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Performance Marketing
AcePoker Online had been running Google Ads in-house with a $22 CPA target but was consistently hitting $85+ due to gambling policy rejections and poor account structure. We took over both Google and Meta accounts, rebuilt campaign architecture from scratch with compliance-first creative frameworks, implemented automated bidding strategies, and launched TikTok as a third acquisition channel. Within 4 months CPA dropped to $28 while monthly FTDs tripled.
AcePoker Online faced a uniquely difficult paid advertising challenge: poker sits in a regulatory gray zone across most ad platforms, with Google and Meta applying stricter scrutiny to poker ads than to sports betting or casino promotions.
The brand had experienced 3 ad account suspensions in 12 months — each one wiping out campaign history, audience data, and Quality Score equity built over months of optimization. Their cost per acquisition had ballooned to $85 per depositing player, nearly 3x the target of $30.
When accounts were active, campaigns were limited to a narrow set of approved geos (UK, Denmark, and Malta), and the creative team was submitting ads that were rejected 40% of the time due to compliance violations around implied guaranteed winnings and missing responsible gambling disclaimers.
The brand knew there was demand — organic search volume for poker-related terms was growing 15% year-over-year — but they couldn't profitably capture it through paid channels without solving the compliance and platform stability issues.
We rebuilt AcePoker's entire paid advertising infrastructure from the ground up with compliance as the foundation. For Google Ads, we obtained gambling certifications in every target market, built dedicated landing pages that met Google's gambling ad policy requirements — including prominent responsible gambling messaging, age verification gates, and terms visibility — and submitted them for manual review before launching campaigns.
We created a compliance checklist and creative review process that reduced ad rejection rates from 40% to under 3%. On Meta, we worked directly with a Facebook Gaming representative to whitelist the ad account, set up proper geo-targeting restrictions, and built a creative library of pre-approved ad templates that the in-house team could customize without risking violations.
We then expanded the channel mix by launching TikTok as a third acquisition channel, leveraging poker entertainment content — hand analysis clips, tournament highlights, and player personality videos — that performed organically and could be boosted as paid promotions.
TikTok's younger demographic proved highly receptive, delivering a $22 CPA. Across all platforms, we implemented automated bidding strategies with target-CPA guardrails and built a real-time dashboard monitoring account health signals to catch potential policy flags before they escalated to suspensions.
Over 6 months, blended CPA dropped from $85 to $28, monthly depositing players increased from 340 to 1,450, zero account suspensions occurred, and TikTok grew to represent 30% of total paid acquisition volume.
Rebuilt Google and Meta ad accounts with gambling certifications, compliant landing pages, and a creative review process that reduced ad rejection from 40% to under 3%.
Launched poker entertainment content on TikTok — hand analyses, tournament highlights, and player personality clips — achieving a $22 CPA and capturing a younger demographic.
Deployed target-CPA automated bidding with real-time account health dashboards that flagged potential policy issues before they triggered suspensions.
“Three account suspensions in a year had us questioning whether paid ads were viable for poker at all. The compliance rebuild gave us stability we'd never had, and adding TikTok was a game-changer — $22 CPA from a channel we hadn't even considered.”
AcePoker Online had been running Google Ads in-house with a $22 CPA target but was consistently hitting $85+ due to gambling policy rejections and poor account structure. We took over both Google and Meta accounts, rebuilt campaign architecture from scratch with compliance-first creative frameworks, implemented automated bidding strategies, and launched TikTok as a third acquisition channel. Within 4 months CPA dropped to $28 while monthly FTDs tripled.
