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In-App traffic is users who click on ads placed inside mobile applications.
In one of the gambling case studies featured in this article, this traffic source generated $69 388 in profit for the team at a 135,09% ROI. And that was after more than $51 000 in ad spend.
In this article, we explain how In-App works and why this traffic source is especially interesting for those running iGaming campaigns. Most importantly, we take a detailed look at 4 recent case studies from 2025-2026.
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In-App ads are shown to users directly while they are using a mobile application. For example, a player completes a level, but before moving on to the next one, they see an ad. These ads are most often configured by affiliate marketers and can take the user to an app store, APK, PWA, or the web version of any offer.
The application where the ad is shown acts as the publisher, while the specific ad slot is called a placement. A single publisher can provide several such placements with different audience behavior, so traffic quality depends heavily on the specific application and the context in which the ad is shown.
After the click, the user journey depends on the setup. When promoting an app, the funnel can look like Click — Install — Registration — Deposit, while with a web version of the offer or a PWA, the install step disappears. This is why In-App should not be reduced solely to buying mobile installs.
An affiliate marketer does not need to search for app owners individually and negotiate ad placements with each of them. Ad platforms already work with large numbers of mobile applications. From a single dashboard, you can launch ads across dozens or hundreds of such apps at once.
When launching a campaign, the affiliate marketer selects the GEO, devices, budget, and other available settings. The platform then distributes impressions across applications automatically. The statistics show where registrations and deposits are coming from, allowing the buyer to disable weak apps and increase the budget for those that deliver the desired results.
The main In-App ad formats are: Rewarded Video, Interstitial, Playable Ads, banners, and native ads. They differ in how the user sees and interacts with the ad.
Rewarded Video — a video ad that the user watches voluntarily in exchange for an in-app reward, such as extra lives or in-game currency.
Interstitial — a full-screen ad that appears between user actions, for example after completing a level or before opening another section of the app.
Playable Ads — an interactive ad that users can engage with directly inside the creative. The user can try a game mechanic for a few seconds before proceeding to the offer. This format is often used to promote games and iGaming products.
Banners — small ad units that are displayed on the screen continuously or periodically.
Native ads are integrated into the app interface and visually resemble its regular content.
Experts Coldbet Partners, who have extensive experience with In-App traffic in iGaming, recommend testing Rewarded Video, Interstitial, Playable Ads, and banners separately. Users interact with these formats differently, so their results are better not mixed within a single campaign.
In-App works particularly well with iGaming because the ad reaches the user directly in a mobile environment where they are already playing, consuming entertainment content, or following sports. For casino and betting, this creates several relevant ad scenarios, which we explore below.
Mobile games and entertainment apps are especially interesting for casino campaigns because users are already familiar with game mechanics, rewards, and in-game actions. In betting, a similar overlap exists with sports apps, live-score services, statistics, and other match-related content.
Head of Affiliate Coldbet Partners notes that this audience overlap really does matter, although by itself it does not guarantee traffic quality. Even two similar apps can bring in player cohorts with completely different value.
The first numbers after launch can easily be misleading. A high CTR, a cheap click, or a low cost per install still does not show how valuable the acquired player will ultimately be to the product.
A single ad network may serve ads across hundreds of applications, and the results can vary dramatically within it. One app may consistently generate target actions, while another with a similar traffic cost turns out to be useless.
Based on the experience of Coldbet Partners, results depend on the specific application, its audience, and the ad placement. That is why statistics should be analyzed by individual publishers and placements, disabling weak sources and keeping those that generate the desired events.
Experts Coldbet Partners note that weak placements are often visible within the first few days. A source may generate many installs but almost no registrations or other target actions. A suspiciously short click-to-install time is also a reason to check that traffic separately.
Next, you need to look at how many users register and reach a deposit. If installs and registrations are there but deposits are low, the issue may already be inside the product — for example, the offer itself, the landing-page bonus, or the registration flow. That is why problems at the early stages of the funnel should not be attributed to In-App traffic quality without proper analysis.
Head of Affiliate ColdBet Partners.
Which metrics does the affiliate program use to evaluate the quality of In-App traffic besides registrations and first deposits?
