Winning strategies for sports betting apps

The sports betting industry in the United States has undergone a remarkable transformation in recent years, driven by the rapid expansion of legalized betting markets and the rise of mobile sports betting apps. Currently sitting at over US$30 billion in lifetime gross revenue, the industry’s growth trajectory shows no signs of slowing down.

As new states continue to legalize sports betting, the competition among operators is fiercer than ever. To stay ahead, an increasing number of sports betting apps are making substantial investments in marketing, pouring hundreds of millions of dollars annually into advertising across TV, digital, and radio channels.

However, beneath this boom lies a set of industry-wide marketing challenges. High customer acquisition costs, oversaturation of ads, and the pressure to achieve profitability while juggling an omnichannel marketing mix have created a complex environment for sports betting app marketers. Stricter regulations on advertising practices and the need for state-specific marketing strategies add another layer of complexity.

In this high-stakes environment, success hinges on your ability to navigate these challenges. This guide arms you with data-backed insights and strategies to:

1. Cut through the noise and optimize your user acquisition efforts
2. Master the art of cross-channel campaign cohesion
3. Keep users engaged during off-seasons and between major events

Whether you’re a seasoned sports betting marketer or new to the game, you’ll find actionable tactics to thrive in this dynamic market. Let’s dive in and explore how you can turn these industry-wide challenges into opportunities for growth.

Adjust data revealed that, in 2023, user engagement with casino/betting apps in the United States was at its highest around the Super Bowl, which was held February 12. Installs began to really pick up pace mid-January, at 24% above the 2023 weekly average both the week of January 16 and the week of January 23. Session spikes were about a week behind. They grew to 8% above the year’s weekly average both the week of January 23 and the week of January 30.

Rather than assuming what works, you’ll need to dig into your data to identify the unbiased truth. Biased attribution occurs when a paid advertising platform or ad network, which also acts as the measurement provider, is incentivized to attribute traffic and conversions to itself rather than to other sources. This conflict of interest can distort your campaign metrics, making it difficult to determine which channels and strategies are genuinely driving success.
For instance, without a neutral attribution partner, you might fall victim to in-market bias, where an ad takes credit for a user who was already likely to install your app, regardless of the ad’s influence. Similarly, last-click bias could lead you to overvalue the final touchpoint in the user journey while ignoring the earlier interactions that played a crucial role in the conversion process.

To avoid these pitfalls, mobile marketers should rely on a third-party mobile measurement partner (MMP) like Adjust. An MMP provides clean, unbiased attribution data. This guarantees that your decisions are based on accurate, comprehensive insights. Start by analyzing your attribution data to determine which channels brought in your various target audience segments. How many ads is a user interacting with before converting? If these users churn between their preferred sporting events, which channel(s) do they typically reinstall through? (We’ll get into this shortly.)

Then, start to piece together the bigger picture of how channels work together from brand awareness through install, on to bets, or other in-app purchases (IAPs). Additionally, some channels may align more effectively with specific sports. For instance, YouTube TV secured the rights to the NFL Sunday Ticket prior to the 2023 NFL season, making it a prime channel for reaching football enthusiasts. 

Connected TV (CTV), for example, allows you to deliver ads to a broad audience in a format that blends the appeal of television with the precision of digital targeting. CTV ads can create awareness and build brand recognition among users who are just entering the consideration phase.

However, CTV's value doesn't stop at brand awareness; it also offers robust performance capabilities, particularly when paired with advanced technologies like AI. YouTube’s use of Google AI optimizes ad break length and frequency based on viewer behavior, ensuring that ads are served at the most opportune moments, reducing intrusiveness and increasing the likelihood of engagement—a crucial factor for sports betting apps, where streamers must not be interrupted during critical gameplay.

Moreover, an increasing number of CTV ad formats allow users to send ad information to a second device (their mobile phone), allowing for a seamless transition from awareness to action. This lets viewers continue tuning into the sport on their TV while simultaneously learning more about your app on their phone.

When protecting your UA budget, it’s important to attract users who will drive value. Start by analyzing data from users with high lifetime value (LTV). You must find out what drives their engagement and how they interact with your app.

Look for patterns in user behavior, such as:

• Interest in specific sports
• Preferred times of day for engagement
• Responses to particular promotions
• Preference for single bets, parlays, or live in-play betting

By pinpointing these traits, you can form a detailed target audience (and respective strategy) to attract similar users. From there, you can segment your target audience for tailored marketing efforts that truly make an impact. By working with an MMP, you’re assured throughout the entire acquisition, campaign analysis, and optimization process, that the data you’re working with can be relied upon. Adjust’s Datascape brings all of your data together into one place with beautiful visualizations (or raw data, if you want it!) so you can make fast decisions with confidence. With sound attribution, you always know which channels are providing you with the highest value users, and where you should allocate budget to acquire more of them. 

