iGaming PPC Agency

BugsyEmpire is an iGaming PPC agency and Google Partner that has managed $10M+ in paid search spend for casino, sportsbook, sweepstakes and social casino brands. We handle Google Ads certification per country, build and run Search, Performance Max, Microsoft Advertising and display campaigns, and optimise to first-time deposits and player value instead of clicks. Our audits find the tracking gaps, bonus costs and policy risks that inflate CPA. Below: what our PPC services include, how casino PPC differs from regular PPC, how Google's gambling certification works in 2026, how we measure results, pricing and FAQ.

Four services, usable separately or together: audit, Google Ads management, display, and affiliate integration, all on top of certification support.

PPC audit

A PPC audit tells you where your current cost per depositing player is actually going. We review account structure, conversion tracking (are registration, KYC, FTD and redeposit events firing, and are they deduplicated?), bidding strategy, keyword and geo setup against each licence, the share of bonus cost sitting inside CPA, the signup and deposit funnel, policy risk in ads and landing pages, and brand term protection.

The output is a prioritised fix list, ordered by what moves CPA fastest rather than by what is easiest to write up. Our audit work for Fortuna is published as a case study. Get a PPC audit.

Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising management

Management covers strategy, account build, keyword research per market and language, ad copy written inside gambling policy, and bidding to CPA or ROAS targets once deposit data is reliable enough to bid on. We run continuous A/B tests on copy, landing pages and bidding.

Performance Max (Google's campaign type that buys across Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail and Maps from one budget) needs two things in iGaming: strong conversion data at deposit level, and asset groups where every image and headline already respects gambling policy, because PMax will otherwise serve the weakest asset you gave it.

Microsoft Advertising (Bing) works as a lower-competition extra channel in markets where it accepts gambling ads.

Display advertising

Display adds market-specific targeting and fast creative testing on top of search. Creatives come from our in-house team, typically within 7 working days, and are designed for policy compliance from the first frame rather than fixed after a disapproval. More: iGaming design agency and programmatic.

Affiliate marketing integration

Affiliates are partner sites paid per referred player or by revenue share, and many of them bid on the operator's own brand terms. Without coordination, you pay an affiliate commission and a click fee for the same player who was already searching for you.

We map which keywords affiliates may bid on, monitor your brand SERPs for breaches, and align tracking so PPC and affiliate conversions are not double counted in reporting.

Casino PPC fails for operators who run it like e-commerce, because six mechanics behave differently:

The goal is a depositing player, not a registration. Registrations are cheap and misleading; as herb.agency puts it, "registrations alone do not necessarily indicate campaign profitability". We optimise to FTD first, then to value (repeat deposits and LTV), which usually raises reported CPA and lowers actual cost per profitable player.

The funnel is longer, so tracking carries more weight. Registration, KYC (identity and age verification), deposit and redeposit each need their own event. Deposits fail at the payment provider more often than marketers expect, and if those failures are invisible your CPA looks worse than it is and bidding reacts to noise.

Bonuses change the maths. A larger welcome offer lifts conversion rate and raises the real cost of every player who takes it, so bonus cost belongs inside CPA, not in a separate promotional line. Bonus wording in ads also has to match the landing page terms, both for platform policy and for consumer protection rules.

Demand follows the sporting calendar. Betting search volume spikes around big fixtures and tournaments, so budgets and bid caps are planned against the calendar instead of spread evenly across the month.

Every geo has its own licence. Campaigns are split per licensed country, US state or Canadian province. A single global campaign in iGaming is not an efficiency; it is a policy breach waiting for an auditor.

Brand protection pays for itself. Affiliates and copycats bid on your brand name, and brand searchers are the cheapest players you will ever buy. Brand campaigns defend that traffic.

No gambling ad runs on Google without certification. Here is what Google asks for as of November 2026 and what we prepare for you.

