Two campaigns, same market, same month. Campaign A delivers first-time depositors at €38. Campaign B delivers them at €61. Every dashboard, every weekly report and every media buyer’s instinct says scale A and cut B. Ninety days later, B has made more money. Here is the arithmetic, with numbers taken from a sportsbook engagement and rounded.
The dashboard view
- Campaign A — in-app network, €19,000 spend, 500 FTDs, €38 cost per FTD.
- Campaign B — paid search, €18,300 spend, 300 FTDs, €61 cost per FTD.
On cost per FTD, A wins by 38%. This is where most optimisation stops.
The cohort view
Follow both cohorts for 90 days and look at what the depositors did after the first deposit.
- Campaign A: 500 FTDs, average first deposit €22, day-30 redeposit rate 14%, 90-day NGR per FTD €31. Cohort NGR: €15,500 against €19,000 spend.
- Campaign B: 300 FTDs, average first deposit €48, day-30 redeposit rate 41%, 90-day NGR per FTD €118. Cohort NGR: €35,400 against €18,300 spend.
A loses €3,500 in 90 days. B makes €17,100. The “expensive” campaign returned almost twice its spend; the “cheap” one has not paid back and, at a 14% redeposit rate, never will.
Why cost per FTD gets this wrong
- It treats every depositor as equal. A €10 bonus hunter and a €200 recreational player count as one FTD each.
- It rewards sources that are good at producing the event you optimise for. Optimise for FTDs and the algorithm finds the cheapest FTDs, which are the ones least likely to deposit again.
- It is available on day one. Cohort value is available on day 90. Reporting drifts toward whatever is available.
The metric that survives
Cost per FTD divided by 90-day NGR per FTD — payback ratio by source. Campaign A: 1.23 (does not pay back). Campaign B: 0.52 (pays back in under seven weeks). Rank sources on this and the media plan reorganises itself. It usually means fewer sources, higher headline CPAs and a finance team that stops asking questions.
What to do on Monday
- Add source-level day-30 redeposit rate to the weekly report next to cost per FTD. Nothing else changes yet.
- Ask your platform for 90-day NGR per FTD by source for the last two quarters. If they cannot produce it, that is the first project.
- Pause the source with the lowest payback ratio for four weeks and watch what happens to blended NGR. It usually goes up.