The Cost of Click Fraud in Sports Betting PPC Advertising‍

Sports betting operates in one of the most tightly regulated and competitive PPC environments in digital marketing. Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) remain under constant pressure from aggressive auction bidding, with cost per click for high-intent keywords regularly exceeding €10 and in some cases surpassing €100. Every euro in a performance budget is commercially significant.

Paid search sits at the centre of new player acquisition for sports betting operators, and the data behind it directly shapes how budgets are allocated across markets. Yet platform restrictions limit audience segmentation, retargeting, and user exclusions, meaning acquisition campaigns often capture a mix of new prospects, returning users, and non-genuine traffic.

The exposure is growing. Global ad fraud losses are projected to reach $172 billion by 2028, with search identified as the channel generating the most fraud over the next five years. In high-CPC verticals like sports betting, where returning users and bots compete for the same branded keywords as genuine new players, even small volumes of invalid traffic can materially distort acquisition costs and optimisation signals at scale.

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‍The Challenge‍

Gaming1 manages a significant annual Google Ads investment, with paid search playing a key role in driving incremental player growth.

As a regulated operator, Gaming1 operates under Belgium’s strict advertising framework and prioritises responsible marketing practices. Any optimisation initiative is designed to improve efficiency within these regulatory boundaries, not to increase advertising pressure.

While campaigns were delivering consistent surface-level performance, deeper analysis revealed a critical inefficiency hidden within brand search activity. In one brand-search scenario, 97% of clicks on branded keywords were generated by existing customers returning to log into their accounts, not new FTDs.

This meant a substantial portion of the acquisition budget was being consumed by repeat engagement that delivered no incremental value. Existing customers were using branded search terms as a navigation shortcut rather than bookmarking or navigating directly, and each click was costing Gaming1 at the same CPC as a genuinely new player.

As investment scaled, Gaming1 needed greater clarity around incrementality to ensure budgets were consistently directed toward net-new acquisition. Specifically, they aimed to:

• Improve visibility into brand traffic composition; understand what proportion of paid clicks were truly incremental versus habitual repeat behaviour
• Strengthen alignment between spend and incremental player growth; ensure acquisition budget was reaching new depositing players, not subsidising existing user navigation
• Increase optimisation precision within platform constraints; work within Google's advertising policies while adding an additional layer of traffic-quality control
• Enhance confidence in performance reporting at enterprise scale; ensure CAC, conversion rate, and ROAS metrics reflected genuine acquisition performance

Gaming1 required a solution that could introduce click-level control over traffic quality while maintaining full regulatory compliance and campaign continuity.

The Solution

Gaming1 deployed TrafficGuard's Search solution across its Google PPC portfolio to prevent non-incremental and invalid traffic from consuming acquisition budget.

Operating at individual click level, the solution:

• Limited repeat paid clicks on brand terms using click-frequency controls aligned with platform-level engagement patterns, preventing existing customers from repeatedly triggering paid ad costs
  
• Validated organic returning users in real time and quantified "paid clicks saved", giving Gaming1 visibility into exactly how much budget was being protected
  
• Prevented non-incremental engagement from absorbing acquisition budget, ensuring spend was directed toward genuine new player acquisition
• Automatically filtered bot and non-human traffic before spend occurred, addressing an industry-wide challenge that costs PPC advertisers millions in wasted budget each year.
• Redirected protected budget toward genuine new depositing players, improving the quality of traffic flowing into conversion funnels and Smart Bidding models

This approach strengthened traffic integrity within paid search, ensuring invalid traffic prevention and returning user controls worked together to improve incrementality, while operating fully within Google's advertising policies and Belgium's regulatory requirements.

The Results

With TrafficGuard's solution in place, Gaming1 delivered measurable improvements across its paid search performance within the first reporting period.

Once returning user distortion and invalid traffic were mitigated, budget allocation became closely aligned with incremental acquisition:

• 11.3% of annualised budget was unlocked; previously consumed by invalid and non-incremental traffic, now available for genuine new player acquisition
  
• 11.5% increase in conversions, as budget was redirected from repeat clickers and bots toward high-intent new users actively searching for sports betting
  
• 11.3% reduction in cost per conversion, with cleaner traffic flowing into optimisation models, Smart Bidding operated on more accurate signals, driving down acquisition costs
  
• 97% returning-user rate on brand terms was brought under control, click-frequency thresholds curtailed the most costly repeat behaviour without disrupting legitimate user journeys

The concentration of invalid traffic within brand campaigns mirrors a pattern seen across iGaming PPC operators invest most aggressively in branded search to protect market position, and that is precisely where returning users and bots generate the highest waste. By addressing this at the click level, Gaming1 turned its most expensive campaign type into a more efficient acquisition channel.

By restoring clarity around incrementality, Gaming1 strengthened acquisition efficiency, improved the accuracy of CAC and ROAS reporting, and reinforced greater commercial control across its enterprise paid search investment.

"Paid search is one of our most commercially sensitive channels, and we needed confidence that our budget was reaching genuinely new players. TrafficGuard gave us that clarity. Unlocking over 11% of our annual budget and seeing an immediate uplift in conversions validated exactly what we suspected — a significant share of our brand spend simply wasn't driving incremental growth. It's now one of the most impactful optimisation levers we've deployed." 

Simon Wood – Head of Performance Marketing, Gaming1