What Google requires before approving gambling ads

Google defines gambling as "staking something of value on the outcome of events or processes determined by an element of chance with the opportunity to win something of value". Advertising it requires certification, and certification requires all of the following:

1. A valid local licence for every country or region you target.
2. A dedicated domain, not a free host or a shared subdomain.
3. Licence information visible on the site itself.
4. Landing pages carrying an age warning, addiction resources and terms and conditions, with a footer showing the licensee name, licence number and privacy policy.
5. For affiliates: links only to licensed entities.

Country rules then narrow it further. In the United States, only state-licensed operators may advertise, ads may not target users under 21, and addiction warnings are mandatory. In the UK, a Gambling Commission licence is required. In Canada, the operator needs a provincial licence and targeting is limited to that province.

What changed in August 2026

From 26 August 2026 Google uses revised certification forms for all online gambling jurisdictions, non-casino games and social casino games. Three consequences matter operationally:

• A separate application per country. One submission no longer covers a region.
• Recertification after any material change. A new licence, a new domain or a new corporate entity all trigger it.
• False information means permanent suspension of the related accounts, not a warning.

We prepare the documents, run the landing page checks and file the per-country applications. Approval remains Google's decision, and it depends on a valid licence we cannot substitute for.

Social casino and sweepstakes campaigns on Google

Google defines social casino games as "online simulated gambling-style games where there is no opportunity to win something of value". They run under their own rules:

• Their own certification, in a separate Google Ads account: one account cannot hold both an online gambling and a social casino certification.
• A disclaimer that the game is intended only for users over legal gambling age and does not offer real money gambling.
• An in-app purchase disclosure.
• No real-money gambling brand names or logos in creatives.
• Availability in 34 "Group 1" countries, including the US, UK, Germany and France.

Sweepstakes casinos sit between those two definitions and need their own treatment.

We report six metrics, all of them downstream of a deposit: CPA per FTD, FTD volume, registration-to-FTD rate, ROAS (revenue divided by ad spend), redeposit rate, and LTV by campaign. Click-through rate and cost per click stay in the report as diagnostics, because they explain a CPA movement without ever being the target.

Tracking comes before scale. Conversion events and attribution are validated in our Track step, so the bidding algorithm is optimising against real deposits rather than a mis-fired tag. After that the loop is Test, Acquire, Optimise: new hypotheses on small budgets, winners scaled against CPA targets, continuous optimisation as bonus terms, fixtures and policies change.

Seven reasons, each one checkable:

• Google Partner status, maintained through live iGaming accounts rather than a certification exam.
• $10M+ in iGaming PPC spend managed, so bidding decisions come from account history, not theory.
• Part of an agency running $150M+ in yearly paid media for 100+ iGaming brands, which means paid search is informed by what paid social and programmatic are seeing in the same market.
• Real money gaming in Europe and sweepstakes in North America: Superbet, Fortuna, Betclic and Betsson in Europe; 50+ North American brands including sweepstakes operators.
• In-house creative for display banners and landing pages, typically in 7 working days, built to gambling policy from the first frame.
• One team across PPC, paid social, programmatic and CRM, so the player journey is tracked end to end and a deposit is attributed once, not three times.
• Audits that find what others miss, documented in our Fortuna audit case study.

Published industry guides put monthly PPC management in the range of $1,500 to $10,000 depending on market complexity, with agencies commonly charging 10% to 20% of monthly ad spend. Use that as a market benchmark when you compare quotes.

A PPC audit is available as a separate entry product, which is the lower-risk way to start: you get the prioritised fix list whether or not you then hand over the account.

Can you get our brand certified for gambling ads on Google? We prepare and submit the per-country applications and fix the landing page requirements that block approval. Approval is Google's decision and requires a valid licence in each target market.

Do you run casino PPC in the US? Yes, for state-licensed operators in permitted states, never targeting users under 21. Social casino and sweepstakes campaigns run through the separate routes described above.

What do you need from us to start? Licences per market, your domains, access to the current Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising accounts, your tracking setup, current bonus terms, and budget per market.

Do you work with affiliates' traffic? Yes. We coordinate brand bidding rules with your affiliate programme and align tracking so the same player is not paid for twice.

Can you take over an existing account? Yes, and we start with an audit rather than a rebuild, so you keep the conversion history the bidding algorithms depend on.