Every day, people consume a lot of information, whether it is a news article, social media feed, or simple advertising. And gambling advertising is a new trend in the world market that strongly impacts customer engagement. Thus, it is crucial to understand how people are engaged with gambling advertising and its effect on them.
In this analytical article, the LoginCasino experts will provide you with a clear explanation of customers engagement and its working algorithms. Additionally, we show you the consumption of gambling advertising and sponsorship in the UK and their impacts while considering the changes in people’s gambling behavior. And by the end of this article, you will get to know the most common ways that use iGaming companies to take customers to the next level and how to increase engagement of the potential or existing clients.
What is customer engagement?
To start understanding the essence of customers’ engagement with gambling ads, it is worth learning the definition of customer engagement. This term means a strategy that every gambling business develops to increase the high level of attractiveness of their potential or existing customers, turning them into a needed conversation rate. Putting this concept in simple words is an interaction between a customer and an organization through different communication channels, like email, social media services, television, newspapers, magazines, etc.
Usually, this process is a two-way conversation, where content takes a position as a medium. The medium ensures that a company can initiate and maintain the conversation. Moreover, if a gambling brand adds machine learning and applies AI (Artificial Intelligence), it is getting easier to analyze and predict customers’ behavior and make suitable recommendations.
From the company’s perspective, this objective approach brings its fruits in terms of conversation rate and revenue, while customers can also benefit from this by having what they need.
For every gambling business, the concept of customer engagement should be taken for the first place because the companies that use it are more profitable. According to Gallup, fully engaged clients present a 23% growth in profitability and revenue compared to average customers. Therefore, it is worth knowing how customer engagement works in practice.
How does customer engagement marketing work?
Suppose you are a gambling business owner or have just started your own iGaming company. In that case, it is highly recommended to get to know the methodologies that customer engagement uses and how these approaches work.
As mentioned above, customer engagement is an interaction between a client and a company. Thus, there are four primary methodologies of customer engagement that many companies apply to boost their conversion rate:
- Profiling. As an irreplaceable part of big data analytics, profiling is a process of processing data available from existing sources and collecting statistics or informational summaries of that data.
- Dynamic filtering. This approach is specifically designed to observe your customers’ behavior and analyze their needs to move forward, and give them what they are in need of.
- Opportunity for engagement. After collecting, analyzing, and filtering the information, the companies are eager to apply the received data to their customers. The marketers distribute content to the audience, hoping that it hooks someone. This content usually includes offering support or giving personal advice.
- Statistics and data Analysis. From this methodology’s name, it is evident that gambling companies use statistical data to create individual and personalized offers. This approach was designed to help these companies in creating content that would grab potential customers’ attention and turn them into the conversion rate.
And at this point, it is necessary to show you what are the primary sources of customers engagement with gambling advertising in a specific country (the United Kingdom).
The consumption of gambling ads in the UK
In 2020, Yonder Consulting, under the regulation of the UK Gambling Commission, conducted a survey, which included approximately 8 000 people from the UK. All the interviewed persons were of the age between 18 and 65+. Six thousand participants participated in this massive survey while touching on the topic of gambling advertising, marketing, and social media. The survey was conducted in 2019 and lasted the whole year, but the end result was released in 2020. At the moment, it is the latest survey that can show a real picture of how customers are engaged with gambling advertising.
The online survey displays that 85% of the participants have ever seen or met any advertising and sponsorship. All of this information that they received came from the three main sources of distribution of information, which you can check out in the chart below.
However, it is necessary to divide these sources into more small pieces and indicate what the most powerful media channel that has the greatest impact is. The data provided on the UK Gambling Commission website displays the following statistics:
- Gambling advertising broadcasting on TV (76%);
- Gambling advertisements published on websites (56%);
- Gambling advertising on billboards and posters (56%);
- Gambling advertisements on social media websites (49%);
- Gambling adverts shown within app games (48%).
Talking about gambling sponsorship, the situation is slightly different:
- On the TV, radio, or podcast (67%);
- On sports merchandise (60%);
- In sports venues (59%);
- Associations with sporting competitions (56%);
- Gambling advertisements online other platforms (56%).
So, it is clearly seen that most customers are engaged with gambling advertising via the traditional way of distribution of information, namely TV.
If we go deeper and consider the age of the participants and their gender, then you will get a more precise picture of what can be your target group. The Yonder Consulting company provided comparative data highlighting what percentage of people of certain ages and gender got involved in gambling ads ever or at least once a week.
The green bar indicates people who have ever seen gambling advertising, and the blue bar covers participants that seen the ads at least once a week. These bars clearly display that most people who get involved in gambling ads are men (88% and 66%), while the percentage of women is on the level of 66% and 52%, respectively.
Talking about people’s age, it is worth noting that people between the age of 35 and 65+ consisted the predominant part. At the same time, people from the age of 18 to 35 are less involved in this kind of advertising.
At this point, we are going to analyze what type of advertising is more efficient to get new customers and convince them to spend their money: traditional approach or online ads.
Read more: TikTok Gambling ads
Traditional vs. online advertising
From the mentioned above charts and statistical data, it is getting obvious that most iGaming companies in the UK put a lot of effort into gambling advertising through the traditional way of advertising. Even though this way is widely popular and insanely invested, it is advisable to take a close look at online gambling advertising that also has great chances to meet success.
One more survey conducted by the consulting company Yonder displayed that online advertising has a rather good chance to compete against traditional ads. And it is not wondering because we are living in an age of technologies and in the digitized world.
