Definition
Facebook Ads, now formally Meta Ads, is the self-serve advertising platform covering Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and the Audience Network. Campaigns are structured in three levels - campaign (objective and budget), ad set (audience, placements, budget, schedule) and ad (creative) - and delivery is driven by an auction that weighs the bid against a predicted action rate and a quality estimate, so relevance and engagement directly affect the price paid.
Meta's historical strength is interest-, behaviour- and lookalike-based targeting at very large scale, with strong automated optimisation toward a chosen conversion event. Privacy changes on iOS and in browsers reduced the precision of that targeting and the completeness of conversion reporting, which pushed the platform toward broader targeting, more reliance on its own modelling, and server-side conversion feeds via its Conversions API.
In context
Gambling advertising on Meta is tightly restricted: it requires prior written permission from Meta, is allowed only in a defined list of countries, must target adults, and the advertiser must hold the relevant local licence. Where it is permitted, operators can run real-money gaming ads under those conditions.
Where it is not, the space is worked by affiliates promoting compliant intermediate content - news, guides, entertainment angles, free-to-play or social-casino offers - that routes users onward off-platform, which sits close to policy lines and carries a standing risk of ad and account rejection.
This is the context in which "agency accounts", account farms and cloaking exist in the iGaming affiliate market: attempts to keep gambling-adjacent funnels running on a platform that largely does not want them. Those methods breach Meta's terms, lead to bans and forfeited spend, and can carry legal exposure.
The durable use of Meta for iGaming is the compliant path - licensed operators advertising with permission in approved markets, and affiliates building genuinely policy-compliant top-of-funnel audiences - not the circumvention economy.
Worked example
A licensed operator gets Meta's written permission to advertise real-money casino in two approved markets, passes the gambling-advertiser review, and runs conversion campaigns optimised on qualified deposits via the Conversions API. An affiliate in a non-approved market instead builds a sports-news audience with compliant content and never places a gambling ad on Meta itself.
Related terms
Frequently asked questions
Browse more iGaming terms in our glossary.
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