Warm weather sees consumers go cold on gaming
Research shows number of gaming-related online searches tumbles as UK enjoys warm summer
Online gaming-related searches conducted through Google UK’s search engine suffered a 34% month-on-month decline in July, according to research carried out by marketing agency Greenlight.
The study reveals there were 995,830 gaming searches during July, which was 34% down on June’s figure of 1.5m and the steepest drop since August 2012.
Casino made up the majority of July’s queries, accounting for a 35% share, followed by sports betting (31%), bingo (18%) then poker (16%).
Overall, the most visible operator to searchers in the organic listings was Paddy Power which achieved a 44% share of voice. However, in the paid listing William Hill came out on top as it secured a 75% share of visibility.
On social media, Betfair had the highest number of YouTube views while Paddys had the highest number of subscribers to its channel.
Greenlight said the dip could be attributed to July being a traditionally slower month coupled with the extended spell of warm and dry UK weather.
“The gambling sector will likely be paying close attention to long term weather trends as climatologists are suggesting the UK should start to expect far more extreme winters and summers,” said Greenlight client services director Matthew Whiteway.
“Should this be the case, advertisers and marketers will rapidly need to think of new initiatives to ensure their customers return more frequently and remain brand loyal.”
According to the agency, the ten most popular terms used by consumers to find gaming sites across the board were:
‘bingo’ – 60,500 searches
‘online casino’ – 60,500 searches
‘casino’ – 49,500 searches
‘poker’ – 33,100 searches
‘no deposit casino’ – 33,100 searches
‘bet’ – 33,100 searches
‘poker hands’ – 22,200 searches
‘bingo sites’ – 22,200 searches
‘betting calculator’ – 18,100 searches
‘free bingo’ – 18,100 searches