A new exercise routine, a fresh book recommendation, or even an undiscovered album. Billions of users take to social media every day to ask the daily questions that were once solely the preserve of search engines.
As a result, affiliates in every industry, including gambling, are being forced to embrace new avenues to engagement.
As digital engagement shifts, we are in ‘a time when someone just scrolling through Instagram [will see] someone they follow go, I found this new online casino, or I found this promo’, said Keith Geary, VP of Global Operations at Game Lounge, speaking on a panel during the latest SBC Affiliate Digital Day.
He added: “So it’s a push to you, rather than a pull. I think it’s really important to know how many users will be acquired by scrolling through Instagram. It’s a complete shift in the way users have been acquired.”
He revealed that internal research from the company has found an over 50% year-over-year increase in the number of casino-related streamers and an over 100% increase in influencers willing to promote gambling products.
While this demonstrates there is a significant appetite for gambling content across social media, the panellists warned marketers not to take a blunt approach and ensure that activations are nuanced to the influencer being used.
“If a creator has a large audience, there’s always been a bit of an attitude of you can put up a free bet offer, and people will convert,” said James Prosser, Growth Director at Checkd.
“It needs to be something that the creator is involved in that excites them, that makes them interested and makes their audience interested as well, because that’s the difference between just another advert and actually a creator-led engagement piece, which also happens to convert people. The numbers and the percentages are massively different when you get that right, versus something that is just generic.”
Working with creators, however, must also be approached with caution, as regulators around the world continue to clamp down on these methods and exhibit stringent oversight of marketing.
As a result, it’s essential that operators and affiliates provide a clear set of brand guidelines to creators, as well as a comprehensive list of regulatory dos and don’ts.
Alongside the right type of content promoted in the right way, Geary also emphasised that brands must pick out the right content creator whose audience has a potential interest in the gambling industry.
He explained: “I’ve seen many times where we’ve run campaigns with influencers or streamers who were thrilled to work with us at the beginning, but very quickly saw that their followers [created] a huge backlash and hated gambling. They started losing followers very, very quickly.
“So ensure that the people you’re working with have a following base that has this interest as well, because that can go really bad, really quickly, and have a complete opposite effect of the intention.”
Although platforms like X and Instagram are the most ripe for acquisition, both Telegram and WhatsApp were praised for their ability to push messages directly to players, especially in regions such as Latin America.
Prosser said: “With X and Facebook, [the algorithms] are much more curated. They don’t really want to show a lot of the affiliate content that we want users to see. Whereas with a Telegram group, every user in there gets a notification for every single thing you send.”
