FEBRUARY/MARCH 2012
The Start-up Affiliate Toolkit
The essential guide for new entrants to market february/march 2012
Dennis Neilander on Nevada and the US Department of Justice Clarification Grooveshark Founder, Josh Greenberg Google on Gaming
INFORMATION, INSIGHT AND ANALYSIS FOR THE BUSINESS OF INTERACTIVE GAMING
CONTENTS 06 Affiliate Events Calendar 10 Webmaster News 14 The Death of the SEO Agency 17 Link Evaluations that Matter 18 Affiliate Website Critiques 20 Second Tier Websites and Link Exchanges 25 Interview: Josh Greenberg, co-founder, Grooveshark Just coming off a great month with LAC and ICE, back to back in London, I’m already packing for my next conference. I’m off to the iGaming North America show in Las Vegas next week, where we will be gathering steam for our newest venture, the new iGaming Business North America magazine! With the US expected to offer online gaming in at least some form in 2012, it’s time that everyone reading this magazine starts to develop their strategy for the legislation of one of the biggest iGaming markets on earth. Las Vegas is already issuing licences for the marketing of iGaming (as you will read in this issue) and that can only mean that the opening of a legislated US iGaming is imminent. As for iGB Affiliate Magazine, we are ready to keep you close to the action, armed with the most effective techniques and in possession of the knowledge you will need to compete effectively in a regulated US market.
29 Interview: Patrick Seguev, CEO, Intercash 30 London Affiliate Conference and Awards Review 34 Nevada Goes all-in, by Dennis Neilander 36 Licensing in Nevada – the Affiliate Perspective 39 The DoJ and the Christmas Present, by Prof Nelson Rose 40 The DoJ Clarification: Affiliate Perspective 42 Social Media and Online Gaming: Doing it Right 45 Social Signals 48 The Google Bet, by Nir Korczak, Head of Export at Google Israel 50 WordPress and Expired Domains 51 Interview: Casinomeister, Bryan Bailey 52 The Start-up Affiliate Toolkit: EU Regulation 56 The Start-up Affiliate Toolkit: Business Plan 58 The Start-up Affiliate Toolkit: Payments 61 The Start-up Affiliate Toolkit: Mobile 62 The Start-up Affiliate Toolkit: SEO 64 The Start-up Affiliate Toolkit: Website Fundamentals 66 The Start-up Affiliate Toolkit: Social Media 68 Engage your Gaming Audience 71 Ten Affiliate Resolutions for 2012
Keep your hats on, because things are about to get very exciting.
72 Market Place 74 Data Centre
Michael Caselli, Editor in Chief
Editor in Chief: Michael Caselli michaelc@igamingbusiness.com Editor: James McKeown
FREE SUBSCRIPTION email: alex.pratt@igamingbusiness.com Printed in the UK by: Pensord Press, www.pensord.co.uk
james@igamingbusiness.com
Published by: iGaming Business,
Publisher: Alex Pratt
33-41 Dallington Street, London EC1V 0BB T: +44 (0)20 7954 3515 F: +44 (0)20 7954 3511
alex.pratt@igamingbusiness.com
www.igamingbusiness.com
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© iGaming Business 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this
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by any means, or stored in any retrieval system of any nature
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without prior written permission, except for permitted fair dealing
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for permission for use of copyright material including permission the publishers. Full acknowledgement of author, publisher and
Sales Manager:
source must be given. iGaming Business Affiliate Magazine is published by iGaming Business Limited of 33-41 Dallington Street,
Richard Wanigasekera
@igbaffiliate
London, EC1V 0BB, UK. The views expressed by contributors and
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correspondents are their own. Editorial opinions expressed in this
Senior Sales Executive: Ed Grundy ed@igamingbusiness.com
under the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. Application to reproduce extracts in other published works shall be made to
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publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or
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iGB Affiliate FEBRUARY/MARCH 2012
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affiliate events calendar Due to their popularity and wealth of information, analysis and discussion, conferences have become an integral part of the affiliate industry and a key communications bridge between affiliates and affiliate managers. Whether used for networking, education or just an excuse to meet up with friends, the affiliate conferences listed below provide all the tools you need to improve your business.
iGaming Asia Grand Hyatt, City of Dreams, Macau March 6 – 8, 2012
iGaming France Paris, France March 26 – 27, 2012
The iGaming Asia Congress is an ideal learning ground for all those looking to enter the Asian market with new products and services, or assist Asian companies in expanding their businesses in Europe. The two-day conference covers legal, market and operational issues for online gaming and sportsbetting in Asia, and features essential updates on the latest opportunities in each jurisdiction.
The iGB Affiliate events team will once again be working in partnership with iGaming France to host the second annual B2B/affiliate event designed specifically for the French market since it legalised online gambling in 2010. This event will look at and offer insight into the key factors for success in this marketplace and provide the best networking opportunities for executives working in or thinking of entering the French gaming sector.
www.beaconevents.com/2012/iGamingAsia2012/ en/Home/index.jsp
www.igamingfrance.com/conference
i-Gaming Forum 2012 Stockholm, Sweden April 16 – 18, 2012
iGaming Super Show Dublin, Ireland May 22 – 25, 2012
The fourth annual i-Gaming Forum will bring all business critical areas to operators and investors in the online gaming businesses in Europe. This well-established meeting will bring high level panellists and participants from across the Nordics and Europe to meet members of parliament involved in the drafting of bills, gaming boards responsible for licensing, tax and other regulatory issues as well as CEOs and venture capitalists which shape the online gaming business in Europe.
The iGaming Super Show is the industry’s largest iGaming specific conference and expo, uniquely bringing together the vast B2B and affiliate sectors of the business. Now in its third year, the Super Show returns to Dublin after a hugely successful 2011 event and promises a comprehensive conference schedule that caters for regulation, finance and business development, as well as a detailed affiliate track encompassing SEO, affiliate marketing and social and mobile strategies.
www.i-gamingforum.com
www.igamingsupershow.com
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iGB Affiliate February/March 2012
The betting & gaming affiliate programme by
is event gives you the th e, nc rie pe ex tic as nt “It was a fa ople in the business, pe y an m ith w ise al ci chance to so sful.” and to the very succes from those just starting om, Affiliate Alba, Degetreemidia.c
“It was a pleasure to at tend to the iGaming Su per Show in Dublin. Two da ys of conference were too short for so many netw orking opportunities.” Pedro Schirmer, Eigh troom.com, Affiliate
IS BACK ! IN L B U D IN
FREE for all delegates 22nd – 25th May 2012
“A great way to build in valuable contacts in the industry. Revenu e will soar high.� Jonas Warrer Petersen , Livegoals.com, Affilia te
is the biggest B2B ow Sh r pe Su g in am The iG o the industry. With tw and affiliate event in this is the meeting events under one roof mbling market. place for the online ga
Why you mu
st attend in 2
The biggest
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event in the
iGaming indu stry Join over 2,5 00 delegates from across operators to the industry, affiliates, leg from is lators to soft and everyon ware provide e in between rs Entry is FRE E for all iGam ing delegate s In-depth con ference sess ions coverin facing the in g the key iss dustry ues Insightful de bate and lea rning from le figures ading industr y The iGaming Series of Po ker, open to all delegates Meet 150+e xhibitors in tw o distinct zo nes Unrivalled ne tworking opp ortunities wit events from h 6 planned the 22nd to th e 25th, inclu CalvinAyre.c ding the om party
To register today and for conference highlights go to www.iGamingSuperShow.com
webmaster news
Golden Nugget Signals Online Intent In anticipation of the possible legalisation of Internet gaming in America, casino giant Golden Nugget has announced details of a partnership agreement with Chiligaming. The deal will see Chiligaming become Golden Nugget’s exclusive online gaming partner with a free-play website set to be launched within the next quarter. “Chiligaming is thrilled to partner with Golden Nugget, which has a very strong brand presence across the US,” said Alexandre Dreyfus, Chiligaming’s CEO
and Founder. “With its Las Vegas, Laughlin and Atlantic City properties, it is ideally and uniquely positioned for all of the online developments that lie ahead.” According to an official statement, Chiligaming’s iGaming platform is a “central feature” of its American proposition and is “designed to both facilitate swift entry into the market and maximize options for the Golden Nugget as the US regulatory and vendor landscape takes shape”. Golden Nugget’s Chairman and Owner, Tilman J Fertitta said, “We started
an intensive process approximately nine months ago and looked at more than a dozen Internet gaming companies and selected Alex and Chiligaming because they were experienced in online gaming in Europe and demonstrated incredible passion, talent and knowledge which our team found to far exceed their competitors. We believe that online gaming is inevitable in the United States and that the Golden Nugget will be well positioned to compete when US laws allow for online gaming.”
Jersey signs MoU with Danish regulator Only days after announcing that online gaming software developer and supplier Playtech Limited had become the first to apply for one of its remote gambling licences, the Jersey Gambling Commission revealed that it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Danish Gaming Board. The Jersey Gambling Commission stated that the new bilateral cooperation agreement with the Danish regulator will see the pair strive to “achieve a common understanding and set of standards” that will allow them to “promote cooperation in support of their legitimate interests and provide operational assistance to each other in achieving these aims”.
The regulator has also published the list of firms that have been accredited to test online gaming systems with NMi (UK), Gaming Laboratories International (GLI) and Quinel Italia Srl the first to be approved. “We have been working with the Jersey regulator for quite some time now and have been carrying out testing of gaming machines there since March 2010,” said Andrew Rosewarne, Managing Director for NMi (UK). In response to Playtech’s application for a licence, Jersey Enterprise business support and advice service stated that the application was a “significant step forward”
in the British Crown dependency’s iGaming strategy and came after “many months of talks” between itself, the Jersey Gambling Commission and Playtech. Playtech CEO, Mor Weizer, said, “We are delighted to be seeking an operating licence in Jersey. We met last year with the Jersey authorities in Israel who convinced us of the merits of the new licensing regime and their commitment to the sector. With many of our existing licensees having operations in the Channel Islands it makes good sense for us to seek a licence in Jersey to support our customers from a regulated jurisdiction with a firstclass infrastructure.”
New Jersey Continues Fight Against PASPA A Congressman from New Jersey has announced that he intends to introduce federal legislation that would amend the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA) to allow the eastern state to conduct online sportsbetting within its borders. If passed, the proposed legislation from Frank Pallone would see the governing 1992 legislation amended and include New Jersey on a list alongside Nevada, Oregon, Delaware and Montana in being permitted to offer sportsbetting. “We’re thrilled to have Congressman Pallone fighting for New Jersey’s interests regarding sports wagering in Washington,” said New Jersey State Senator Raymond Lesniak. “The current federal ban on sports wagering is unfair and arbitrary, giving preferential treatment to gaming operators in just four states while pushing sportsbetting underground throughout the
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iGB Affiliate FEBRUARY/MARCH 2012
rest of the country. We can no longer turn our backs on the millions being spent on sports wagering in New Jersey currently, which support organised crime and offshore betting operators.” The move from the Democrat follows a revelation from fellow New Jersey Congressman, Frank LoBiondo, that he will be introducing legislation asking the federal government to lift the ban on sportsbetting and offer every state a window in which to challenge the existing prohibition. Recently, Governor Chris Christie signed legislation into law that would allow New Jersey to offer state-regulated intra-state sportsbetting to residents. However, the state must now overturn PASPA before those over the age of 21 will be permitted to place sports wagers at special lounges due to be created in casinos and racetracks. “It’s taken nearly a decade to get to this point but I’m happy to see progress being
made,” said New Jersey State Senator Jeff Van Drew. “Between Governor Christie signing the legislation last week and Congressman Pallone taking up the cause this week, it’s safe to say that sports wagering isn’t an issue of if, but when. By legalising sports wagering in New Jersey once and for all, we can allow our casinos and racetracks to reap the economic rewards but we can also step in to make sure that sports wagering is regulated and above-board to protect the integrity of the sport.” The New Jersey electorate voted almost two to one in favour of a sports betting measure in a statewide referendum late last year. iMEGA director, Joe Brennan Jr, added, “We’re very happy that now, after this long and difficult process, the question of legal sportsbetting is at last moving through the proper venues.”
PokerStars Launches Mobile Service PokerStars has announced that players in the UK can now enjoy a range of real and play-money games while out and about using their iOS and Androidenabled mobile devices. Dubbed ‘PokerStars Mobile’ and offering real and play-money games of Texas Hold’em, Omaha and Omaha hi-lo, the new service also allows players to participate in their favourite multi-table tournaments, cash and sit-and-go games while all competitors will automatically become a part of the operator’s global pool with no separation. “PokerStars Mobile is more than just the migration of the existing PokerStars game product to the mobile platform,” said Jeffrey Haas, Director of New Platforms for PokerStars.co.uk. “It’s an intentional product designed specifically for the form factors of mobile and tablet devices and the different ways people play games on them. This is the best authentic poker experience available for mobile devices today.” PokerStars.co.uk stated that a unique aspect of the its mobile offering is its
multi-table optimisation that allows users to “easily join several tables at the same time” while the service’s ‘intelligent auto-switch technology’ and ‘flick navigation’ ensure that mobile competitors never miss a hand. “PokerStars Mobile is going to transform where and when I play poker,” said Liv Boeree, a member of the Team PokerStars Pro squad of sponsored professional players. “I now have access to the biggest tournaments and all my favourite cash games even when I’m not in front of my computer. I plan to play all the upcoming UKIPT events and will now be able to play some poker when travelling to or from a tournament.” Just like its desktop counterpart, the games lobby for PokerStars Mobile comes complete with filters allowing competitors to locate all available games quickly alongside player and tournament search functions. Those playing while on the move will also earn VIP player points and frequent player points in the same way and at the same rate as desktop players.
888 Extends Caesars Relationship Online gaming operator 888 Holdings has announced that its independent Dragonfish B2B division has extended its software licensing deal with Caesars Interactive Entertainment Incorporated. The pair already have a similar agreement in place for the UK market with 888 revealing that the new deal will see Dragonfish power a selection of virtual poker brands from Caesars Interactive once online gaming is permitted in the United States. “Utilising 888’s state-of-the-art poker platform, the agreement will allow the launch of a real-money offering immediately as either federal or state-based
regulation is finalised and upon licensing by gaming authorities,” read a statement from 888. 888 signed a long-term agreement in 2010 to provide Caesars Interactive with technology and services for the operation of online gambling sites for the World Series of Poker (WSOP) and Caesars brands. Although these domains are only available to players in the UK, the duo applied for and subsequently received approval for their business relationship from the Nevada Gaming Commission and the Nevada State Gaming Control Board early last year under the language of the Nevada Foreign Gaming Act.
Rank Reports Interest in Gala Coral British gambling giant Rank Group is reportedly at an “advanced stage” in talks that would see it spend up to £250 million in order to purchase the land-based casino operation of rival Gala Coral Group. According to a report from The Sunday Times newspaper, the planned deal would see Rank create the UK’s largest land-based casino estate by merging its 35-strong Grosvenor Casino chain with the
24 outlets owned by Gala Coral. “Rank confirms that it is in discussions with Gala Coral Group about a potential acquisition of Gala’s casino business,” read a statement from London-listed Rank. “The terms of any such acquisition have not yet been finalised and there is no certainty that any transaction will occur. A further announcement will be made in due course.”
Playtech Inaugurates German Joint Venture
In anticipation of expected deregulation, Playtech has signed a joint venture agreement with Merkur Interactive GmbH that will see the pair create an online gaming operation focused on the German market. Merkur Interactive is the online division of gaming machine manufacturer Gauselmann Group and the deal comes in addition to a related software licensing arrangement that will see Playtech provide online gaming technology and its player management system. “We are delighted to be able to announce this significant joint venture with the leading German gaming brand,” said Mor Weizer, Chief Executive Officer for Playtech. “Gauselmann and its Merkur brand are universally renowned throughout Germany and will provide a fantastic springboard for the business once regulations permit online activity. While the regulatory and fiscal environment remains uncertain, it is clear that a partnership between Playtech and Gauselmann can deliver a combination of marketleading capabilities, which have the potential to achieve a significant market share however the market regulation develops. “A joint venture structure was viewed by both parties as being the best way to achieve their strategic goals and has the potential to deliver significant returns to both shareholders. This transaction also clearly delivers on our indications of the likely form of our joint ventures and, with a partner of the quality of Gauselmann, it can be seen to be validation of the PTTS acquisition in March of 2011 that made this opportunity achievable.”
iGB Affiliate FEBRUARY/MARCH 2012
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webmaster news
Churchill Downs purchases Bluff Media
American horseracing and casino operator, Churchill Downs Incorporated, has announced that it has purchased the assets of Atlanta-based poker publishing firm, Bluff Media, for an undisclosed amount. Bluff Media, which owns Bluff Magazine, revealed that the agreement will see Churchill Downs take control of the publication in addition to its online counterpart BluffMagazine.com and its ThePokerDB poker player and tournament database and resource. The deal also includes Fight! Magazine and a variety of blogs, forums, news and editorial content along with tournament and player rankings and various website addresses such as Bluff.com and BluffPoker.com. “Churchill Downs has a long tradition of excellence and has continued to evolve and diversify its holdings over 138 years,” said Eddy Kleid, Co-President for Bluff Media. “This business combination makes sense for us and it’s an opportunity we’re excited to have.” Louisville-based Churchill Downs also operates the TwinSpires.com online wagering service and stated that, in addition to expanding Bluff Media’s current content and business model, it believes that its acquisition “potentially provides the company with new business avenues to pursue in the event there is a liberalisation of state or federal laws with respect to Internet poker in the United States”. “We’re extremely excited to be joining forces with Churchill Downs,” said Eric Morris, CoPresident for Bluff Media. “We look forward to having the experience of their management team behind us.” As part of the arrangement, Morris and Kleid are to continue in their current roles as will Jeff Markley, Online Operations VicePresident for Bluff Media. The New iGB Affiliate website is now online, The New iGB Affiliate visit www.iGBAffiliate.com website is now online, visit www.iGBAffiliate.com
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iGB Affiliate FEBRUARY/MARCH 2012
Scientific Games Disbands SciPlay Joint Venture A little less than two years after establishing the SciPlay joint venture with online gaming software designer and supplier Playtech Limited, American lottery technology provider Scientific Games Corporation has revealed that the pair have decided to restructure their strategic relationship in relation to Internet gaming products and services. Scientific Games and Playtech established the business-to-gaming SciPlay joint venture in January of 2010 as a way of delivering state-of-the-art online technology to government-sponsored and regulated lottery operators around the world including those in the United States. The pair have now agreed to disband SciPlay in favour of an agreement that will see Playtech licence its online gaming software to Scientific Games on a mutually non-exclusive basis for use by certain categories of the American firm’s current and prospective customers. “This restructured arrangement seeks to replicate the successful strategic relationship that Scientific Games’ Global Draw subsidiary and Playtech have in place for use of Playtech’s Videobet technology for server-based gaming machines,” read a statement from New York-based Scientific Games. Scientific Games stated that the duo also anticipate entering into “additional documentation in the coming weeks to further detail certain aspects of the arrangement” with all SciPlay-related entities becoming its wholly-owned subsidiaries.
“We believe that our restructured arrangement with Playtech preserves the business and strategic rationale of the SciPlay joint venture and even expands its scope to be able to offer a powerful combination of Scientific Games’ proven ability to provide comprehensive solutions to lotteries and other operators and Playtech’s leading Internet gaming technology,” said Rick Weil, Chief Executive Officer for SciPlay. Scientific Games declared that it expects to continue its close working relationship with Playtech going forward and focus on “opportunities where partnering is believed to have the greatest potential benefit for both companies. At the same time, the arrangement affords both parties greater flexibility in the provision of Internet gaming solutions, given the evolving and highly dynamic Internet gaming space.” Mor Weizer, Chief Executive Officer for Playtech, added, “This is a sensible reflection of the changing nature of the opportunities and the expansion of the potential scope of our relationship. “The flexibility this affords both parties will also ensure we can both work in the most effective way. We will look to work together as we both recognise that a number of key opportunities are outside the initial arrangement. It should also be noted that the formal joint venture structure had certain limitations and accounting complexities that we will no longer experience.”
iGaming Business Voted Industry Publication of the Year iGaming Business has been recognised as the Industry Publication of the Year 2012 at the International Gaming Awards (IGA). The accolade is awarded to the publication that “has pushed the boundaries in abovethe-line reporting” with the judging panel focusing on the “quality of reporting and features”. “It is an honour to receive such an accolade, and the magazine’s success is down to everybody that works to put the publication together,” said James McKeown, Editor of iGaming Business and iGB Affiliate magazines. “It’s been a busy couple of years for journalism in the industry and to be acknowledged as
leaders in conveying the intricacies of this changeable landscape is all the more rewarding.” The International Gaming Awards are bestowed on nominees by expert judges who are deeply involved in the gaming sector, such as the Senior Vice President of Communications/Government Relations at Caesars Entertainment Corp, the Founder and Director of Sportingbet Plc, the Founder and Owner of PokerScout.com, the Vice President of Public Affairs of the Canadian Gaming Association, the founder of the Interactive Gaming Council (IGC) and many more. This result is a reflection on the readership and scope of iGaming Business magazine.
