Contextual advertising for selling CS:GO cases (gray segment)
CS:GO cases for sale (gray segment)
Project: a site for selling and opening CS:GO cases
Our team was tasked with promoting a site that specializes in selling and opening cases with skins for the game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. This topic automatically falls under strict regulation, as its structure is similar to gambling. This makes it difficult to run ads on Google Ads and other popular services.
Main problems:
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Google's strict restrictions on unlicensed gambling;
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quick blocking of advertising accounts;
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risks of losing budget without results.
Challenges and issues
A website with CS:GO cases faces a major obstacle - moderation algorithms easily detect the words "cases", "skins" or "CS:GO". Because of this, even well-designed campaigns are often blocked. In addition, the lack of legal confirmation of activity further increases the risk of advertising rejection.
Promotion actions and strategy
To circumvent the limitations and reach the target audience, we used a comprehensive approach:
1. Cloaking
A "white" site was created with a blog about video games, guides, and CS:GO reviews — that's what the moderators saw.
Real users gained access to a commercial platform with cases and skin unlocking.
2. Alternative advertising platforms
In addition to Google Ads, we tested TikTok Ads and Telegram ads, where moderation is much more lenient.
3. Query masking
Instead of the obvious phrases "CS:GO cases", alternatives were used:
"gift cases for gamers";
"surprises for shooter fans."
Avoiding direct mention of "CS:GO," we used abbreviations and euphemisms.
4. Targeting and segmentation
The advertisement targeted gamers aged 18–30.
A special emphasis is placed on users who actively use Twitch and YouTube.
5. Account rotation
For stability, new accounts were launched every 2–3 weeks to avoid permanent bans.
Campaign results
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CTR (click-through rate): 5.8% on average due to narrow targeting.
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Profitability: for every dollar, they received about $4.5 in net profit.
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Traffic: a steady stream of about 10,000 visitors per month from various platforms.
Conclusions:
Promoting grey niche sites like CS:GO cases requires a non-standard approach. Standard Google Ads tools often don't work, so the key elements of success were:
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creative texts without forbidden words,
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technical solutions like cloaking,
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using alternative advertising platforms.
This case proves that even in complex topics, you can achieve high results if you apply a flexible strategy and combine different promotion channels.
The basis of the team
Denis
Denis is the voice of our company. He spends hours making sure that our clients feel cared for and enjoy their interactions with the company. If you have any suggestions or ideas, you can write to us.
Christina
Khrystyna is responsible for the product concept, manages the creative team. Her task is to help the customer formulate a message for the target audience and visually package it so that it is correctly perceived.
Eugene
Evgeny is the main creative engine of our team. Logical thinking, analytical mindset, but at the same time can always impress our clients with a unique approach to business.
Daria
Daria's job is to formulate the client's objectives and desires, and then communicate them to the team of specialists. The project manager has to gather his or her will into a fist and finish the task with shocking force.
Nikita
Responsibility, broad horizons, marketing vision and many more qualities that can be said about Nikita. A unique tandem is the quality and speed with which Nikita performs her work.
Karina
A native speaker and expert in foreign languages with over 10 years of experience in writing texts for various tasks. She will study your tone of voice and craft the perfect text for each specific need.
Contextual advertising for selling CS:GO cases (gray segment)
This case study focuses on the promotion of a website specializing in the sale and opening of skin cases for the game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. The project operates in a niche that advertising platforms perceive as close to gambling, so any activity in Google Ads is associated with additional risks and strict moderation. The audience is as targeted as possible: gamers who are well-versed in the mechanics of cases and are looking for new services for the game.
The topic of “CS:GO cases” automatically attracts the attention of algorithms that check ads and landing pages. The standard approach to contextual advertising in such a niche often ends in quick rejections, blockings, and loss of budget without results. That is why the promotion strategy was built around careful work with wording, audience segmentation, and gradual hypothesis testing instead of aggressive launches.
Project: sales and case opening platform for CS:GO players
The online pharmacy project started with an already working website and some organic traffic, but the contextual advertising channel was not yet used systematically. The client wanted to receive a managed flow of requests from users who enter specific drug names, product groups, or symptoms in the search that indicate an intention to purchase a medicine.
The basic goals were to increase the number of transactions, increase the volume of high-quality search traffic, and build a model for the return on advertising investments. For an online pharmacy, it is important not only to bring people to the site, but also to retain them thanks to the correct catalog structure, availability of assortment, and a convenient ordering system.
The contextual advertising strategy was based on understanding which drug categories were a priority for the business, which queries brought the most value, and which audience segments had the highest probability of repeat purchases. This allowed us to immediately identify the core around which advertising activity was formed.
Niche complexities: advertising platform limitations and risks of blocking
The subject of CS:GO cases falls into the group of “gray” segments, as it resembles the mechanics of gambling. Advertising platforms closely monitor such projects, limit mentions of keywords and react harshly to any violations of policies. Even a correctly configured campaign can be rejected if the texts or content of the page raise doubts from the point of view of rules and security.
An additional complication is the risk of blocking advertising accounts. Attempts to work by inertia, copying standard approaches to e-commerce, in a similar niche often lead to loss of access to the account and stopping all campaigns. That is why the strategy for promoting CS:GO cases requires careful planning, selective work with semantics, and constant monitoring of the platform's reaction to creatives and texts.
Google Ads Strategy: Working with Gaming Audiences and Semantics
The strategy focused on the target gaming audience, mostly between the ages of eighteen and thirty. These users actively spend time playing shooters, following streams on Twitch, and watching CS:GO content on video platforms. The ads were designed to speak to them in a language they understand, but without directly duplicating “sensitive” terms that could trigger moderation.
The semantic core consisted of queries related to gifts for gamers, the topic of shooters, interest in in-game items and entertainment. Instead of a direct focus exclusively on the phrases “CS:GO cases”, more general formulations were used that maintained a connection with the product, but did not provoke unnecessary triggers in the system. For each group of search queries, their own ads were configured, and landing pages were maximally consistent with the audience's expectations.
Results: 5.8% CTR, about 10,000 visitors and ROI up to 4.5
During active campaigns, the average click-through rate for ads reached approximately five-point eight-tenths percent. This CTR indicates that the ads were reaching interested users who recognized their interests in the texts and creatives and expected to see a similar product. For a niche with increased control from the platforms, this is a significant result.
Traffic during peak periods was kept at the level of about ten thousand visitors per month from various sources, where contextual campaigns played an important role. Due to the combination of a relatively small budget and clearly configured connections “request - ad - page”, it was possible to achieve profitability of up to four and a half dollars of net income for every dollar of advertising costs. It was this economy that made the project resistant to seasonal fluctuations and allowed to plan for scaling.
Case study conclusions for gaming projects in the gray segment
The practice of promoting CS:GO cases shows that even projects from the gray segment can use contextual advertising as a working channel if the strategy takes into account platform limitations and audience specifics. The key role is played not by one tool, but by a combination of well-thought-out semantics, appropriate landing pages, and careful hypothesis testing with constant analytics of the results.
For other gaming projects, this case can be a guideline in planning advertising activities. Focusing on understanding player behavior, segmentation by interests, and controlling campaign economics allows you to avoid chaotic launches and build promotion around real numbers. The UP-NP team in this case remained more of a strategic partner, while the center of the story is the case sales service itself and the achieved performance indicators.