Cloudbet

About the Brand

Cloudbet is one of the longest-running crypto sportsbooks, operating since 2013. Known for high betting limits, deep markets across football, NFL, NBA, MMA, and esports, and billions paid out in BTC, ETH, and stablecoins. 

Target Audience: crypto-active sports bettors, skewing toward high-frequency live bettors and pre-match value hunters in Tier-1 markets. 

Growth Stage: Enterprise / Established Operator.

The Challenge 

Acquire higher-quality, longer-LTV sports bettors at scale — without Google's or Meta's precision targeting and without diluting brand equity through low-quality inventory.

Four obstacles made this harder than it sounds:

• Tier-1 reach restrictions. The categories Cloudbet serves are tightly restricted on every major mainstream platform. Workaround tactics like cloaking and brand-bid arbitrage are short-lived.
• Affiliate quality drift. Cloudbet's affiliate channel had matured, but incremental affiliate volume was coming with declining LTV and rising CPA — a classic late-stage affiliate pattern.
• Inventory mismatch. Generic open-exchange programmatic surfaced Cloudbet ads on inventory that didn't reflect the brand's premium positioning.
• Attribution opacity. Existing channels could prove clicks but rarely tied them back to wallet behavior — leaving the team unable to optimize beyond the click.

Why Blockchain-Ads

Cloudbet's existing stack before Blockchain-Ads could only deliver volume but not the right bettor at the right moment. The team needed to surge spending around Premier League, UFC, and NFL windows, so they decided to leverage Blockchain-Ads to access:

• Wallet-level audience precision — the ability to target wallets with confirmed sportsbook or exchange behavior.
• Premium curated inventory — a Web3 publisher network whose contextual surroundings matched Cloudbet’s brand positioning.
• Event-aware bidding — ability to shift spend toward high-intent windows (kickoff hours, fight nights, playoff series).
• Direct attribution back to wallet behavior, not just clicks. 

Unique Capabilities Leveraged

• On-chain wallet behavioral segments — active sportsbook depositors, exchange-funded wallets, and stablecoin power-users.
• Lookalike modelling from Cloudbet's own depositor seed wallets with matching transaction patterns to existing high-value players.
• Privacy-safe wallet retargeting — re-engaging visitors and connect-but-no-deposit wallets without third-party cookies.
• Real-time event triggers—bid surges aligned to sport calendars (Premier League match days, UFC PPV cards, NFL Sundays).

Across 9 months, the campaign moved every key metric:

Before Blockchain-Ads → After Blockchain-Ads

• CPA (per Sports-Bettor FTD): ~$350 → $169
• CTR: 0.10% → 0.25%
•  Click → FTD: 0.60% → 1.45%
•   90-day ROAS: 1.1x → 2.3x

Sports-bettor cohorts acquired through Blockchain-Ads showed 34% higher 30-day bet frequency and 22% higher AOV than the brand's blended baseline.

Cloudbet's blended paid CPA broke below the $200 mark. The savings were redirected into higher-quality creative production and a brand marketing layer the team had previously been unable to fund.

Phase 1 — Learning (Month 1)

Objective: Identify which wallet segments and sport-context creatives drove the strongest deposit behavior.

• Five segments tested: Stablecoin power users, CEX depositors, sportsbook lookalikes (seeded from Cloudbet's CRM), DeFi traders, and NFT collectors (control).
• Eight creative variants — split between live-betting urgency creative and welcome-bonus creative.
• Geo focus: Western Europe (50%), LATAM (25%), and Canada + APAC (25%).

What they found:

• The Cloudbet CRM-seeded lookalike segment converted 3.1x the rate of the NFT control. This became the primary segment for Phase 2.
• Stablecoin power-users delivered the highest AOV per FTD; CEX depositors delivered the highest volume.
• The "live odds shifting now" creative outperformed the "100% bonus" creative on FTD rate by 38%.

Phase 2 — Consideration (Month 2–3)

Objective: Concentrate budget on winning segments and tighten creative.

Actions:

• 75% of budget reallocated to lookalike + CEX-depositor segments.
• Creative cycle shortened to weekly; vertical video added for top 3 sports.
• Funnel rebuilt: wallet-aware welcome screen replaced the legacy email-first flow for wallet-connected users, cutting first-step drop-off by ~31%.

Performance Improvements:

• CTR lifted 0.18% → 0.27%.
• CPC compressed $3.10 → $2.34.
• Click-to-FTD rate climbed 0.92% → 1.43%.

Phase 3 — Acquisition + Retargeting (Month 4–9)

Objective: Scale during sport-calendar peaks and lock in retention through retargeting.

Actions:

• Daily spend lifted 3.6x vs. learning-phase baselines.
• Wallet-based and behavioral retargeting — connected wallets that browsed without betting and registered users who hadn't deposited within 5 days.
• Event bidding activated around UEFA, NFL Sunday, and UFC PPV windows.
• Geo expansion into Argentina, Brazil, and Vietnam — all three cleared the team's CPA threshold in less than 21 days.

Outcome:

• Steady-state CPA settled at $169.
• Retargeted cohorts converted at 2.6x the cold-cohort rate.
• 39.2M+ impressions delivered.