Will Facebook Be the Best Player Acquisition Tool Ever?
Rumors of real cash gambling on Facebook, along with the arrival of legal online gaming in the United States later this year have set the gaming affiliate world abuzz the past few months. After all, with over half of all Americans on Facebook, the potential for player acquisition from the social media giant is unparalleled.
In fact, given the huge number of Facebook users and their willingness to download apps, Facebook could be the best player acquisition tool ever known. So how is this situation likely to play out, and how can affiliate partners set themselves up to take advantage of it?
Players Trust Facebook
So what is it about Facebook that’s going to make it into such a great net for affiliates? For starters, Facebook has incredible brand loyalty and trust. You’ve probably heard complaints from privacy advocates that Facebook plays fast and loose with personal data. Whether that’s true or not is a matter of debate, what’s not in debate is that but those folks are in the minority.
Facebook users have no problem downloading, and sharing, all types of apps but are particularly fond of gaming apps. The massive success of Zynga and its stable of social gaming apps is all the proof anyone needs to see that Facebook is the perfect place to pick up new players.
Still trying to figure out how to integrate Facebook into your marketing plans? Check out Facebook Strategies That Work.
Gambling on Facebook
Right now, big name gaming companies like Caesars are already setting up virtual casinos on Facebook that are the first step in a much larger strategy. All those players who sign up to play on Caesars Casino on Facebook are all providing their contact information to the company when they download the app. How helpful will that be when its time to market legal online gaming, whether it’s on Facebook or not?
Currently, there are over 1.5 million likes for Caesars Casino. Zynga’s Texas Hold ‘Em, the most popular game on Facebook, has over 7 million players everyday. Converting even a small percentage of these players from virtual to real money play would be a game changer for the igaming industry.
Finally
Facebook’s massive, trusting and gambling friendly audience makes it the perfect tool for netting player conversions should US online gambling get the go ahead. If you’ve put off a social media strategy for your sites, time is running out. Don’t miss this land rush opportunity.
its not about the trust , its about the impact that facebook give to the gambler , offerting real money applications to play on it.i think all the online casinos will move to facebook .facebook give a big opportunity for free marketing expansion. as i say in other commants, fb is a souce of profit for online gambling industry.a simple application will worth billion of dollars.
Even if real online gaming never hits facebook, those real fan pages are worth the investment in time and effort in building brand awareness. However, I hope facebook never allows it.
There’s no harm in establishing a decent Facebook following. That way, if this does become a reality, you’re already in. If it doesn’t, you’ve established great branding.
You pop the question “So how is this situation likely to play out, and how can affiliate partners set themselves up to take advantage of it?” But seems like you forgot to answer the question in your article. Isnt Facebook gonna cut out affiliates? Simply because operators are running (and promoting) the app themselves. There is not gonna be an affiliate site in between, or how do you see this Brian?
Thanks everyone for the great comments! To answer your question Frits, I don’t think that Facebook gambling will do an end run around affiliates because they won’t be getting all of their players from Facebook and, presumably, they’ll still have the types of websites they’re using today, too.
Again, thanks for the questions and comments.