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Client X approached Ruby Digital with the intention of launching Google Ads as a new acquisition channel for their online casino and sports betting platform.
Due to the advertising policies for gambling enforced by Google Ads in South Africa, ads cannot be activated unless specific requirements are met. Ruby Digital advised The Company and their platform providers, to reach approval through creation of a dedicated sports-only subdomain. This is designed to separate sports betting content and provide all the necessary information gambling licences, rules and policies, and to align with Google Ads policies.
The brief was to ensure that Client X could meet these requirements and successfully enable Google Ads.
At the same time, a foundational Google Ads strategy was created. This included setting up a structured account aligned to best practices, ensuring that once approval was secured, campaigns could launch in a controlled and scalable way.
The main challenges of ensuring that Client X met Google’s policy standards before any campaigns could go live presented itself through two paths. The first path was meeting the requirements set out by Google Ads and its policies. The second challenge was working with third-party platform providers that had to make all the changes to Client X’s sports betting only subdomain.
These two paths needed to be managed in parallel, where compliance requirements had to be clearly defined by Ruby Digital and then had to be implemented by an external team. This created additional complexity in timelines and required continuous alignment to ensure that all changes met Google’s requirements.
A further challenge was navigating Google’s approval process itself. This involved moving through automated review systems, addressing feedback through support channels, and ultimately progressing to a manual review stage to secure final approval.
As a result, progress toward launching Google Ads was dependent on both meeting policy requirements and successfully coordinating the implementation and approval of those changes across all stakeholders involved.
Ruby Digital implemented a structured strategy built around Google Ads best practices for the sports betting industry.
A dedicated sports-only subdomain was created as the only entry point for paid traffic, ensuring compliance with Google Ads policy requirements.
The Google Ads account was then built using a highly structured campaign setup, with campaigns and ad groups aligned to specific sports, leagues, and search intent. This allowed for more relevant ad messaging, stronger alignment with search terms, keywords, ad groups, campaigns and the sports betting only subdomain and its messaging.
The strategy focused on driving users through intent-drive actions from registration to first-time deposit and then recurring deposits all while continuously refining keyword targeting, updating campaign structures and value-based offering ad copy.
Over the three-month focus period (1 February 2026 to 30 April 2026), The Company saw consistent growth across all primary conversion actions when compared to the previous period.
The most significant movement was seen in First Time Deposits, which grew at a much higher rate than registrations. This indicates that a greater proportion of users who signed up were progressing through to complete their first deposit.
This shift reflects a measurable improvement in acquisition quality. More of the users being driven to the platform were completing key actions, rather than dropping off after registration.
