Advertising is an art. The art of striking the right chord and presenting an image of the product or service advertised that will appeal to a wider audience. And it really requires a great amount of artfulness to appeal to the general public, given the fact that it is comprised of people of different generations, with different interests and demands.
On the other hand, advertising is also the art of striking the wrong chord and creating controversy over what is being advertised. Controversy that may eventually result in drawing greater attention to the product or service marketed.
Human beings are curious creatures and even though they may be deeply shocked, frustrated, and offended by a given advertisement, such contentious content, no matter the form in which it is presented, may ultimately evoke a certain amount of curiosity in them. And this curiosity is actually the effect certain ads aim at producing mainly due to the fact that general discontent sometimes leads to broader attention.
Brand admiration, brand adoration, brand indignation… and most importantly, brand AWARENESS, all these are the product of a successful advertising campaign. The gambling industry has become so competitive nowadays and has been growing on so many fronts that it is really difficult or even practically impossible to predict the direction it will take in a few months, let alone a few years.
The Importance of Brand Awareness for the Global Gambling Industry
Brand recognition is instrumental to companies operating in such a highly competitive environment. This is why gambling operators have been relying heavily on advertising to promote and popularize their offering over the past several years. Their dependence will likely grow even more in future, as the industry is entering a transition period, with this transition being driven primarily by two interrelated trends.
In the first place, Generation Y, or the generation of the twenty- and thirty-somethings, will gradually replace the Generation X and the Baby Boomer cohorts as the dominant consumer demographic within the gambling industry. Given the fact that millennials are the first members of this world’s population that have been introduced to modern technology at a very early age and have been using it from that moment on in practically every aspect of their lives, it is not a surprise that gambling operators and service providers have been investing so much money and efforts in growing the Internet gambling segment. And financial reports provided by involved companies indeed prove that online casino, sports betting, bingo, lottery, and related gaming options, indeed, enjoy growing popularity.
Such a transition within the industry will certainly require quite a lot of support and powerful tools to promote the new generation of gambling products and services and to grow the existing gambling customer base. As already mentioned, operators do consider advertising such a powerful instrument.
The UK gambling industry is probably the most explanatory example to the above statement. The country’s gambling sector is among the most highly regulated and most profitable at the same time ones in Europe (and in the world).
UK’s Gambling Industry Up To Continued Growth
The UK Gambling Commission recently provided data about the gross gaming yield generated by gambling operators offering their products within the country’s borders for the period between October 2014-September 2015. The total amount of £12.6 billion was reported, compared to a total of £11.2 billion generated between April 2014-March 2015.
Revenue from online gambling operations amounted to £3.6 billion between October 2014 and September 2015. In other words, remote casino and bingo games, and sports betting offering held a 29% market share in the UK.
TV Gambling Advertising Boom in the UK
According to a study by US global information and measurement company Nielsen, commissioned and recently published by the Guardian, the amount of £456 million was spent by UK gambling companies to promote their products via TV ads in the period between 2012 and 2015. What is more, when lottery companies’ TV advertising costs are included, the overall figure goes up to an approximate of £631 million.
Last year, companies offering gambling options, with those being online casino games, sports betting, and bingo products, invested a total of £118.5 million in TV spots, up 46% as compared to the £81.2 million spent for the purpose back in 2012.
The figures posted by the Guardian are huge. And the continued upward trend over the past several years really speaks volumes about the effectiveness of TV advertising within the context of the UK gambling industry.
With the Gambling Act 2005 coming into force in 2007, the advertising of gambling products on television was liberalized significantly. Prior to the major changes in the UK gambling regulations, the National Lottery, football pools, and bingo games were the only gambling options that were allowed to be advertised on TV. As of 2007, commercials of sports betting, online casino, and poker options can also be spotted.
In order to provide better understanding of how the market has changed since the Gambling Act 2005 was introduced, British communications regulator Ofcom commissioned and published a study into the matter back in 2013.
The research showed that in 2006, or the year before the market was liberalized, there were 152,000 gambling advertisements to be shown on television. In 2008, the figure increased to 537,000. In 2012, as many as 1.39 million commercials of different gambling products were seen on British television.
Bingo ads accounted for 38.3% of all gambling adverts to be shown in 2012. In other words, as many as 532,000 bingo adverts were shown that year. Commercials of online casino games and poker options held a 29.6% share, lotteries and scratch cards took a 25.6% share, and sports betting commercials accounted for 6.6% of the overall figure reported. In numbers, there were 411,000 online casino and poker, 355,000 lottery and scratch card, and 91,000 sports betting commercials shown on British television in 2012.
Gambling-related adverts represented 0.7% of all ad spots across UK’s commercial television back in 2006. Two years later, the figure increased to 1.7%. In 2012, gambling commercials accounted for 4.1% of the total.
No similar research has been initiated since 2012, so it could not be said how many gambling ads were shown over the next years. However, the results from both the Ofcom- and the Guardian-commissioned studies are indicative enough of the fact that UK gambling operators consider television a powerful medium for reaching existing and alluring potential new customers.
(Source: Ofcom/BARB/Nielsen Monitor)
Nowadays, UK gaming companies (and not just UK ones, of course) invest millions of dollars annually in improving their digital divisions, a logical response to the growing popularity of Internet gambling products among consumers of these products. This is why it may seem a bit peculiar that so much money is still spent on TV advertising, especially given the fact that many believe television is marching inexorably towards its demise and it will not be that long before it sinks into oblivion.
However, figures show otherwise. According to an analysis compiled and published last year by marketing analytics provider MarketShare and commissioned by Turner Broadcasting and Horizon Media, television is still “the most effective advertising medium” and a major driver of growth in key performance indicators such as sales and new accounts. The study includes a wide number of marketing optimizations deployed by some of the biggest international advertisers across multiple industries in the period between 2009-2014.
It seems that TV advertising has not lost its appeal and influence over the general public or at least not to such a great extent as many would argue. And it all shows that gambling operators, particularly UK ones, still consider it an effective means for attracting the attention of a wider gaming and sports betting audience. It is difficult to predict whether investment in gambling TV advertising will grow in the years to come, but companies will probably stick to the creation of witty, funny, or scandalous commercials to secure brand recognition in the overcrowded and somewhat saturated gambling industry.
