A certain lady by the name of Annette Gulick has a very, very famous quote that I’m sure you’ve heard or seen shared on Facebook in one form or another – “when you’re young you have time and energy but no money. When you get older you have money and energy but no time. And later when you finally have time and money, you no longer have energy.” And it’s true! It’s absolutely and completely true. But while most people hear this quote and think “Haha, yeah, isn’t it funny how life works?” I was taught it in a completely different context. While I was studying for my business degree a few years ago, one of my professors put this quote as a slide on the wall and, to make a long story slightly shorter, he basically said that when you’re trying to promote a product or a service, you should aim it towards the people who need it the most. For example, if you made a videogame that’s 150 hours long, like “Skyrim”, then you’re probably better off promoting it to teenagers and selling it for relatively cheaply, since teenagers are those who would be able to utilize it the best. This is what’s known as a product aimed at a target demographic – a product specifically meant to appease a certain group of people with certain needs and restrictions. Still with me? Good, because we need to take a bit of a detour.
About 1-2 years ago, you might remember that suddenly, everyone and their mother suddenly began promoting mobile casinos. Huge giants like 888 and LeoVegas proudly touted their mobile counterparts for the entire world to see. “Download our app on your smartphone, we’ve got hundreds of games on it, click here!” The flashy banners begged. And then, just like that, they disappeared from the face of the Earth. I mean, don’t get me wrong, pretty much every single online casino still has a functioning mobile counterpart, which you can see on sites like www.mobileonlinecasinos.co.uk, but they’re no longer being shoved in your face. There’s no more banners, no more pop-ups, no more bonuses for using the mobile app… Did online casinos simply assume that enough people know about their mobile components and they’re not worth advertising anymore? Or were they simply abandoned?
Well, the thing is, mobile casinos were very much a product aimed at a target demographic. That target demographic were the “older people” from Annette Gulick’s quote – the ones that have lots of money and energy, but no time. In theory, the concept was actually pretty genius, with mobile casino aiming to allow them to only spend 2-3 minutes at a time on gambling. On the loo? Play roulette! Stuck in traffic? Spin a slot! Hell, mobile games have been doing it since “Angry Birds”, and it has worked wonders for them, and if it worked for videogames, why not for gambling? Well… It’s because most people don’t really want to play roulette on the loo. I mean, let’s be honest here – how many times have you, the one reading this, sat down somewhere at a bus stop or something and thought to yourself “Ah, man, you know what I need now to pass the time? A slot machine!” That’s not a healthy mindset!
And if you think that online casinos weren’t aware of the fact that most people wouldn’t use mobile casino, then you’re dead wrong. But what were they supposed to do? When the mobile revolution happened, those in charge of online casinos found themselves in a very awkward situation. Everyone else was making mobile counterparts of their websites and services, after all! It was only a matter of time for a mobile casino to do it, and the first one to get it right was going to receive additional business while the others were going to be criticized for lacking what was, at the time, considered an essential feature. So the casinos were faced with two options – they could invest a ton of money into online counterparts knowing that nobody was going to use them, or they could refuse to do it and fall behind. But there was a third option – they could make people play them. That was the whole point of the big mobile casino push – to get as many players as possible into it in order to recoup the costs sunk into the development of mobile casino.
And, for a while, it actually worked! Curious people too intimidated by playing online casino on their desktops downloaded the app, checked it out, deposited, spun a few slots, and then most of them never returned… But it was fine. Because now, a year later, I assure you that the cost has been recouped thanks to that initial marketing push. Today, most casinos don’t <i>need</i> to promote their mobile counterpart. All they need to tell you is that it’s there – if you’re interested in it, you’re going to go and check it out for your own. Thanks to this strategy, a lot of casinos managed to turn what was undoubtedly a terrible (if admittedly great on paper) business decision into a gigantic benefit. And honestly, that’s rather admirable. So to answer my own question – no, mobile casino is still very much alive. It just doesn’t need the attention these days. But when the next big feature that needs to be pushed comes along (probably VR gambling in 5-10 years), expect a similar marketing presence.