The Influence of Marketing and Advertising on Gambling Behavior

Article by : Svetozar Kuzman Oct 1, 2024

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Updated: Oct 2, 2024

In recent years, we’ve become witnesses of an increasingly aggressive gambling marketing, chiefly under the influence of the burgeoning online gambling industry. As you probably know by now, marketing isn’t really about providing you with the most accurate descriptions of a product, rather, it’s about affecting you emotionally so that you’re more likely to buy something.

It’s the same with gambling marketing – you’ve most probably encountered some online ads referring to online slots or casinos that are just good to be true. Gambling marketing is an important reason why rates of gambling addiction tend to be somewhat high around the world and it’s getting better and more effective every day. The global value of online gambling, on its own, is around $97 billion, and it’s no wonder that a lot of this money gets redirected to marketing that would draw even more customers.

Marketing Strategies in the Gambling Industry

The gambling industry uses the standard tactics used to advertise numerous other products:

Promotions

A lot of gambling companies offer special deals for first-time players. You can get “free” money, “free” spins, “free” anything, at least in the beginning. But very quickly you stop being the one receiving the money and become the one giving the money.

Targeted Advertising

Targeted advertising has become a standard in the online world. Your social media, your search engines, basically everything you use online collects information about you. This data can be sold to numerous different companies, including casinos, who can then use your info, such as your gender, age, ethnicity, country of origin, location, to tailor the best offers and the best ads aimed just at you.

Sponsorships

Sponsorships are a big thing around the world. If you’re watching the English Premier League, chances are you’ve seen numerous gambling sponsors on the front of players’ shirts. A lot of sports stars personally endorse certain gambling companies, trying to explicitly or implicitly get their fanbase to try out different gambling games. Quite often these sponsorships are paired with promotions, so that a sponsor has a special promo code that can be used by their audience to get “free” spins or something similar. There’s now a group of thriving YouTube gambling channels, for a lack of a better expression, where influencers gamble (sponsored by a specific gambling company), watched by fairly large audiences.

Comfort and Ambient

Another important aspect of casino marketing are free drinks and food you sometimes get inside. The smell of casinos is also very, very characteristic, as well as the cozy and comfortable atmosphere inside. Everything there is geared to keep you inside. The standard tools such as physical posters strategically located in busy spots, shiny signs, are also used by gambling companies.

Psychological Impact of Gambling Advertising

Most of us think that advertising doesn’t affect us in any way and that we’re immune to it. While consciously this may be a thing, unconsciously advertising may affect you in a way that makes you more likely to spend money where you didn’t really intend to spend it.

The Unconscious Effect of Gambling Ads

Say you’ve been trying to curb your gambling habits, staying away from it as much as you can. You stopped going to casinos, and you don’t have online gambling accounts. Then you encounter a sort of banner-ad, showcasing a typical beautiful girl leaning on the roulette wheel. The girl may get your attention, and then you realize that what this ad is about is gambling.

You quickly turn your attention to something else and you manage not to think about gambling. However, this impression stays in your mind, and increases the likelihood of you thinking about gambling sometime down the line, perhaps when you’re bored and have nothing to do.

YouTube Gambling Marketing

The YouTube gambling channels are even more pernicious. Some people may watch them as a “replacement” for gambling. However, watching content such as this will make you more likely to crave gambling yourself and to believe that you’re going to be the next lucky jackpot winner. I analyzed the content of some of these channels, and a lot of these people are suspiciously lucky. Like REALLY lucky, seamlessly winning hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes even more. I believe that they’re not really winning this money, rather this is all a very big ad to get you to gamble. These YouTube gamblers are some of the most obnoxious, loud, and in-your-face winners I’ve ever seen, celebrating their wins like there’s no tomorrow.

So instead of providing healthy entertainment, content like this is likely to actually make you crave gambling more, thinking that if a YouTube gambler can easily earn thousands upon thousands of dollars, so can you.

Case Studies and Examples

A recent study conducted by Hoebanx and French and published in 2023 showcases the manipulative tactics of YouTube gamblers. While most other avenues of gambling marketing are heavily regulated, the YouTube gambling channels tend to present their content to a variety of users, including minors.

These channels also tend to provide “strategies” and “advice” on how to earn money by gambling, providing a direct motive to the audience to employ these pieces of advice. The editing of the videos also make them more enticing to watch, as the parts where the influencers are losing a lot of money are purposefully left out, while wins are celebrated in exaggerated ways.

It is not uncommon for serious gamblers to spend whole nights in casinos, where they usually receive “free” drinks and sometimes food. The “free” drinks thing isn’t only to keep you hydrated. A lot of casinos give away free alcoholic drinks that are meant to get you in the state of mind where you don’t care about throwing away your precious money.

Tips from a Psychologist on How to Avoid Casino Advertising and Keep a Clear Mind

1. Reduce your social media use

This will help you improve your well-being in a very general way, and will also help you stay away from aggressive gambling advertising.

2. Block gambling YouTube channels

YouTube now allows you to block content you don’t want to be recommended to you. So if you encounter any kind of gambling YouTube channels being recommended to you, you can block content coming from that channel in a few seconds.

3. Avoid places and locations that offer gambling

This is pretty straightforward but a lot of people fail to get it right – if you want to control your gambling, avoid places that would remind you of gambling or provide you with an opportunity to gamble. So if your friends want to meet “for a drink” in a casino, it would be best to offer a change of location or avoid this event altogether.

4. Don’t give in to promotions – understand that you won’t be losing anything if you don’t cash in on a promotion

The issue with promotions and discounts is that if you miss them, you have a feeling that you’re lost something. It’s a very good example of loss aversion and how it affects us humans. A good promotion usually offers something for free – which means that this something is potentially yours, but only if you make a gambling account or something like that. When something is for free, we feel as if this is almost within our reach, almost ours. So when we don’t make the most out of a promotion, we feel as if we lost something that’s rightfully ours.

Conclusion

Gambling marketing and advertising have come a long way, developing into a very complex set of techniques and strategies aimed at influencing your decisions. With the rise of online gambling, new avenues for gambling marketing have opened up, and in this article we focused primarily on how to shield yourself from the gambling marketing that you will encounter online, sooner or later.