Push ads are advertising messages delivered as notifications to a user's device or browser, appearing outside any webpage in the notification tray or on the lock screen.
Definition
Push ads are advertising messages delivered as notifications to a user's device or browser, appearing outside any webpage in the notification tray or on the lock screen. They come in two forms: classic web push, sent to users who opted in to notifications from a publisher site, and in-page push, which mimics the notification format inside a webpage and does not require an opt-in.
Each ad has a small icon, a short title and a line of body text, and clicks go straight to a landing page.
Push is a high-volume, low-cost format popular in performance verticals including iGaming. It reaches users when they are not actively browsing, subscriber bases in cheap GEOs are enormous, and CPCs are low.
The trade-off is quality: much push inventory is noisy, with accidental clicks, stale subscriber lists and fraud, so aggressive source-level filtering is essential.
In context
Running push for iGaming means treating source (zone) optimisation as the core activity. A campaign starts broad, accumulates spend, and the buyer reads a zone-level report to blacklist the zones that produce clicks but no registrations and whitelist the few that convert.
Creatives fatigue fast on push — the same icon and title shown repeatedly to a subscriber base lose click-through within days — so a constant supply of fresh creatives is required to keep a campaign alive at scale.
Compliance and platform considerations apply. In-page push does not need an opt-in, which is why it carries gambling inventory that classic push networks may restrict, but it also invites lower-quality traffic.
Some markets and browsers have tightened notification permissions, shrinking classic web-push reach. Buyers evaluate a push network on its compliant gambling inventory by GEO, its anti-fraud, the granularity of its targeting and reporting (down to zone and subscriber age), and whether its subscriber lists are fresh or recycled.
Push is a workhorse format for Tier-2 and Tier-3 casino acquisition, less so for Tier-1 where compliant, higher-intent channels dominate.
Worked example
A buyer runs an in-page push casino campaign in Peru. After $700 of spend, a zone report shows 40 of 300 zones produced 85% of registrations at a $22 cost per FTD, while the rest averaged $180. Whitelisting those 40 and rotating five fresh creatives weekly holds the campaign at a $30 blended cost per FTD for two months before it needs a new creative direction.
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