The Hidden Cost of Blocked Traffic in iGaming
Every marketing campaign has a goal: to get as many visitors as possible to become registered players and deposit money into their accounts. Whether the traffic originates from organic searches, advertisements, social media, or other affiliates, there is a cost associated with each individual visitor.
For many iGaming businesses, there is a percentage of those visitors that get lost in the transfer from visitor to registered player. This most common issue is referred to as “blocked traffic” and is one of the most prevalent costs of revenue that the industry ignores.
While many see this as a problem that is to be endured, the majority of that traffic can be avoided. Companies that understand where their traffic is getting lost can better improve their profitability.
What Is the True Cost of Blocked Traffic?
Traffic in the gaming and gambling industry is typically measured with the following indicators:
Click-through rate
Registrations
First-time deposits
Earnings per click
Revenue generated
However, no reports explain what happens to the visitors that do not make it to the registration portion of the website.
Blocked traffic means that the visitors had the potential to place a wager for the company but were instead blocked by some means.
While the industry defines this as lost revenue, it is truly hidden revenue that remains unnoticed.
Every Lost Click Has a Cost
As anyone who manages gaming or gambling websites will tell you, the cost of acquiring traffic is becoming ever more expensive. Publishers invest in optimizing websites for search engines, creating content, placing advertisements, linking to other websites, sending emails, and creating social media campaigns to expose their products and services to as many potential players as possible.
Yet, if the traffic that is acquired is blocked before they can register, it is essentially a wasted effort in terms of spending and money.
Reducing blocked traffic can increase the value of the traffic that is already spent on marketing programs.
Where Revenue Leakage Occurs
There are several instances in which traffic can get lost.
Geographic Restrictions
Many online gaming and gambling companies only allow people from licensed countries to join.
Therefore, players from other countries are unable to join or register for various reasons.
Compliance Requirements
Companies must adhere to a variety of regulatory requirements. Some of these include age, identity, and jurisdiction checks before users can continue to the registration portion of the website.
Technical Problems
Some blocked traffic is not related to regulations. It could be the result of a variety of technical problems. For example, if players are redirected to a page that does not exist, they will never be able to register. Similarly, links may expire before players can register. These could all be prevented if the website carried out regular technical reviews.
Why Traditional Analytics Tools Miss the Traffic Blockage Issue
Most analytics tools will provide a variety of statistics on the success of the website. For example, they can measure the number of sessions, clicks, conversions, and bounced users.
However, they will not indicate why users did not end up converting to registered customers.
To fully manage blocked traffic, publishers would have to use additional analytics software to monitor this issue.
Identifying Traffic Blocked Reports
Aside from basic conversion rates, there are a variety of reports that can show publishers where traffic may be getting blocked. For example, by measuring the number of clicks and registrations, geographic placements of registered users, and the number of visitors from specific devices, publishers can avoid blocked traffic and increase the number of registered customers.
The Impact of Blocked Traffic on Publishers
Currently, publishers use the affiliate management software to determine the success of their traffic channels.
The inability to view blocked traffic means that they will appear less profitable than they may be.
This could lead to them pausing channels that are successful, removing content from those channels, decreasing their advertising budgets for specific channels, and using fewer channels altogether in their advertising efforts.
The Impact of Blocked Traffic on Operators
For the operators themselves, they may think that specific channels or campaigns are underperforming. They may also think that their current affiliates are providing them with poor quality players or traffic.
Instead, their traffic could be high quality but getting blocked by various means. By understanding where players are getting lost, they can better optimize their traffic acquisition programs.
Recovering the Lost Traffic
While there are some instances when traffic is blocked that cannot be avoided, there are others in which using better technology could lead to the redirection of those users to licensed companies.
Intelligent Traffic Routing Software can evaluate the users that visit a publisher’s website before sending them to an operator. The software can use information like the visitor’s country, device, browser, language, and availability of the various operators to send the visitor to the most appropriate company.
Alternatively, instead of showing an error message, the publisher’s website can show other licensed operators, offers to those visitors, content to inform them of the terms and conditions, waitlists for these companies, or alternative products.
Improve Geographic Targeting
A variety of the users who are blocked by these companies originate from the areas that were not targeted by those publishers.
By reviewing traffic according to the country of origin, publishers can exclude certain countries, and show localized landing pages and targets to specific operators in those areas.
Strengthen the Technical Elements of Gaming Publishers’ Websites
Just as online businesses have established quality control programs for their products, the publishers of the best online gaming and gambling companies can implement the same kinds of programs for their websites. For example, engineers can review the various links, redirects, landing pages, and other aspects of the publishers’ websites to identify any potential issues that may result in blocked traffic.
Use Data to Make Better Decisions
By monitoring all the elements of the traffic acquisition channels of publishers, it is possible to track a variety of metrics related to those publishers’ websites.
Examples of the metrics that can be tracked include the number of clicks to registrations, registrations to deposits, blocked traffic according to geographic region, device type, and various other factors related to the players or the companies themselves.
By tracking these aspects of the publisher’s website, it will be easier to understand in what areas their revenue is being lost.
Future Technology That Could Help Reduce Blocked Traffic
The future of the publishing and operator companies will likely involve automation. For example, artificial intelligence software can read the various elements of a visitor’s device and automatically route them to the most appropriate license without human intervention. Additionally, the future may see automated recovery of blocked traffic to the best operators for those visitors.
Best Practices to Reduce Blocked Revenue
There are a variety of steps that publishers and operators can take to reduce blocked traffic. For instance, they can monitor the geographic regions of traffic, review the links from their affiliates, test the landing pages, check the availability of the operators they advertise, review the compliance requirements of those operators, optimize their traffic routing software, track their conversion rates, and even diversify the variety of operators that they license and partner with.
Final Thoughts
Despite the potential revenue that publishers and operators could generate from the players who visit their websites, the issue of blocked traffic has, until now, been mostly overlooked.
Every visitor that is blocked from joining these online gaming and gambling companies is a missed opportunity to generate revenue. Publishers and operators need to treat blocked traffic as a problem to be managed and solved rather than one that is endured with each visitor to the site. With the technologies mentioned in this article and additional innovations in the future of the industry, publishers and companies could generate significantly more revenue from the traffic that visits their websites.