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Understanding the Impact of Invalid Traffic: How Online Betting Companies Can Protect Their Ads and Drive ROI
We are honored to publish this byline by Richard Metcalf, Director of Business Development EMEA, TrafficGuard. Make sure to let us know your comments below the article.
The global pandemic has undoubtedly caused a massive increase in the number of active users that gamble regularly. A global statistic from Casino.org suggests that almost 26% of the world’s population gamble, and the global gambling market is expected to grow from $76.79 billion to an impressive $127.45 billion by 2025, according to Research and Markets.
Betting companies are having to distinguish themselves in such a highly competitive and evolving market by investing in digital campaigns and using premium ad networks. However, many of these channels may not be properly equipped to deal with invalid traffic and ad fraud, and as a result, could be losing large amounts of money every day to fraudsters.
The level of financial and competitor growth within the industry has created a strong attraction from fraudsters, and gambling companies can fall prey with little to no knowledge this is even occurring. And, with the betting industry only saturating further, companies cannot afford to suffer from low ROI and poor campaign performance.
Understanding the Risk of Ad Fraud
The risks associated with virtual gambling are unfortunately heightened with such lucrative rewards on offer and many betting companies deploy protection to help minimise the risk of fraudulent transactions or unethical behaviour. However, there is a real lack of awareness around ad fraud within gambling, and many companies don’t realise the level of impact it’s having on them.
Ad fraud is any traffic that is maliciously created and used to target companies’ advertising budgets, and is a subset of invalid traffic, meaning any advertising engagement that is outside of the target of an advertising campaign.
Here are just some of the ways ad fraud is threatening your ad campaign:
- Bots – Bots are programmed to emulate human behaviour and vary in levels of sophistication and can do anything from clicking and viewing ads to watching videos. Promo abuse bots that click on paid search ads and then run scripts to claim free bets or free spins are highly prevalent in online gaming. As these bots ‘convert’, delivering misleading marketing metrics, it means you are likely optimising campaigns using the wrong data and towards winning more bot traffic.
- Browser-Related Fraud – For example, location fraud, which involves manipulating users’ location information to match the advertiser’s targeting criterion, and domain spoofing, when bad actors monetise the traffic from low-quality sites by manipulating the domains and making it appear to come from high-quality sources.
- Misattribution Fraud – A large volume of clicks on both affiliate and mobile campaigns are faked from a mobile device, even though the user never clicked the ad. If a user with a similar fingerprint then visits the target website and installs the app, the spammer receives credit for the conversion/install and is paid commission.
In reality, the result of ad fraud is inaccurate advertising results and wasted budget. One globally-renowned online betting company that was running a Google Ads campaign found that 23% of its clicks were invalidated, which equated to 28% of its advertising spend.
Without any prior visibility or protection, 71% of the gambling company’s wasted spend was attributed to just one of its campaigns. If the company had the visibility and awareness it truly needed to be able to address the problem, there was an opportunity to save $115,000, a mixture of media spend and potential losses in bonus deposits.
All gambling companies that run Google Ads campaigns are equally as vulnerable as this online betting company, which makes it crucial for marketers operating within this industry to proactively put themselves ahead of fraudsters with increased visibility, accurate analytics, and real-time protection.
Protecting and Saving Your Budget
With confidence in your data and analytics, the saving potential for gambling companies is around 10%, 7% higher than that of other verticals. The solution to invalid traffic starts with knowing exactly how it is impacting your business, and how you can combat it. With trustworthy data that analyses every bit of traffic quality, you can easily make a business case to combat bots, browser fraud and misattribution.
With visibility into the scale of the problem, betting companies can then properly evaluate the right solutions and the partner needed to help solve it. Once you’ve identified a partner with the right skills, technology and expertise for you, they can make an immediate impact.