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TRAFFIC
Seven Reasons why SEO Agencies are Dead
(Part 1)
Paul Reilly returns to delver the first of a two-part insight into why operators and affiliates should beware of outsourcing online marketing campaigns to agencies. The title is a bold statement indeed and it doesn’t just relate to SEO agencies; it applies to the fundamentals of the agency model itself. Having worked in a couple of the largest online marketing agencies, there are a few things I know about them. As such, I think it’s worth sharing my thoughts on why both operators and affiliates in particular should be careful when hiring a traditional agency to deliver an online marketing strategy whether it’s SEO, PPC, online PR, mobile, design, conversion optimisation or any discipline for that matter. The model is fundamentally flawed and for this reason I always advise my friends within this industry to avoid agencies at all cost. Based on my experience, I’ll walk through the first four major problems with most if not all search marketing agencies, and continue with the final three in the next issue.
1) Vendor lock-in – aggressive client retention Great for the agency, really bad for the client. Did you read your contract carefully? Do you know who owns your PPC account and related quality score? Do you get true 100 percent visibility on your link building campaign? I’ve heard it argued that zero visibility is the industry standard and that zero visibility is there to protect the client and the webmasters from leaked data. I’ve also heard it said that this is now becoming the standard objection handler within many agencies to stop clients in their tracks when it comes to the ‘link ownership’ question. A friend of mine told me of one client who commented that their CFO had raised concerns and demanded link data. The client argued that she was paying for the link building and should own the link data. He looked at her straight in the eyes and responded with:
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“You pay us to put you (and keep you) in position one, right?” She responded with a nod. He continued, “The links are the tool we used to get you and keep you there, right? When you booked your last holiday, did you demand rights to own the plane? Of course not. Well, this is the same thing. Those links are the tool we use to get you and keep you in the top position.” I’m told that this client never raised the question again. The fact was that he knew full well that the real reason he didn’t want to disclose the link data was so that if the client ever, for any reason, chose to disengage with the agency they would, within a matter of days, call the client’s competitors or the agency acting on behalf of the competitor and offer their backlinks at a knock down price. Ethics aside, this is good business for agencies and is becoming an increasingly popular way of working. With such a lot of money changes hands, any agencies who practice this approach can earn a fortune. Such activity makes moving up the NMA charts a walk in the park, particularly if link rich iGaming clients make up the core business. Any client finding themselves on the receiving end of this will be going nowhere. The agency knows it and the client knows it. NOTE: Never engage unless you’re assured 100 percent true visibility of links.
2) Faking full service – jack of all trades, master of one! Rarely do agencies specialise in all aspects of online marketing. Sure, your dedicated sales person (account manager) will constantly try to cross-sell you a panda busting blog strategy, mobile app, online PR and whatever else the client services director is being measured on pimping, and rightly so; their bonuses are based on these sales targets.
Does it mean it will be beneficial to your campaign and revenue? More importantly, is your SEO agency best suited to delivering these ancillary services? I doubt it. I’ve worked in an agency in the past where the Head of Mobile was chosen from within the company based on who responded to an email asking the employees: “Who has an interest in mobile technology and would they like to take the role of Head of Mobile” and I’ve lost count of the times I was sent to wax lyrically about social media to a client the moment said client had shown an interest – what do I know about Social Media, I’m an iGaming link builder and I’m good at it. Building dream teams is about taking the right blend of specialised knowledge and experience as well as complementary skills and, most importantly, passion. NOTE: Do you have the right people working on your campaign?
3) Talent retention – you can’t keep a good man down Another massive flaw with the agency model is that the best talent always leaves. If they’re good they will be head hunted or go independent. After all, there’s money to be made and a lifestyle to build. All the most talented people I know move on without exception. Sometimes I’m shocked by some of the moves within the SEO industry. Sure you get old timers who’ve been with the company since it was started, but they’re rarely talented and often happened upon the job by being in the right place at the right time; their skills were (at the time) sufficient. I’m talking about true raw talent, the likes of which bring a step change to a business, turning it around, driving innovation and passion. No amount of token share options are going to keep these guys on board, and here’s why…
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The barrier to entry in becoming an independent SEO or any search marketing practitioner is zero. Many of the so-called ‘fakers’ have developed what appears to be quite credible standings within the industry – buyers beware. With talent leaving so rapidly, I say with confidence, that if you’re lucky enough to have a decent agency SEO working on your campaign and your campaign performance is strong, your SEO is probably already in discussions with his next paymaster or building his independent status on the side, after hours. NOTE: Who will be running your campaign six months from now?
4) Joined-up thinking – building walls not bridges Does your right arm know what your left leg is doing? This is another important reason why traditional agencies are unable to deliver excellence. Heads of Department rarely talk to each other about specific campaigns. They have too many clients to worry about and cannot afford the time to get bogged down in the specifics. Crossagency collaboration is even worse. At best,
the cultural ‘them and us’ dynamic is too strong to foster collaboration; at worst, the agency may have developed an irrational phobia or even hatred toward a competing agency. Either way, you can be sure that your SEO isn’t talking to your PPC guy and your campaign will fail to fully leverage the natural integration points. At first, getting everyone involved with a campaign to play nicely looked set to prove tricky. It became clear that this challenge required an entirely new business structure. Once solved, this issue turns on it’s head – the structure we came up with to eliminate these issues go further still and achieves a dynamic which I never imagined would be possible, it’s based on shared objectives and client centricity and unparalleled professional respect. NOTE: Ensure all key people are working in harmony towards a shared objective. We shall cover the final three nails in the marketing agency coffin in part two of this series. Remember... ●●Follow your instincts when hiring expertise ●●Don’t believe the hype!
If you have any specific questions email me directly at paul@mediaskunkworks.com or follow me on http://twitter.com/paulreilly or stalk me on http://foursquare.com/user/paulreilly Disclaimer: the views contained in this article are not those of the publisher. With over 12 years’ experience in Search Engine Optimisation, Paul Reilly is one of the most experienced and influential professionals in the industry. With a wealth of experience in highly-competitive sectors, Paul has worked on many of the UK’s largest brands in the toughest spaces, both in-house and at large reputable search marketing agencies. In most recent years, Paul has focused and specialised in online gaming, delivering consistent results that matter, time after time. Paul is the founder of MediaSkunkWorks, a new and pioneering service provider which dissects the traditional agency model, building world-class, handpicked specialist teams either inhouse or as outsourced think tank and creative problem solving service. MediaSkunkWorks which has built its reputation on innovation and optimised methodologies that really do deliver results.
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Link Evaluations That Matter Internet Marketing Consultant, Dave Snyder, provides the inside track TWo things have become clear to me from my last few speaking engagements at iGaming events: 1) Affiliates are seeing the effects of algorithmic updates like Panda. 2) They are not certain where to start looking for what is affecting them. Anyone that ventures into search marketing today needs to begin with their existing link portfolio and a similar breakdown of the competition’s portfolio. This can give you amazing insight into where you stand competitively or, more importantly, standout in places that may be less than ‘white hat’. The following is the approach that Hua Marketing uses to create a data-rich composite profile of the competitive landscape: ●●Take
notes on your website to get a sense of where you should focus your research: who are you, what do you do, what need do you serve, and how do you accomplish that need? ●●Go to SemRush.com and download the CSV file of your competition in Google organic search. ●●Pick your top three (ten for in-depth) competitors. ●●Go to majesticseo.com and download your full historical backlink data. ●●Also on majesticseo.com, download the full historical backlink data for each competitor’s site. i. For each data file, if links belong to the same domain choose the link with the highest AC rank and delete the rest. ii. For each competitor’s sheet, compare domains against your domain backlink data and remove duplicate domains from each competitor’s sheet. iii. Pick the top 25 percent links in terms of AC rank for each competitor and combine into one file. iv. Add a PR column to that file and get PageRank of a competitor’s backlink domains. If a domain has PR of 1 or 0, remove the domain. v. Add three columns: article/blog post, sidebar/footer, and resource link;
then find where the backlink to the competitor’s site is located. ●●Go to SemRush and pick three non-authority (non-Wikipedia, etc) competitors in Google organic. i. Create a new excel file, build seven columns and label as such: domain, indexed pages, Facebook shares, twitter shares, LinkedIn shares, referring domains, and external backlinks. ●●Obtain the stats for each competitor and also for your site. ●●To get the number of pages indexed, go to google.com and search site:domain.com. ●●For Facebook, go to http://graph. facebook.com/http://[your domain] ●●For twitter, go to http://urls.api.twitter. com/1/urls/count.json?url=http:// [your domain]. ●●For LinkedIn, go to http://www.linkedin. com/cws/share-count?url=[your domain]. ●●For referring domains and external backlinks, go to majesticseo.com with the filter historic index. From this basic audit, you will be able to highlight some key indicators that cause issues with the changes in the algorithm over the last two years. (1) Is your link profile much heavier in terms of site-wide links, i.e. is your ratio of overall link counts to referring domains very high? This is not natural and something that should be addressed. (2) Where do you stand in your vertical in terms of referring domains to your site? While it’s easy to say that if you are far behind the competition some catch-up is needed, it is also important to note if you are well ahead of the competition but lagging behind in rankings. This is a good sign of over-optimisation and that some pruning is needed. (3) Do you have an anchor text ratio for your website that is much higher than the rest of your vertical? This is a dangerous place to be and can trip filters.
(4) Note the competitive link placements compared to yours, where you should be looking for future links, and what links you should be taking down. (5) Note how far ahead or behind you are in terms of not only amount of content but value. For example, if you have 25,000 pieces of indexed content with 24 Facebook shares, and your competition has 100 pieces of content with 5,000 Facebook shares, it is pretty evident that your content has less value to users and may also appear that way to search engines that love to prune away poor content post-Panda. This type of data-driven dive is not something you should simply explore once and then forget about. Any type of serious search campaign will continually explore and monitor its link campaign to assure that it does not fall behind its competition and, furthermore, so that competition doesn’t begin to do anything unnatural to their link profile. If you manage your campaign via this type of analytical approach you will have a superior level of insight into all of your online marketing efforts.
Dave Snyder is SVP of Product Development at BlueGlass. Dave is a world renowned Internet Marketing Consultant and has spoken around the world on search marketing and social media, and has consulted for some of the world’s largest companies. Dave parlayed his gifts as a former teacher and writer into his current role as a thought leader in the arena of search marketing. He is also one of the publishers of SearchEngineJournal and DailySEOTip, where he shares his unique perspective on concepts related to search marketing. Dave’s strengths lie in both organic and paid search marketing, and he excels in utilising social media for brand building and online reputation management. Dave is considered one of the foremost authorities on link marketing.
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Ask the Coach Affiliate Coach, John Wright, reflects on his ever popular Affiliate Coaching and Live Advice session at the recent LAC and also takes a look at some of the sites sent in for review by affiliates. If you didn’t make it to the London Affiliate Conference then you missed out on the best show ever. According to iGaming Business, over 2,800 delegates attended this year’s conference. All of the seminars were well attended with many SEOs including the likes of Bastian Grimm, Dave Naylor, Dave Snyder, Judith Lewis and Peter Young, all presented over the two conference days. Of course, one of the seminars was the live affiliate coaching and advice panel which featured myself along with Kay Schaefer of ksom.es and Frank Hohenleitner from Searchmetrics. This seminar was for gambling affiliates who got the chance to have their website critiqued on the spot. Affiliates could get feedback on their website about marketing and strategies, design, conversion and SEO. For those that missed the session, I will give a summary of some of the topics and requests we handled and I’ll also run through a longer list of affiliates that have sent in requests but due to time constraints, we didn’t get around to critiquing at the show.
Summary of live affiliate coaching and advice panel This was the second panel we have done on this topic. We had many affiliates submit their sites in advance and we started off with two reviews from that list before we asked affiliates in attendance to submit their site and ask for some advice and feedback. More of the advice came on the technical and SEO aspects and thanks to Frank, we were able to use the Searchmetrics tool to break down some websites in terms of link quality and quantity.
kasyno.pl At the show, this affiliate asked for a critique on design. While I spent a bit of time discussing the design – which I didn’t think had much of a problem – Kay and Frank were ready to jump in to discuss SEO issues especially from their link profile as analysed by the Searchmetrics tool. The current link profile had many links coming from non-gambling domains and that were from non-Polish websites. The advice was
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very direct: stop getting more of these links and start adding more Polish gambling links that are more relevant. When it comes to design and optimising the page for conversions, this set-up gets a good mark from me. They present information that is easy to scan, there aren’t too many banners flashing in your face and they make use of buttons to guide the user rather than expect the banners to do all of the work. Perhaps the header takes up too much space and adding social media icons and links would be appropriate. In this situation, the SEO work should be their number one priority.
Betcomparative.com This affiliate asked for a critique and after a few minutes we realised we had critiqued this website in Barcelona. Thankfully, most of the recommendations from the Barcelona Affiliate Conference (BAC) were implemented but still more work had to be done. Pre-BAC, this site had too many banners and far too many links. When you have over 200 links on a website it becomes even more difficult to navigate. They used to have a social media plug-in which for some webmasters seems like a great idea but these are just more links on your site and outgoing links as well. At LAC, there were still too many links and we recommended this be cut down and explained that this is also part of an SEO strategy; that being a website with more links reduces the quality of the link juice passed on internally. There were also too many language links and the anchor text wasn’t optimised either. At the time of writing this article, it appears that most of the suggestions we made this time around have been implemented. When it comes to design and marketing, this is where I spent a bit of time discussing the attributes of successful affiliate sites. I think this site needs a redesign and, more specifically, to move away from the all-black website with white text. Most websites of this style are generally seen as being untrustworthy, secretive (like porn) or something based more on
entertainment and less on information. Most professional websites these days have a white background with black text and this is more or less a standard. Just have a look at these gambling websites and you’ll see what I mean: ●●Latestcasinobonuses.com ●●AskGamblers.com ●●Pokerstrategy.com ●●pokerlistings.com ●●whichbingo.co.uk ●●onlinegambling.com How about the most visited websites in the world? You won’t see them with a black background anytime soon: ●●bbc.co.uk ●●facebook.com ●●google.com ●●wikipedia.org This site seems to lack a very strong unique selling point. The good news for this site is that it is in French and it is far less competitive than in English. However, the issue is that the big three gambling types are all focused into one site like casino, poker and sportsbetting. I guess you can call this a classic casino guide site but the page title keywords at the time were more focused on the big three opposed to something more like a gambling guide. If you stuff all these keywords and focus on the homepage, you could be shooting yourself in the foot. Imagine someone searches for something like ‘casino guide’ or ‘casino games’, if they land on the homepage and start seeing poker and sportsbetting banners, content and keywords, they might think they ended up in the wrong place. Every page has a purpose and the page titles need more care in crafting and ensuring the content matches. Last comment regarding page titles. The most important phrase should be at the start of the page title so having the domain betcomparative.com as the opening keyword is not optimal. 70 characters are enough to get your message across; any more and some browsers as well as search engines will cut it off.
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Onlinecasinobonuslist.com This portal has a simple layout and design and my guess is that it would convert well enough. Without seeing the bounce rate I can’t make too many recommendations for changes, that is if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. When it comes to the domain name and page titles, this site implies that it is about online casino bonuses and that it is a list. In this situation, I would add a table visible somewhere above the fold that highlights the bonuses of some of their recommended casinos. Adding a feature like this could reduce bounce rates and improve conversion rates. This site doesn’t appear to have a blog and that is something that will hurt rankings over time.
Soccerway.com Kay and Frank were quick to add SEO related comments and the first thing they noticed was the redirection of the domain to uk.soccerway.com. This appears to be an instant duplicate content issue as the site has mostly identical content on two domains. My comments are that both sites have identical page titles and the content is more or less the same. The UK version doesn’t do anything special for UK residents other than the logo features a UK flag. Most people in the United Kingdom probably wouldn’t visit this site much to begin with since they are passionate about football. The word soccer is used more for Canada, America, Australia and New Zealand. The UK sub folder makes this a different domain and there needs to be unique content on it to make it worth the effort. More SEO related issues include lack of content on many pages including the homepage. The term ‘live scores’ is the first item in the page title and is listed in the description and keywords but cannot be
found anywhere on the homepage! The homepage has over 300 links and there are too many of them, especially in the footer. Every page has a link for all types of sports but in my opinion, these are mostly unnecessary. You are watering down your link quality and giving some of it away to these pages which have nothing to do with football/soccer. The design of this site is great but the conversion elements are questionable. About 50 percent of the banners are for sportsbooks while the other 50 percent I have seen are for the World of Warcraft video game, Overstock banner for shoes and something about Adtech. This is wasting ad space and a giant World of Warcraft banner might turn people off and make them think they are at the wrong site.
Soccerwidow.com This site is all in German and is meant to focus on football and statistics. For something that is a bit technical and digs deeper into math and equations, I would try to alter the design template so the background of the content is white. This site is using WordPress and the homepage is set to blog posts instead of a static page. The downside of doing something like this is you have a constant page title but you don’t always have this content existing on the homepage as it is dependant on the excerpts of the blog posts. For example, one of the keywords in the page title is ‘Wettstatistik’ but I couldn’t find that word anywhere on the homepage. Another keyword is online wetten and there are no sportsbetting banners anywhere on the homepage – if this content did exist, the user would have to scan through all of the links.
Pokereverything.com To begin with, this is a great template and I am guessing it is a WordPress template. At first glance there doesn’t appear much to critique without going through the analytics and looking for bounce rates. Since the site is called ‘poker everything’ and offers poker rooms, bonuses, training, strategy and coaching, my recommendation is to make your four sliders focus on one of these topics rather than four poker rooms right off the bat. Your H1 header is called ‘Titan Poker’ but obviously the homepage isn’t about that. I would make sure your slider titles aren’t using these headers. Last but not least, the site doesn’t appear to make use of blogs and news postings. This helps to keep the website fresh and over time adds more visitors to the site. Search engines like to reward an active site.
Looking for coaching help? If you are looking for help on your website and want to be critiqued, send me an email. John@gaffg.com John Wright is an affiliate coach and the main editor at Gaffg.com, a site that promotes affiliate programs and offers webmaster tips and articles to help them accelerate their business. John graduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. After graduating he pursued a career in professional gambling in 2002 and also playing online casinos and poker. With nearly ten years of experience in the online gambling industry he is now focusing his time and energy into affiliate websites and consulting services.
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TAKE YOUR SITE TO THE NEXT LEVEL Kay Schaefer,, founder of ksom.es, explains how building up second tier websites can push your link exchanges to the next level. LINKS ARE ONE of the most important ranking factors, but how do you achieve good links? One way of building up links is by exchanging them with others in the industry. Usually, it is a good idea to keep your main money site clean, as Google states in its webmasters guidelines that it does not allow “Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging (‘Link to me and I’ll link to you.’)” To avoid being tagged as an excessive link exchanger, you should have other websites to exchange links to. This gives you the opportunity to make non-reciprocal link exchanges. Obviously, people are searching for links from a website that has some power on its own. Therefore, it would be a good start to get an expired domain that has some links already built into it. There are several market places: ● http://www.pool.com/ ● http://godaddy.com/ ● http://expireds.net/ You should try to get at least one domain for each of the bigger markets (casino, sportsbetting, poker and bingo), as well as one or two for your specific niche. Make sure that you use an anonymizer provider, like Go Daddy, to hide the ownerships of the domains when you register them.
Setting up the domains The optimal (and most expensive) set-up would be to get a different C-Class IP for each of the domains. After getting your web space, you should set-up a CMS to manage the content. One of the most used and most
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practical is WordPress. The set-up is easy and there are tons of designs out there, nevertheless, it is recommended to use a theme provider, such as: ● http://www.elegantthemes.com/ ● http://www.woothemes.com/ ● http://www.mojo-themes.com/
etc. From time to time, try to link to other pages you like, or where you got your information or images from. Build up your content regularly at least one per month (one per week is better), but the most important thing is that it is continuous.
Scaling content If you want to track your statistics and you do not want to be related to your main websites you should not use the same Google Analytics account. There are alternatives, such as piwik.org, an open source web analytics tool.
Optional: central management software For scaling and optimising the process of publishing content and links, it would be ideal to have a ‘one log-in to all your blogs’ solution. There are many different ways to do this; either you program your own management software using the XML-RSS API from WordPress or you get an existing solution, like the build-in ‘blog manager’ from Raven (http://raven-seo-tools.com/) or any other software managing multiple WordPress blogs.
Building up content After finding the right set-up for you, you still have to fill your blogs with content. Make sure you get unique content, ideally with images or videos, something to attract real users. Try to avoid footprints like always having the same article size (250 words length should be avoided as it is a typical SEO text length), always linking out to other gambling domains, always linking,
The day only has 24 hours and when you reach a certain workload, you can no longer do everything by yourself. Let others write content for you, build up an authors network, use text platforms like Textbroker. com to order your article (hint, there is a WordPress plug-in from Textbroker). Some other options could be finding a personal author on odesk.com or some nice additional features on fiverr.com.