According to the given table, it is worth mentioning that the traditional way of advertising works more effectively compared to the method of online advertising. The chart displays that the major part of customers that are involved in traditional ads are adults of 55-64 y.o. (84%). People between the age between 18 and 24, which is a 77% share, saw gambling ads while using social media services.
Thus, it is getting absolutely clear that traditional advertising covers a wide range of people that can be converted into your client. Even though 77% of the participants confirmed that they saw gambling ads online, the traditional sector of advertising won in every single age group.
The following question arises – how did gambling advertising impact people across the United Kingdom?
The impact of gambling ads
Without a doubt, gambling advertising influence people to some extent. Some of them cannot ignore it and start doing what advertising says to them, while others are strong enough to stay away from this temptation. For sure, it is impossible to be entirely avoided by these ads because iGaming companies put a lot of effort and investment into the promotion of their businesses. And whether you are watching TV, listening to the radio, or simply scrolling your news feed on social media, the statistics show that 84% have ever noticed this kind of promotion.
As a consequence of the distribution of gambling advertising via different ways, over a third of the participants were impacted to spend their money on gambling leisure. In other words, over 2 000 interviewed persons turned to gamble after seeing gambling promotions.
On average, 18.6% of all participants were prompted to start gambling for the first time, while 19% decided to increase the amount they played before. For 43.8% of interviewed, gambling advertising did not change their minds to change the amount they gambled. The part of people that had a break from gambling but changed their mind in turn of restarting this exciting activity was 16.6% on average. And 11.4% of respondents declared that gambling promotion on different channels shifted these people to try new gambling activities.
So, the third part of all participants got influenced by gambling advertising, whether traditional or online ads, to spend money on casino or sports betting platforms.
Does advertising of gambling increase gambling addiction?
Besides gambling advertising, the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to a significant increase of gamblers in numbers. However, the UK Gambling Commission has constantly been checking the situation in the market, and the official representatives of this organization were entirely sure that there was nothing to be worried about.
In the telephone survey conducted by the Gambling Commission, 4 010 people were interviewed. From June 2020 to June 2021, the number of gamblers has fallen to 42%. According to this data, the overall problem gambling rate can be called statistically stable because it is on the level of 0.4%. Meanwhile, the moderate risk rate went down and remained at 0.7%. Compared to the previous year, this rate was 1.4%. So, it is evident that it was decreased by two times.
The adblocking penetration rate in selected countries worldwide
When you are surfing the world wide web, you see a lot of pop-ups or advertising notifications, which promote gambling and all related activities, on the visited websites. Sometimes advertising can be extremely annoying. The only way to hide these irritating notifications is to use browser’s ad blocking extensions or additional software, which may help solve this problem.
As the Statista report states, the share of people that have tried to block gambling advertising is going down from year to year. And you can be convinced in this fact by looking at the below charts.
Unfortunately, there is no data on 2023, but some sources signal that this indicator is decreasing. This moment means that iGaming companies made high-quality and captivating content (advertising) that people want to see. As a result of these efforts, people who have not even thought about gambling are fully involved in this exciting, entertaining activity.
Gambling behavior in 2023
The UK Gambling Commission released its findings on gambling behavior among adults of the age of 16+. The total number of respondents was 4 021. The data was collected during the telephone calls in March, June, September, and December 2023.
The data shows that the problem gambling rate lies at the point of 0.3%, while the moderate gambling risk rate remained at the level of 0.8% (1.9% in 2020). The respondents were asked a question about the danger of gambling for family members. The majority gave a positive response – 70% agreed that gambling could be dangerous for family life. Compared to the data of 2020, the percentage was decreased by 5%.
And it is also worth highlighting that the year 2023 showed a significant shift toward positive improvement.
Three ways iGaming companies take customer engagement to the next level
As you can see from all these tables, charts, and statistical data, many people across the UK have seen gambling advertising, and this type of ad had a great impact on them. However, it is challenging to keep the high level of engagement among the customers because there are a lot of gambling and sports betting houses that offer almost the same. Ok, they are slightly different from each other but still.
As for an entrepreneur, marketer, or business owner, it is necessary to take all the advantages digital marketing gives. So, let us start with three useful tips that have helped many iGaming companies reach prosperity from the perspective of promotion and distribution.
The very first tip is to create a beyond-the-reality customer experience. According to Dimension Data’s research, the companies that improved customer experience gained an increase of 84% in revenue. Fascinating, is not it? And it is crucial to keep online reputation on the same level, but it would be great if this level is going up constantly. And customers want to see on gambling advertising that they can trust this or that gambling/sports betting company.
The second recommended tip is to take advantage of conversational marketing. The essential idea of this marketing strategy lies in building interconnections between the company itself and its existing or new clients. The usage of conversational marketing will help convert gambling ads into new leads and new customers. As a good example of conversational marketing, the UK Gambling Commission published research indicating that free bets and free spins offers had their impact. In this research, 31% of participants (from 8 000 interviewed people) agreed that they were encouraged to start gambling right after seeing free spins or free bets deals.
And finally, keep going focusing on customer retention. For sure, acquiring new clients is not a bad idea, especially when a gambling company has been recently launched. However, some research shows that existing clients can bring even more benefits to the business. So, it is highly advisable to create gambling ads following the customers’ preferences and feedback.
Final thoughts
To conclude everything that had been written, it is necessary to give honor to iGaming companies that put so much effort into keeping a high level of engagement while using different approaches and methods of digital marketing and advertising (traditional and online variations). The research clearly displays that people are involved in gambling advertising no matter their desire to do so. And it is almost inevitable to be hidden from the power and influence of mass media, especially gambling advertising.
Read more: Best iGaming Aggregators
