Gambling Creatives with Trident Media: From Ideas to Production

Today we have Trident Media as our guest — a Ukrainian media buying company working with iGaming traffic, running campaigns on Facebook and Google. Today we're talking about creatives in gambling: what approaches exist, what elements get mixed into creatives, where to find inspiration, and how to write a brief. In short, you've got a solid cheat sheet you can rely on.

The Basics — What Is a Creative in Gambling and What Types Exist

A creative (also called a creo) is a static or dynamic image or video on the topic of online gambling or betting that encourages a user to play, incentivizes them to claim a bonus, or builds brand awareness for a specific brand in this niche.

How creatives in the gambling vertical can be categorized:

• Branded ads — when the creative puts the casino brand front and center. Public figures and celebrities are often used here to amplify the campaign and build trust. Examples: Shans from SlotoKing, Lymon featuring Yuriy Horbunov with infernal motifs from Cosmolot, or Favbet with Olya Polyakova.
• Gameplay creatives — creatives featuring specific and stylized slots, roulette, or spins.
• Emotional creatives — creatives that showcase win reactions, usually sourced from gaming streamers' streams, adapted from shoots via deepfakes, or captured from video chat recordings. The more resourceful teams even pull reactions from gaming bloggers' streams (CS case openings, Hearthstone card reveals) or celebrity reactions in online video chats.
• Bonus creatives — describe a bonus for new players or highlight bonuses tied to a specific occasion — a casino's birthday, New Year, and so on.
• Interactive creatives — a creative format where the audience interacts with games — scratching cards, spinning a slot, tapping on certain elements, and so on.

What Tools to Use for Finding Creatives?

Beyond these categories, there are also specific techniques — but to explore them, you first need to understand where to look. Our team primarily uses AdHeart, and doesn't shy away from occasionally checking the Facebook Ad Library, as well as Telegram channels where designers post creatives for sale or offer custom orders.

There are also other tools, such as AdSpy, BigSpy, and PowerAdSpy. 

How to Write a Brief for a Designer?

Ordering a creative largely depends on who you're working with — an in-house design team, a regular freelance contractor, or a different executor each time.
Let's look at the simplest scenario — a new contractor, task assignment via Telegram.

The first thing that determines how fast the work gets done is the reference you bring to the table. If you have no clear idea of what you want, you'll keep sending revision after revision while the designer wastes time guessing. So start with a reference and a clear understanding of what you want to get. Then describe which elements to keep, which to replace, and what to add. If you need copy — bonus descriptions, their wording, and translation — that's on you.

Brief the designer on the GEO where the creative will run — this helps them account for cultural context and choose the right character (if there is one in the creative). Also specify the gender to use. Don't forget to indicate which slots and visual style you prefer, since not all slots have readily available assets and something may need to be created from scratch. But if it's a popular slot, that won't be an issue.

There are also websites where you can spin slots for free and record footage.
https://slotcatalog.com or https://clashofslots.com — or simply provide a screenshot of the slot's interface as a reference.

If you're working with an in-house team or a regular designer, chances are they already have a solid feel for what needs to be done based on previous tasks, keeping revisions to a minimum.

Remember — specificity works in your favor here.

What Combinations Are Popular Right Now?

Now a few words about the combinations that are used most frequently.

Most commonly, creatives are built around the following formula: stylized slots or a wheel + win reaction + bank deposit notification.

The majority of creatives feature a bank push notification about a payout or a phone screen showing a banking app with an account balance.

A few details worth keeping in mind:

• ! if you're running on Android, make sure the push notifications in the creative aren't from iOS
• ! make sure the win amount and the payout amount shown in the creative match
• ! don't forget that the currency and language must match the GEO
• ! experiment with triggers and calls to action
• ! set accurate bonus terms to avoid getting burned by the advertiser

To back up everything above, let's take a look at a few real-market examples:

If you are looking for a job at a media buying company or partners to drive quality iGaming traffic to your product – visit Trident Media. You will also find their proprietary mobile apps built for gambling traffic. Work with the best!