Social set-up In the post-Panda world of Google updates, social signals are getting more attention. Very soon, exchanging likes, links, followers and so on will be daily business. That is why you want to make sure to create a separate social identity for each of your blogs, get your own Twitter, Facebook, email and G+ account. Those accounts also need to be well cared for, as you want them to look as natural as possible, so start getting friends, follow people or even connect to foursquare. Be careful to not leave too many footprints, especially when using a G+ account. It might be a good idea to use a social aggregate tool to submit your status updates to your accounts. Make sure to use your accounts to build up links to your webpage, as they are for
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“In the post-Panda world of Google updates, social signals are getting more attention. Very soon, exchanging likes, links and followers will be daily business.”
free! Set up a page for your websites and ‘like’ it – do all that will make your profile look as natural as possible.
Building up links To get better link exchanges you need to have a more powerful website. Getting more links is key to boosting your second tier websites, and you should use the common ways to acquire them: ● web directories ● forum signature links ● social media discussions (Twitter posts, Facebook posts, etc) ● link exchanges (some site-wide banner or blogroll links to get some popularity) ● article directories ● bookmarking services
example, you want to check regularly if the links are still live and valid, you want to know how many links you have already built up and the anchors you used for them. The easiest way to keep track of your links is manually using a table to manage your link exchanges and check them by opening your browser and seeking if they are still online and valid for search engines. A less time consuming approach is, again, an automated tool that monitors your links for you. There is a range of software which solves the problems differently. It is recommended to find software with a good reputation as well as one that is local so your data is not shared on the web as it is something you want to keep private.
When you are not sure of the quality of the link you are exchanging, let it be (or use one of your second tier websites as) the target. This way, you keep building up links from different sources for them, which leads to better real estate for exchanging on your side. You joined several forums and contacted friends and other affiliates. Now start exchanging links! If you need help or have any questions regarding building up a second tier set of websites, do not hesitate in contacting me.
Start exchanging links Follow the common sense guidelines for link building: ● Not too many at once ● Continuously build links ● Get a good mix of different link types and qualities ● Vary anchor texts
You have your domains, have set them up, put content on them and built up some links, now you are ready to start link exchanging for your main money site.
Where to go for trading links: ● ●
It seems like a lot of work, and it is. Find ways to scale your link building and to make use of your website as soon as possible to get revenue back out of your investment.
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Link exchange tracking
If you follow the basic guidelines for building links as previously mentioned, this approach can be a high quality source of links for you.
It is very important to keep tracking your link exchanges for multiple reasons. For
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Skype contacts Skype groups Forums (www.gpwa.org, forums. digitalpoint.com and many more) Personal contacts IGB events
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● ●
KAY SCHAEFER is Founder of KSOM.es. Kay studied business administration and marketing before he settled on internet marketing and SEO in 2004. His main specialty is improving a company’s search engine visibility using creative and unique link building strategies. His client portfolio includes companies in online gaming and other industries outside of gaming. In 2007, he started building his own SEO company and currently resides in Barcelona, Spain. http://en.ksom.es
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SHARK BYTE Josh Greenberg was still an undergraduate when he helped found a business with two of his college peers that would enable people to legally share music with each other online. Nearly six years on and his start-up, Grooveshark, is now one of the largest on-demand music services on the Internet. How was the concept born, especially considering that you and your co-founders were undergraduates at the time? I can’t take credit for the original idea… that was created by my co-founder and CEO Sam (Tarantino). It (the concept) was actually brought about by necessity. Up until shortly before Grooveshark started, Sam was on a medical track. He was going to be a pre-med and a doctor; that was what his parents wanted. One day he had a change of plan. He realised that his love for music (he wanted to be a musician) needed to turn into a full-time career. He was on his way to donate plasma and drove by a buy/sell/trade CD store, and that was what sparked the initial idea. He was looking at this place where people are legally sharing music with each other and paying to share. It’s a system that everybody enjoys, it helps the music industry as a whole and there was nothing like that for digital at that moment. We brainstormed the idea out a little bit and thought about the real issues with digital music. One of the things that we came up with was the problem that illegal music was free but legal music was paid for. Anybody can go to YouTube, Grooveshark or sites like that, search for a song and hear it for free. So there are legal ways of getting free music. Illegal music, especially back then, was just better. There were more tracks available, they were usually better quality, there were no issues with downloading, as there were with sites like iTunes – you can put it on your iPod but you can’t burn it to a CD – and so on. So, consumers had a choice. Pay and get something less or get something better for free. So this dysfunctional ecosystem really created an opportunity for a service to innovate by trying to compete with piracy as opposed to trying to compete with iTunes which is what everyone was doing.
So what were your roles in the early days of setting up the business? Obviously you were friends but why did Sam come to you? In the early days, Sam was doing the business stuff and I was doing the tech, which basically meant writing all the code. Our third co-founder was doing the design… he was the creative guy. We started to see fairly early on that in a startup you have to wear many hats. When it came to business plan writing, it wasn’t just Sam doing it on his own, it was all three of us putting lots and lots of time into it. If we ever needed to do a pitch it was mainly Sam who focussed on that but we would help out. When it came to products there was a lot of collaboration between all of us, so I wasn’t just doing the ‘black box’ stuff. Even very early in the life cycle, we recognised that we were chasing a monstrous task and it would take a lot of manpower to do it and the focus was always on hiring, finding the right people and getting them on the bus. That mainly centred on the tech area in the beginning. Looking for developers was the first main task that we had. When you came up with the idea in 2006 there must have been an impetus to get started as soon as possible. How long did it take to get from the initial idea to getting the business off the ground? It took about two years. Getting from the idea to the business being incorporated was just a matter of a few months. Following that, we started building the
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team, started writing the code and we released in Alpha. Then we cleaned it up, released in Beta, got a new office, investment, etc. It felt at the time that we were really getting the company going and starting to create something but we were two years in at that point and although it was a tough to face, we still hadn’t crossed the customer adoption hurdle. Any time we stopped marketing we stopped signing up new users. Even though it was a tough pill to swallow we realised that the product wasn’t viral and it wasn’t doing what it needed to do. So we got most of our core team into a room and we basically said we’re going to run out of cash and go under unless we completely change our business. So we figured out a way to refocus on our core mission, dealing with piracy but in a different way. That was when we switched from a download based model to streaming model with the rationale that instead of competing with piracy, we could try to make downloads obsolete. So we were sort of following in the footsteps of YouTube. There wasn’t a service for audio that YouTube were doing for video. You mentioned investors. How did you finance the early days of the business? Very early on, the initial investment came from friends and family. Some came from Sam’s parents and some was from people that we would meet locally. Eventually, we got to the stage where we needed a little bit more capital. We got lucky and met some angel investors from Boulder, Colorado who came in as a collective group. We met one guy who started everything, he brought in some of his friends, they brought in a few of their friends and that allowed us to get our first chunk of capital
Would you single out Spotify and Pandora as your main competitors? At the risk of sounding coy, I think that the main competitor is piracy. It’s not just a truism that we trot out; if you actually look at the breakdown of how people consume music digitally the numbers are astounding. The headlines are usually talking about services like Spotify, Pandora or maybe Last.fm or Grooveshark but in reality, if you take all these services and add them up, the overall amount of market share is nothing compared to the illegal market. On a worldwide basis, everyone is still consuming illegally to such a great extent that we would be doing a disservice to the music industry, to our customers, to everybody, if we didn’t view piracy as the real threat. If we were to create a service that is one percent of piracy in terms of the overall number of songs consumed, then we’re as big as iTunes. The numbers are just so ridiculous. When it comes to looking at competition from a different angle, user experience or song selection or things like that, then some of these competitors do hold a bit more weight. I’d say that Pandora is absolutely fantastic for music discovery, particularly for the ‘set it and forget it’ listening style. I think they do a great job at that. But we are really trying to do something a little bit different to what the other guys do. We differentiate from Spotify by being more about accessibility. We think that it’s very important that you could think of a song and that no matter where you are, you can have it quickly in your ear within a few seconds playing through Grooveshark. We’re also very big on long-tail content; so all of
“Instead of competing with piracy, we could try to make downloads obsolete. So we were sort of following in the footsteps of YouTube. There wasn’t a service for audio that YouTube were doing for video.” that we could use to sustain the next level of operations. We got a bigger office, we started hiring a little bit quicker and that carried us through for a while. Since then, we’ve raised bits and pieces at a time but we’ve never done a substantial round. This is an area where we differentiate from most of our competitors. Spotify has raised upwards of $200 million, same thing for Pandora with their IPO. All in all we’ve raised a total of about $4 million.
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those songs that aren’t that important to our competitors, the ones that maybe just two people on the planet care about, well we care about them for the same reason that YouTube cares about the videos that make it great. They may not be important individually but collectively they’re a good differentiator. Another way you differentiate from Spotify is by not having audio adverts interrupting
the user experience attempting to drive free account holders to subscribe. Is your business model made up of selected banners on homepage and on other pages? It’s a good part of it. Overall, the business model that we’ve been going for, for quite some time has been the YouTube model. YouTube is a service that is completely free for everyone to use although it still costs them a lot of money to run it. It’s all supported through ads. As YouTube grows and matures as a company they implement different kind of ads – whatever they need to do to modify effectively. It’s really our goal to follow down that same path, and not become too much of a subscription service. We do have a subscription tier which is a good portion of our revenue but overall, what we’re trying to do is capture and modify the rest of the market. There are a lot of great subscription services out there between Rdio and Spotify and things like that. Only a certain fraction of music listeners worldwide are ever going to be willing to pay. Obviously, it’s everybody’s goal to get more of them to follow the paying group. Being realistic, the vast majority of people still need some sort of a service that could bring any revenue at all back to the industry. We’re looking to provide a user experience that is better than piracy. That really is the goal. As soon as we have too many ads or it gets a little annoying or gets too slow, or if the content selection isn’t good enough, then people are just going to think “I’m going to go back to piracy. Why would I use this commercial site if I can get something better instead?” Because of that, we’ve made some user experience decisions that sacrifice shortterm revenue but really help us. There’s a better connection with the user. As far as long-term strategy goes I personally dislike audio ads, and they don’t generate all that much revenue. They push people to subscribe because they’re so annoying that they want to get rid of them. What is the feedback from the companies advertising on your site? For straight branding purposes, the appeal in terms of reach is obvious, but what about those companies who are looking for click through on their banner ads? With regard to artist promotions, that’s an area where are conversion rates are absolutely through the roof. If you’re an
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artist, the way that we will push your music will include site feeds, sometimes we’ll do banner ads and we’ll also do direct promotions into Grooveshark Radio. If you’re an independent artist and your band sounds like Coldplay you may come to us and pay to be placed next to Coldplay on our radio playback. When that sort of experience is brought to the user, the
Mountain View and music. I think Red Bull is starting to do the same thing now. There are a lot of other brands that fall into that category. I think overall everyone does benefit from it and, as you say, there are a wide variety of advertisers on our site, lifestyle brands in particular, are really noticing music as a great platform for advertising.
“On a worldwide basis, everyone is still consuming illegally to such a great extent that we would be doing a disservice to the music industry, to our customers, to everybody, if we didn’t view piracy as the real threat.” user is playing Coldplay and looking for recommendations as to what to play next and the conversion rate is unbelievable. It’s upwards of 60 percent, as far as people who are engaging in the content. When it comes to things like our site fee ‘tickovers’, they’re performing well. We’ve had great feedback from advertisers that we work with and the overall click rate is way higher than the industry average. We’ve also been able to deliver social media engagement for brands, we deliver downloads and ticket purchases for artists and website traffic and all sorts of other things. You have a disparate array of advertisers, from games retail outlets to financial services to data hosting companies. What industries are your primary advertisers and are there any sectors becoming more involved as sponsors on your site? I think the overall appeal of music as an advertising vehicle is definitely increasing. There are a lot of lifestyle brands that are realising the unbelievable importance of connecting their brands with music. It’s something that universally, everyone enjoys to some extent. People prefer different types of music but if you make a connection with a customer by showing that you’re interested in the type of music that they like, it’s actually helping to sponsor the music they like. It provides them with that experience. It helps create such a rich connection. Any brand that is falling into that lifestyle sector in particular, really resonates with us. We really see brands like Mountain View starting a record label because it makes financial sense for them to do so, just because of how much benefit they get from showing this connection between
You’ve been active in your current streaming format since 2008. How would you assess its success in that time… would it be in-line with your expectations on day one, or has it surpassed your initial forecasts? Early on, our projections were completely off target. Even today, I couldn’t make a guess on where we we’re going to be in a year. That’s just the nature of start-up life. I think that in terms of user adoption, even if in our early days we’d made projections on a whiteboard that one day said “we’d have millions of users”, we never really knew what that meant. None of us had experienced it. Even if it was in the back of our heads that we were going to get there, I don’t think that any of us were really anticipating that reality happening. Even today it’s a bit surreal. We’ve got 35 million people using Grooveshark. It’s fantastic, and the way that we’ve all grown with the company has really been one day at a time. Even though we’ve experienced tremendous growth over the past few years, it’s happened on a day-to-day basis, so we’ve seen it pick up then we’ve grown a little, everyone in the company has grown into their positions, we’ve scaled the infrastructure and we’ve improved the code base. Even though it’s been a viral climb and things have been growing exponentially, we’ve felt it happen slowly enough that it always felt that it was at a normal pace. As far as expectations go, I try not to have too many as far as the company is concerned in terms of particular milestones and things like that. We’ll set goals for things that we want to hit but we adjust them constantly. In the start-up world, things change so rapidly.
On a personal level, was starting a business something that you wanted to do or was it just the opportunity presenting itself at the right time? Starting a business was always something that really interested me. I like the process of creating new things; it’s always excited me since I was a little kid. Prior to Grooveshark, I had a couple of other companies that I started at high school and college, neither of which were anywhere near Grooveshark scale. I’ve always had this itch to start new things. Do you see yourself as an entrepreneur? I think so, yes. Has that itch to start new things manifested itself in any projects away from Grooveshark? I haven’t started any new projects since Grooveshark. I definitely recognise that at some point I’m going to want to be creating new things. However, the company has started all sorts of initiatives for artist development, mobile applications, all these different things, so even though I’ve been at Grooveshark for the entire time, I’ve been doing new initiatives within the company. As long as Grooveshark requires a high percentage of my attention, that’s where it’s going to be. I’ve no idea what the future is going to bring. A lot of our readers have a similar, technical background. What advice would you give to anyone trying to start their own business in today’s digital market? I’d say go ahead and start it. The thing that holds most people back from starting a company is the lack of will to take that initial leap. One of the things that has really helped me out is that I used to look at starting a company as such a daunting task – the paperwork, the legal stuff, hiring people, making a website – there’s so much stuff to do. But if you boil it down, there’s always a first step. Then, after that, there is one more step, then another step and all of a sudden if you take the sum of all these little steps, you have a company. Most people think that starting a company is such a massive, grandiose process that they never do it. The actuality is that if you take it one step at a time, you make it happen.
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INTERVIEW
Cash Flow As our start-up feature underlines later in the magazine, the area of payments is not only a fundamental part of the affiliate business, but can also be a complex one that changes depending on the geographic markets in which you operate. Patrick Seguev, CEO at Intercash, puts his thoughts to some of the issues surrounding the affiliate payments landscape in iGaming. What are the most challenging payments issues facing affiliates in the current climate as markets regulate and the industry continues to evolve? As you mentioned, market regulation is a key challenge as it is almost synonymous with payment regulation. The ripple effect is the challenge of paying individuals around the world, as payment companies need to offer services that are totally licensed in different jurisdictions. What would be your advice for those entering the iGaming affiliate space for the first time with regards to payments and the importance of identifying a partner that can accurately cater to their business needs? Affiliates and networks need to carefully study the payment options and the providers behind those options, as they are not conditioned to ask themselves questions like “Where is my money being held?” or “Will I be able to access my funds locally?” Affiliates and networks must evaluate these elements in the same way they study the product they are going to market through their marketing partnerships. Naturally, security is a big issue for any online-facing industry – what are the current safeguards in place to ensure that affiliates’ money is secure? Some of the biggest security concerns with payments emerge from the specific jurisdictions where the payments are being made and where the funds are being held. Intercash merchants fund a secured merchant account in Luxembourg, which is then used to make a direct payment to their affiliates’ chip and PIN-protected personalised prepaid card. On the back of each Intercash card, we state the name of the issuing bank which informs the affiliate where their money is being held. Affiliates can consequently be comforted by the fact their funds are totally secured by the MasterCard network regulating this payment tool and the bank holding their money.
What sorts of promotions has Intercash been offering for affiliates in the iGaming space and describe some of the features that have become popular with your users, such as your Card to Card transfer? Promoting a payment option is not on the same scale as marketing an online gaming site. For this reason, we have kept the
to understand all the marketing trends and applications (affiliate marketing is one of the most challenging yet fun sectors). There are so many ways to work in this space and understanding is key for important issues like financial industry compliance in different countries. So what’s on my plate on a day-to-day
“I have to admit that being at the forefront of payment services is more challenging than I had originally anticipated 12 years ago. But I love it: it keeps me at peak levels in all areas of my life.” formula simple for affiliates to use and, in turn, promote. The product sells itself: backed by the MasterCard brand, Intercash cards are convenient, regulated, and the most secure way to receive commission and bonus payments from partnered networks. The Card to Card transfer and our new top-up abilities are just some of the great prepaid card features affiliates will enjoy.
basis? Marketing, technology, payments regulations, banking trends, networking with stakeholders like MasterCard and Visa, and much more. But I love it: it keeps me at peak levels in all areas of my life and constantly challenged. In my position, I don’t like making mistakes because the ripples are huge and I’m accountable.
Affiliates are increasingly looking at mobile as the next platform for the ‘digital’ space. How different is the mobile payments landscape to online and what should affiliates be taking note of? I am a great believer in the future of the ‘digital’ space as a future marketplace for affiliates. Affiliates know: payments are payments. Their commission and bonus payments are controlled by the same regulators and providers in mobile as they are online. Finally, on a personal note, how challenging is it to be spearheading, as CEO, the strategy of a payments company in the digital age – what are the challenges, the opportunities and, ultimately, do you enjoy it? I have to admit that being at the forefront of payment services is far more challenging than I had originally anticipated 12 years ago when I entered this niche space. Cyberspace for CEOs can be very demanding because of the need
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CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS
LAC
London Affiliate Conference 2012 represented the sixth consecutive year of the London Affiliate Conference (LAC), with record numbers of delegates, exhibitors and conference speakers ensuring this was the best attended London event to date. Here, we take a look at some of the highlights from the exhibition, conferences, iGSOP poker tournament and the prestigious opening ceremony, the iGB Affiliate Awards. The London Affiliate Conference (LAC) 2012, held in Old Billingsgate on the banks of the River Thames, marked the opening event on iGB Affiliate’s busy 2012 events calendar. The latest instalment in the LAC series was officially the biggest and most expansive in its six year history, bringing together more than 2,700 people from all over the industry, and all over the world under one roof in England’s capital. The event has become a natural pull for both operators, who are guaranteed a huge amount of affiliate traffic, and the affiliates themselves, who get free admission as well as unique access to the partners they promote and dozens of networking opportunities for new business. There was also the return of the ever popular iGaming Series of Poker (iGSOP) which is open to all registered affiliates and sponsored programs at each iGB Affiliate event (LAC, iGaming Super Show and Barcelona Affiliate Conference [BAC]). This year’s London title was won by Harry Barber of PKR. However, one of the main attractions of the LAC is the two-day conference schedule, which allows delegates free access to some of the leading industry experts and gaming speakers who cover a range of topics that include regulation, SEO, traditional and digital marketing, mobile gaming, social media and much more. Nir Korczak, Google Israel’s Industry Head Export (who writes later in this issue) provided just one of the highlights of the conference. The following images take us back to the exhibition floor, some of the conference session highlights as well as the ultra competitive iGSOP tournament, before we concentrate on the glamorous Affiliate Awards evening.
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iGB AFFILIATE AWARDS
CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS
iGB Affiliate Awards The fifth annual iGB Affiliate
Best Affiliate: Bingo
Awards ceremony brought together over 500 people from the industry to honour some of the best programs, affiliates and personalities from the hugely dynamic affiliate sector of the iGaming marketplace. As always, the black tie event was the curtain opener to the LAC conference and expo and was again held in the splendour of The Brewery where guests were guided through the evening by comedian and compere, Miles Jupp. We look back at the night in pictures and detail all of the winners of the coveted awards on the night.
WhichBingo.co.uk View from the judges: As one of the longest serving and most established bingo affiliates the judges were particularly impressed with the reputation and brand power of Which Bingo. The 2011 makeover of the site was also deemed to have vastly improved the user experience and the development of a highly effective SEO strategy had also been considered as a key factor.
The 2012 Awards Winners and Judges’ Comments Best Affiliate: Casino Sponsored by WagerShare AskGamblers.com View from the judges: The award is down to their impressive work within social media on top of their consistent innovation in the market. The site is extremely professional and well designed and the panel was particularly impressed with the complaint system for both the casino and player.
Best Affiliate: Non-Traditional APCW.org View from the judges: With over 2.7 million views, their weekly newscast is the mostwatched and most-distributed video in the online gaming industry. J Todd was singled out for his no-holds-barred opinions and genuine love for the industry, a key ingredient that makes APCW’s footage so popular.
