Betting and gaming organizations dealing with digital platforms are confronting a problem that is prevalent in all sectors, yet the risks are amplified due to the sizable fiscal considerations. Pursuant to Statista, it’s projected that the worldwide internet market will be worth over $92.9 billion by 2023. The evidence of this prediction is reflected in the invalid click rates; while the invalid click rate across all industries is 17%, it jumps to 28% for betting corporations.
Gaming corporations operating pay-per-click campaigns are particularly targeted, likely resulting in substantial financial losses due to unproductive expenditure. It is crucial for marketers in this industry to stay a step ahead of the fraudsters, employing practices such as enhanced visibility, precise analytics, and real-time resistance.
Rewards Worth the Risks?
Elevated Acquisition Expenses
Gaming firms face steep acquisition costs due to competitive bidding in a highly competitive market with limited targeting. A significant portion of their budget is allocated to secure the top advertising slots over their competitors, indicating large financial commitments.
Abuse of Bonuses
Attracting new customers often involves offering free bonuses, but these are prime targets for fraudsters who use automated bots to create fake accounts and pilfer bonuses. Complex networks of malefactors can exploit millions of IPs to commit such bonus frauds, often undetected by the gaming companies, and they won’t stop until they are halted.
Organic Traffic Cannibalized by Paid Media
Existing customers often utilize brand search campaigns as a portal to the company’s website repeatedly. This pattern suggests that these customers would have accessed your site even without the ad, leading to substantial inefficiency in advertising.
The Impact of Invalid Traffic
Invalid traffic results in inaccurate advertising outcomes and squandered budgets. In fact, over a single week, ApacAff recorded the following results for a gambling client:
- 38% of all its clicks were invalid traffic.
- This resulted in an approximate waste of £18,934.57 on invalid traffic (IVT).
- This constituted 45% of their total expenditure for the same period.
- Bots generating clicks on its ads accounted for 83% of invalid clicks.
- Competitor brand keywords accounted for 39% of IVT cost, signaling repeat clickers on that competitor brand search term.
Overall, when juxtaposing invalid traffic to the valid traffic over the course of a week, there were 6,563 total clicks resulting in 128 conversions with a conversion rate of 1.95%. ApacAff determined that 2,498 out of those 6,562 clicks were invalid. Eliminating and replacing invalid traffic with valid traffic would augment the conversion rate by 38.24%.
The principal outcome of this audit for the client was greatly improved visibility into the problem. The client might have known about the existence of invalid traffic within their results but lacked detailed knowledge on causes and IPs and hence were clueless on how to target the invalid traffic for its elimination.
Case Study: Google Ads Campaign with No-Deposit Bonus
A globally renowned online gaming company was running a Google Ads campaign with a no-deposit bonus promotion to enhance new acquisitions. In a single week using ApacAff, the client discovered that 23% of all traffic from the campaign was invalid. However, once protection and visibility were installed, the company managed to save a total of $115,000 in just 7 days using ApacAff.
Developing a Focused Strategy
By addressing invalid traffic, gaming companies could witness savings of around 10% compared to the 3% potential savings noticed across other sectors. Gaming companies are required to implement a strategy tailor-made for their industry’s demands rather than adopting a standard approach offered by many traditional partners. This is the sole solution to counteract large-scale bot attacks.
With a better understanding of the sources and reasons behind invalid traffic, gaming companies running PPC campaigns can extract higher returns on their ad spend with increased conversions and confidence in the data analytics used as they expand. By identifying the sources of fraud before it depletes the budget, businesses can circumvent reactive measures and lost revenue that fraudsters may have already pocketed.
Conclusion
We empower gambling companies to secure superior results for their PPC campaigns through a proactive, multifaceted strategy. Would you like to know more? Reach us HERE.
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