CPA in iGaming: What It Is and CPA vs Revshare

CPA in iGaming (cost per acquisition) is a payment model: the operator (a sportsbook, casino or broker) pays the affiliate or media buyer a fixed amount for each FTD, or first time deposit, they generate, no matter how much that player bets or loses afterward. In general marketing, CPA means the average cost to acquire a customer (spend divided by conversions). In iGaming affiliate jargon, “CPA” almost always refers to this specific model: a fixed payout per conversion.

CPA vs revshare

CPA competes with another common model in the industry: revshare (revenue share), where the affiliate gets a recurring share of the GGR (or NGR) generated by the player they brought in, for as long as that player stays active. CPA pays once, a known amount, with no long-term risk. Revshare pays less (or nothing) in the short term, but it can beat CPA if the player keeps betting for months or years. Some operators offer a hybrid deal (a reduced CPA plus a smaller revshare), splitting the risk between operator and affiliate.

Why the payment model changes your traffic strategy

On CPA, you have an incentive to optimize campaigns purely for FTD volume: every qualified deposit pays the same, so a player who deposits the minimum and never returns is worth as much as one who stays active for months. On revshare, the incentive is quality: what matters is bringing in players who deposit, come back and play, because that’s what sustains the recurring payout. Knowing which model is in play before you build the campaign changes what’s worth optimizing: FTD volume (CPA) or GGR per player over time (revshare).

CPA and tracking

In either model, the operator pays for what your affiliate link recorded. But to know which campaign and which creative brought those FTDs, and where more budget should go, the FTD has to come back to your tracking and to your pixel. Without that, you can’t tell whether the CPA you receive covers the cost of each campaign, or which creative brought the player who sustains your revshare.

In Track4you, that’s what Integrations do (Pro and Enterprise plans): the tracking link generates a click ID for every click, the platform returns that value in the postback, and the first deposit reaches the pixel as the FTD event, with no time limit on Track4you’s side, even if it happens weeks after the click. Credit to a campaign in Ads Manager, on the other hand, depends on Meta’s attribution window (by default, 7 days after the click or 1 day after a view).

See the iGaming S2S postback guide to understand how the FTD reaches your tracking, and the real CPL ranges by vertical to compare what a lead costs you with the CPA the operator pays for it.