2.8 mln impressions and 129 regs on a Gambling offer in the UK via TMA ads — RichAds case review

In this case we provided a fresh point of view on advertising iGaming offers in Telegram Mini Apps. As RichAds ad platform can provide a trusted source to try this approach out, with a bit of luck — it’s a performing campaign for British audiences!

Let’s have a look at this fresh case of a profitable promotion:

Advertisements in mini applications of Telegram are similar to in-game or in-page banners. For example, one of their formats could look like push notifications, featuring just an icon and a couple of text lines without being marked as ads. Such banners are integrated into the Mini Apps interface, prioritising popular applications of the ‘tap-to-earn’ format.

Why this advertising format works well for iGaming:

• Less restrictions by categories — unlike official Telegram Ads, in mini applications you can launch almost any Gambling offers with simplified moderation.
• Low ‘banner blindness’ — users haven’t got used to this format yet, which is increasing the click-through rate.
• Access to Telegram Premium — you can target the most paying and active users.
• Affordable price — the CPC starts from $0.02, meaning that you test offers even with a relatively small budget.

Advertising experiment: what was it in practice?

It wasn’t my first time that I launched campaigns with RichAds, but ads in Telegram were new to me. Usually, I work with pop and push, but manager RichAds offered to try something new, and I risked it

— the case’s author wrote.

As a test, they chose a branding offer LeoVegas for the UK — a good and recognizable product.

The aim was simple: monitor what amount of traffic they could accumulate on the new source in about 3 to 4 weeks.

The format seemed promising on high traffic volumes for the Gambling niche, and by launching the campaigns, the experiment began: is it possible for Telegram advertising to overtake push and pops in terms of performance?

Setting up and launch: what the campaign looked like

For starting the campaign there was used the basic and straightforward configuration — no complicated filters, micro targeting and additional restrictions.

The main goal is to test the performance of advertisements in Telegram on the go and evaluate its potential to gain traffic in the UK:

Basic launching parameters

In the overview case, the budget is $180 per day, while eCPA is $18. Such an amount could allow one to fastly understand whether the campaign is performing, and with the first 10–15 conversions the full potential would be clear.

It was decided to not complicate the targeting: the broader the coverage from the start, the faster one could gather the working intel for analysis. The campaign was launched on Premium sources by RichAds — the higher quality traffic that converts the most.

First results — hands down

Surprisingly, the bids started to win right from the start. The Winrate was at 75%, and that says a lot about how competitive the campaign was. Another pleasant surprise was that the conclusive CPC turned out to be lower than expected — $0.01 instead of $0.025.

The creatives looked like classic push ads, but adapted to Telegram, which brought them impressive CTR — 7% from the early days of advertising!

A tip by RichAds’ team:

How creatives performed: approaches, offers and impressions

One of the main recommendations from RichAds managers was that it’s better to test 5–10 different creative concepts from the start. Not just variations of the same, but different angles of targeting — visuals, texts, messages. This helps to find the right approach to the desired audiences faster and get rid of the weak options.

Creative examples

The creative elements that appeared to be effective for British audiences of iGaming:

An advice:

 

Do restrain yourself to 1-2 creatives. 5 is a minimum, while the best would be up to 10, containing different messages and visuals. This speeds up the A/B testing and helps finding the growth point faster. As a plus, you can ask RichAds managers about getting personal creatives for the exact GEO as were provided in this case.

 

What about optimization?

It’s interesting that optimization wasn’t considered at the first stages. No mistakes there, but a responsible action, as the main goal was to evaluate the potential of Telegram Mini Apps format in its pure form, regardless of particular sources and filters.

I wanted to see how the campaign would perform itself: without disabling ineffective publishers, trackers and blacklisting. Just launch and analyse — so to make a decision whether it’s worth to scale further

— the case’s author wrote.

At the start, the campaign utilised Premium sources, so that the traffic was of higher quality in general. While in the future, it’s set to filter by blacklists, connect a tracker and turn off the publishers that bring no registrations or simply draw the budget.

A tip by RichAds:

 

Black- and whitelists are must-have if you want to reduce the conversion prices and increase ROI. For that it’s better to set up tracking (for example, Voluum or Binom) and ask managers for help with analysis, or manually disable the way too expensive or underperforming sources.

 

Finalising the calculations and conclusions

The results of the very first campaign exceeded the expectations:

The registration price was $4 lower than initially expected, while the CTR and traffic volumes made a good surprise. The ads in Telegram mini applications proved themselves as a competitive and scalable traffic source — especially for the iGaming niche.

Telegram Mini Apps are kicking it again?

The format of advertising in Telegram via Mini Apps can become a perfect alternative to push and pop, especially if you work with Tier-1 and are seeking a quality traffic source at affordable prices. It’s important to not stop experimenting and try out new platforms while the competition there is still far from peaking!