Elimination with Prevention
Ad fraud currently dominates many betting companies globally, but a change of hands is within reach. Luckily, stopping invalid traffic doesn’t have to be complex or costly. In fact, the money you save will almost always outweigh your investment into stopping it, ensuring you can focus solely on making new savings.
By combining proactivity with visibility, betting companies can make enormous savings and address invalid traffic with confidence and ease. With many betting companies globally only looking to scale their digital marketing further, now is the time to understand your advertising losses and prevent them to achieve maximum growth and success.
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Scientific Games today named Ovie Doro as Senior Vice President of Data, Analytics & AI, a strategic hire that accelerates the company’s investment in data science, machine learning and AI-driven insights for its global lottery business. Doro will lead the expansion of SG Analytics, Scientific Games’ enterprise analytics group, to deliver stronger product performance, personalized player experiences and measurable ROI for lottery customers across retail and digital channels.
Driving analytics-led growth for lotteries
Scientific Games says the appointment marks a step-change in how it uses data and AI to inform lottery game development, optimize player engagement and support lottery beneficiaries. As head of SG Analytics, Doro will focus on turning large volumes of market and player data into actionable intelligence for product, sales and operations teams.
“Advanced analytics is critical to how Scientific Games supports our lottery customers and drives innovation and performance for sustainable growth,” said Pat McHugh, CEO of Scientific Games. “Doro brings deep experience understanding consumer behavior and building scalable analytics and data science capabilities at global organizations, and we’re excited to have him lead this mission-critical work.”
What Doro will lead at SG Analytics
Doro’s remit will include expanding capabilities in:
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Market and channel intelligence to identify growth opportunities across regions and channels
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ROI and growth modeling to quantify the value of product and marketing investments
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Data engineering and standardized reporting to speed insights to decision-makers
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Data science, machine learning and experimentation for personalization and cross-channel optimization
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Visualization and business intelligence to make analytics accessible to commercial teams
These priorities are designed to better connect retail and digital play, enable experimentation-driven product improvements, and provide lotteries with measurable results that support their beneficiary missions.
Proven leader in enterprise analytics and ML
Doro brings more than a decade of experience building enterprise analytics and machine learning platforms for major consumer and e-commerce companies. Most recently he served as Senior Global Director of Data Science & Machine Learning Engineering at AB InBev, where he led the AI strategy for the company’s global B2B e-commerce platform. His prior leadership roles at Walmart and Jet.com focused on customer analytics, personalization, experimentation platforms and lifecycle modeling—translating applied research into production-grade analytics systems that drive growth and retention.
“Doro’s appointment strengthens our ability to translate data into action and value for our customers,” said Carrie Galvin, Chief Transformation & Strategy Officer at Scientific Games. “His experience building analytics capabilities that deliver real-world business outcomes will help us better serve lotteries through smarter products and performance insights.”
Background and reporting
Doro holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Master’s degree in Applied Mathematics from KTH Royal Institute of Technology. At Scientific Games, he will report to Carrie Galvin and collaborate closely with leaders across product, technology, sales and operations.
With this hire, Scientific Games positions SG Analytics to accelerate AI-driven product development, deepen personalization, and deliver clearer ROI for lotteries worldwide—strengthening the company’s role as a data-first partner to the lottery industry.
© 2026 Scientific Games, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
The post Scientific Games Appoints Ovie Doro as SVP of Data, Analytics & AI appeared first on Eastern European Gaming | Global iGaming & Tech Intelligence Hub.
Gambling in the USA
Scientific Games Announces Ovie Doro as Senior Vice President of Data, Analytics & AI
Scientific Games has named Ovie Doro (“Doro”) as Senior Vice President of Data, Analytics & AI, strengthening the company’s investment in advanced analytics, data science and AI-driven insights to support growth and innovation across its global lottery business.
Doro will lead the expansion of the SG Analytics group, Scientific Games’ enterprise analytics practice that combines deep expertise with business intelligence tools, data and insights to support decision-making and increased performance of the company’s lottery products and services. His appointment advances the company’s industry-leading use of data and AI to help guide development of lottery games and technologies, enhance player experiences and deliver measurable, ROI-driven value for lottery customers—helping optimize performance in support of their beneficiary missions—across retail and digital channels.
