We would like to share some analysis from our Media Team. The purpose of this whitepaper is to provide Gambling advertisers with insights and strategies to maximize their online trade.

Since October 2008, gambling companies have been able to advertise their offerings through Google AdWords which has proven to be a powerful tool for driving relevant and highly-targeted traffic, promoting new customer acquisition. The percentage of adults in the UK participating in remote forms of gambling has risen to its highest level in four years and despite the economic downturn, gambling queries have maintained their volumes.

The first section of this paper focuses on insights. We look at seasonality and the latest trends relating to Bingo, Poker, Betting and Casinos.

The second section of this paper focuses on advanced strategies for Adwords gambling campaigns. We look into the following:

• Impression share, cost-per-click, Quality Score and budgets
• Expansion of keyword coverage
• The exponential relationship between Rank and click-through-rate for all four main gambling segments
• How to capture event driven opportunities such as assist in new product launches
• An overview of Google tools to assist gambling advertisers in driving new conversions and optimize their website conversion processes
• How search works with other media used in the gambling sector (mainly TV)
• Search for gambling branding

We welcome all feedback on this paper and, as ever, we hope it proves insightful. Download the gambling whitepaper.

This paper and others can be found in the insights archive on the Google UK Advertising Toolkit.

Posted by Imad Karam, Media Team

One of the trends that we have seen as the recession has deepened is that consumers are economising on going out and increasingly making the most of the social and entertainment opportunities of the web. This is something that people on the street we spoke to agreed with. We have seen these trends emerge using a number of free tools that we have, such as Google Insights for Search, that allow us and you to glean insight into consumer interests and search patterns over time.

For example, in the past searches for 'recipes' usually only overtakes searches for 'restaurants' at certain times of the year, such as at Christmas, but recently we have seen people consistently searching more for 'recipes' than for 'restaurants'. In the context of the recession, this interest in home cooking rather than eating out implies that people are being careful about managing their costs.

Cooking is just one area we are seeing a renewed interest. The popularity of online gaming is evident from the number of results you can find on Google Blog Search and YouTube. Using Insights for Search you can see that there is a rise in searches for 'free online games' every weekend, when more consumers are at home looking for entertainment.

*Data pulled 20/04/09

We'd like to share these and other insights in a presentation you can download, Staying in is the New Going Out (PDF). Hopefully these insights will give you inspiration to find other trends using Google Insights for Search! If you find other interesting trends or have suggestions for other topics to explore please email us. If you'd like more stats on the rise of Internet entertainment and the trends in consumer behaviour online, have a look at this booklet, Speeding up in the Slowdown (PDF).

If you're interested in seeing hot searches as they happen add the Google Insights for Search gadget to your homepage. Read more about the gadget and how it can be useful on the Conversion Room blog.

Posted by Rosie Rankin, The Agency Team

Our Insights tools, such as Google Insights for Search, can help shed light on changes in consumer trends and behaviours. Indeed, our findings at the moment are showing that consumers are staying in more and increasingly making the most of economic, social and entertainment opportunities online. We wanted to know if people agreed with our findings, so our 'Google on the Street' team went out and asked them. Watch the video below to see what consumer are saying.

You can download these consumer snapshots by topic:

• Lifestyle (6.9MB WMV file)
• Internet Access (5.2MB WMV file)
• Home Entertainment (8.7MB WMV file)
• Home Cooking (8.3MB WMV file)
• Home Repairs (5.2MB WMV file)

Posted by Rosie Rankin, The Agency Team