From improving user experience to ensuring regulatory compliance, online casinos have many reasons to monitor player activity. Tracking user behaviour is a standard and legal practice that serves a variety of purposes.
In this article, we examine why online casinos track players, the tools and technologies they employ, whether win-loss data is analysed, and other key aspects of this practice.
There are five main reasons why online casinos track players:
Online casinos are constantly handling monetary transactions, from deposits to withdrawals. It’s no surprise that they and players face ongoing fraud attempts. This is why casinos will track account activity to detect any unusual trends that may allude to money laundering or account hijacking. In the event that activity on an account becomes highly suspicious, the casino can take necessary action.
While online casinos are all about the fun for players, they have to adhere to strict regulations and licensing to ensure fair and secure gameplay. Tracking players allows online casinos to prove their compliance with anti-money laundering laws, age verification rules and responsible gaming instructions to remain in business in their region.
This one’s for the players. Tracking gameplay and account activity allows online casinos to identify key trends and, therefore, offer personalised marketing assets. This includes seasonal promotions, long-term player rewards, bonuses and even game recommendations.
Believe it or not, tracking players’ movements can help casinos identify areas where their systems can be improved. They could find that a game hasn’t been played by users for an extended period of time due to a glitch in its opening, or identify that players aren’t using their bonuses because they aren’t reflecting on their accounts properly.
Casinos often track players for their value to assess whether they need to be rewarded differently. High-value players, meaning players who deposit large amounts and play routinely, can be offered certain perks that others aren’t, such as extra free spins or larger bonuses. Lower-value players, meaning players who deposit relatively small amounts or who don’t play regularly, will be offered less or smaller rewards.
Now we know why casinos track play, how do they do it exactly? They employ a number of technologies to monitor activities across their platforms and accounts. Everything from profile details to deposits, bets, game preferences and withdrawals.
Cookies and tracking pixels are the main components of tracking play. Cookies will follow a user’s journey from the time they log in to the time they log out to collect data on all the pages of the website that were visited and the time spent on those pages. Pixels collect data on specific actions taken, such as clicking on a pop-up promotion. Casinos can even track new players from comparison sites, such as the Norwegian-focused casino guide casinor.com, to evaluate how they arrived on their platform.
Online casinos do track wins and losses. The main reason for this is to understand whether or not their games are working correctly, and comply with fair gameplay regulations. Wins and losses are recorded and stored in the event that they need to be shown to a regulatory authority.
Not all online casinos are created equally. This makes it crucial that players find and stick to secure online gambling platforms that track their activity purely for the above reasons. Players should always look for casino licensing information to make sure that they are regulated by a recognised authority and can be easily contacted in the event of suspected fraudulent activity.
Player tracking is just as much about player safety as it is about casino compliance.