Rank Group is a large gambling group in the UK whose primary brands are Mecca Bingo and Grosvenor Casinos. These previously retail-focused brands have had to put more and more focus into digital since the lockdowns in 2020 which is where we came in.
We were engaged to support with the paid social of the two primary brands as well as subsidiaries of each. The primary objective to drive new customer growth and increase profitability on social channels.
Mecca and Grosvenor are very well-known names in the UK which meant that we were fighting a winning battle. However with compliance being ever more cautious and tracking issues abound there was a lot of work to be done to get digital into a place where it could support the loss of retail traffic.
We started by revamping the accounts to boost the amount of data flowing through individual campaigns and maximizing Meta's machine-learning capabilities. The gambling industry is a great place to use broad targeting because Meta receives stronger signals from players compared to other industries. If a player has deposited on another site, Meta knows they are an online gambler and therefore displays more gambling ads to them. This is true for other industries as well, but gambling has more data points.
Because of this, in most cases it's better to let the machine learning work without targeting parameters and focus on optimizing creatives and offers. The Rank brands had poor tracking implementation, which we aimed to fix as soon as possible. Every day without proper tracking means losing at least 10% of spend.
Next, we shifted our attention to creativity. The two brands had been regularly testing new offers and games, making it difficult to see clear trends in creative performance or leverage top-performing creatives. We changed this approach and focused on creating different assets for a single DRG to learn as much as possible about what works best in terms of copy, CTA, style, and format.
With the learnings from this, we doubled down on the most successful formats for our SUB ads. By Q1 2023, we had double the industry standard CTR and delivered better CPAs compared to the previous year.
