The numbers attributed to mobile gaming are, in a word, staggering.
We’ve probably overused the word ‘revolution’ in our lives at one point or another, but describing mobile gaming as a revolution doesn’t even do justice to the way it’s being received now compared to where it was a few years ago.
Consider this: in 2010, mobile gaming was thought of to be a complementary revenue source for operators in the gaming industry. Now, you have Juniper Research releasing a report late last year, estimating that mobile gaming to be a $100 billion business.
There have been some circumstances that have helped in this explosive growth. As Aideen Shortt, in association with Bullet Business and the Mobile and Tablet Gambling Summit, wrote about in her report, “Marketing for and on mobile – new tactics and best practices”, mobile gambling’s explosion can be attributed to the boom of the smartphone.
Call it coincidence, fate, or destiny, but the advent of the latter allowed for consumerism to literally be in one’s fingertips. And that includes mobile gaming.
It goes without saying that mobile gaming has been a huge boon for a lot of gambling operators that saw the potential in the medium and jumped on it even during its infancy. In her report, Shortt pointed out that some of the biggest European operators are reaping huge rewards from their mobile gaming businesses, including Paddy Power, whose mobile outfit accounted for 32 percent of its online revenue in 2012. Same can be said for Betfair, who reported that 50 percent of its new registrations in the third quarter of 2012 came from mobile gaming.
Even William Hill, one of the biggest UK bookmakers, reported that mobile represents 35 percent of its online revenues, prompting CEO Ralph Topping to boldly proclaim that the company has set a target of 40 percent at the end of the year.
“Mobile is no longer just a product; it’s a channel,” Shortt wrote in her report. With the scale by which mobile gaming has evolved in recent years, it’s become far more than just a portable and easy-access venue by which smartphone owners can wager on.
Equally – and maybe even more – important is the capacity for mobile to be a useful marketing tool for gaming operators.
Shortt touches on all the possibilities in her report, providing a detailed analysis and systematic mapping of how these companies can take full advantage of the seemingly endless benefits of mobile technology to reach their intended audience.
Whether its through taking advantage of display advertising, search engine optimizations, or using old marketing techniques and adapting them to fit into the new world order of mobile dependency, marketing in the world of mobile technology is becoming one of the most important strategies any successful gambling company should pay serious attention to.
Having a mobile platform to offer your services is just another part of the equation now. For Shortt, getting customers to notice your product amidst the sea of all these offerings is the challenge that’ll set you apart from the rest.