Best Overall Affiliate Sponsored by NETELLER Oddschecker.com View from the judges: Simply, Oddschecker is one of the biggest odds comparisons sites in the world, but they also consistently deliver both volume and quality player growth year-
on-year. The judges were also impressed with their on-page SEO and ranking in the search engines as well as a number of innovative approaches to boost conversions.
Best Affiliate Manager: Casino Martyn Beacon, AffiliateEdge View from the judges: The judges summarised Martyn as a huge asset and one of the most dedicated and helpful affiliate managers in the industry. The award was based on his commitment to helping and responding to affiliates in a timely manner, his dedication in getting the newest promotions out and general hardworking attitude.
Best Affiliate: Poker PokerStrategy.com View from the judges: This award demonstrates that not only are they one of the biggest poker affiliates in the market but that they provide such a highly valuable service in educating the masses about online poker. Poker Strategy is a significant source of information and an enormous asset for all poker operators and the wider gambling industry.
Best Affiliate: Sportsbetting OLBG.com View from the judges: The judges were highly impressed with how OLBG have developed and activated one of the UK’s busiest and best converting betting communities. The management team were also found to be extremely approachable and professional, consistently focusing on how the broader industry trends could be utilised in their business.
“We chose to sponsor the Best Overall Affiliate award in 2012 as recognition of the achievements affiliates make in continuing to drive innovation within this growing industry. We look forward to next year’s event with great anticipation!” NETELLER
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iGB AFFILIATE AWARDS
management. His friendly personality and upbeat demeanour is evident in all of his relationships, whether managing existing clients or establishing new ones. The judges concluded that Seb is an exceptional affiliate manager who treats all affiliates like he would want to be treated.
Best Overall Affiliate Manager
Best Affiliate Manager: Bingo
Best Affiliate Manager: Poker Atil Singh, Carbon Poker/ChipSplit View from the judges: Atil has excelled in providing his affiliates with great service and his honest and thoughtful approach is well respected within the industry. The judges summarised that Atil’s dedication goes above and beyond what is required and this recognition is well deserved.
Vikki Taylor, Bingocams View from the judges: The judges chose Vikki because of her friendly attitude and positive approach to problem solving, making the most of any opportunity that comes her way. The judges concluded that Vikki’s can-do attitude and 100 percent commitment to the affiliates she manages really set her above her bingo affiliate manager peers.
Best Affiliate Manager: Non-Traditional Sebastian Loaiza, Poker Affiliate Solutions View from the judges: Seb’s award was down to his passion for relationship
Nigel Ridgway, bet365 View from the judges: Nigel’s dedication to both the bet365 team and his affiliates ensured that he was the deserved winner of this award. The judges concluded by reiterating that Nigel’s honesty, promptness and considered responses are just a few reasons why both his colleagues and affiliates feel he goes out of his way for them – a real professional.
Best Affiliate Program: Casino Affiliate Edge View from the judges: The judges were particularly impressed by their wide assortment of casino choices, innovative reporting, attentive staff and timely payments. Affiliate Edge have succeeded in establishing one of the best managed and respected affiliate sites.
Best Affiliate Program: Poker Everest Affiliates View from the judges: This award was as a result of the program’s longevity and stability. With a business-minded affiliate management
Best Affiliate Manager: Sportsbetting Nigel Ridgway, bet365 View from the judges: This award went to Nigel as a result of the excellent support he gives to the affiliates he manages. The judges concluded that his hard work, reliability and trustworthy character deserve a lot of credit as he has become one of the industry’s top all round affiliate managers.
“As always, the iGB Affiliate Awards is a great, rewarding celebration of our industry peers. The highlight of the night was having the proud sponsor opportunity to present the ‘Best Newcomer Affiliate’ award to our friend Adnan of Come On!. Intercash looks forward to his future success as well as the success of all gaming affiliates in 2012 and beyond.” Intercash
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iGB AFFILIATE AWARDS
team and strong brand focus, Everest has remained a popular favourite keeping their affiliates as their number one priority.
CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS
the success it has had. Bet365 is best summarised by one of the comments in the nomination process: “There is nothing negative to be said about this program!”
Best Affiliate Program: Sportsbetting
Best iGaming Affiliate Network
Bet365 View from the judges: The judges felt that bet365 not only have the best player facing product but also an incredible affiliate program with high conversions and consistently good support and prompt payments. It is a solid and ethical business with a highly dedicated team that want to help their affiliates to grow.
Income Access View from the judges: Income Access received this award because the judges were particularly impressed by their continuous search for excellence, providing a popular, trusted and reliable service with unbeatable support. The company is a seriously dedicated group of experts with experience that is second to none.
Best Affiliate Program: Bingo
The Lou Fabiano Award for the Best iGaming Community
Market-Ace (Jackpot Joy) View from the judges: The judges recognised Market-Ace due to their solid reputation and strong selection of recognisable and leading bingo brands. They also made a special note on the fantastic affiliate support that help affiliates gain the most from the extensive marketing tools provided.
Best Affiliate Program: Non-Traditional 24Option View from the judges: 24Option deserved this award due to the fact that they consistently put affiliates first and genuinely work with their partners to increase conversions. In addition, the judges were impressed with the level of customisation available to track the various marketing campaigns.
GPWA View from the judges: The judges were impressed by the tremendous effort that is put into this forum, the engagement of administrators, breadth of topic coverage, quality of posts and overall reputation. The judges summarised GPWA as the number one destination for any affiliate manager or affiliate, old or new – a very active and vibrant gaming affiliate community.
Best Payment System NETELLER View from the judges: NETELLER’s award comes through their usability, reliability, and excellent customer service with particular focus on account security and resolving fraud payment withdrawals. NETELLER is a solid, robust and highly trustworthy payment solution that has added a novel affiliate model to enhance its offering to players.
Outstanding Achievement in the iGaming Affiliate Industry Richard Skelhorn View from the judges: As CEO of Mandalay Media, Richard is one of the most successful casino affiliates in the iGaming industry, consistently delivering high quality traffic through innovation and SEO techniques since 2000. Building on this success, Richard moved into bingo from both the operator and supplier side driving big successes and challenging many misconceptions in the bingo market creating a number of very well known brands. Richard is a bona fide Super Affiliate and has achieved a huge amount in a short space of time.
Best Newcomer: Affiliate Program Sponsored by Intercash ComeOn! View from the judges: ComeOn! have successfully built great awareness and recognition despite being such a young company. They are a new but very likeable brand with a professional approach and an affiliate-friendly concept.
Best Affiliate Program: Overall Bet365 View from the judges: A busy night for bet365 saw their affiliate program scoop the top honour because they exceed expectations on every level from transparency and reputation to conversion and retention. The judges were most impressed with how dedicated and hard working the affiliate team is which underpins the entire program and
Best Newcomer: Affiliate Goal.com View from the judges: Goal.com deserved this accolade because of their impressive high-end site and phenomenal progress in such a short time. They have a great concept and with the availability of languages and top class content, this site looks set to become one of the more renowned sports sites of the future.
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iGaming and the United States Nevada goes all in, an exclusive insight from the former Chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board, Dennis Neilander. The State of Nevada has been working toward the legalisation of iGaming for the last decade. In 2001, in my role as Chairman of the Nevada Gaming Control Board (GCB), I worked extensively on state legislation that would legalise, regulate and tax iGaming activities both on an interstate and international level. The then Chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission (NGC), Brian Sandoval (now the Governor of Nevada), also worked extensively on the legislation and was supportive of its passage. The law was enacted and became known as the ‘Nevada Interactive Gaming Act’. This law did not allow the regulators to go forward without making a finding that the activities could be done in accordance with all applicable laws, including federal laws. Toward that end, the regulators began a dialogue with the US Department of Justice (DoJ) in an effort to examine the interaction between federal and state law. In a rare move, the DoJ authored a letter concluding that the authorisation of iGaming as set forth in the state law would violate several federal laws, principally the Wire Act. For the next decade, regulators and policy makers monitored the explosive developments in online gaming but were stopped from going forward by the DoJ opinion. In 2011, the US Congress began consideration of various pieces of legislation that would address the issue. In an effort to prepare for the possibility that the activity may become legal, Nevada lawmakers, regulators and other interested parties began debating the issue. The Nevada Interactive Gaming Act was amended to require the regulators to adopt regulations to implement iGaming. However, a provision was added that does not allow any iGaming licences to be issued unless there is some clarification of the federal law by Congress or the DOJ. The Nevada regulators held a series of public workshops from June through December of 2011. After assuring themselves that the regulations properly implemented the law by including required
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protections of player funds, game integrity, and assurances that minors and the vulnerable would be reasonably protected, the NGC adopted the regulations on December 22. Then, in a surprise move, the DoJ issued an opinion on December 23 that appears to clarify and reverse its prior opinions in respect of the applicability of the Wire Act to certain iGaming activities. This letter was in response to an inquiry from the states of Illinois and New York regarding whether they could sell lottery tickets to out-of-state residents over the Internet. The DoJ opined that the Wire Act applied “solely to sport-related gambling activities in interstate and foreign commerce”. Many gaming experts have concluded that this allows states to offer at least online poker and some argue other casino games as well. The opinion seems to open the door for legalisation on a state-by-state basis of at least some gaming activities. In Nevada, the Attorney General’s Office (counsel to the regulators) is considering the ramifications of the opinion and will advise the regulators in due time. The much publicised indictments that were issued on Friday April 13, caused that day to become commonly known as ‘Black Friday’. The new DoJ opinion issued on Friday December 23 is now being dubbed by some as ‘White Friday’. Meanwhile, the state has begun accepting applications for iGaming licences and has started the probity and financial investigations of the applicants. As of this writing, seven applications for some form of iGaming activity have been filed. Although not part of the iGaming legislation, in separate legislation, the state authorised the use of independent testing laboratories for terrestrial and iGaming systems. The regulators are currently drafting regulations to allow independent testing labs to work with the state lab to test both types of systems. These regulations are expected to be effective in May or June. What follows is a description of the major provisions of the new Nevada Regulations.
I. iGaming licence requirements Nevada maintains two main types of iGaming licences. First, the operator of an Interactive Gaming Licence authorises the licensee to operate the interactive gaming system and to accept and pay out wagers. This is similar to an operator’s licence in Europe. The second type of licence is a Service Provider Licence. In order to be eligible for an Operator of an Interactive Gaming System licence, the applicant must have held a land-based licence in Nevada for at least five years and depending upon the location of the licensee, operated a resort hotel with at least 500 slot machines and table games. (These requirements are by law, not regulation.) In order to qualify for a Service Provider Licence, there is not a requirement that the company be a Nevada Company or have a history in Nevada. This type of licence will allow existing iGaming companies outside the US to participate by affiliating with Nevada Companies.
II. Licence conditions and application process The provisions for licence conditions and applications are similar to what Nevada has used for land-based gaming. There is an application fee and a deposit that is drawn upon to pay the costs of the investigation. The criteria or standards for licensing are very similar to land-based casinos including an in-depth evaluation of character, reputation, financial status and associations. With respect to licence conditions, the regulators are free to impose any conditions they deem reasonable. There are a number of reporting and auditing requirements that must be met by virtue of the fact that in order to hold an operator licence, the company must already be licensed to conduct land-based operations and all the reporting requirements that are already in the land-based regulations would still apply. iGaming is restricted to persons 21 years of age or older and advertising must be truthful.
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III. Service providers Nevada is proposing three classifications of service providers. A class 1 provider is any interactive gaming service provider that supplies the core services related to the offering and acceptance of wagers and the conduct of games or who receives a percentage of revenue from gambling, and any other provider deemed as such by the Chairman of the GCB. The class 1 provider must make application on the forms and meet the standards of a non-restricted licence (probity and requirements the same as large land-based casinos). A class 3 service provider is any person who is acting on behalf of an operator of interactive gaming as a marketing affiliate. The class 3 provider is required to make application on forms prescribed by the chairman. The application for this class is more like a registration. The GCB intends to conduct cursory investigations of these marketing affiliates, but they would not be subject to the standard comprehensive probity checks that class 1 would be. The licence is probationary in nature. The Chairman of the GCB may convert the application to a class 1 application at any time. The NGC may then either terminate the class 3 licence and issue a class 1 licence or terminate the class 3 licence. There is no appeal from such a termination. In addition to marketing affiliates, the GCB has added holders of trademarks and trade names to this category. A class 2 service provider is any person providing service not captured by 1 or 3 above. Such persons must make application on the forms and meet the standards for a restricted licence in Nevada (small bars, convenience stores and the like that may operate only 15 slot machines or less and no other games). The scope of the investigation is much less than a class 1, but slightly more than a class 3.
IV. Hosting activities The Nevada Legislature enacted a law in 2011 that authorises “hosting centers”. This new law was supported by the GCB and applies to interactive gaming systems including mobile gaming. Previously, Nevada regulators required certain components of mobile gaming systems and server-based systems to be housed within the bricks and mortar casinos. The new law allows hosting centres to be located in any suitable location, but the hosting centre must be within the state of Nevada. The GCB has not yet drafted regulations addressing the hosting centres.
V. Manufacturers of iGaming equipment and disciplinary action The new regulations provide definitions for what constitutes iGaming equipment and the standards for approval. Any party that manufactures an interactive gaming system will be required to hold a licence. The standards an applicant must meet are the same as the operator standards discussed previously. The regulations also contain provisions for disciplinary action and set forth the available remedies (suspension, revocation, etc) and due process provisions.
VI. Key individuals The Nevada criteria for key persons are based on the land-based criteria. Persons in a mandatory licensing position include the CEO, COO, CFO and CTO. For privately held companies, all shareholders holding greater than five percent of the equity must be licensed. For publicly held companies, only those shareholders holding greater than ten percent of the outstanding shares are mandatory. The regulations also contain provisions that allow the regulators to call forward anyone they deem necessary for licensing.
VII. Player accounts The regulations require each licensee to establish a reserve account. This account must be held in a “reserve” (not subject to any company or other uses) with a highest rated financial institution. The reserve is an amount equal to the total amount of all customer deposits per day. This amount is in addition to the actual customer deposits and can be satisfied using cash, a bond or a letter of credit. There is a requirement for the licence to audit the reserve account requirements on a daily basis.
VII. Conclusion The attorneys and others who drafted the Nevada regulations drew upon the existing land-based regulations but also relied greatly on established iGaming jurisdictions including Alderney, the Isle of Man, and UK regulatory schemes. As a result, while there are some differences, the systems are also similar in many ways. As presently adopted, the regulations will only allow for the game of poker; however, they are crafted to cover all types of games eventually. Nevada should be applauded for moving forward in a proactive way to address this issue. Millions of Americans gamble online every day without benefit of regulation and consumer protection. The United States approach of partially prohibiting certain activities and relying on
antiquated laws has not worked. While the DoJ opinion seems to have opened the door to a state-by-state legalisation of iGaming, I believe a federal solution is best. Europe and countries in other regions are light years ahead of the US in the regulation of iGaming. The US would be wise to learn from the mistakes of other jurisdictions. iGaming in Europe has created a fragmented marketplace where regulation is difficult and uncertainty is common. I believe the best course of action is for the US Congress to create a framework that would establish uniform regulatory standards for the states to use in the day-today regulation of iGaming. Congress should also establish a fair and efficient scale of taxation that is uniform among the states. The individual states could then decide as a matter of public policy if they want to participate or not. States could also then compact among one another and potentially with international jurisdictions to pool player funds and create an efficient liquid market. It will also be difficult for the states to prevent illegal operators from operating in the US without federal law enforcement tools. Legalising and regulating any activity becomes futile if the regime allows for black markets and unlicensed operators. Absent of a federal solution, I am supportive of the states’ rights to move forward and regulate these activities that are occurring among their citizens and will occur no matter what the federal government does or does not do. White Friday is going to make 2012 an interesting year in Nevada and the US. Dennis Neilander is the former Chairman of the Nevada State Gaming Control Board (GCB). His practice focuses on gaming, administrative law and government affairs. He served as Member of the GCB from 1998 until the end of 2010. Mr Neilander was the Chairman for the last ten years of his tenure and was the longest serving Chairman of the GCB. He was appointed by three different Governors from both political parties. As Chief Executive Officer of the GCB, he executed daily operations of the Board including the oversight of approximately 500 employees, a $42 million dollar budget and offices in five Nevada cities. Mr Neilander represented the GCB regarding all gaming matters before the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government at both the state and federal level. He also served as Chairman of the Board’s Audit Committee that was responsible for full scope compliance and revenue audits for Nevada casinos.
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US ONLINE POKER MARKET(S) WILL RE-EMERGE IN 2012, WILL YOU BE THERE? As affiliates, what opportunities does this coming re-emergence present today? How do you gain access to the re-emerging US market(s), and what will it mean in terms of earnings? I can offer suggestions on what you should do if you want to monetise your US-facing assets, re-enter the marketing of US online poker, and what sort of regulatory scrutiny is in your future if you choose to re-enter. (I have very little insight, unfortunately, as to what affiliate earnings might look like, but can offer my opinion on what structures might be allowed and how to best ensure a win-win outcome for you and newly-licensed US operators.)
Legislation or not, here it comes Regardless of whether or not some form of federal legislation passes into law in the coming months, online poker licensing is moving forward. Nevada has approved online poker regulations, which provide expressly for use of marketing affiliates by licensed online poker operators. (Similarly, New Jersey is again in the process of passing online gaming legislation, this time with support promised from Governor Christie. As this issue goes to press, other emerging state markets may include Florida, Illinois, and Connecticut.) In any event, the most recently discussed federal legislation itself would push licensing and regulation to the traditional state level agencies, calling upon designated “qualified” state regulators to licence operators and service providers.
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applications and may issue licences in time for business to open before the first hand of the 2012 WSOP is dealt. Nevada is a likely gateway to the US market(s), regardless of whether legalisation proceeds by federal or state-by-state activity. Since Nevada has called for licensing of marketing affiliates, it seems likely that subsequent enabling regulatory schemes will do so as well. (Briefly, the experience of Nevada gaming companies’ entanglement with Macao junket operators lead to a requirement for registration of ‘independent marketing agents’ in Nevada early last year. A desire to avoid any untoward associations in the online world lead Nevada regulators to take a similar approach to online poker marketing affiliates.) Affiliates have an opportunity to strike early deals with Nevada licensees, provided they get a class 3 gaming licence, or work through someone who gets a class 3 licence. No licence means that a Nevada online poker operator expressly cannot use your services.1 Affiliates are required to be licensed, as they clearly are “a type of interactive gaming service provider… who provides information regarding persons to an operator of interactive gaming via a database or customer list”.2
Why is Nevada’s licensing of affiliates important?
Can I get a class 3 Nevada licence or work through a super affiliate, who gets licensed?
Nevada will be first-to-market and is a traditional leader in US gaming regulation. Nevada has advanced the process furthest, has taken operator and service provider
Actual class 3 application forms will be out by the time of this article’s publication. In the interim, NGC staff have been advised to expect their disclosures to look like the
iGB Affiliate FEBRUARY/MARCH 2012
Independent Agent forms used for junket marketers. The application fee will be $150, plus an investigation fee of $2,500. Are you a “person of good character, honesty and integrity”, “whose prior activities, criminal record, if any, reputation, habits and associations do not pose a threat to the public interest of [Nevada] or to the effective regulation and control of gaming… or enhance the dangers of unsuitable, unfair, or illegal practices, methods and activities in the conduct of gaming…”?3 Although the marketing affiliate regulations discuss issuing a licence generally following a “cursory investigation”, do not make the mistake of thinking anyone can blow smoke or fail to disclose any material background matters needed to fully disclose or fully explain the areas inquired about or your meeting statutory qualifications for licensing. Failure to disclose everything is literally as bad as lying. (It is historical fact that one bricks and mortar casino developer, after having literally built an entire brand new hotel-casino in Las Vegas, was denied a gaming licence for a failure to disclose some facts from his past.) A class 3 licence of a marketing affiliate can be terminated on 30 days’ notice.4 If someone “unsuitable” manages to get licensed, that remedy can be expected to be invoked. Furthermore, the Nevada regulators understand they have a way to go on the learning curve of the online gaming industry. The Nevada Gaming Commission has retained a lot of discretion as to marketing activities and practices it
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An affiliate who gets a Nevada licence now, and enters into an expansive marketing affiliate agreement with Nevada online poker sites, stands to grab onto the coattails of the emerging US and international market(s) wherever Nevada licensees can take themselves. Furthermore, a class 3 marketing affiliate can enter into agreements with more than one Nevada online gaming operator. Finally, there is nothing to prevent a class 2 marketing affiliate from negotiating the best deal it can, including fees for cross-selling to customers brought to the Nevada licensees from offline or non-poker gaming and activities.
Can I make money as an affiliate from Nevada online poker play?
may or may not choose to allow as suitable. As discussed below, it seems a best practice to put agreed-upon marketing practices, whether forms of overall compensation, offering of players incentives to aid your client acquisition or retention efforts, into the affiliate agreement entered into with your operator counterpart. My reading of the likely regulatory posture in Nevada, based upon the treatment afforded to independent agents, is that a super affiliate may obtain a class 3 licence and contract itself with subaffiliates for use of their services. The super affiliate, as the class 3 licensee would be the contracting party with the licensed operators, be fully accountable for any screw-ups by its sub-affiliates and, most likely, would be required to report at least quarterly on what sub-affiliates it employs and on what terms, submits to personal jurisdiction in Nevada and authorises the Secretary of State to receive process. This path would be a huge benefit to the smaller affiliates who have experience in the US markets, and valuable data and contacts, but are reluctant to commit the time, expense and effort to getting licensed before entering into any agreements with prospective Nevada online poker licensees.
