Each month, The Adquirer provides insight into the creative and media strategies of industry-leading advertisers in a particular sector. Estimated cost per web visit results are provided by our data scientists, utilising sources including Hitwise, Nielsen and BARB.
This month, we look at four different Bingo advertisers, all fighting to elevate their offerings above those of their peers. We explore the similarities and differences in their campaigns and unpack how they apply creativity to classically homogenous products to set them apart.
Bingo sites in general tend to have a female customer bias, and Wink Bingo dives right into this assumption, kicking off their comic book styled animated ad with the words “Wonder women of the world, it’s time to treat yourself!” followed by the delivery of their special offer: reward points for playing, that can be spent on more games, as well as shopping, “coffee with the girls” and days out.
The ad is eye-catching, to the point and direct. The brand name is mentioned often, and the logo appears natively throughout, so the viewer is left in no doubt where to go to enjoy the games and subsequent rewards presented in this 30 second spot.
But did all these ingredients add up to a successful campaign? Our data scientists estimate that Wink Bingo achieved a cost per website visit (CPV) of £111, almost double that of Gala Bingo, and 5x that which Vernons Bingo achieved.
There are two potential reasons for why this particular ad seemingly missed the mark.
Firstly, it appears that the media strategy did not mirror the female-bias of the creative. While the media plan is biased towards women with a +18% bias, this is no more than the average for the Bingo sector in 2018, and less biased to women than both Vernons and Gala at +25% and +24% respectively. (Source: BARB). Furthermore, according to the latest review of online gambling from the Gambling Commission, 67% of online bingo customers are female. Therefore, deploying a heavily female-biased creative direction could mean a potential alienation of 33% of existing and potential customers.
Secondly, as with most other bingo operators, ITV and Channel 5’s stations are a popular destination for ad delivery, and Wink are no different with 45% of impacts appearing on ITV1 (21%), C5 (10%), 5USA (7%) and ITV2 (6%). However, when swimming in similar waters to competitors and big brand advertisers on the likes of ITV1, not all can win, and as such that could be one reason behind the higher CPV achieved here. The station mix deployed by Vernons Bingo further shines a light on this approach as they only utilised Sky stations – heavily utilising Channel 5 stations, but not appearing on ITV’s portfolio – and achieved the lowest estimated CPV of all four advertisers analysed in this Adquirer, at £21.
