your gambling website, and it is important to conduct an appropriate assessment before searching for a traffic provider for your business. However, after figuring this out, the premise is simple; if your goal is to have EU players directed to your casino, you have to choose a traffic provider that targets players within Europe.

Choosing the right GEOs to target around the world is particularly important for startup operators. The reason for this is that newer firms that have fewer resources available to them will have a harder time complying with the regulatory requirements of some strictly regulated markets like the United Kingdom or the Netherlands. Consequently, newer companies may want to start their journeys in the industry by driving gambling traffic from more forgiving jurisdictions around the globe.

The Volume of the gambling traffic

Due to the nature of the gambling industry, the balance between quality and quantity in gambling traffic should be aired on the former’s side. However, it is also important to assess what volumes of traffic a prospecting advertising partner can deliver. This is especially vital for upstart companies that are growing rapidly and firms that are facing fierce competition in the markets they operate in.

One of the main reasons why it is important to buy gambling traffic with adequate volumes is that each marketing method will involve a certain amount of overhead costs or effort, which in the case of affiliate marketing mainly consists of managing the operator’s relationships with its affiliate partners. Buying gambling traffic that features adequate volumes in addition to high quality will ensure that operators can get the most value for their upfront efforts and costs.

Moreover, gambling operators that deliver their services in tightly regulated jurisdictions with high-quality responsible gambling tools should value high volumes as well, as they are more likely to have higher churn rates than other gambling firms.

The Pricing

Pricing is a pretty self-explanatory thing to look for. After all, you want to get the most value for your money to boost your business’s growth. However, depending on where you choose to buy gambling traffic, assessing the pricing of different offers could become a challenging prospect.

If you choose to partner up with an affiliate website, learn about their payment plan, or if you choose traffic providers, learn about their payment particularities. The main difference between affiliate websites and regular traffic providers is that the latter requires upfront payment and isn’t responsible for your monetization risks, meaning that if you pay a large sum of money up front to a traffic provider but fail to appropriately target the most optimal audience for you business, your marketing campaign could yield subpar results for what it cost.

Affiliate marketing companies, on the other hand, usually earn their revenue on a commission basis; the operator pays the affiliate a share of earned revenue generated by the players of that specific affiliate. This allows affiliate marketing to pose a vastly lower risk for gambling operators than traditional forms of marketing, although it is not perfect and does have a few issues to be wary of, such as iGaming affiliate fraud. Additionally, some affiliates also require fixed fees (listing fees) in order to add an operator to their comparison or review websites.

Affiliate Listing Fees

If you end up choosing an affiliate website over other gambling traffic providers, you should pay attention to their listing fees, as there are some affiliates that require listing fees to start adding the operator to their website and start promoting them. Percentage commissions are the most common ones among casino affiliates. But when does paying a listing fee make sense? What is an appropriate amount? The percentage usually varies from 5 to 30%, which may differ from affiliate to affiliate.

There are a few reasons why some affiliates charge initial listing fees for their websites, with one of the main ones being to provide their readers with higher-quality content, namely unbiased reviews and comparisons of a wide variety of online gambling businesses. Another reason is to maintain a high standard of quality for the operators these iGaming affiliates feature on their sites, as many of the industry’s highest-regarded affiliates have spent a lot of resources and time on building their brands to be able to deliver top-notch gambling traffic.

You, the operator decides, whether it is worth paying listing fees or not. Your decision should be based on factors such as the quality and popularity of the affiliate website, the revenue gained from being listed on the affiliate’s website, and your own convenience.

The industry experts at affpapa.com recommend analyzing the affiliate website on factors such as popularity, documented results, dedicated audience particularities, the number of partners and operators they have already worked with, etc, before deciding to spend a big number on joining them.

iGaming Affiliate Networks

As an operator, you can join networks to receive traffic from there. A Network is a multi-brand affiliate website where different operators offer their campaigns to registered affiliates. The latter are free to choose which brand to promote. So, in a way, a Network is a website with multiple registered affiliates, with whom operators can start cooperation with.

Experts at affpapa.com recommend getting closely acquainted with a Network before joining it. Pay attention to the number of already registered affiliates and operators in the Network you want to join. Analyze your prospects in said Network by answering a set of questions, like:

• What does this Network have to offer me and what do I, as an operator, have to offer to this Network?
• Am I interested in the registered Affiliates of this Network?
• Will I be a competitive operator in this Network?

Last but not least, make sure the network has sufficient tools and assistance to help you optimize the effectiveness of your campaign. Working together with a trustworthy iGaming affiliate network will help reach a wider audience and attract high-quality users.

One particularity, however, that sets affpapa.com apart from betting Networks, is the fact that we are a digital place where operators meet affiliates and are free to contact each other to further communicate and collaborate outside of affpapa.com. That is, operators cannot make payments through affpapa.com.

Future Trends 

For those eager to get the most of their traffic acquisition efforts must keep up with the constant evolution of the gambling industry, the application of AI and machine learning is one of the main upcoming trends influencing the market.

The way traffic is acquired and handled is being completely transformed by AI and machine learning technology. These tools enable operators to more precisely target marketing campaigns by analyzing enormous volumes of data to find patterns and trends. Algorithms driven by AI, for instance, can assist in identifying high-value players and customizing marketing strategies to appeal to them particularly.

So, if you want to be one step ahead, consider investing in AI and machine learning technology and utilize those to optimize your traffic acquisition methods.

For your proper convenience, the Affpapa team has gathered a list of some of our Affiliates and Traffic providers, who are open to cooperation:

You can learn more about the differences between traffic providers with the pros and cons of each, in our previous article ‘Where to get casino traffic from?’ or by taking a look at our Best iGaming Affiliates list.

Join affpapa.com to access the full list of registered affiliates and traffic providers for a chance to start cooperation with them. We will be more than happy to have you here and help you make the best choices for your casino business!

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