Will there be demand from Nevada poker operators for marketing affiliate services? Nevada’s prospective online poker licensees get the importance of liquidity, liquidity, liquidity in presenting an attractive online poker experience to prospective players. Nevada has only 2.7 million residents, plus another 300,000 or so visitors on weekends. The Nevada regulations flexibly make it discretionary for the Gaming Commission to authorise licensees combining with international player pools or eventual multi-state player pools, but that day is not tomorrow. So, not surprisingly, use of affiliates is expressly allowed and likely seen as an essential part of the Nevada online poker ecosystem from date of launch. There will definitely be different appetites among prospective Nevada online poker operators, as some already have massive player databases and in-house marketing machines. However, there are already a number of applicants on file for online poker licences without such apparent resources. Finally, I expect one or more licensed online poker ‘networks’ to arise, along the aggregator model used in Europe and the US by Tribeca.
Regulation 5.240(4) (A licensee may only use a service provider that is licensed as such by the commission.) Regulation 5.240(2)(c). 3 Nevada Revised Statutes Section 463.170. 4 Regulation 5.240(7). 1
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There has been some speculation about what forms of compensation will be set by the market for affiliate services in Nevada. While it is doubtful that straight revenue sharing will be allowed, there is room for tiered fees tied to player activity. Operators may also push for a simple low CPA arrangement, with high play requirements and a short lifespan, where the operator owns that player. I do not think you can expect much revenue in the short-term, but you need to consider the long-term value of the business relationships you may be able to launch there, build in future earning potential, push for cross-marketing fees and try for a long enough term to realise gains as added jurisdictions come online.
David Gzesh provides poker and online gaming industry clients an understanding of their business issues and goals, drawn from experience for years spent as an online poker network operator and software provider. David also brings legal expertise from over 20 years advising both online and terrestrial gaming operators in a number of jurisdictions, both in the US and overseas. Elected in 2010 as a General Member of the International Masters of Gaming Law, and as a member of the State Bar of Nevada Section on Gaming Law, David provides an informed perspective on the re-emerging US online gaming market(s) and regulatory development.
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A Present from the DoJ: Internet Lotteries (and Poker?) are Legal Shortly after news of the US Department of Justice’s (DoJ) clarification of the 1961 Wire Act, esteemed gaming expert, I Nelson Rose, offered his view of the events and their implications. The United States DoJ has given the online gaming community a big, big present, made public two days before Christmas. President Barack Obama’s administration has just declared, perhaps unintentionally, that almost every form of intra-state Internet gambling is legal under federal law, and so may be games played interstate and even internationally. Technically, the only question being decided was “Whether proposals by Illinois and New York to use the Internet and out-of-state transaction processors to sell lottery tickets to in-state adults violate the Wire Act.” But the conclusion by the DoJ that the Wire Act’s “prohibitions relate solely to sport-related gambling activities in interstate and foreign commerce,” eliminates almost every federal antigambling law that could apply to gaming that is legal under state laws. If the Wire Act is limited to bets on sports events and races, what other federal anti-gambling statutes are left? There are prohibitions on interstate lotteries, but Powerball and the other multi-state lotteries show how easily these can be gotten around, even before Congress passed an express exemption for state lotteries. And poker is not a lottery under federal law. So, all that are left are the federal laws designed to go after organised crime. These all require that there first be a violation of another law, like the Wire Act, the federal anti-lottery statutes, or a state anti-gambling law. If a state has expressly legalised intrastate games like poker, as Nevada and the District of Columbia have done, there is simply no federal law that could apply. If the bettors and operator are all in the same state, and the gambling does not involve a sports event or race, the Wire Act cannot be used against the operator, even if phone wires happen to cross into another state. And if the state legislature has made the online game legal, it does not violate any other federal anti-gambling law. I suppose it is possible that the DoJ could argue that poker is a “sporting event or contest.” But the language of the Wire
Act prohibits “information assisting in the placing of bets or wagers ON any sporting event or contest.” If poker is a contest, it is one where players bet IN the contest, not on it. Anyway, the DoJ held that the Wire Act was designed to go after bookies taking bets on horseraces and football games, etc, not other forms of gambling.
Once these jurisdictions open their online games, even if limited to players who are physically within the state, operators will push for compacts to allow interstate Internet poker among the legal states. And other states, like Florida, will jump on the bandwagon.
Beneficiaries
Proponents are trying to spin the DoJ opinion. But the reality is that Congressional advocates, like Barney Frank (D.-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R.-Tx.), have had some of the wind knocked out of their sails. Since states are now clearly free to legalise intra-state online poker, and perhaps even interstate, there is not as much reason to even bother with a federal law. Opponents, like Jon Kyl (R.-AZ) and Frank Wolf (R.-VA), might get some leverage for their attempts to expand the Wire Act to cover all forms of gambling. But, Congress has passed literally no substantive laws since the Republicans took over the House of Representatives in January 2009. There is as little chance of this Congress passing a new Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act as there is its passing a repeal of the UIGEA. The interesting question is what the Majority Leader of the US Senate, Harry Reid (D.-NV) and Kyl, the number two Republican in the Senate, will do. They had sent a letter asking the DoJ for clarification of its position on Internet gambling. They now have their answer, though it may not have been what they had wanted. My bet is that they, and Congress, will continue to do nothing, while Internet gambling explodes across the nation, made legal under state laws.
The immediate beneficiaries will be the Nevada-licensed private operators, since that jurisdiction is the furthest ahead. The state lotteries in Illinois, New York and New Hampshire will also initiate or expand their online games. After all, most of the provincial lotteries in Canada are already operating Internet poker. I believe this will be a major incentive for the other states looking at legalising intra-state poker and other games. First will probably be Iowa. The State Legislature mandated a report, which has already been submitted, concluding that intra-state poker can be operated safely and will raise money. The Iowa Legislature meets for a short period at the beginning of the year, so it has to act quickly, or it will be passed by other states in 2012. Those other states are California and New Jersey. California is desperate for any source of revenue, and it has so much legal gambling that the only question is which operators are going to be the big winners. The Democratic-controlled Legislature in New Jersey approved intra-state online gaming, but the bill was vetoed by Governor Chris Christie (R.-NJ). Christie understands his state needs the money, so he will probably help put the issue on the ballot in November. In November 2011, the voters of New Jersey approved sportsbetting. There is no reason they would not also approve Internet casinos. It will be interesting to see if the main author, state senator Ray Lesniak (D.-Union), will limit online patrons to New Jersey, as his original bill stated, or, if he will accept players from any other state and nation where Internet gambling is legal.
What impact will all this have on proposed federal laws?
© Copyright 2011, I. Nelson Rose, Encino, California. All rights reserved worldwide. Gambling and the Law® is a registered trademark of Professor I. Nelson Rose, www.GamblingAndTheLaw.com. www.gamblingandthelaw.com/blog.html.
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feature OPINION
THE DOJ CHRISTMAS PRESENT: THe affiliate perspective By Jeremy Enke, Founder, Poker Affiliate Listings. The rest of the story about the DoJ’s surprise statement remains to be written. By Saturday December 24, however, the online gambling industry was buzzing with what may prove to be the most significant statement made by the US Department of Justice regarding online gambling since the signing of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) in 2006. This surprise statement took place just one day after the State of Nevada adopted new online poker regulations. In this statement, the DoJ finally clarified its position that the Wire Act of 1961 only prohibited sportsbetting. Throughout the last five years, the interpretation of the Federal Wire Act of 1961 as it is related to the UIGEA has been
way, let’s examine four specific challenges should individual states venture alone into the complex world of running an online poker operation.
Player liquidity Anyone who has ever been involved in a new online poker site knows that player liquidity is a tremendous challenge. Early predictions are that, initially, the states who pass some form of legalisation and regulation will only be able to offer online poker to individuals residing within their state borders. Could all 50 states in the US individually sustain a large enough player pool to operate successful online poker operations? The answer to that question is more than likely a resounding ‘no’.
“If these new poker operations approach the wide-open US market with an ‘If we build it will they will come’ attitude, they will be in for an unwelcome surprise.” heavily debated amongst industry veterans and legal scholars. And although there are probably hidden agendas or political reasons for this statement coming out at this exact time, it is one that is welcomed and long overdue. The DoJ’s newfound stance has many in the industry cautiously optimistic for fully legalised online gambling inside US borders within the New Year. With the DoJ’s recent clarification, many legal experts have proclaimed that the door is now open for individual states to begin offering online poker. On one hand, this is reassuring; on the other hand, however, it presents a whole new set of challenges for the online gambling industry. While there will be multiple challenges along the
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it profitable is almost comical. Sure, many states have lotteries, however, lotteries for the most part involve land-based transactions paid in cash, versus an online player-to-player transaction.
Online poker is a complicated business Despite the fact that to the layperson, running an online poker operation might seem as simple as plugging in some turnkey software and marketing to new players, it is not. Many of the world’s most successful poker operators are large publicly traded companies and have assembled some of the brightest minds in the industry to run their operations. Currently in the US, most states cannot figure out how to balance a budget, make collective decisions, or even just have representatives from two parties simply agree on legislation. The thought of a ‘state’ running a complex business such as an online poker operation and making
Taxation of online poker While each state will have different ideas of how online poker should be regulated and taxed, one thing is certain: the idea will be caught up in bureaucracy and debates for several months amongst politicians before we see a state with a live functioning poker site. Likewise, many high value players depend on schemes such as rakeback or bonuses to be profitable each month. Adding mandatory taxation on top of the player’s already thin margins could potentially be a major turn-off for many of these players. This leads us to the fourth and final challenge for today.
Meeting the expectations of online poker players While most of the discussion at the state and federal level revolves around regulation and taxation; the real challenge for states will be to build a product that is attractive to players. When you look at the existing largest and most successful online poker sites in the world, there are several departments and creative teams that ensure player conversion and retention. If states become disillusioned that they can drive conversions and retention simply through regulation with an inferior product, they will be surprised when their perceived golden goose turns out to be a rotten egg. Overall, the clarification made by the United States Department of Justice regarding the Wire Act is certainly one of the most positive things the industry has
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seen in a long time. It is also unlikely that it’s simply a coincidence this clarification was made only one day after the state of Nevada adopted new online poker regulations. While there is a great deal of speculation as to what transpires next, most in the industry believe that the plans are already in place.
The face of regulation While nobody knows exactly what a ‘regulated’ US market will look like, I have a few ideas on the possibilities. I’ll preface this by stating that, of course, this is just one poker affiliate and consultant’s opinion. When we start discussing publicly traded US gambling companies and US landbased casinos, we enter an entirely new discussion from the traditional ‘offshore gaming businesses’ we often speak of. Like many other industries in the United States, the gambling industry has very powerful lobbyists and political connections. Through these lobbyists and political connections, we will likely see some sort of serious regulation begin to take place. Given the timing of Nevada’s regulation with the recent DoJ clarification, I personally believe we will see the large
“Should the right companies and individuals be involved in the new emerging market of legalised and regulated online poker in the US, this could be one of the best things to ever happen to our industry. “ land-based casino organisations heavily involved in any regulated and legalised online poker environment. And frankly, after reviewing some of the four challenges previously listed that exclusive state-run poker would be faced with, this is probably a good thing. More than likely we will see a few major US gaming companies partner up with large overseas online poker operators still in good standing with the US government. From there, the various states with regulated and legalised online poker will collectively team up to a share a player pool, similar to how existing poker networks currently operate. Furthermore, this interstate model is somewhat familiar to the states as there are already various interstate lotteries such as the mega millions and powerball games. Should the right companies and individuals be involved in the new emerging market of legalised and regulated
online poker in the US, this could be one of the best things to ever happen to our industry. However, one thing is certain: this new regulated market will need to remember that at the end of the day, after profits, after taxation, and after bureaucracy, the players are what drive revenues. While most players will be the first to say that they would welcome a regulated market, they will not accept an inferior product. Unfortunately for the states and new poker operations, the US player base has been extremely spoiled over the years by regularly playing on the world’s largest and most well designed poker clients. If these new poker operations approach the wide-open US market with an “If we build it will they will come” attitude, they will be in for an unwelcome surprise. The reality is that they will indeed build something; however, players will continue to find ways to play at offshore poker sites and avoid the mandatory taxation on their winnings.
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INSIGHT
Social Media and Online Gaming: Doing it Right! This article focuses on real case studies showing how social media is being used in a clever and innovative way for regular player acquisition, high roller acquisition and player retention. Also defined in this report is the way social media can and does influence the everyday life of people who are now being referred to as ‘the social consumer’. It is important to bear in mind that there is a great deal of psychology behind online social interactions. By fully understanding the challenges, the audience, the interaction and the engagement, businesses will then be ready to cater completely to the social consumer. Repay Media, a Denmark-based full service digital marketing agency is run by affiliate marketing experts, Mads Busekist and Rune Lundager. Mads and Rune shared with me some of their techniques for using social media to acquire high rollers. Rune began, “In Denmark there’s a saying ‘show me who your friends are and you show me yourself’. That’s the principal behind our ‘Twin Lead Generator’ social media program.” Working very closely with their gaming clients, Mads and Rune locate existing high rollers through their social media profiles. This can be Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any other social channel. Once they find and have access to the players, they are then able to target incentivised surveys, competitions or lotteries at these players, using targeted Facebook advertising. In most cases, the offer is connected to an online survey. None of the ads are directly related to online gaming and all of the ads adhere to the terms and conditions of Facebook’s current advertising policy. In order to get the offer, the player needs to accept the terms of the Facebook application. From the moment the player accepts the application, the database behind the application is able to capture the player’s full contact details including email and phone number. Also captured within this process is the entire friend list
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connected to the player. The same ads are then targeted at the friends of the player. Using a number of filtering techniques hidden within the survey, identifying other potential high rollers is carried out. Once the data is captured and potential high rollers have been identified and flagged accordingly, they are then contacted either by phone, email or SMS. The fact that these users are connected to an existing ‘high roller’ makes the prospect of finding additional big spenders much higher. Hence the program name ‘Twin Lead Generator’. In the past, prior to Facebook, having access to a high roller’s ‘network of friends’ would have been impossible. For regular player acquisition, similar surveys are used. They are advertised using Facebook ads and offer incentives for completion such as a free hour of casino time or $250 free. Cleverly devised questions place a score on the potential player. Then, using call centre technology, the potential players are contacted. Additionally, once a person becomes a player, their friends’ details, who have also been captured during the survey process, are flagged within the database. “It requires a great amount of technology and a lot of time to set-up to locate the twin high roller. When you ask us, ‘do you see social media as an acquisition channel’, the answer is ‘of course we do’ but this is only one way of doing it.” Rune continued.
Ambassadors and re-targeting Additionally, from the way surveys are answered the identification of potential ‘Gaming Ambassadors’ is found. Once an ambassador is located they are then
incentivised to share specific promotions and bonuses to their network of friends. They are offered plenty of reasons to choose to wager at a specific online casino or poker room. This behaviour is growing vastly inside the social web. Many brands that have spent thousands of dollars to learn about social consumer psychology are now coming to the same conclusion. Word of mouth marketing being done within a social environment, by people who are seen to be social influencers, is worth more than a large Facebook advertising campaign. Instead, the advertising campaign is merely being run to identify the potential influencers and brand ambassadors. The technology behind the survey, competition or prize draw also enables retargeting. Simply explained, this means that where a user has completed any of the above, on completion, a ‘re-targeting’ cookie is placed on the user’s computer. Advertising inventory can then be bought and specifically targeted to this user’s computer. Unlike Facebook where online gaming is prohibited, direct advertising for online gaming sites can then be served to the user. The ad reaches them due to the ‘re-targeting’ cookie and eliminates the use of email, telephone calls or SMS from a call centre. This closes the full circle of player acquisition using social media. Another service offered by Repay Media is what it calls its ‘Win Back’ service. People move houses, take new phone numbers, change email provider and would never think twice about updating unimportant records. Some people don’t even inform their own bank. But the single most updated media in the world with the most current records of it users is Facebook.
specific brand promotions. People listen to their peers, especially their celebrity peers. With social media, celebrities can communicate directly and more personally than ever before to the people who elevate them to their celebrity status. Even if players cannot currently gamble directly inside Facebook, they are still subject to the same social psychology. And even more so, to listen to well-known personalities, when being given advice and tips on gaming, through social media channels. This should be the direction being taken by online casinos when beginning to strategise for their entry into social media. For large land-based, Vegas casinos looking for an online strategy, they have every element at their disposal to make a hard hitting entry into social media. They just need the right strategy and execution plan.
Virtual currency
“As companies and affiliates work on a strategy to tap into social media, it is important to note that virtual currency is a huge business and has become a vast economy within a social media framework.” Using in-house developed technology, Repay Media is able to locate inactive players using their Facebook account and reactivate their gaming accounts. This is what they refer to as their ‘social washing machine’. “We take a pyramid, shake it, turn it upside down and start from bottom up” added Rune. But these are not the only inroads being made with social media.
Social strategies Many companies are only now starting to seriously enter the social media arena for player acquisition and/or strategic positioning. The easiest, simplest and most cost effective way to enter is just to start a fan page and try to capture fans. However, the old adage ‘you get what you pay for’ is very true in this case. Zero investment equals zero return. However, on the other extreme, it is also not necessary to spend a small fortune in order to see if something works or not. Straight out of stealth mode is a new start-up which will be taking social media advertising to a new level. Focusing on
communities and trendsetters, advertisers will have the ability to make direct offers to social influencers and vice versa. The influencer/trendsetter is the voice of authority within their community. They know what will be heard and acted upon by their social followers. This gives a whole new channel of advertising within Facebook, without ever running a Facebook advertising campaign. Also, due to the nature of the ‘word of mouth’ recommendation, the conversion rate is already being seen as way above industry average. Dashboard statistics are available for both the trendsetter and the advertiser. The advertiser seeing the potential influencers and channels for the exposure of his ad and the trendsetter seeing and choosing which ad would best fit his social community and which reward accompanies each ad. Putting this kind of advertising into perspective for the gaming community, could see celebrity poker players becoming social ambassadors within an environment of social gaming. Celebrities already have a better base of real fans than brands. Brands have a high number of fans just because of
On a final note, as companies and affiliates work on a strategy to tap into social media, it is important to note that virtual currency is a huge business and has become a vast economy within a social media framework. The connection to real money gaming is not just the power of conversion. After recently speaking with the founder and CEO of Glamble, I was amazed to learn that with very little effort and minimum advertising, the platform has around 600,000 users and is making approximately $45,000 to $50,000 per month in micro payments for chips that can never be withdrawn. The company does not currently have any plans to try to convert its players to real money, but is certainly keeping its options open as time goes by and online gaming laws evolve. These are just a number of ways companies are making use of social media. As time evolves there will always be new and innovative ways to reach consumers. But consumers are much more aware of online tricks and traps and consumer psychology dictates that real ‘word of mouth’ marketing efforts are the most effective. Michael Katz is CEO and founder of Sociarati Media, a full service social media marketing agency specializing in strategy and campaign planning for the online gaming industry. Michael has been a part of the online gaming industry since 2002 and has specialized in social media since 2010. Michael can be contacted by email at Michael@sociaratimedia.com.
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INSIGHT
Social Signals Despite mixed feelings about the field within affiliate circles, the incorporation of Google+ and +1 into SERPs and the probable introduction of real-money gambling to Facebook are game changers. More than ever, being competitive in today’s global economy hinges on the ability to acquire and retain customers using social marketing tools. Facebook
Beyond Facebook and Twitter
When you think of social networking, the first word that springs to mind is Facebook, and for many people Facebook is social media. Indeed, its numbers are staggering; the company boasts in excess of 800 million users – bringing its global penetration to ten percent of the entire world population. In the UK, Facebook numbers peaked in July 2011 with 30 million users, and Ofcom’s 2011 Communications Report outlined a 46 percent take up rate of social networking for all UK Internet users, driven primarily by this platform. Yet, while Facebook marketing activities should be included as the core part of any plan, there is a massive and widespread misconception that a Facebook fan page is sufficient for a wellrounded social media plan,
Some analysts are predicting that 2012 will see the emergence of the niche social platforms but in advance of that, there are several other key networks that affiliates need to consider, for various reasons. Google+ cannot be ignored primarily because of its deliberate impact on SERPs which is the lifeblood of any affiliate activity. Outside of that fact, however, it has become a monster of a network filling the gap between the personal elements of Facebook and the quick information and content sharing that Twitter enables. Google+ reached 20 million users in 24 days, 1,011 fewer days than Facebook, and proceeded to achieve 40 million accounts in its next few weeks with Larry Page announcing in early January 2012 that the service has hit the 90 million mark. Another network of supreme importance is YouTube. It is an under-appreciated fact that YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine behind Google. There are 100 million social actions every week on YouTube – this includes ‘likes, ‘shares’ and comments, and video (on desktop and mobile) is among the fastest growing segments of Internet usage. Other sites, such as Foursquare, have more than ten million active users, and the latest social darling is Pinterest. If you don’t count sites like Google+ or new Yahoo! channels that have built-in user bases, comScore’s data shows that Pinterest would be the fastest site of any kind to hit ten million monthly ‘uniques’ in the US. Indeed, of its 13 million registered customers, 12 million are American, 83 percent of whom are female. In the UK, there are currently less than 500,000 users, however, the numbers are rising rapidly and, more importantly, the demographics are vastly different from the US with 56
Twitter Twitter, too, has come a long way when you consider that in May 2008, Nielsen reported that the network had reached only 1.2 million unique visitors globally. However, at the start of 2012, Twitter has reported 100 million users worldwide (and up to 250 to 300 million accounts), 20 million of whom are in the UK. And it’s not just the customer numbers that are on the rise, but also the site’s usage by those customers. The average number of tweets per day in June 2010 was 65 million, which rose dramatically to 230 million per day in September 2011. Though celebrities tend to dominate the trending topics, sports events from the recent Super Bowl to a Manchester derby (football) have hundreds of thousands of interested people actively engaging in real-time, which is, or should be, a key part of targeting activity for affiliates and operators.
percent male registrants, of whom 29 percent are in the top income bracket and more than half are earning more than $100,000 per year.
