Imagine you're working for a major betting and gambling client aiming to promote their games through paid social.
The goal is a positive ROI, but you already hit a brick wall and realized that standard awareness campaigns do not cut it.
Betting companies focus on Facebook ads for betting, but they soon clutter their workflow. Moreover, they often end up using generic campaigns and standard Facebook dynamic ads that bring little to no engagement.
Typically, match promotions change on an hourly basis. Also, numerous legal and licensing issues can slow you down.
You can overcome these problems in one fell swoop with workflow automation. It effectively allows you to create multiple campaigns with relevant offers in seconds. The best part is that without hiring more staff you will be able to:
- Improve retention
- Maximize acquisition
- Increase user activation
Let the games begin.
Most betting ads on Facebook fail and here’s why
There are two main challenges of Facebook gambling ads:
- Complying with all licenses and laws of Facebook or the countries you advertise in
- The dynamic nature of the betting industry forces you to change your campaigns several times per day, which results in generic and outdated ads
When it comes to legal issues, it must be said that Facebook wouldn’t approve online gambling ads until recently.
Thankfully, Facebook’s stance on advertising online gambling services is more flexible nowadays. Now, gambling ads on Facebook are allowed in countries where online gambling is legal.
The new guidelines also enable gambling companies, from both the online and brick and mortar worlds, to place ads on Facebook and Instagram; providing they:
- Comply with the local laws of the country where the campaign is being run
- Get Facebook’s approval for the ads
The pressure mounts because betting offers change frequently; several times a day. Doing paid social manually (making each creative and running ads hourly), means you can’t present relevant ads at the best time. Facebook doesn’t have the time to finish the learning phase and optimize your campaigns for better performance.
That’s why 2022 marks a turning point for betting and casino advertisement on paid social. Once you integrate your real-time data into your campaigns and start delivering hundreds of offers each day, you will finally unlock paid social for betting and gambling.
Note:
Before we thoroughly dive into the online betting and casino world and can help you in that venture, please check your required preconditions: What are the requirements for running online betting ads with Hunch?
First of all, you need to have a Facebook-approved license to be able to launch campaigns. Also, you have to have an open feed so we can personalize your ads.
As a Meta Business Partner, we follow Meta’s policies. Without the license to advertise online betting or gambling ads, you’re unfortunately not able to advertise through Hunch.
Facebook ads for betting and gambling via workflow automation
Millions of ads are launched on Facebook every month. Well-structured campaign workflow automation gives you a chance to stand out.
Utilizing 1st and 3rd party data you can make engaging, and personalized creatives that resonate with your audience.
That means that you will be able to advertise thousands of different matches and games each day.
Dynamic Creative for betting ads
The betting campaign workflow automation system is focused on automating promotions for betting matches in real-time. There are multiple benefits to this solution:
- It increases the relevance of your betting Facebook ads by showing relevant, personalized offers instead of generic ones
- Workflow automation saves you time throughout the whole process, from building creatives to deploying campaigns every day
- It allows you to create 1000+ different ads for 1000+ different matches
Besides this, there are also two main ways of using dynamic creative for betting paid social:
- Pre-match ads – promoting matches on the day when the game is played
- Live ads – promoting ongoing-live matches
Dynamic Creative for casino ads
It can be quite a struggle to spread awareness and gain attention on Facebook, of course, if you have a license for your casino advertisements.
Users are bombed with massive amounts of ads daily, so how to stand out using casino advertisements
Easily - with the power of enhanced data-driven ads - dynamic creative.
Dynamic creative for casino ads is based on automating promotions for individual casino games, such as poker or roulette.
Games can be divided into different categories (for mobile/desktop, new/popular, etc.), and based on that, you can create multiple ad types such as images, videos, stories or carousels.
Solution: Dynamic ads for casinos – transform the standard DPA feed into casino games feed.
There are a lot of casino players on Facebook and Instagram, so you can expect a lot of recorded Facebook pixel events. Facebook then unlocks a lot of data, and it finishes the learning phase quickly.
Here are two key elements for setting up your workflow automation, you can start deploying thousands of offers each day:
- Data feeds – feeds represent the data source, which will be used for automating the process of creative production and media buying; this is where you enter all the necessary data you want to include in your ads (i.e. information about matches and games)
- Facebook pixel – used for tracking the users’ behavior
So, when it comes to casino advertisements, you need to think about the bigger picture.
