I was messing around with iGaming PPC campaigns recently and it got me thinking—how many of us are probably wasting money without even realizing it? Honestly, when I first started, I thought PPC was just about writing a catchy ad, picking a few keywords, and letting it run. Turns out, it’s way easier to burn through a budget than I expected.
For me, the biggest wake-up call came when I noticed I was getting clicks but not really seeing the conversions I hoped for. At first, I blamed the market being too competitive. Then I thought maybe my landing page wasn’t strong enough. But after comparing notes with a couple of folks running similar campaigns, I realized a lot of us were repeating the same little mistakes that added up.
One pain point I had was targeting way too broadly. I figured more impressions meant more chances to land players. The reality? Most of those clicks weren’t even from people really interested in the games. They were random clicks that drained the ad spend fast. Narrowing down the targeting to actual intent-based searches made a big difference, even though the volume looked smaller at first.
Another mistake I made was ignoring negative keywords. Sounds small, but this one hurt my wallet the most. I kept showing ads on irrelevant searches because I hadn’t excluded terms that didn’t fit. For example, if someone searched for a free play or demo game, they weren’t my audience at all, but my ads kept showing. Adding a handful of negative keywords cut out a ton of wasted spend.
I’ve also noticed that ad copy can trick you. Early on, I went with ads that sounded flashy just to grab attention. They did get clicks, but they didn’t match the actual offer. So people bounced right away. I learned it’s better to keep the ad more direct, even if it sounds less exciting. Matching ad copy to the landing page honestly made my budget stretch a lot further.
One thing I’m still figuring out is how often to tweak campaigns. At first, I was adjusting every day because I thought that’s what optimization meant. But that constant tinkering actually made it harder to see what was working. Now, I let a campaign breathe for at least a week before making changes, unless the numbers are completely tanking.
I’m not saying I’ve cracked the code—far from it—but just cutting out the obvious errors helped. I also found this post about common iGaming PPC ad mistakes that goes into some of the details I wish I’d read sooner. It kind of confirmed that I wasn’t the only one making rookie errors, which made me feel a little better.
What I’ve realized is that iGaming PPC isn’t so much about spending more to get results, but more about plugging the leaks in your budget. Once I stopped wasting money on the wrong clicks, the numbers started making more sense. Even if I wasn’t scaling huge, at least I wasn’t throwing cash down the drain.
If you’re just starting out, I’d say the top three things to watch are:
Don’t target too wide, it’s tempting but costly.
Always use negative keywords; even a small list helps.
Make sure your ads actually line up with what’s on the landing page.
I’d be curious to hear what other folks here have run into. Have you found any small changes that made a big impact? Or is it just trial and error for everyone? For me, it’s been mostly trial and error, but at least now the errors aren’t as expensive.
