Opening Thoughts

Social media has ushered in so many changes in our lives. Still, its impact on how advertisers target us is perhaps the most evident example of how much this market has changed global society and how businesses target their audience to grow into new areas. 

Casino gaming is one of the main areas where marketing changes have been the most prevalent—and today, we’re going to cover four of the biggest ways social media has transformed iGaming marketing over the last decade.

#1- Spearheaded A Global Shift In Marketing

The internet is the dominant resource in casino gaming. It’s the medium platforms use to grow their brand, develop their marketing strategies, and provide walkthrough guides on how casino games work. 

Rather than the issues that plagued us before the internet, where if you wanted to learn how to play a casino game like poker or understand how poker rankings operate, you would have to go down to the bookstore and purchase a book on the topic, this information is now available to us at a moment’s notice. 

Instead of forking out cash on how to learn how to play poker and how poker hands and poker hand rankings work, this information is now available as a free resource online. Obviously, this led to large numbers of poker players moving online. 

This is not just for those who want to seek out information about how to play other casino games, such as roulette, but also for those who want to seek out the latest promotions and offers.

#2 - Allowed Brands To Grow Their Presence While Offering Promotions

When radio and TV advertisements ruled the airwaves, casinos were subject to far more restrictive advertisements. Once online casinos became a large part of the industry, they turned into global juggernauts, and brands quickly established their social media presence and used it to cast the net wide to find a range of new customers. 

Instagram is one of many platforms that have become the battleground for the new iGaming marketing war. While sites offer a range of tools that allow users to download Instagram pictures directly and other tools that keep users engaged, Instagram has become the central hub of marketing activity in the iGaming sector. 

Social media transformed the market by offering gamers the chance to win prizes by liking, sharing, and tagging friends in posts. It’s an approach that worked just as well 15 years ago as it does today. 

It meant they could spread the news of the offer to as large a group as possible and that online casinos and gambling companies could simultaneously increase their visibility while offering promotions for new customers.

#3 - Specific Audience Marketing

One of social media's many advances is that brands can find collaborators and social media influencers who endorse their products or services. Instead of a dated approach, such as TV adverts, which have died a death due to the rise of streaming, social media has been able to focus on specific audiences. 

Brands do this by partnering with social media influencers who specialize in casino gaming, stream casino games, or have deep-rooted ties with professional poker players and other people in the industry. Ultimately, it highlighted how specific marketing is the way forward. It’s cheaper and more direct and has proven to have better results for iGaming companies, so why would online casinos not move to this method of marketing instead?

#4 - Short Clips Rather Than Radio Jingles

It’s rare to come across an advert longer than 30 seconds these days. Creative storytelling has become one of the most impactful ways for marketers to connect to an audience in 2024. While marketers still don’t have much faith that the attention span of their audience is any better than it was 40 years ago - short clips now get to the point and quickly. 

Some casino companies turn their promotions into GIFs and loop them in on their page. Others quickly fire through the main talking points of the offer, encouraging people to share and sign up. It’s a totally different world from some old tactics that land-based casinos use. I am old enough to remember many of them: leaflets, bonus credits for signing your friend up, incentivized slot terminals—how times have changed. 

Final Thoughts

We’ve only touched the surface today. iGaming is one of many industries that have utilized social media's phenomenal advances to turn their businesses into true, global success stories. It’s not just casinos and betting apps that have benefited from social media becoming the key route for advertising, either. 

There are a range of other industries that continue to benefit from cutting-edge approaches to social media marketing, not to mention the iGaming industry, which continuously looks for ways to innovate and continue grabbing the attention of a colossal potential audience on social media. 

It’s going to be the battleground for the foreseeable future. There are billions of people glued to their smartphones every day, so those iGaming companies that can chisel out a niche will be in a hugely advantageous position. The art is in finding the niche.