For us, the first deposit is only the beginning of traffic evaluation. We look at the entire downstream player economics: R2D, total and average deposit amount, repeat deposits, activity, player returns, GGR, NGR, and LTV. In parallel, we always analyze traffic for fraud and any behavioral anomalies.
For example, two affiliates may each bring 100 FTDs. With one, most players make a minimum deposit and disappear; with the other, players keep playing and depositing a week and even a month later. For the product, these are completely different levels of quality, even though the top-of-funnel result looks identical.
In-App is often perceived as a source of high volumes of cheap FTDs, but in practice everything depends heavily on the quality of the affiliate's work. Well-developed setups can deliver not just volume, but genuinely high-quality players — with repeat deposits, a healthy lifecycle, and solid economics for the product.
The GPM agency team entered Argentina via Unity Ads using approaches that had previously worked for them in European GEOs. The start was weak: slots unfamiliar to the local audience and dry gameplay simply did not convert. Over four weeks, the team reworked the setup and reached 2099 FTD and 88% ROI.
Setup:
After the first tests, the team abandoned the European creative approach and began building creatives for the local audience, taking into account local preferences and popular slots in this GEO. Most of the volume came from Joker’s Jewels and similar game mechanics featuring jokers, multipliers, and big wins, while emotional UGC became the second effective direction. Localization was a key focus: they used Argentine Spanish, amounts in ARS, and familiar local payment-service design elements in the creatives.
The optimization approach changed as well. At first, Unity collected install data. The team then kept the working creatives and apps, while the ad system began taking registrations, deposits, and deposit amounts into account. Once enough data had accumulated, the campaigns were relaunched with ROAS optimization, and only then did the team begin scaling volume.
Results:
The casino recouped more than 60% of the traffic cost in the first month and decided to continue working with the affiliate.
And if you want to run strong campaigns in any GEO as well, you definitely need a reliable affiliate program. Read below to see where to find one.
Coldbet Partners — the affiliate program of direct advertiser Coldbet, operating since 2025. Its main verticals are casino and betting, while the brand itself operates in more than 100 GEOs. The affiliate program accepts many traffic types, including In-App, and provides every affiliate with a dedicated manager. Rates are up to $200 CPA and up to 60% RevShare. Hybrid and Flat Fee can also be negotiated individually. CPA comes with a soft cap of up to 50 FTD, qualification by minimum deposit, and a hold from 7 days.
Standard payouts are weekly, and the managers are very flexible, so better terms can often be negotiated. Payments are available to bank cards, via SEPA, Skrill, and crypto. Additional features from Coldbet Partners include custom landing pages, banners, and pre-rolls.
For In-App traffic, the program integrates with AppsFlyer and supports event transfer via postbacks. If needed, affiliates can receive free access to the AppsFlyer dashboard, where they can track installs, registrations, and FTDs together with their manager. The affiliate team also helps select GEOs for testing, adapt creatives and the funnel to local audiences, and recommends popular games and relevant sporting events. Traffic can also be sent directly to an APK, which is especially relevant for some Tier-3 GEOs.
Make sure to sign up and try running traffic with Coldbet Partners — you definitely won't be disappointed.
From February 12 to March 31, 2025, the ProTeam team ran traffic through Moloco in Portugal. They promoted the SLOTT offer at $115 per FTD. In a month and a half, the team generated 1050 FTD and $69 388 in profit at a 135,09% ROI.
Setup:
At launch, the team tested 5–8 different approaches, using different popular slots for a broad audience. After the first results, they kept the best approaches and created new versions around popular games available inside the offer itself.
The team also paid special attention to what exactly was shown in the ads. According to their observations, Portuguese players know what real slots look like, so creatives with made-up effects and mechanics performed worse. As a result, the ads were designed to resemble the real gameplay of the selected slots as closely as possible. Creatives featuring Joker and Gates of Olympus performed best.
The second important part of the campaign that led the team to success was constant placement cleanup. First, ProTeam removed ad placements that did not convert at all, then reviewed each app individually and blacklisted weak ones. If an app generated one deposit but no repeat conversions afterward, it was also blacklisted. During the campaign, the team disabled two large placements and around 15 apps, and also removed the children's and family-app category.