Search versus discovery We are operating in a social world and it is imperative to include a social strategy in affiliate work. It’s no longer a luxury, it’s a necessity. Your current and future customers and revenue generation opportunities are hanging out on social networks, ergo, this is where you need to be active in order to find them. The growth of social networking is directly in parallel with the move from search to discovery. Push links including tweets, likes and +1s are driving how people discover information. Actions are taken based on recommendations from friends and the flow through the Internet is driven by news feeds, twitter feeds and browsing recommended links from Pinterest, Tumblr or StumbleUpon. Search will always have a place, but its relative importance is declining in the face of the meteoric rise of social networking.
Google’s social strategy Google is ‘socialising’ its search function – presumably both to tailor and improve its service in-line with customer behaviour and also to ensure the success of Google+. A few months ago, Google incorporated Google+ into its algorithm which dramatically impacted SERPs. Around the same time, it included its +1 ‘endorsement feature’ in the SERPs and since then, +1 has been widely adopted with the button served over five billion times worldwide per day. Just recently, in mid-January, Google announced its most radical transformation ever, with a new “Search Plus Your World” format. It finds both content that’s been
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INSIGHT
shared privately along with matches from the public web, all mixed into a single set of listings allowing people to search against both the broader web and their own Google+ social graph. To a certain degree, affiliates are victims of their own success, as the new position Google is taking and the Panda update are as much about Google ensuring the growth of its own network to compete with Facebook, as they are about cleaning up search results by incorporating user generated content which is infinitely less corruptible and malleable than links in acquiring positioning in the results. This makes affiliate work significantly harder and more complex, but addressing the core of the networks will yield results that do justify the effort.
Facebook’s EdgeRank Beyond Google, the most important algorithm that affiliates need to address is Facebook’s EdgeRank. EdgeRank is the equivalent of SEO for the Facebook platform. It is not numbers of fans or followers you have on your page, it is the number of people that see your content that is critical. It is Facebook, not you, that determines who sees your content at all.
EdgeRank = affinity x age x type: ●●Affinity
represents the strength of the relationship between you and the individual reader based on both the direct relationship between both people, and the wider shared network. ●●Age is the time since the item was posted. Newer is better. ●●Type is the kind of item that has been posted – a news item, a comment, a ‘like’, etc. More authority is given to direct items, and less to comments; less still to likes.
The value of ‘like’ Typically, on Facebook, comments are more valuable than likes: the average clicks are 3.103 per like, but reach 14.678 per comment. The Financial Times has outlined that for every brand post on Facebook, fans write an average of 100 comments in response and for every fan of a brand, there are an additional 34 friends of that fan that can be reached with a marketing message. Consider this finding in conjunction with a Socialnomics
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survey which found that 90 percent of consumers base purchasing decisions on peer recommendations and only 14 percent trust advertisements, and you begin to understand the real underlying power of networks when used in association with other direct acquisition tools. Recent research has found that 56 percent of consumers said they are more likely to recommend a brand to a friend after becoming a fan on Facebook and 51 percent of consumers said they are more likely to buy a product once they become a fan. Brand exposure (directly to fans, and indirectly to friends of fans) in social media tends to lead to significantly higher usage of the owned/core website. Data from comScore has shown that user interaction with UK football clubs, for example, is dramatically increased from exposure and fan pages on Facebook. The average user has 130 friends and
for their personal relationships. Success is borne only through the realisation that despite the relationship being titled ‘fan’, you are effectively a friend, as your messages appear in the same timeline and in the manner as pictures from last night, or a joke, or a news story of interest. Seamless engagement, which differs by network, is critical to driving traffic to your portal or site.
Mobile networking Social networking is the most common use of mobile Internet. In excess of 50 percent of all UK mobile Internet minutes are spent on Facebook, and mobile use of social networking is up 80 percent compared to 2010. This means that, although both social and mobile marketing are relatively new concepts, there has to be a considered synergy between the two to maximise results. It’s fair to say that gambling companies
Arsenal
Man United
Liverpool
Total Internet population
1.6
1.4
1.3
Facebook ‘fan’
26.9
18.7
23.2
Friend of Facebook ‘fan’
7.6
6.6
6.8
spends 700 minutes per month on Facebook. 30 billion pieces of content are shared each month and in over 60 seconds, there are 510,000 posted comments, 293,000 status updates and 136,000 uploaded photos.
The right content To engage with the audience in social media, there must be a conscious mindset change from broadcast messages to customer engagement and from content distribution to generation. Social networks are immensely personal, and advertising/promotional messages will be unwelcome except in the case where they add value. Value can be in the form of humour, subtle brand/site promotions and offers – as long as there is no ‘hard sell’, not shouting a message. The fact that fan pages exist at all is indicative of how people are willing to welcome brands into their private world, but the message has to be in context, and that means using the same tone and format as the audience
and affiliates have yet to widely embrace social marketing. The best practice companies tend to be brands like CocaCola and Starbucks who have 34 million and 25 million fans respectively. On the other hand, the more pervasive gambling company is arguably Paddy Power, and yet, its fan numbers barely top 60,000 at last count. Right now, the social landscape is there for the taking, it’ll be a land grab for the early movers and once that happens, everybody will pile in and dilute the opportunity. Despite today’s naysayers, social media is the next big thing.
Aideen Shortt is an iGaming industry consultant and author of the iGaming Business mobile and social gaming reports. aideen.shortt@gmail.com
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INSIGHT
BET
THE
Over the past couple of years, the online gambling industry has been experiencing phenomenal growth internationally. Given the central part affiliates play in this industry and the large number of affiliates, it is exceedingly important that one learns how to stand out from the rest. Nir Korczak, Industry Head of Export at Google Israel, provides this exclusive insight. Google’s stand Since late 2008, Google has changed its policy towards the showing of gambling ads on its domain. This policy has evolved over time, differing across geographies in-line with the range of law, cultures and business practices in the various countries. Today, Google enables some requirement-meeting gambling ads to run throughout the Google.com domain, its search partners, select mobile websites and across part of the Display Network in several countries throughout Europe. Google provides a wide set of tools enabling an affiliate to maximise their performance. These include the utilisation of smart mobile-targeting, the use of long-tail traffic for low cost coverage, the tailoring of ads for specific events and the reaching of new territories and platforms. For a better understanding of how crucial these tools can be and how they can help you to excel, we will discuss some of the most important.
Conquering the long-tail It is well known that core keywords typically drive the majority of traffic to many sites. Nonetheless, targeting the long-tail, while requiring more work, can also drive greater benefits. What most people are unaware of is that the core keywords produce less than half of the share of voice in total, while the sizeable long-tail traffic is much easier to obtain. If we take a look at ‘casino’ as an example, the top five keywords comprise 21 percent of the total casino query volume, with the remaining 79 percent providing
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a great opportunity to compete at lower CPCs. Core keyword CPCs are not only higher, they are also rising, driving higher overall CPAs for advertisers running on those keywords.
Targeting geography Today, with Google’s tools, an advertiser can drill down to a specific geographic location, thus enabling him to customise ads for local purposes, events, trends or other factors that affect local behaviour in search. For example, one might take advantage of location targeting to target a city-level audience for advertising related to a sports event in that same city. By tailoring specific ads based on location, advertisers can take advantage of lower competition. In addition, they can tailor regional-specific landing pages in order to raise the quality ranking of their ads and lower their CPCs.
Display: know where to be Since late 2011, advertisers have been able to run online gambling ads, who have met the legal requirements, on the Google Display Network in select countries in Europe. At Google, we strongly believe that promoting over the Display Network is going to be the next big thing, and we hope that this will be the case in online gambling depending on the development of legal regimes. Over the next couple of years, the Display Network inventory is expected to grow immensely, providing substantial opportunities for affiliates. To succeed on the Display Network it is critical to know where to show your ads. For instance,
sports and automotive sites provide almost definite access to casual online gamers, with an average of 83 percent more likelihood that online gamers will visit these sites than average Internet users. This enables easy access to online gamers with the advantage of the low cost advertising of the Display Network.
Going forward The online gambling industry is indeed growing fast and looks promising, yet is also highly competitive. The challenge that lies ahead for online advertisers in this industry is to be a part of this vastly growing market. We’ve taken a look at some of the ways to address relatively virgin territories, providing great opportunities for low costs.
NIR KORCZAK is Industry Head Export at Google Israel. Nir manages the entire export activity of the company, covering business and commercial relationships between tech, media, gambling, forex and binary options companies in Israel and Google. Nir has been working for Google for five years and he is part of Google Israel’s management team. Nir joined Google after working at Amdocs for three years as a senior business consultant in the system integration division and has vast experience in online marketing, the mobile space and the high tech industry. Nir holds an MBA from the Tel Aviv University in Israel and a BA in Industrial Engineering at the Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheba.
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INSIGHT
WordPress SEO and Expired Domains Following on from his presentation at January’s London Affiliate Conference, Bastian Grimm, Founder and CEO of Grimm Digital, assess the most effective ways of building and running large scale link networks. As an online marketing discipline, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) has changed massively during the past couple of years and, surely, is going to continue changing. The same goes for WordPress, which quickly became one of the most popular pieces of open source software available on the market. And there are dozens of (valid) reasons for this success. To name just a few: ●●the software is amazingly easy to use and even works for people without prior publishing-knowledge; ●●it’s easily customisable – which is true for the design part but also for adding functionality by using and/or creating plug-ins; ●●and last but not least, WordPress is – out of the box – pretty solidly search engine optimised. Sure, you could, and should, do much more than the core software provides, however, WordPress provides significantly more options than others. Naturally, it didn’t take long until the first SEO plug-ins became available on the market, each mainly improving one, two or three things that weren’t fully optimised within the WordPress core. I remember giving a talk on WordPress and SEO at a webmasters meeting a couple of years ago, where I presented our current WordPress set-up for maximum SEO success. Believe it or not, at that time we were using around 15 different plug-ins. That is a lot! And it was SEO-only, not including components such as maintenance, security and other additional functionality.
Times changed and so did the WordPress plug-in market Another good thing about popular open source software is the (usually) amazing community around it. Developers and designers provide great plug-ins, themes and tools to extend functionality and make it even better. That said, my good friend
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and Dutch SEO legend, Joost de Valk, decided to create an all-in-one SEO solution which, simply, does an amazing job. Besides the performance improvements (1 Vs 15 plug-ins surely has a performance impact), this plug-in does everything you need in SEO. Just have a look for yourself: managing titles and metas on a global as well as per-post/page level (including templates), controlling indexation settings (noindex’ing as well as disabling parts of perhaps unused functionality), solving logical issues (do you really need categories and tags being indexed?), fixing URL issues (removing ‘category’ from the URL, adding trailing-slashes, etc) and much, much more. Again, it’s the one thing you need, nothing more and nothing less. Be sure to check it out: http://yoast.com/wordpress/ seo/, and if you need a recommendation on settings to be used or have any questions, be sure to shoot me an email or contact me on twitter (@basgr).
Additional functionality to make your life easier In addition to Joost’s plug-in, there exists an array of additional extras that will make things even better. WordPress isn’t very good at internally linking posts and pages (at least not in a way that makes too much sense); be sure to check out ‘Yet Another Related Posts Plugin’ (YARPP). Backing-up data is crucial and you don’t want to waste your time doing so. Using ‘BackWPup’ handles that task for you; it backs up files, themes, plug-ins as well as your database and can put them somewhere safe – be it a FTP account, your DropBox or simply by emailing it. You’d also want to have ‘Redirection’ on your blog. The plug-in does – as you’d guess from the name – handle all kinds of redirect issues. For example, if you change a URL slug, it can automatically redirect old to new URL parts, including the ability to do regular expressions and other fancy stuff.
WordPress and security The downside of using popular open source software is – at least in my opinion – that you’ll automatically be targeted by (automated) hacking (e.g. code injection, etc) attempts. And this can be really, really nasty. I don’t want to go into all of the details about what could happen, but more provide some guidance on what you could do to (hopefully) prevent being hacked. In general you should, of course, make sure you’re always running the latest version of WordPress including updated themes and plug-ins. There is a handy plug-in called ‘WP Updates Notifier’ which can email you for each blog if there are updates available. That said, it’s also wise not to keep stuff that’s being deactivated – get rid of it. In addition I’d recommend using ‘Secure WordPress by WebsiteDefender’ which controls many relevant settings (e.g. removing the WP version in frontend, back-end and themes as well as error messages) but also blocks malicious looking URL-requests. In combination with ‘WP AntiVirus’ which scans themes for bad code (daily) and ‘WP SecurityScan’ to check for correct chmod-settings and other potential issues, you should be all set. Happy optimising!
Bastian Grimm is founder and CEO of Grimm Digital. Starting his online career back in 2001 and having a background in software development, nowadays, he specialises in SEO strategy consulting, trainings and workshops, website assessments as well as large scale link building campaigns for national and international clients. If you want to get in touch, you’ll find Bastian’s contact details at www.grimm-digital.com.
INTERVIEW
Meister at Arms iGB Affiliate magazine talks to Casinomeister, Bryan Bailey, on the casino affiliate market, common industry misconstructions of the player and whether casino is still where the money is. Do you think that there is still a lot that affiliates and operators can learn about the demographic they are marketing to? Absolutely. Operators as well as affiliates need to be engaging the players – getting the players involved with their websites. Once this is done, they can determine the needs of their players and serve them in a more efficient manner. This has always been a very dynamic industry, players come and go, and one cannot make smart decisions about the focus of a business based merely on a survey or poll made a year or two ago. Affiliates and operators need to monitor trends and encourage feedback as much as possible. Most operators are not players, and this is where many lose the game. They don’t understand the basic needs of players; that the gaming is secure, their personal info is kept private, the casino entity is a stable operation, the operator is ethical and fair and, of course, there is a chance to win. Operators fail on so many levels catering to those needs. Casinomeister’s rogue section is full of these misadventures. In your experience, what are the most common misconceptions that the industry adopts towards casino players? One general misconception is that all players are out to ‘get’ the casino. Sure, there are many advantage players, but these players should be treated with the same respect as recreational players. When advantage players find a casino that treats them fairly with good offers, they can become quite loyal. Players are not sheep being led to a ‘fleecing’. There are many players who are quite perceptive and have done their homework; they know what they are doing. Players should not all be painted with the same brush – they are housewives, retirees, doctors, police officers, journalists. Pardon the cliché, but they come from all walks of life. There is much discussion about the apparent ‘dislike’ between operators and their players – what is meant by this? Many operators get into the business with a very narrow point of view. Their mission: to make a lot of money in a short period of time. That is a recipe for disaster. These operators are oblivious to the fact that they
exist primarily to provide entertainment for their players, i.e. gambling in a safe environment. Happy players are those who win and want to keep coming back. Happy operators are those who understand that in the end, the house always wins. Misguided operators tend to resent players who win. They fail to see the bigger picture. Players are not that easy to appease, and they are costly. But you’d be shocked at how many operators throw their players out with the bathwater when rewriting bonus terms or conjuring up new promotions. There are also quite a few operators that are just plain lazy or unimaginative and copy whatever anybody else is doing, e.g. outrageous bonus wagering requirements, and take on an ‘us Vs them’ approach to their work. But this is an ever growing industry, and there is a ‘casino Darwinism’ at work. The operators with bad attitudes are usually deselected by failed casinos. How would you describe today’s casino affiliate market – is it more competitive than ever and if so, how difficult is it to build liquidity as an affiliate, particularly if you are specific to one product vertical? Looking back ten years, it’s probably just as competitive as it was back then, but it’s different. Today, there are more serious ‘businesslike’ affiliates who have actual business models as opposed to a decade ago when more affiliates were webmasters learning the ropes. I don’t think it is difficult at all to build ‘liquidity’ if you know your target audience; what your visitors expect and what they are looking for. If you want to target sports, massive fan bases are out there looking for websites on a daily basis. If you know slots, the web is always in need of an informative guide concerning slot games. The traffic is out there – it’s up to the webmaster to bring it to his or her site. There was an ‘old’ adage, maybe not so old come to think of it, that “casino is where the money is” for affiliates. Have other product verticals caught up with casino in their ability to generate sustainable business for affiliates, or does that old saying still ring true? I think that the casino affiliate has the best means to be flexible since many
casino websites can cover every aspect of gaming. Many gaming sites overlap sportsbetting, poker, live games, and miscellaneous betting with the standard casino games. This gives the casino affiliate room to send traffic to various betting sites as desired. Sportsbetting and poker may be difficult for the novice affiliate to master. That said, there are quite a few poker and sports affiliates who do quite well. But since these markets are quite specialised, there may be more room for competition compared to the casino market. It may not be so saturated. What advice would you have for affiliates starting out in iGaming today? Do something that others haven’t done yet. There are niches that haven’t been addressed or explored – be inventive. Engage the players in a way that it becomes enjoyable for everyone involved. Go to conferences since this industry is very much network related – it’s a very small industry comparatively speaking. Get to know other webmasters and affiliates. Be open minded since there is a lot to learn. True diligence will pay off in time. And never forget to enjoy yourself. The online casino industry was founded on having a good time. If you had to start all over again in gaming, where would you start? I would have bought the domains poker.com, slots.com, and gambling.com in 1998 and auctioned them off in 2006 right before the UIGEA was passed. I’d be chillin’ out on my yacht off of the Southern coast of France, dictating this to my secretary right now if I started like that. And finally, if you were to attribute one thing alone to the success of your business, what would it be? My attitude! I never considered Casinomeister as work. I converged my talents and interests (which had nothing to do with online gaming by the way), and focused on Casinomeister. I keep my attitude positive – and mellow.
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Toolkit for Start-up Affiliates After exploring the future of affiliate marketing in our previous issue, we now shift our focus to start-up affiliate businesses and explore the fundamentals needed to make headway in an industry that has come a long way from its ‘wild west’ beginnings. This feature will look at several components of the modern affiliate business that new entrants and ‘rookies’ will need to fully understand, including legality, business planning and budgeting, payments, website build, SEO and mobile and social marketing. Firstly, our friends at DLA Piper walk us through the legalities of affiliate marketing in the key regulated European markets. Affiliate marketing in a regulated Europe In his article in the last issue of iGB Affiliate, “The Future For Affiliates in a Regulated European Market”, Stephen Ketteley, Partner at DLA Piper in London, considered the changing landscape of the regulatory regimes across Europe and explored how this was potentially going to impact on the operation of marketing affiliates. Following up on that article, other specialists in DLA Piper’s Madrid, Milan and Paris offices consider the impact of recent regulation in their jurisdiction on marketing affiliates; vital information for affiliates generally but particularly for those new to market. First, Siân Croxon, another partner in DLA Piper’s London office, considers the way general advertising laws can operate when faced with extra-territorial enforcement challenges. She illustrates this with recent examples of the UK’s advertising regulator’s actions.
