Cost per deposit down 26% and 48% within the first month of publisher-level autobidding
Two iGaming operators in South Asia, seven ad networks, about 6,000 publisher x campaign pairs. Bids were set by hand or on a proxy metric. We moved the target to post-view deposits and let an optimizer reprice every pair daily.
Situation
Both operators run retargeting on their own player base (depositors and registered non-depositors) across Ubidex, Racer, PropellerAds, RichAds, ExoClick, TrafficStars and Popunder: pop, push, native, banner and video. Bids for thousands of publisher x campaign pairs were managed manually or against authorizations, a proxy that does not track the cost of a deposit. Expensive publishers kept eating budget; cheap ones were underbid.
What we did
- Switched the target metric to post-view deposits: an impression followed by a deposit within seven days, matched by cookie or by device (device matches are down-weighted).
- Launched a daily bid optimizer per publisher x campaign pair: CPA tiers against the target, a kill rule for pairs with spend and no deposits, a cap on the size of each step, and an audit log for every decision with rollback.
- Where the network has an API (Ubidex, Racer) bids are written automatically; elsewhere the decisions go to the network manager through a bot.
Result
Before: 23 to 31 August 2026, the first nine days with the unified metric. After: 1 to 30 September 2026. Seven networks, retargeting funnel only.
| Metric | A, before | A, after | Change | B, before | B, after | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spend per day | $4,314 | $3,828 | -11% | $1,687 | $1,871 | +11% |
| Post-view deposits per day | 1,473 | 1,775 | +21% | 705 | 1,526 | +116% |
| Cost per post-view deposit | $2.93 | $2.16 | -26% | $2.39 | $1.23 | -48% |
| Cost per deposit, cookie-matched only | $4.26 | $2.74 | -36% | $3.29 | $1.57 | -52% |
Weekly CPA, all networks: A 3.27, 2.11, 2.65, 1.82, 2.32, 2.04, 1.59. B 2.91, 1.47, 1.95, 1.64, 0.91, 0.70, 0.52.
By network (CPA after vs before): Racer -58% (A) and -81% (B), Ubidex -10% and -61%, Popunder -20% and -17%, RichAds -13% (A). ExoClick and TrafficStars for operator A got 13 to 18% more expensive as budget was moved into them at higher volume.
What to keep in mind
- The "before" window is nine days, so weekly seasonality is not averaged out.
- PropellerAds push counts an impression on landing-page open and delivers about half of all post-view deposits at $0.07 to $0.11. Excluding it, CPA went from $4.65 to $4.07 for A (-13%) and from $4.34 to $2.50 for B (-42%).
- The launch automation went live on 30 September, so September reflects the bidder alone.
- Figures come from the operators' own spend logs and post-view attribution, not from network dashboards.
What it means for an operator
Cost per deposit from retargeting drops by a quarter or more without a bigger budget, because spend leaves publishers that do not bring deposits. Bids are updated every day across thousands of pairs with no manual sheets, and every change is logged and reversible.
Run this on your accounts: 6-week pilot