As a result, the team generated an impressive profit over a month and a half.
Results:
You can replicate this result with Coldbet Partners.
The ProTeam team, already familiar from the previous case, delivered another solid result. In mid-May 2026, the media buying team began testing Unity Ads as an additional source of In-App traffic. Until then, most of their volume had come through Moloco, so the offers, apps, and some of the approaches had already been proven in practice.
The first test received a $2 000 budget and ran for 8 days. After the test, the team continued scaling and, over a month and a half, reached $73 818,29 in spend with a final ROI of 27%.
Setup:
D7 ROAS is the ROAS over the first 7 days after install. In other words, Unity tries to find users who will generate enough revenue within a week after installation relative to ad spend. Normally, a campaign can first be trained on cheap installs before ROAS optimization, but the media buying team deliberately skipped this stage.
For the first two days, each campaign spent $100. The team did not rush to increase the budget until they confirmed that the app was connected correctly, events were being passed, and the first users were reaching a deposit. After the first FTD and an integration check, the daily budget was raised to $200–250.
The initial ROAS Goal was set in the 40–60% range. If a campaign could not spend properly, the target was gradually reduced to 30%, then to 20% and 15%. The lower the required ROAS, the broader the audience Unity can search among, making it easier to gain additional volume.
Two main creative formats were used. The first was video ads with an end card and a call to proceed to the offer. They featured the crash games Chicken Road and Tower Rush, as well as classic slots whose names the case-study authors do not disclose. The second format was interactive Playable Ads using Chicken Road and Zeus mechanics, where the user could try a short game round directly inside the ad.
After the eight-day test, the team began creating new campaigns and adding new apps and GEOs. Of 12 apps, only 8 continued because the others were blocked. Of 8 GEOs, only 6 were scaled: France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Malaysia, and Germany. Denmark and Sweden were turned off due to mediocre results.
The team also had to work through analytics issues. The first deposit appeared in Keitaro and AppsFlyer on the second day, but it showed up in the Unity dashboard later. According to the case-study authors, postbacks to Unity can be delayed by up to two days. This once again confirms that high-quality analytics is an essential part of a successful setup.
Publishers were also cleaned regularly. Every 3–5 days, the team analyzed Android and iOS traffic separately because Unity uses different publisher IDs for each operating system. At the start, there was little data for individual GEOs, so blacklists were built separately for Android and iOS across all launched countries.
Results:
ProTeam's result is not as impressive as in 2025, but it is still worthy of praise.
Head of Affiliate ColdBet Partners.
What mistakes do affiliate marketers most often make when launching In-App traffic to iGaming offers?
One of the most common mistakes is scaling too early.
An affiliate sees a cheap registration or low FTD cost, immediately asks the manager for a higher cap, and increases spend. A little later, it becomes clear that repeat deposits are low, players do not stick around, or the economics simply do not work. The top of the funnel looks great, but there is almost no value for the product. The campaign is stopped, and the cycle starts over.
The second mistake is insufficient source transparency. The better we, as the operator, understand exactly where the traffic comes from, the faster we can work with the affiliate to identify strong segments and remove what does not work, while also fine-tuning how the retention team engages with the player.
Our department also has In-App media buyers who constantly test their own setups, apps, approaches, and different GEOs. This means we see In-App not only from the perspective of the affiliate program that receives and evaluates traffic, but also understand the buying mechanics from the inside.
As a result, our recommendations to affiliates are based not only on general statistics or theory. We can compare what we see on the buying side with how those users later behave inside our product. In my view, this combination provides a much more objective understanding of traffic quality.
Now you know what In-App traffic is, how it works, and have also picked up several practical techniques from real campaigns. The case studies show that with proper work on apps, creatives, and analytics, this source can scale to tens of thousands of dollars in spend while maintaining a strong ROI.
If you have been meaning to test In-App for gambling, you can do it with Coldbet Partners. The affiliate program accepts In-App traffic, works with AppsFlyer and postbacks, and its managers will help you choose a GEO and offer and adapt the setup to a specific market. Use the approaches from the case studies, build your own setup, and test it — perhaps the next case study with an attractive ROI will be yours.
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