The UK: is this a case of “Yes Prime Minister”? Siân Croxon, DLA Piper London With questions being asked in the House of Commons as to the amount of betting advertising being aired on TV (approximately 32 hours per week) and the Prime Minister giving his own opinion on the need for companies to behave
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responsibly, it is clear that the spotlight is shining on the industry. The UK, as with a number of other countries, operates a self-regulatory regime based on well-established codes of practice. The CAP Code, as it is commonly referred to, looks somewhat benign on first reading stating as its opening gambit that all advertising should be “legal, decent, honest and truthful”. The Codes themselves are straightforward to read and in many ways apply common sense to the premise that advertisers should not mislead consumers but neither should their creative juices be entirely squeezed out. That said, when it comes to marketing what are considered ‘sensitive business sectors’ (sex, drink and gambling), or marketing to potentially vulnerable consumers (the old, vulnerable or children) the authorities take a much stricter line and can and do lose their sense of humour in the public interest. Furthermore, now that their remit has been extended to material on the Internet, overseas companies can no longer ignore the UK Advertising Standards Authority’s (ASA) influence, as recent adjudications illustrate. Whilst not a gambling related advertisement, the reported complaint against Zazzle Inc does show how a non UK-based company can be affected by an adverse onshore regulator’s adjudication (in this instance, the ASA). Zazzle is a company that has developed a platform to allow an open marketplace for the promotion of user generated designs. The company does not pre-vet the user-
generated content (UGC), although its terms and conditions make clear that it will remove any material found to be offensive if reported. The website was used to advertise a children’s T-shirt labelled “Nothing Tastes as Good as Skinny Feels”. An image of a T-shirt bearing the slogan was included. As soon as Zazzle learned of the complaint, it removed the advert (which it was accepted breached the Code). However, the company argued that it was a US company over which the ASA had no authority and that Zazzle itself was not the advertiser – the UGC having been created by a third-party which it merely hosted. Zazzle’s arguments fell on stony ground – with the site offering the URL www. zazzle.co.uk, it could not avoid the ASA’s extended authority on the basis of clear territorial targeting. Furthermore, since it manufactured the designs created by the contributors of the UGC, the ASA held that the company was the advertiser for the purpose of the review. Had Zazzle not provided the manufacturing services it might have escaped censor. Even if the advert in question is not on a ‘.co.uk’ site, the long arm of the ASA may nonetheless catch it out. Another example unconnected with gambling (although sex must have been involved somewhere along the line) relates to the advertising and sale of pregnancy testing kits. The company distributed a pack that made certain claims about the product and its performance (i.e. using their testing kit would tell the consumer a day before any other product
STart-up Affiliate Toolkit
if they were pregnant) but the ASA held that the way the claims were expressed in its advertising were misleading and could not be repeated. That meant that Zazzle could not show the pack which included the offending wording. What, you might ask, has that got to do with the world of gambling? On its ‘.com’ website on which its international business was showcased, it displayed photos of the pack. In order to comply with the adjudication (and despite the fact that the claims were perfectly acceptable in most other countries), the pack had to be pixellated out of clear view with the wording changed on the site. Apply that principle in the gambling industry and you can see what the impact of an ASA adjudication might mean. When the Prime Minister made his comment about “quite aggressive” advertising during the live broadcast of football matches, the chief marketing officer of one well known betting company said that adverts are intended to be entertaining and the industry should seek to emphasise brand values not react to the Prime Minister’s allegation. Sound advice, but if they want to avoid falling foul of regulatory scrutiny, he and his fellow marketing executives will have to be on their mettle to ensure the right balance between entertainment and compliance is achieved whether in print, broadcast or online advertising.
France Jeanne Dauzier, DLA Piper France The regulated online gambling industry in France was enacted under the French Online Gambling Act of May 12, 2010 (the Online Gambling Act). The Act opened three online gambling activities
to competition; horserace betting, poker and sportsbetting, although such activities remain under numerous restrictions. In order to provide one of these activities in the French market, an operator needs to be licensed by the French Online Gambling Regulatory Authority (the ARJEL). According to the said Act, the provision of online gambling services by an unlicensed operator, as well as the advertisement of such services, is a criminal offence.
Sanctions for the advertising of unlicensed operators Affiliate marketing is used by the remote gambling industry in many countries, including France, to promote the websites of unlicensed operators. However, such practice is illegal in France and affiliates are liable under Article 57 of the Online Gambling Act. This provision allows the French government to adopt a strong enforcement policy against illegal operators, along with the ability to block access to illegal websites and to prohibit any transfer of funds to or from accounts identified as being held by unlicensed operators. Article 57 provides that anyone advertising an unlicensed operator’s website by any means is liable for a €100,000 fine. The amount of the fine can be increased up to four times the amount spent on illegal advertising and anyone has the ability to launch proceedings on these grounds. This means that affiliates as well as advertising agencies, advertisers and bloggers (or anyone displaying or advertising such services) can be liable for promoting unlicensed operators websites. Indeed, according to general case law on affiliation, although the retailer is liable for the content provided to its affiliates, the affiliates are the ones directly liable for the advertising. Hence, compliance to French
law is customarily imposed upon affiliates by affiliate networks in their Terms and Conditions. And, although to our knowledge there is no specific case law with regards to Article 57, it is known that the ARJEL as well as the French Courts are actively enforcing the Online Gambling Act. In addition, the sanctions specified by the law regarding advertising an unlicensed operator’s website could be an effective deterrent for affiliates. Consequently, when assessing the risk/benefit ratio associated to the illegal advertisement of unlicensed operators in France, affiliates should take these elements into consideration as Article 57 of the Online Gambling Act leaves no doubt that they will be considered as liable.
Spain Albert Agustinoy Guilayn, DLA Piper Spain One of the most controversial issues arising out of the recently adopted regulations of online gaming in Spain has been that relating to the actual definition of an ‘operator’. This is a crucial question since, under said regulations, any such operator is going to be required to obtain the corresponding licenses, something which may imply reasonably high costs (since any licensed operator is required to file a bank guarantee of at least €2 million). Moreover, the Spanish authorities have adopted a restrictive approach in this respect, considering that any entity obtaining benefits from the operation of online gaming activities and being involved in the relevant decision-making processes connected with those activities are to be deemed as ‘operators’ and, as a consequence, subject to the licensing duty.
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The activities of affiliates would fall in a grey area, without having a clearly defined regime. Nonetheless, the Spanish regulations (namely Royal Decree no. 1614/2011, developing the Spanish Gaming Act) have considered this question, setting forth a flexible system that should allow the operation of affiliation schemes in Spain. Article 3.4 of the Royal Decree sets forth that, as a general principle, marketing affiliation per se is going to be exempt from the duty of obtaining licences in Spain. In this sense, ‘affiliation’ is defined as any promotional activity or any other type of marketing behaviour aimed at attracting potential customers for a given gaming operator, as long as the affiliate does not register those customers or execute any type of agreement or maintain a gaming account with said customers. Taking this definition into account, it is obvious that, under Spanish law, affiliates will benefit from the exemption of obtaining licences as long as they act as genuine marketing entities, without getting involved in the contractual relationship between the customers they have attracted and the operators they serve. It is critical to determine whether someone is acting as an affiliate or if they are going beyond what is permitted and moving towards being an operator. Affiliate schemes in Spain will require a lot of attention on the sharing of personal data between the operator and the affiliate or, indeed, any other information relating to the registered customers of the operator in question. The Spanish regime obliges operators to adopt a vigilant approach vis-à-vis the commercial practices of their affiliates. Indeed, under Spanish law, operators shall be deemed liable for any breach incurred by any of their affiliates. Hence, any affiliation scheme in Spain shall require strict fulfilment of the general advertising requirements as well as those regulations that are due to specifically oversee advertising and any other relevant promotional activity to be adopted by the affiliates. No such regulations have, as yet, been published.
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Finally, it is important to bear in mind that affiliates can only assist authorised gaming operators. Any affiliate promoting non-authorised operators will be considered to be performing an illegal activity, which could lead to enforcement action and significant fines.
Italy Giulio Coraggio, DLA Piper Italy The regulatory principles applicable to affiliates under Italian gambling law have never been the subject of thorough review, perhaps because of the difficulty in enforcing Italian court decisions against foreign websites. However, such conduct is regulated and the applicable sanctions are considerable. The general principle is set forth in ‘Law 13 December 1989, No. 401’ prohibiting the advertising of gambling websites run without an Italian gambling licence issued by AAMS or offering games that are reserved to the Italian state. Breaching this obligation is punishable by imprisonment of up to three months which can then be increased to one year in the case of advertising concerning foreign gambling websites offering lottery tickets or similar games of chance. Italian law prohibits the remote offering of games to Italian residents without an AAMS licence and sanctions imposed on such conduct can lead to imprisonment of up to three years. As a consequence, the aforementioned provisions have also been introduced to avoid any advertising practice involving non-Italian licensed websites targeting people located in Italy. But under what criteria are these provisions applied in the case of foreign websites? Italian criminal law applies the principle of territoriality which makes reference to both the place where the illegal conduct took place and to the place where the effects of such illegal conduct occurred. As a consequence, because of the ubiquity of the Internet a foreign affiliate website that advertises non-Italian licensed websites might face criminal sanctions.
Despite the fact that there is no case law on disputes involving affiliates, the previous conclusions are even more grounded if there is a version of the affiliate website in Italian. In such cases, given that the Italian language is mainly spoken only in Italy, the affiliate website might be deemed to be ‘targeted’ to Italian players, therefore falling under the scope of Italian criminal law. This is confirmed by the number of affiliate websites that are on the blacklist of illegal websites published by AAMS and in relation to which, Italian Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are obliged to implement filters preventing Italians from accessing such websites. This is due to the fact that affiliate websites are often used by non-Italian licensed gambling websites to circumvent the filters put in place by Italian ISPs through banners which link to websites whose domain name is slightly different from the main operator website. Indeed, despite the considerable efforts of AAMS to keep its blacklist up-to-date, operators frequently generate new domains that avoid the blacklist and are redirected to their main website. However, in order to notify the new domain name to players, they use banners published on affiliate websites. This practice is even more risky for affiliates since they might be deemed to be liable, in a contributory sense, in the crime perpetrated by the operator. In such cases, the potential sanction would increase from three months or one year imprisonment (depending on the games offered on the advertised website) to three years – the sanction applicable against non-Italian licensed online operators offering games to people located in Italy. Therefore, caution would be the watchword for affiliate websites advertising non-Italian licensed websites to Italian residents, especially because monitoring is likely to become increasingly aggressive due to the pressure that Italian licensed operators (which now include most of the major gambling operators) are putting on AAMS to foster more stringent actions against them.
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www.sportingbetaffiliates.com
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Business Plan Writing a business plan is one of the most important exercises an entrepreneur must go through, explains Melissa Blau, CEO of iGaming Capital. There are two main purposes of a business. One is to raise capital, and it is critical to present a comprehensive plan that is both informative and tells a great story. The second is to keep an entrepreneur on track with a clearly defined focus strategy. As these two purposes differ greatly, so might the documents. Investors have little time and like to see either a two page snapshot or a five to eight page executive summary. So it’s important to be informative yet succinct. A full-blown business plan should reflect every aspect of your business; I equate it to the veins of the business. Not one aspect of your business is to be overlooked. As such, a full-blown business plan could be as little as 30 pages and as large as 50 to 70 pages, sometimes longer. The problem with writing a full blown business plan is that it can become an elongated process; companies, especially in the iGaming space, are required to move so quickly that it’s almost out of date from the minute it is completed. Regardless, it is a good exercise and one that many
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learn from as they put their thoughts onto paper. The investor executive summary should reflect a boiled down version of the longer management business plan. Certain sections (which we will come to later) such as the market opportunity should almost remain the same (verbatim). Other sections, such as financial projections and technology, should be a much-abbreviated version of the longer management business plan. Getting an investor to sign a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) is ideal as a lot of proprietary and sensitive information is shared during the investment process. A vast majority of institutional investors will refuse. Investors see many business plans come across their desk. Asking an investor to sign an NDA could pretty much put them in violation should they decide to invest in a competitor. So don’t be put off if an investor refuses to sign it. What is important here is mutual trust. An investor is evaluating the entrepreneur to see if they are investable. Just as important, the entrepreneur should
also be evaluating the investor. Are they trustworthy? Though I have very rarely seen an investor read a business plan and steal the idea, I do know a few cases where it has happened. So buyer beware! Sharing confidential information should be a carefully thought out decision. The main difference between other technology and e-commerce business plans and a business plan geared for the iGaming sector is the critical importance of regulations and responsibility. Unlike most other technology-related sectors, the regulations surrounding the iGaming sector means that the industry acts as the overarching differentiator between how a company plans to run its business and where it fits into the overall sector. This article will outline the important sections that should be included in a long form management business plan. Each section provides a specific purpose to the overall story that is being conveyed and provides a comprehensive blueprint from which to base an entrepreneur’s strategy.
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I. Summary (overview) The overview section should be a brief summary of the rest of the plan. Typically, the overview could be two to five pages and form the basis of the executive summary presented to potential investors. I always write this section last as its purpose is to succinctly summarise the rest of the document.
II. Industry overview It is often helpful to write a section on the industry and specifically on the sector the company is focused on. The industry overview should include the size of the market and its characteristics. It’s important to discuss (1) product segment (sports, casino, poker, bingo), (2) company role (operator, supplier, affiliate, other service provider) and (3) geography (Europe, Asia, N America, etc). It would also be helpful to write a paragraph about the history of the industry as well as the current situation, especially with regard to regulation.
quality driven? Will the site focus on user generated content or the voice of the editor of the site? The more detail the more focused the product.
don’t only focus on Poker Strategy and Pokerlistings.com. It’s nice to aim for the sky, but it’s important to keep one’s feet on the ground.
VI. Marketing strategy
XI. Management
This section focuses strictly on how the entrepreneur will get their business in front of customers. Strictly natural search or paid traffic as well? Will you use social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter? Possibly use the television as a vehicle? What is the message and how is it going to be heard.
An important section, and it is possible to put this section further forward in your business plan after the market overview. Management experience is critical so it is important to put in a brief bio of all of the key managers, board members and advisors. Don’t go overboard.
XII. Financials VII. Partnership strategy (optional) This section is not for every sector. For the affiliate community, it could be less relevant. For operators, this section would focus on who the software providers are, including games providers, platform providers, affiliate software and payment providers. It could also include the PR or advertising companies that are contracted.
VIII. Technology III. Sector background If the company is focused on a specific area, such as affiliate or live gaming supplier, it is also a good idea to include additional information about the specific sector. For example, if it was a live gaming business plan, break down the sector into sub-sectors such as Europe Vs Asia or Webcam Vs television studios. It is a good exercise to mention the specific differentiators that characterise each subsector and why you specifically targeted that sub-sector.
IV. The market opportunity This is possibly the most important section of a business plan. It basically explains why the entrepreneur started the company. What hole are they filling that doesn’t currently exist or how they will do it better? This section really makes the entrepreneur reflect and explain: “I am not here to find a problem, but rather I am here to solve an existing problem”. That’s what investors want to see. What problem is the entrepreneur solving? Another way of putting it is, “What is the entrepreneurs’ USP (unique selling point)”?
V. Products and services This section fully describes whatever product or service is being offered. The more detail the better (product description, product roadmap, etc,). For an affiliate company, this should include the description of the content, layout, number of sites that will be promoted. Is the site promotionally driven or product
This section focuses on the network architecture as well as the programming language that the company is developing to create the end product. This should include a breakdown of the various components of the system and how they work together. Again, this should be as specific as possible.
IX. Regulations This section is the key differentiator to other sectors as it is there to give an overview of the regulatory constraints that influence the company. Operating in regulated France? How does that impact affiliates? What confines to the affiliates need to adhere to? Is the business targeting non-regulated markets? How will the increased regulations impact the company and the competitive environment? This section is not to be overlooked as regulations are an overarching factor.
X. Competition This section describes the overall competitive market and where the company fits into the sector and sub-sector. When describing the competition, and similarly when describing the industry, don’t necessarily focus on the largest company or the wide market size. Relevance is key here. I cannot tell you how tiring it is when companies compare themselves to Microsoft. Really? Be specific and clear and concise. It is nice to aim for Microsoft, Facebook and Google but go after the closest competition. If it’s a start-up operator, the competition is not really bwin.party and PokerStars. If an affiliate,
The financial section should start out with an analysis of the revenue drivers and key expense lines. It should also contain a description of the commercial model such as revenue share, fee for depositing player, or a hybrid. A high level overview of the revenue, expenses and operating profit should be included with a detailed monthly breakdown in an appendix. Typically, a 12-month and five year projection will more than suffice.
XIII. Investment highlights Finally, we get to the investment highlights. This reflects all of the positives outlined in the meat of the plan. Highlights could include a two sentence summary of the market opportunity, experience management team and scalable business model. Each section should be no more than one to three sentences.
Summary I hope this gave you a detailed outline of what I have seen to be the best business plans I have reviewed. This is offered only as a template. Not all companies are the same, so I may have missed some areas that are important to your business and may have gone into too much detail on areas that aren’t relevant. Writing a business plan is an art form. It is always good to follow a specific structure but the beauty is how you create the masterpiece within the confines of the structure.
Melissa Blau has been in the Media, Technology and Finance sectors for 20 years. She is currently an advisor for the online gaming industry bridging US and European interests as well as a financial advisor working in conjunction with Akur partners providing M&A advisory for online gaming companies.
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Payments 101 One of the fundamental aspects of any enterprise in the iGaming industry is that of payments, to ensure the fluidity of cash flow both into and out of your business. R Paul Davis, LL.D., Managing Director, Counting House Affiliates, investigates the available options for affiliates in today’s sector, and those that work best in specific markets. Affiliates come in all shapes and sizes, from serious professional to ultra casual, and inhabit all corners of the earth. What they share is that they are highly manoeuvrable, and can quickly take their services elsewhere if they are dissatisfied with the delivery of rewards. Given the variety of verticals and the geographical dispersion of their homes, mastering the art of paying international affiliates is a challenge for affiliate managers. From the perspective of the affiliate, it’s important to understand how you’ll be paid, in what currency, and with what frequency and negotiability. Here, we explore the options and rate their effectiveness, then inevitably explain why some work better than others for some fields and countries, and why. For the purpose of this discussion, an affiliate can be defined as a person (or company) who directs traffic to a site for a payout or other reward. And I’m going to assume that your prospective affiliate program has a reliable way to identify its affiliates, calculate their rewards, and a dashboard of some kind that presents them with options as to how to receive their compensation. What are the sensible options? The scope of this summary excludes ‘transfer affiliates’ – that is, affiliates who collect and consolidate funds on behalf of businesses and remit large sums to them in return for a commission. The dynamics involved in the collection of high values from complex remote jurisdictions and subsequent remittance of high value commissions and/or winnings are completely different to those appropriate for more modest payments.
(1) Benefits in kind If you are doing affiliate work for fun, or to enhance your player experience and it’s not an important source of income or a living for you, then don’t discount the effectiveness, or cost-effectiveness,
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of on-site affiliate rewards. There is a sizeable group of affiliates who promote sites because they like, or are genuinely interested in, the product or service. Even away from the web, there are millions of people who hold parties, visit their friends, or corral relatives into buying lingerie, kitchenware and jewellery, for example, in order to earn credits towards similar goods for their own use. Likewise, a knowledgeable poker player may promote a favourite site in return for credits to play at tables. Benefits in kind can be particularly cost-effective where gaming affiliates are concerned because the odds are decent, in favour of the house, meaning the affiliates will eventually give their earnings back to the house. With this in mind, managers can afford to be generous. You can receive credits which are considerably more generous than the cash rewards offered for similar achievements.
(1b) Benefits in kind – others A handful of programs offer the ability to purchase goods from other suppliers as an affiliate incentive; Amazon gift vouchers represent one of the most common examples. My experience is that these are not particularly popular as they tie the affiliate to making purchases from one chosen supplier. If you want the chance to go shopping with your rewards, look for an affiliate program that offers prepaid gift or ‘virtual’ credit cards. With prepaid cards, affiliates legitimately feel that they have received real money to spend as and where they please.
(2) Real money The needs of a sizeable proportion of affiliates, particularly those of corporates and professionals, are unmistakably simple. They want to receive real money – that is, affiliate commissions that are quickly convertible to cash. There are a number of ways to receive real money rewards and
where you live is an important factor in considering what the practical payment options are for you. Here are the main contenders:
(a) Cheques People in countries like Holland or Finland which have done away with paper payments may not realise, but cheques remain very popular in much of the rest of the world. They are affordable to obtain and send; they are traceable; they cross borders seamlessly and leave the affiliate with a range of options for encashment: deposit at your own bank, cash at the cheque cashing store, or sell to a friend. The trick with issuing cheques for affiliate commissions is to make sure that the program sends you cheques that are relevant in your home country. This means, you need to be able to deposit your cheque at a reasonable cost in the country where you work and live. A US dollar cheque is useless to an affiliate in Brazil; a Sterling cheque is equally useless to an affiliate in India. The good news is that, if you particularly like a certain program but it doesn’t offer this option at present, the manager doesn’t have to be persuaded to whizz around the planet opening bank accounts to facilitate international payouts. There are companies that specialise in issuing paper cheques for affiliate commissions: like www. countinghouseltd.com for gaming-related payments and www.chexxinc.com for non-gaming. All of the major suppliers in this marketplace are publicly visible and identifiable on the Internet, and it’s easy to make sure that the company really can issue cheques drawn on banks in the specific country where you want to draw down your earnings. When evaluating the reliability of cheque providers used by your affiliate program, take a good look at what verticals they serve.
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If your field is Adult Online Entertainment (AOE, a popular way of spelling ‘porn’), make sure gaming payments aren’t included in the portfolio of services. And if you receive cheques from a gaming provider, make sure they don’t operate accounts in the USA or other complicated jurisdictions which could result in the entire structure of the company going down. There are plenty of precedents showing just how bad it can be when a large provider to one field gets nailed for operating illegally in another.