As we’ve noted above, it’s important to first make sure you’re not paying for users you’d otherwise be acquiring organically (for free). Luckily, this is easily done with incrementality testing. With Adjust’s AI-powered incrementality solution, InSight, your campaign will be compared to a synthetic test group that is bespoke to your vertical. The results will accurately determine whether your paid campaigns are truly adding value, or simply capturing users who would have converted organically.

The next step is to optimize the UA campaigns that are driving incremental value. When refining these campaigns, there are a few key questions you need to address:

• What characteristics and behaviors define my most valuable users?
• Which channels are effective at the top of my funnel?
• Which channels are effective for conversion?
• How does my campaign tell a cohesive cross-channel story?

The answers to these questions will allow you to build campaigns that are efficient, effective, and have a high return on investment (ROI). This is because you’ll be targeting the right users with the right channels.

Fostering end-to-end harmony

Achieving cross-channel cohesion is about ensuring that your campaign tells a unified story across all platforms. It’s not just about being present on multiple channels, but about creating a seamless experience for the user as they move from awareness to consideration to conversion. Each touchpoint should reinforce the last, guiding the user smoothly through the funnel. This can be achieved by aligning your messaging, creative assets, and timing across channels. Whether a user sees an ad on CTV, engages with a social post, or clicks on a search ad, they are consistently encountering a narrative that drives them closer to install.

Sports betting apps often experience high churn rates, as users may lose interest after their preferred sporting events or uninstall the app entirely. However, by introducing tactical engagement strategies, marketers can encourage ongoing interaction and ensure users continue to find value in the app.

The goal is to maintain user interest by providing relevant content and experiences that resonate with their betting preferences, without resorting to unethical practices such as encouraging excessive gambling. Personalization and gamification are two key strategies to employ in this regard.

The power of personalization

Push notifications are a powerful tool for re-engaging users. But, personalization should extend beyond just these alerts to create a more immersive and engaging experience. By segmenting users based on their interests, betting behavior, and demographics, sports betting apps can deliver targeted experiences across multiple touchpoints.

For instance, in-app messages can be personalized to align with a user’s betting preferences, such as displaying special offers or content related to their favorite sports or teams when they open the app. Email campaigns can also be tailored to remind users of upcoming events or offer exclusive promotions that align with their betting history.

Leveling up engagement with gamification

Sports betting apps can introduce gamified elements throughout the user journey to significantly enhance engagement. Gamification refers to the integration of game-like elements, such as points, badges, leaderboards, and challenges, into non-game contexts like apps. The goal of gamification is to make the experience more interactive and enjoyable, encouraging users to participate more actively by tapping into their natural motivations, such as competition, achievement, and curiosity. The most important aspect here is to remain considerate and ethical. The goal is not to develop unhealthy gambling habits and dependency,

Here are a few examples of how gamification can ethically be applied to sports betting apps:

1. Spin-to-win games: Incorporate fun, non-betting elements like spin-to-win games that offer users entertainment and rewards, such as tokens. These tokens can be used to access exclusive content, skip ads, personalize the look and feel of the app with skins of their favorite teams, or get a discount on virtual events.
2. Daily challenges and quests: Introduce tasks to complete non-betting activities, such as virtual sports simulations or engaging with sports content, to encourage users to return regularly. Reward users with points, badges, or other non-monetary incentives for consistent participation.
3. Leaderboards: Create leaderboards where users can track their progress in completing non-betting challenges, such as predicting game outcomes or answering sports trivia questions. This fosters a sense of competition and community, motivating users to engage regularly to improve their rankings.
4. Achievement badges: Award badges to users who explore different sports, complete educational modules about responsible gambling, or answer polls (this will also help you better understand your users!). Display these badges on user profiles to provide a sense of accomplishment and encourage ongoing interaction.

1. Optimize your onboarding for opt-ins: Securing AppTrackingTransparency (ATT) user consent during onboarding on iOS is invaluable for creating truly personalized user journeys and for effective retargeting and re-engagement. While AdAttributionKit does now offer re-engagement attribution, consented, first-party data via the IDFA is not only granular, but can be leveraged to inform the machine learning and AI tech that drive next-generation measurement solutions. Implementing a well-designed pre-permission prompt that clearly explains the benefits of opting in—such as receiving personalized offers, fewer ads, and improved app experiences—can significantly increase opt-in rates. Learn more about securing the opt-in on iOS and check out our top design tips and tricks for your prompts.
2. Free up your hands with automation: Automate routine tasks with mobile marketing automation tools to free up time for strategic decision-making. Use Adjust Automate to automate bid and budget adjustments, as well as pull together multi-channel data aggregation for you. Doing so allows your team to focus on high-impact activities like campaign refinement and creative development.
3. Proactively prevent mobile ad fraud: Robust fraud prevention is crucial to protecting your budget. Adjust's Fraud Prevention Suite helps you proactively reject fraudulent installs in real-time, keeping your data accurate and actionable. Clean data not only allows you to confidently analyze campaign performance but also helps you allocate your marketing budget more effectively, focusing on genuine user engagement and acquisition rather than fraudulent activities.