Google Adwords Online Casino Scam in South Africa

[DaftDog]

Are you a casino affiliate targeting the South African market? If you are then you are being screwed by some of the affiliate programs you may be promoting. Let me elaborate.

Google Adwords does not allow online casino related ads in South Africa. They do allow Sports Betting and Lottery with certain restrictions.



That's why online casino advertising via Adwords in South Africa does not happen, or should not happen. However these two Adwords account owners have discovered a way to fool the Adwords ad approval team.



They both use the same geo-targeting technique to fool Google Adwords. I'll use the first listing, which is linked to hxxp://www.sacasino.info/ to explain how they do it.

This is the page that is seen when viewed from a South African ip address and shows a listing of online casinos:



This is the content that is shown when the same url is viewed from a non South African ip address and shows a listing of land based casinos, and that is how they fool the Adwords team.



The two sites concerned (hxxp://www.sacasino.info/, hxxp://www.southafricacasino.info/) require a big budget to keep their Adwords campaigns running. So either these sites are owned by affiliate programs who could afford such a big budget, or the actual site owners of these sites are having their campaigns sponsored by one or more of the casino / affiliate programs listed.

Myself and other concerned affiliates have contacted Google Adwords via the correct channels to point out these ads but our complaints have thus far fallen on deaf ears.

All we are asking for is a level playing field, whats fair for one should be fair for all.

I am trying to gather support to fight this and would appreciate your support if you are an affiliate that is being negatively and unfairly affected by this. If you promote any of the casinos that appear in the top three positions on any of those websites I ask you to contact your aff manager and complain about this unfair practice which is affecting your bottom line too.

I will be contacting them and asking them to help put a stop to this. I will even consider removing the listed casinos from my websites if nothing is done about this in the next few days.

The listed casinos are Yebo Casino, Springbok Casino, Thunderbolt Casino, White Lotus Casino, Apollo Slots, Crazy Winners, Jackpot Cash Casino, Casino Midas, Casino.com, Mansion Casino, Gday Casino.

[playcasino1]

I strongly agree & support you DaftDog!
We all spend huge some of money, time and resources on our sites and to have some sneaky shyster come along and screw us all, is certainly not on!!! This truly speaks volumes about the casinos who are being promoted on these ad-word sites ~ Oh wait - Ethics don't exist in this industry !

We will alert the casinos to this thread and if they dont take any action soon, we are happy to stop promoting them too.

[hublot]

This is nothing new... its called Black Hat PPC and its been around for years and pretty much in every country where you're not allowed to promote gambling...

[Triple7]

Yep, I saw it in more countries where you can advertise for online gambling. Even in countries where it's not allowed. I agree it's annoying and programs should facilitate playing the game fair.

[Nocturnal]

I'm in agreement that we should do what we can to stop this.

It's clear that they're gaming the system and should not be permitted to do so.

I urge affiliate managers reading this thread to suspend this affiliates accounts with their programs.

[DaftDog]

This is nothing new... its called Black Hat PPC and its been around for years and pretty much in every country where you're not allowed to promote gambling...

Well its new to me in South Africa and I have been in this business since 2006. Just because it happens does not mean you need to accept it.

[DaftDog]

I'm in agreement that we should do what we can to stop this.

It's clear that they're gaming the system and should not be permitted to do so.

I urge affiliate managers reading this thread to suspend this affiliates accounts with their programs.

The affiliate managers concerned are probably going to do nothing about it unless us affiliates force them to do so.

[Topboss]

I agree that it is just plain unethical, and I hope that the relevant casinos being advertised by these sites take action. If the casinos condone it then how are we ever going to clean up this industry!

[DaftDog]

...and another one joins the ranks: hxxp://www.southafricancasinodirectory.com. Redirects straight to casino dot com when visited from South Africa (lol).

Good news is that they're all making the cpc bid price more expensive for each other.

[theGman]

...and another one joins the ranks: hxxp://www.southafricancasinodirectory.com. Redirects straight to casino dot com when visited from South Africa (lol).

Good news is that they're all making the cpc bid price more expensive for each other.

Does Google have a South African office ? If so they need to be alerted to the fact that they are facilitating and allowing the law to be broken in the RSA. Perhaps enlightening them to this fact might motivate them to do something re the matter.

[DaftDog]

Does Google have a South African office ? If so they need to be alerted to the fact that they are facilitating and allowing the law to be broken in the RSA. Perhaps enlightening them to this fact might motivate them to do something re the matter.

Good luck in trying to find any contact details for Google offices anywhere in the world other than their frustrating call centres and contact forms.

[Triple7]

The affiliate managers concerned are probably going to do nothing about it unless us affiliates force them to do so.

For them it's money and the webmaster of the affiliate website is responsible for what he's doing at Google Adwords. I guess some of them also consider it as just a breach of Google-terms and not something illegal.

Like with the hacker issue. I blacklist programs cooperating with them. I am sure they don't give a damn if I blacklist them or not. But if thousands of people (would) do it, it would be another kettle of fish for sure.

[yebocasino]

The OP failed to mention that before he started complaining about these campaigns he in fact was doing these campaigns himself. The website he was using was: www(dot)casinosa.info. After not being able to successfully run these campaigns himself, he decided that if he could not run them then no one was allowed to. He also falsely accused us of owning these sites which i informed him this was not the case.. i requested him to please contact some of the other casinos listed on the site to check with them who owned the sites but he ignored the request...

[DaftDog]

The OP failed to mention that before he started complaining about these campaigns he in fact was doing these campaigns himself. The website he was using was: www(dot)casinosa.info. After not being able to successfully run these campaigns himself, he decided that if he could not run them then no one was allowed to. He also falsely accused us of owning these sites which i informed him this was not the case.. i requested him to please contact some of the other casinos listed on the site to check with them who owned the sites but he ignored the request...

My response can be read here: https://www.gpwa.org/forum/yebo-casi...tml#post831152

[yebocasino]

Stop derailing, please explain in this thread as the are two separate issues. If this was indeed just a test please post your findings as you went to such lengths to try and prove that these campaigns were negatively effecting your revenues.

[DaftDog]

Stop derailing, please explain in this thread as the are two separate issues. If this was indeed just a test please post your findings as you went to such lengths to try and prove that these campaigns were negatively effecting your revenues.

lol, GFY.

[yebocasino]

lol, GFY.

I'm sorry but this is not an appropriate response and in fact extremely rude and very unprofessional. Please post your findings of your Adwords tests proving how it effected your revenues..

[DaftDog]

I'm sorry but this is not an appropriate response and in fact extremely rude and very unprofessional. Please post your findings of your Adwords tests proving how it effected your revenues..

GFY = Go fan yourself because you're getting very hot under the collar.

I have posted my Yebo Adwords stats in the other post referred to above.

[DaftDog]

I'm sorry but this is not an appropriate response and in fact extremely rude and very unprofessional.

I feel the same way about my stats being trimmed.

[yebocasino]

GFY = Go fan yourself because you're getting very hot under the collar.

I have posted my Yebo Adwords stats in the other post referred to above.

Daftdog, this actually is no laughing matter and we all know what you meant by GFY.
If it meant "Go fan yourself", why did you feel the need to edit it, twice??