When looking at your marketing dashboard, the metric you choose doesn’t just describe performance, it shapes behavior. It’s easy to get excited about a high conversion between clicks to first time deposits (FTDs), and many teams still heavily rely on this metric to measure success. The logic behind this is understandable: an FTD represents intent, some form of commitment, and progress beyond registration.
However, in the world of performance marketing within the gaming and sportsbetting industry, not all FTDs are created equal.
Don’t get us wrong, an FTD is an exciting factor. You made it past the click, past the registration, and the deposit has reached the platform. But in the world of gaming, FTDs don’t equal commitment and it does not tell you how valuable that user will actually be.
Two users can both make a first deposit and look identical in reporting, while producing dramatically different outcomes over time. Player A church quickly after a small loss and player B deposits repeatedly, engages across products, and generates a meaningful NGR. Obviously, in an industry as competitive as gaming, you want as many player B’s as you can acquire.
When teams optimize primarily around FTD volume, they risk rewarding activity rather than value. Acquisition looks strong, but the quality of growth remains unclear. This is the same trap many teams fall into when they optimize for first deposits instead of net deposits.
Measuring NGR per FTD introduces an important layer of accountability. Instead of asking how many new users deposited, it asks how much value those depositors generated. This metric helps surface differences in traffic quality and partner performance that raw FTD counts cannot. It begins to separate users who simply convert from those who actually contribute revenue.
However, NGR per FTD still has a blind spot. It assumes the FTD population itself is the right denominator. In reality, many acquisition strategies influence not just who deposits, but who never gets that far at all, and those users still cost money.
Measuring the value only among depositors isn’t a strong enough metric and doesn’t provide value across all acquired players. Acquisition efficiency is not just about monetization, it’s about how effectively spend translates into long-term value across the entire funnel.
A campaign that produces fewer FTDs but higher NGR per user will outperform a campaign that generates many deposits but little sustained value. Without this deeper view, operators are stuck with over-investing in sources that inflate early metrics while quietly eroding profitability. This is exactly what we see when teams focus on first deposits instead of net deposits. The headline number improves, but the business outcome does not.
Metrics do not just report outcomes. They influence where budgets go, which partners scale, and which strategies survive internal review.
When success is defined by FTD volume, optimization naturally favors speed and quantity. When success is defined by NGR per FTD, optimization begins to account for quality. When success is defined by NGR per user, optimization aligns with actual business impact.
Each step moves decision-making closer to reality. The danger is stopping too early and mistaking progress for performance.
Incomplete measurement doesn’t always cause obvious failure. More often, it creates false confidence.
Dashboards look healthy. Growth appears steady. Teams feel validated in their decisions. Meanwhile, inefficiencies compound quietly because the chosen metric never reveals them.
This is why operators who move beyond surface-level KPIs often see counterintuitive results at first: traffic declines, conversion rates tighten, and budgets become more selective. But downstream value improves because the system stops rewarding noise.
The goal of performance marketing is not to maximize individual metrics.
It is to maximize value per dollar spent.
NGR per FTD and NGR per user are not competing measurements — they are signals at different depths of the funnel. Used together, they provide clarity that FTD counts alone never can.
Just as net deposits reveal more than first deposits, value-based revenue metrics reveal more than conversion-based ones.
The teams that win long term are not the ones generating the most activity.
They are the ones measuring the right outcomes — early enough to act on them.
If you're still evaluating acquisition success primarily through FTD volume, it may be work asking what your numbers are not tell you. Understanding where value comes from is often the fastest way to reduce waste and improve performance. Request a demo today to see how Intelitics can solve this problem for you.