Updated in 2026, fifteen years later.
Bonus hunting means hunting for bonuses. In the traffic-arbitrage slang of the early 2010s, we used the term for almost free PPC traffic obtained through ad-platform coupons.
Over fifteen years, the search meaning of the term was hijacked. Today, a search for “bonus hunting” returns mainly betting, casinos, and antifraud rather than AdWords coupons. So first, a short explanation of the current meaning; below it, I will leave the original 2011 post for history.
Bonus Hunting Today: Casinos and Betting
Today, a bonus hunter registers with a bookmaker or casino for a welcome bonus or free bet, meets the promotion’s minimum conditions, withdraws the money, and moves on to the next platform. The bookmaker needs a player who makes repeat deposits. The bonus hunter is not interested in that.
The point, by the way, is exactly the same as it was for media buyers: find a place that gives money for registering and milk it until the trouble starts. In 2011, that meant Google, Facebook, and MS adCenter; now it means gambling and betting.
How a Bonus Hunter Hurts a Media Buyer
I am interested in this not from the hunter’s side, but from the side of the person running traffic. In the gambling vertical, a bonus hunter is an unpleasant lead: they register, take the bonus, make the minimum deposit, and disappear.
The advertiser looks at the cohort, sees no repeat deposits, cuts the payout, shaves some leads, or may simply ask you to stop. This is not always fraud; sometimes it is just shitty traffic quality. I covered how such decisions look from the advertiser’s side in the rejection rules.
Often, the media buyer brings in this audience themselves. A creative saying “100% registration bonus, free bet for everyone” will convert bonus hunters too. CTR is high, registration CR is high too, and then it gets sad.
If multi-accounting is added to the mix, antifraud links profiles by device fingerprints, payment methods, KYC, and behavior. An antidetect browser does not cancel that mechanism. The same cat-and-mouse game as with traffic sources, except now it makes sense to root for the cat.
What About Ad Coupons?
Ad-platform coupons have not gone anywhere. Google Ads still offers promotions: an advertiser meets the conditions, spends a certain amount, and receives credit for future expenses.
But this is now an ad discount, not a source of free traffic. Trying to bypass restrictions with a pile of accounts violates the ad platform’s rules, and the old adCenter bugs that let people pour in coupons forever are gone.
So there is no need to rewrite the 2011 obituary: coupon bonus hunting died, and the bookmakers picked up the term.
Original Post, June 5, 2011
Below is the original text. Only obvious typos and punctuation were fixed; the meaning and numbers are preserved.
I received several questions. I will add a definition to the CPA Glossary and write a little more detail.
Bonus hunting, hunting for bonuses, was when coupons could be used to extract almost free traffic from advertising systems.
An account was created, topped up with coupons, and the traffic was poured into CPA systems. It worked very well several years ago.
- AdWords could be topped up by several hundred dollars.
- As far as I remember, YSM! could be topped up by 100 USD.
- Facebook could be topped up by as much as 500 USD and the traffic poured out at a minimum ROI of 200-300%.
- adCenter had a software bug: you could keep topping up an account for a very long time with free 50 or 75 USD coupons. In effect, you could extract large amounts of free traffic from it. An account launched for 5 USD could yield several thousand dollars.
Bonus hunting with tier-1 PPC has now become almost impossible: too many complications and too little benefit. There are also far fewer Facebook coupons, and they are less useful now. The cost per click falls much more slowly.
So I think that even then, bonus hunting was no more than history.