“Advanced analytics is critical to how Scientific Games supports our lottery customers and drives innovation and performance for sustainable growth,” said Pat McHugh, Chief Executive Officer of Scientific Games. “Doro brings deep experience understanding consumer behavior and building scalable analytics and data science capabilities at global organizations, and we’re excited to have him lead this mission-critical work.”
Doro has more than a decade of experience in architecting and scaling enterprise analytics and machine learning platforms across global consumer and e-commerce organizations. Most recently, he served as Senior Global Director of Data Science & Machine Learning Engineering at AB InBev, where he pioneered the AI strategy for the company’s global B2B e-commerce platform, transforming it into an AI-enabled ecosystem that drove revenue growth and partner value across multiple international markets.
Doro has held senior data science leadership roles at Walmart and Jet.com, where he led teams responsible for customer analytics, experimentation platforms, personalization and lifecycle modeling. His work focused on translating applied research into production-grade analytics and machine learning systems that supported growth, retention and omnichannel engagement.
At Scientific Games, Doro will advance SG Analytics by translating data into action across market and channel intelligence, competitive and industry insights, ROI and growth modeling, data engineering, data science and machine learning, supported by standardized reporting and visualization. He will also play a central role in enabling analytics-driven product growth, personalization, experimentation and cross-channel optimization that connects retail and digital play.
Doro will report to Carrie Galvin, Chief Transformation & Strategy Officer of Scientific Games, and will work closely with leaders across product, technology, sales and operations organizations.
“Doro’s appointment strengthens our ability to translate data into action and value for our customers,” said Galvin. “His experience building analytics capabilities that deliver real-world business outcomes will help us better serve lotteries through smarter products and performance insights.”
Doro holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Master’s degree in Applied Mathematics from KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
© 2026 Scientific Games, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
The post Scientific Games Announces Ovie Doro as Senior Vice President of Data, Analytics & AI appeared first on Americas iGaming & Sports Betting News.
Gamblers Connect
Gamblers Connect has officially launched its iHub, a new dedicated page created to be your ultimate connection to the iGaming world
Gamblers Connect, the award-winning iGaming media and affiliate platform, is proud to announce the official launch of the iHub, a new dedicated page created to be your ultimate connection to the iGaming world.
The iHub exclusively features companies that have an official partnership or verified collaboration with Gamblers Connect, ensuring that every listing meets our editorial, commercial, and quality standards. To achieve this feat, we have successfully organized the complex web of the iGaming industry into a single, centralized location.
The sole purpose of the iHub is to function as a comprehensive database that allows anyone in iGaming, whether it is affiliates, operators, or players, to find the right solutions in one place. Unlike open directories, the iHub is a curated environment, only trusted, officially partnered companies are included, with no self-submissions or automated listings. The iHub, just as the industry itself, is built upon four essential pillars that cover every facet of the iGaming realm, including Affiliates, Game Providers, B2B Providers and Payment Solutions.
Every company featured within the iHub is manually reviewed and onboarded through an official partnership with Gamblers Connect, ensuring accuracy, relevance, and long-term value for the industry.
Gjorgje Ristikj, Founder of Gamblers Connect, said: “The launch of the iHub perfectly reflects our goal to be the most transparent source of information in the iGaming world. It marks a new milestone in our history, as it represents a step forward in our ongoing mission to bring clarity to the industry. By launching the iHub, we unite the four essential pillars in a transparent and centralised manner, giving our community the ultimate resources to navigate the iGaming landscape.”
The post Gamblers Connect has officially launched its iHub, a new dedicated page created to be your ultimate connection to the iGaming world appeared first on Eastern European Gaming | Global iGaming & Tech Intelligence Hub.
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