How to set up Feeds and Pixels for betting and gambling ads
When it comes to the feed data, here are some examples you can include in it:
- Logo of a sports team (for betting matches)
- Time of the match/promotion
- Name of the game/match
- Unbeatable offers that you’re gonna use
- Starting and ending time of your campaign
- The audience of your campaign
Facebook Pixel Events for betting and gambling ads
To create an effective marketing performance channel for betting and gambling, you need to adjust the tracking that Facebook uses in its algorithm. So, make sure to set up all the pixel details listed below:
- Page View – triggered on each page
- Complete Registration – triggered when the user is registered or activated
- View Content – triggered when a casino game is opened (with game id parameter)
- Add To Cart – triggered when the user is adding a deposit to his account (with amount parameter)
- Purchase – triggered when a user makes a transaction (ticket, chip buying, etc – with amount parameter)
Static assets such as logos, images and other accumulated information are incorporated into your feed. Hunch can then automate your workflow, create dynamic product templates and make 1000+ contextual and engaging ads.
In a nutshell, you can automate the delivery of campaigns each day, for multiple markets, by using just one performance marketing specialist.
Mozzart Bet, a leading betting company in South-Eastern Europe, recently partnered with Hunch to automate their campaign workflow for promoting different betting offers at the right time. Spending less time on operational work and investing more effort into the strategy itself helped Mozzart Bet improve their ROI and get better results with fewer resources.
Europebet, the biggest betting company in Georgia and a leading organization in bookmaking and online gambling, also partnered with Hunch in order to diversify advertising channels for running personalized, creative ads on Facebook without manual efforts. Their advertising channels were limited to static banners, key messaging, and some promotional offers.
By connecting their feed to Hunch, they were able to leverage the Hunch Creative Studio to run ads on Facebook without needing to manually update details.
This helped Europebet create engaging ads and save time thanks to automation and feed management.
Before we go any further, it’s vital to define your audience segments. Careful audience segmentation ensures that your creatives are shown to the right people, which, in turn, unlocks the best possible ROI.
Audience segments and lists for gambling ads on Facebook
In the betting and gambling industry, there are two main types of audiences:
- Acquisition Audience – people who are not yet registered on the site (i.e. LALs, Interest Based, Broad audiences)
- Retention Audience – people who are already registered on your client's platform (such as Customer List Audiences)
When it comes to retention, you can go even further and define subcategories:
- Registered Users
- Activated Users
- Users who paid deposits
In essence, when you take a look at it, workflow automation is nothing more than ensuring you promote all of your matches to your entire audience at the right time, at scale.
Is there anything more powerful than that?
Okay, it is safe to say we have mastered the essentials of workflow automation and Facebook ads for betting. Now we can dig into the best performing strategies for betting and casino companies.
Strategy promotion types for betting and casino ads
There are two main types of promotions within the betting and casino industries:
- Always On Promotions – promotions that can be active throughout the entire year
- Special Campaign Promotions – promotions that come from other marketing departments; they can be implemented into paid social as well
By using workflow automation, you will be able to keep up with the constant promotion and match changes and manage to publish campaigns at just the right time.
That’s why, when you partner up with Hunch, you can create dynamic ads for both types of promotions. What’s more, you can combine both promotion types into one (i.e. you can use the current special promotion and combine it with the relevant matches).
Transform Paid Social for gambling into a performance marketing channel
Facebook ads for betting and gambling are a very sensitive subject. You need to change your promotions and offers constantly, and that can strain your in-house staff. Local laws and Facebook policies make things even more difficult.
That’s why betting, gambling and casino brands need to shift their marketing activities toward hyper-personalized and contextual offerings. It’s the next big thing in the gambling industry.
The idea is to convert paid social for betting into a performance marketing channel. If this seems just the ticket for you, reach out to our customer success managers and schedule a free strategy call.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. How to advertise gambling on Facebook?
Facebook’s stance on advertising online gambling services is more flexible nowadays. Now, gambling ads on Facebook are allowed in countries where online gambling is legal.
- Comply with the local laws of the country where the campaign is being run;
- Get Facebook’s approval for the ads
