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.
Vernons Bingo applies a fool-proof creative strategy to their ad by utilising a heart melting pug dog – one of the most popular breeds of 2018…apparently – as the lead character. The dog in question is named Stan (why not Vernon??) and is shown having fun around an empty house whilst his owner is out: Watching TV, reading the newspaper, having lunch and catching a nap. The last thing that Stan does is fire up a tablet to play Vernons Bingo just as his owner returns and the voiceover advises us to “be like Stan”.
Cutting to the chase, Vernons achieves the lowest cost per website visitor (CPV) out of all the advertisers in this Adquirer, estimated to be at £21. So, let’s explore why this could be.
The first standout piece of insight from our research is that Vernons bucked the bingo trend by deploying all of its TV spend on Sky’s stations, with no ITV or Channel 4 stations in sight. Looking closer, Vernons do heavily lean on Channel 5’s group of stations, with 85% of all their impacts appearing across C5, 5USA, 5Select and 5Star. Channel 5 is the cheapest way to reach a UK terrestrial audience. C5 also aligns with the demography of online gaming and provides a more efficient approach to advertising in peak time, potentially leading to 57% of Vernons impacts appearing in peak – more than the other three advertisers in this analysis.
The brand and logo are not mentioned or seen until the tablet is displayed with the Vernons game shown on its screen. From then on, the on-screen action and voiceover deliver the call to action and offer of: “Deposit £5 and get £25 to play”. The CPV of £21 indicates a successful campaign, and one which could scale accordingly with the right strategy.
