Television Ads not affecting online gambling in UK

[The Buzz]

An interesting study by the UK's online gambling commission shows that there has been no increase in online gambling there since Internet gambling companies have been licensed and allowed to advertise on television.

The Commission claims that only 8.8 percent of people in the UK that were studied have participated in any form of online gambling. That figure is the same as it was in 2007, showing no change from the television ads.

The majority of people that were doing the online gambling were men between the ages of 18-44. There was an increase, however, from last year in the number of women who admitted to taking part in the online gaming.

http://www.casinogamblingweb.com/gam...ing_49059.html

[PartnerJ]

apparently there are a number of reasons for that.

one guess would be that UK market is at the maturity stage - getting closer to stagnation but I would not take it seriously

also as I understand only those companies could advertise on TV that had UK license - were in the White List. People that have seen the ads on tv already play with them and there is a strong affinity between the brands and the players, so they played online before and after the TV ads

another thing is that there is a certain threshold of perception - the person will perceive the idea of the ad and actually find it appealing only after a number of times he sees it - about 20 for TV ads if I'm not mistaken. Would be interesting to review the responses of the audience regarding the number of times they've seen gambling ads, what they understood from them and so on

next...well a number of companies keep shrinking their budget for TV ads and video display ads market online is actually growing - it is predicted that by2011 US companies and companies of the world will be spending 13% of their marketing budgets on video ads online

so gambling video display ads online can be in demand as well

[chalkoutline]

Interesting stuff, I would have thought that it would have made online gambling more of a mainstream activity over here and attracted more people to play online. I wonder how they track this information. Do they talk to the companies advertiser or do they poll a cross section of the general public?

If nothing else these findings do serve to show places like the US that regulated advertising of gambling does not necessarily cause more people to gamble.

[masontech]

Thanks for the link. Makes interesting reading..

[PartnerJ]

not sure if tv ads can actually make gambling a mainstream activity. maybe in the countries where the market is still at the low level. in countries where the market is more developed, its harder to attract new players because many people play occasionally and those who play often stick to the 2-3 brands they like

[schoolly]

TV watchers is not a targeted auditory.