How gamers behave online. And what it means for advertisers

As marketers, we acknowledge that we’re not our target audience

Which is why, at Receptional, we recently surveyed a 400-strong online panel – of recent gamers - to find out their views and buying habits.

Let’s dive into the research findings.

What does your audience want?

We wanted to understand how best to shape our message and offer.

Before surveying the audience, we predicted that welcome offers would be the biggest influence on new customer acquisition. Our thinking reflected the commonly held view of clients in this space.

So, here’s what our panel said was important when choosing an operator.

Our panellists told us that the memorability of your advert was the most important factor that determined whether they opened an account.

The memorability of your advert.

The welcome offer was mentioned least by our panel.

Is that surprising? We thought so.

Our survey suggests that, too often, marketers focus on the value of the opening offer. When, in reality, prospects’ views are more nuanced.

It’s certainly worth testing the other factors in our ad campaigns.

What about age?

Our survey suggested that preferences differ by age.

Younger prospects mentioned welcome offers more frequently than older age groups.

Older age groups were more likely to care about the quality of customer service. And are more likely to pay attention to online reviews.

If you want your messaging to be memorable, we suggest segmenting your ad copy by age. And testing variations of your messaging.

Contented with your content?

Creating content that is effective at capturing and converting your site’s visitors can be challenging.

Which is why we wanted to understand how punters research their bets.

According to our study, punters like to consume content quickly. They typically spend less than 30 minutes engaging with content before placing a bet.

We followed up by asking what format works best – video, audio, or written content.

Video – short snappy video – is the frontrunner.

It’s worth:

• Reviewing your approach to video in your blog or news content. Are you creating enough short-form video?
• Sharing and promoting video on your social platforms (not least, because those platforms are biased to video)
• Using video ads on YouTube and Facebook to promote your brand
• A good benchmark is to be spending 10% of your Google-focussed ad spend on YouTube.

What next?

You can find more insights into gamers’ online behaviour in our eBook: How to best use PPC in 2021 to acquire high-value gamers.