Is GEO expansion worth it for sports betting ads?
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So I’ve been fiddling around with sports betting ads for a while, and lately I’ve noticed more people talking about GEO expansion like it’s some magic switch. You know how it is—someone says, “Just expand into more regions and scale,” and it sounds simple enough until you actually try it. That got me thinking about whether it genuinely helps or if it’s just another one of those things that works for some people and makes the rest of us lose money.
For me, the curiosity started when I kept hitting a ceiling in my usual GEOs. The traffic was still decent, but the CPAs were climbing and the player quality felt random. Some days it looked good, other days it felt like I was spending for nothing. I figured maybe the audience was just saturated, or maybe the competition got sharper. Either way, it pushed me into wondering if expanding GEOs could give me that fresh pool of players I seemed to be missing.
My first attempt was pretty messy. I picked a couple of countries just because I heard other affiliates had “good results” there. Not exactly scientific, I know. I went in blind, didn’t adjust my creatives much, kept almost the same targeting, and assumed the traffic behavior would be similar. Spoiler: it wasn’t. The clicks came in cheaper, sure, but the deposit rates tanked. At one point I seriously questioned if GEO expansion was just a polite way of saying “go burn more budget.”
Eventually I slowed down and tried to figure out what went wrong. The biggest thing I noticed was that every GEO has its own vibe. People respond differently not just to the ad but to how the whole betting flow feels. Some places care about bonuses. Others hate too much flash. Some audiences convert only after hours of browsing. Others jump in instantly if the landing page feels familiar to them. I realized I couldn’t treat GEO expansion like adding extra toppings to a pizza. It was more like stepping into a new neighborhood where you don’t really know the rules yet.
So the second time around, I did it differently. I picked fewer GEOs and looked at them one by one instead of dumping all of them into the same bucket. I also started with lighter budgets rather than trying to scale too fast. The surprising part is that once I adjusted my creatives to feel more “native” to that region, the CPAs dropped and the retention numbers improved. Nothing crazy, but enough for me to think, okay, this might actually be worth it.
Something else I figured out along the way is that the traffic source matters more when you expand. What performs well in one GEO can totally flop in another, even on the same platform. I used to assume a strong audience in one region would translate nicely into the next, but nope. Sometimes the winner was a smaller ad placement I barely used before. Other times the lookalikes worked better than interest targeting. It honestly felt like a trial-and-error puzzle, but once you find the right combination, the pattern becomes easier to repeat.
There was one resource I stumbled across that helped me frame my approach better. Someone in another forum shared an article about GEO expansion in sports betting campaigns, and it had a few points that made me rethink how I should test each region before scaling.
What really clicked for me after reading more and testing more is that GEO expansion isn’t instantly profitable. It’s more like planting seeds. You check the soil, water it regularly, see how it reacts, and then slowly increase the effort once you see the sprouting. If you try to scale too fast, it backfires. If you take your time building momentum, it actually becomes a long-term growth path instead of a short-term gamble.
So, is GEO expansion worth it for sports betting ads? I’d say yes—but only if you treat it like a learning process instead of expecting overnight wins. The biggest mistake is copying someone else’s GEO list or settings and thinking it’ll work out the same. What worked for me ended up being a mix of slow testing, watching how people from each region reacted, and adjusting creatives in a way that felt natural to them.
If you’re thinking about trying it, start small, keep your expectations realistic, speak to the audience in the way they naturally browse, and don’t be afraid to ditch a GEO that refuses to convert. Sometimes the hidden gems are in places nobody talks about.