(b) OFT (Original Funds Transfer) to Visa and MasterCard payment cards This is an inexpensive, traceable and easily tracked way of receiving affiliate payments if you have a Visa or MasterCard (including debit cards). There is a lot of mythology surrounding these payments, and I have written extensively on this in the past. Here are the straightforward facts: ●● They are not expensive for the issuing company. They should not cost you more than €1.50, or about £1.25, if your program manager buys OFTs through a knowledgeable and fair supplier. ●● They work well in Europe, less well in Asia and South America, and poorly in North America. ●● Some banks block OFTs on the assumption that all are gaming payments. This is an error but is prevalent, for example, in Spain where they are not accepted on about 60 percent of cards issued. ●● They can be sent in any currency, to any card. ●● The payment limits are very high. Indeed, there is little reason to anticipate that any normal affiliate transaction would ever breach them. ●● It is not a requirement that the merchant (affiliate program) has taken an original deposit from you on the card. The whole point of OFTs is that they are the first transaction with the card. The exception is if you pay gaming winnings by OFT onto a payment card, which is not included in the scope of our conversation here. ●● They can be sent in any currency, to any
Visa or MasterCard; however, countries with protected currencies don’t perform well with them (Russia, China, India, Brazil, and Argentina are the largest culprits).
(c) Prepaid cards In both their real and virtual forms, prepaid debit cards have garnered huge press and attention in recent years. Under this heading we should not disregard mobile payments. The prepaid debit card grew out of prepaid phone card technology; in a curious return to roots, payments to consumers, especially in difficult countries like China, are increasingly taking advantage of mobile technology when more consumers have mobile phones than plastic cards. The notion of ‘prepaid’ as a payment method is simple; a plastic payment card (or an Internet representation of same) can be mailed or emailed to a payee, preloaded with funds or subsequently used as a place to send funds. There are thousands of providers of physical cards, from well known to barely known, most with Visa, MasterCard or American Express brands. In the USA, you could probably buy 50 different cards without trying very hard. Some work only in the USA; some work internationally. If your program manager can meet the minimum order quantity, it is possible to you may even receive a card branded to the site, and the program manager may be able to choose the design. Some US banks even let merchants design their own individual cards online and order them through Internet banking. The prominent provider of virtual cards, Entropay, is heavily engaged with the gaming industry despite ongoing attempts to widen its image and portfolio. This is both a blessing and a curse, but there is no doubt that the firm’s delivery is efficient and easy to manage. The cards, which appear to be hosted and sponsored in Malta, are internationally usable and have effectively avoided many national restrictions on gaming use, making them acceptable for gaming affiliate payouts to many jurisdictions. Prepaid cards have many attractions for paying lower values, not least the speed of
reloading after the initial card is issued, and, if the project is large scale, the ability to manage a program with some side benefits for the merchant. Physical cards are more costly than virtual; sometimes this cost is passed to the affiliate, so be sure to check before ordering a physical plastic card based on a virtual issue message. The downsides involve the risks of postal loss, cost of initial issue, and their poor record as a way to deliver actual cash – issuers typically have high charges for ATM cash withdrawals on the cards and sometimes for the initial delivery of a plastic card. A final restriction on the use of prepaid is the compliance angle. While low values can typically be loaded with no more than an email address, more successful affiliates who earn four-figure sums will quickly be required to provide additional compliance documentation and you may not be willing to do so. Many prepaid cards come with annual limits for loads, so it’s definitely not a solution for high value affiliates.
(d) EFT, bank transfers and wires There is no reason why affiliates who are willing to provide their bank details should not be paid directly into their own accounts. Particularly in the developed world, critically Europe, North America and the more advanced countries in Asia, there are well developed local transfer systems that can be accessed at a cost of cents, rather than dollars or pounds, per transaction. These are, therefore, very popular with affiliate managers in the current costdriven environment. A multi-currency processor will facilitate low-cost transfers into 50 countries or more, so again, affiliate managers don’t need a massive suite of bank accounts to direct low-cost payments. Direct transfers are particularly attractive for affiliate commissions in the USA and Canada, where they are extremely cheap, and the UK, where they are extremely fast. The facility today exists to have payments to UK customers made 24/7 with typical delivery of funds within 15 to 20 seconds of execution of the payment order and very low costs. If you are in the UK and aren’t receiving your money with lightning speed, ask your program manager to implement ‘UK Faster
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Payments’ which are truly state-of-the-art in terms of local payment processing. Wire transfers are more expensive, but valid options for higher value transfers, payments to many less developed countries, and situations where speed is required. Pricing tends to be in dollars and pounds rather than cents or pence, usually double digits, so you may be required to pay a small fee towards the cost of delivering funds to you.
(e) Payment wallets No one who shops on the Internet can have failed to notice the plethora of payment wallets available to consumers who wish to deposit their funds in a convenient spot, then shop securely with web merchants. PayPal, Moneybookers (Skrill), NETELLER, there is a long list and many have integrated solutions with many facets. What is slightly less well known is that merchants (in this case affiliate managers) can utilise the wallet system to distribute funds to affiliates, who then can spend the funds from the wallet or, in many cases, cash them out via the wallet using one of the aforementioned methods. Costs are quite
reasonable, usually a percentage basis, and the only downside is that, of course, every affiliate is required to open a wallet relationship with the provider of choice.
cross border aspects: an affiliate manager in one country wants to pay affiliates in another, and struggles to get cost-efficient payments to them in a timely manner. Here is a brief list of problematic countries, and an indication of some solutions which we know to work from experience and industry gossip.
Problem areas Many, if not most of the problems in paying affiliate commissions come from
Affiliate’s Country
The problem
What works
Where to find it
Argentina
Severe currency
Virtual Card
www.entropay.com
Restricted Currency,
Cheques, internal
www.chexxinc.com
international transfers
‘DOC’ payments
regulation Brazil
don’t work China
Massive non-banked
Local solutions
Hong Kong, www.neteller.
population
com. Monitor the Amex project with LianLian
India
Restricted currency
Local cheques,
www.chexxinc.com
local EFT Japan
We’re committed to bringing out the super affiliate in you
No cheques used
Postal Money
in country, complex
Orders
www.pacnetservices.com
local payment systems, poor Visa/ MC penetration
More than just a magazine. Go to iGBAffiliate.com for free videos, articles and resources on the affiliate market. “An invaluable resource for anyone in the online gambling affiliate industry” JUNE/JULY 2011
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Developing a Mobile iGaming Strategy One of the most significant differences between the industry of today and that of just a couple of years ago is that iGaming no longer means ‘online’... it means digital. Neil Fairweather, Account Director at Latitude Digital Marketing, looks into mobile strategy development for start-up affiliate businesses. The question used to be “How many people own a Smartphone?” Now, it’s rapidly changing into “How many people don’t?” Smartphone usage has exploded in recent years, with an estimated 43.8 percent of the UK population owning one at the end of 2011, and Ofcom predicting that six in ten Brits will own a Smartphone by the end of 2012. As an affiliate, there are three main areas that you need to focus on: ●● Usability ●● SEO ●● Mobile-friendly gaming sites
How does this relate to mobile gaming? Business developers within the gaming sector are now past the point of just considering mobile strategies but need to be effectively implementing them NOW to maximise potential consumers from this sector. Simply transferring a desktop campaign to a mobile isn’t the most effective way to gain an audience. Affiliate marketing can be much more effective on a site that has been created specifically with mobile handset resolutions in mind, rather than merely the same site used for a desktop campaign.
Usability Any successful affiliate campaign rests on recruiting as high a value consumer as possible through your sites and, therefore, it is vital that the mobile platform makes it as easy as possible for the consumer to convert on your site. Mobile users access content in a different manner from desktop users. An effective call-to-action for a desktop user may be overlooked when seen on a mobile, therefore, it is important for affiliates to prioritise content for mobile users and present it more effectively. By producing what is essentially a stripped-down version of the main website, the functionality of a mobile site can become quicker, simpler and easier to navigate. It is important to remember that everything done on a mobile is done using only one digit. Simplicity is
key. All this will ensure that it is as easy as possible for the user to convert. With the current range of Smartphones on the market all using slightly different displays, device detection is also an important part of any mobile strategy development. A mobile site designed for an iPhone, for example, may display correctly and prove lucrative, yet it will display differently on a Blackberry or Android, thus rendering any campaign focal points ineffective. As mobile display is different from desktop, it stands to reason that the advertisement spaces an affiliate promotes will also be different. The desktop layouts of banners, textlines, skyscrapers, etc, will need to be different in order to cater for this and maximise impact through a mobile.
How does the best practice for SEO relate to mobile iGaming for affiliates? With the growth in Smartphone users in the UK, it’s not surprising that there has been an increase in search queries from mobile devices with volumes expected to overtake those coming from desktops by the end of 2013. As mentioned previously, text-rich advertisements and banners are more effective on mobile devices, due to the way they are displayed. Research has shown that mobile users will use search terms in a different manner from desktop users and, therefore, this needs to be incorporated into the SEO strategy. A typical mobile searcher will use on average two or three words when performing a search query – much less than a desktop user. In terms of a mobile campaign, longer tail keyword phrases are going to prove less valuable at this moment in time. Another important consideration is to include location with highly competitive phrases to take advantage of localised listings.
How does mobile usability effect affiliate business? The ultimate goal for any affiliate business is to deliver revenue from its traffic and, therefore, loyalty to any one company isn’t
as important (although this will depend on deal types agreed with providers). When working within a desktop landscape, an affiliate business needs to be selective about the type of site that it sends its clients to. If the site is poor, then the affiliates are going to make less revenue from conversions so, as a consequence, it is wiser for them to send their clients to sites which are more effective converters. The same concept applies to affiliate companies working within the mobile sector. If a desktop campaign has been simply transferred to a mobile, the model will not prove effective for affiliates. For example, a flash skyscraper advert on a desktop can be an effective call-to-action, but mobile users may not see it correctly. Adverts need to be text-rich, or in the form of mobile friendly banners to prove effective. Affiliate companies are more likely to refer clients to bookmakers with mobile specific banners as these display differently. Gaming companies such as bet365 have strong mobile sites and affiliates are more likely to promote these. The next hurdle is deciding what sort of campaign an affiliate should run. Currently, a significant 12 percent of all gamingrelated PPC clicks come from tablets or Smartphones, which is not to be ignored. Even with the suggestion that Smartphone searches are set to overtake desktop within the next two years, this 12 percent figure is set to rise further throughout 2012. Latitude is already seeing a marked increase in mobile CPCs as the landscape becomes more competitive, although the click-throughrates for mobile PPC adverts are as much as ten percent higher than on desktops. We hope this helps any affiliates in planning their forward thinking approach to ensuring you are considering your mobile campaign in 2012.
Neil Fairweather is Account Director at Latitude Digital Marketing. With over eight years digital marketing experience, Neil has been influential in the growth of the company’s gambling client portfolio.
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SEO Guide for Gaming Affiliate Beginners So you’re just getting into the industry as a gaming affiliate, what do you need to know about SEO? David Naylor, one of the industry’s most respected SEO experts, provides the lowdown. First off, something you certainly should already know is that it’s a tough industry, easily one of the most competitive for search engine results page (SERP) space that exists. But don’t let that put you off; as long as you’re willing to put the work in there’s no reason why you can’t still succeed, and the reason it’s so competitive is because it pays so well, so it’s more than worth it.
Brand building Branding has become of utmost importance with regards to organic search, from social presence to branded links. For a newcomer site this will be especially important; it’s all about trust and in the eyes of Google, branding means credibility. You need to choose a domain that you can build a brand around then start getting your name out there with social and PR pushes.
Content – things are different now Since the first Panda update back in early 2011, you now need to offer real value to the users. You can’t just have a website or web page doing the same as everybody else, providing text based information that says the same thing as all of your competitors say, just with different words. You need to be original, you need to offer widgets and features, videos and images; you need to stand out from the crowd. The trick here is to look at your website as if you were a user searching for what it offers. Imagine that you land on it for the first time. What do you think? Be honest with yourself. Does it cut it? Is it any different from all the others?
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Aim your site at the people; if you do that well enough and they like it, then Google will too. Is it good for the user, or just full of banners for monetisation purposes?
Mini on-page/site SEO guide – the usual suspects Right let’s go through the usual stuff. Anybody who knows anything about SEO will know that there are some basic things that need doing on any website so that Google will know the site is relevant to the search terms in question.
Site structure This is obviously important. Where are your landing pages in relation to the rest of the site? How shallow is the file structure? In other words, how many sub-folders do you have? There’s a fair amount of evidence that this doesn’t matter as much as it used to but it’s still a good idea to ensure that the site structure is as shallow as possible. If you have a landing page which is buried deep in the site, within several subdirectories then you’ll want to consider removing some of those sub-directories so that Googlebot doesn’t need to crawl too deeply to reach the content of that page.
SEF URLs URLs should be SEF (Search Engine Friendly). This means that instead of having meaningless, non-descriptive characters in the URL you should have words relating to the content of the page. Keywords relevant to the sub-folder (so the category and possible sub-categories) and the page itself should be used where
possible, without going over the top and keyword stuffing. As a final note in SEFs, if you’re separating words be sure to use hyphens instead of any other separators.
Link architecture More important than the actual file structure is the internal link architecture. This is because Googlebot follows the links to reach the content on the landing pages, so the less ‘hops’ from the homepage to the landing page, the better. An internal landing page will absorb more equity and be considered as higher in importance (not to mention crawled more easily) if there is a link to that page on the homepage itself, or your most equitable page. Now, depending on how many categories, sub-categories and pages exist on the site this may or may not be possible. You can’t link to every landing page from the homepage or it will simply have too many links on it, and will split the equity being passed to those pages too much to have the desired effect anyway. You should ensure that the landing pages of most importance to you are as closely linked from the homepage as possible. Don’t forget though, there’s nothing to stop you adding a couple of homepage links to special landing pages that are of high importance to you, just as long as you don’t go too far with it and have too many.
Crawl errors This is arguably the most important factor to consider. After all, if Googlebot can’t
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crawl your site, it won’t index it, and you’ll have no rankings at all. You will want to check within Google Webmaster Tools for crawl errors and ensure you fix anything that’s showing as a potential problem. Of course, some crawl errors are more severe than others, but suffice to say that all should be resolved for optimum results.
Title tags Title tags are a signal to the search engines of what the page is about. You will want to provide a unique, descriptive title to show what the page is about. (And remember, that doesn’t mean stuff as many keywords in as possible, that will backfire!) Consider it from a user’s perspective rather than from the search engine’s. When the listing for the page appears in the search results, what will make the user think, “Hey yeah, that’s what I’m looking for!” and then click… and then once clicked see the page content and feel they made the right choice, and decide to stick around? Of course, you do want to make sure you have the best chance of the listing showing in those results in the first place, so whatever that user is searching for, you want to make sure it’s present as a keyword in your title tag.
Meta descriptions This won’t affect your rankings, but it will affect how many people click through to your site from seeing it as a listing in the SERPs. This is similar to the title tag in some ways. It must give a good, unique description of the page. What is it about? Why is it what the user should click on? Once again, when the user comes through to the page they need to see that it’s what they were looking for and matches what the description said about it.
Body content Body content should be unique, well written and contain ‘some’ keywords. Do not stuff keywords in everywhere you can, doing
so will only hinder you. See the adding of keywords as just letting Google and the users know that the page might well be relevant to searches for pages with that subject matter. Don’t force them in where they shouldn’t be, don’t sacrifice readability to get more in, just allow for naturally written content which, if the page is about that subject anyway, will likely already have the keywords in question within it. However, it’s not a great idea to be missing all the keywords you want to rank for. Different variations of the keywords and even semantics should show up in phrases, with exact and partial matches dispersed naturally.
Links – you still need ‘em Links are, always have been, and always will be important (at least as far as any of us can see into the potential future). Links are votes from other websites that your website is good and if those sites are in the same/ similar industry, and ‘sometimes’ (not overdoing it, keep it natural) use keyworded anchor text, then those sites are saying your site is relevant too. So, you must acquire links. You must acquire them from websites that are already trusted in the eyes of Google, and relevant to your site. There are lots of different ways to acquire links but there is no way I can cover it all in one article. The best links are the ones that link to you naturally without prompting, due to how great your site is… easier said than done I know. Try a bit of outreach, experiment with content, get yourself about in the online community and do whatever you think might earn you links from people, without spamming and giving yourself a bad reputation for it. It’s worth mentioning that due to Google’s link penalty process, individual pages are more likely to be penalised than whole sites if you happen to do something that goes against the Google guidelines. For this reason, a ‘better safe than sorry’ approach should be taken by targeting internal landing pages with your efforts
rather than the homepage… remember, if an internal page gets penalised you can replace it, but if your homepage gets penalised then you’re in trouble.
Social – don’t shy away Whether or not social signals affect rankings is disputable, with new evidence for and against continuously cropping up. Some of the latest research points to social signals not directly affecting rankings through the algorithm. Either way, even if it does then it’s only slight at the moment. But, we know that social signals will count… once the algorithm can factor them in effectively (and filter out efforts to game the system). But none of that means you shouldn’t ‘go for it’ with social… on the contrary. More visibility in the SERPs, direct traffic – it just depends how it’s done and how much effort is put in. Even if you have great content, you still need to promote it. Tell people about your site and what it has to offer them via social media.
Conclusion – you get out what you put in (mostly) As with anything else, it’s very much a matter of “You get out what you put in!” The rewards can be great in this industry; it’s certainly one of the best payers if you can make it. Whether you make it or not all just depends on your commitment and your attitude. Gone are the days of easy, quick wins. If you think you’ll get there with little effort then go do something else as you’re wasting your time here. However, if you’re prepared to put the work in consistently and over time, then just stick with it and you’ll get there in the end.
David Naylor, is an industry leader in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Online Search Marketing.
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Website Essentials Understanding your visitors is key to making them stay and venture further onto your affiliate website. A visitor coming to any website will ask four basic questions to determine whether he or she wants to engage with you. Respond effectively to all four questions and you have a new user… a conversion. Fail at any of them and your competition gets one instead. Question 1: Have I come to the right place? If a visitor to your site is looking for Blackjack strategies, he/she will want to know, “Is this a site that is about card games at all?” You have something like 0.2 seconds to answer that question. With photos, with headlines and text that is easy to scan. Many people I meet who are setting up or redesigning their sites go out of their way to create a ‘unique experience’ and find their USPs so they can convince people to love and stay at their site. Here’s a thought: before new visitors try to figure out what makes you so unique, they will try to figure out if you are just like the rest. They will look for common images and text that communicate, “Yes this site is about gaming, how can we help you?” Reviewed-casinos.com is one of the bigger affiliate sites out there and the first heading on the site simply says: “ONLINE CASINOS REVIEWED & RANKED SINCE 1998!” There’s no way you can misinterpret that.
Question 2: Do they have what I need? The second question will not be just about whether your site is about card gaming, but specifically, “Do you have those Blackjack strategies which I came for?” Now it’s your job to answer that question through a highly visible search function, by clear entrances to your main content categories and in other ways. The goal is to let the visitor find exactly what they came looking for… or they’ll go away. Here’s a thought: are you aware of the fact that many younger Internet users have what is called a ‘search-dominant’ behaviour? The first thing they will do on any site is to search. They treat any site like Google. So focusing on search and creating
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great search results is key to keeping those visitors. But hey, there’s no way you can do that! You have all these great lists of ‘top 10 casinos’, ‘top jackpots’ or whatever it might be. Now, consider this company which has a huge list of products and services covering everything from your personal mobile phone to global enterprise solutions, and what they show on their first page is a search box with the words, “What can we help you find today?” I’m talking about Intel’s new home page. How can that inspire you?
Question 3: Can I trust them? Question number three lingers with the visitor throughout the whole visit. They’ll want to know whether they can trust this site and feel comfortable about giving away things like their email address. Study after
study has shown that lack of confidence is one of the most common reasons for a visitor to click away. And you know what? Reviewed-casinos. com covers this too in its site heading: “ONLINE CASINOS REVIEWED & RANKED SINCE 1998!” It doesn’t say that it’s the greatest or the best, but by saying “since 1998”, the site just lets you draw that conclusion for yourself. When you use trust-enhancing techniques like ‘badging’, ‘social proof’ and ‘privacy reassurances’, you must be careful. Many who do it sloppily slam some stuff in the header or footer and then think, “Yeah, I’m done”. Users need to be reassured both when and where they are making their crucial steps. For example, if you want to promote your newsletter don’t just tell your users of some
STart-up Affiliate Toolkit
“Visitors will want to know whether they can trust this site and feel comfortable about giving away things like their email address. Study after study has shown that lack of confidence is one of the most common reasons for a visitor to click away.”
or ‘compare’ will be more appealing. The trick is to use many varieties and use your web analytics to figure out what works.
privacy policy in a distant corner of your website. Use the text “We will NEVER share your email address with anyone”, and put it really, really close to the submit button, because that’s the point where they need to be reassured.
Scent: what happens before the site? How visitors perceive your site is very much influenced by the expectations they had when they arrived at it. Think of your visitor like a blood hound who just got started on a fresh scent trail. Now the blood hound is on your site and it’s your job to
Question 4: How do I exit? By now, the visitor knows they are in the right place, found what they came for, and find you reasonably trustworthy. Now, they just need to ‘get their stuff done’, and they want that to happen at lightning speed. That’s where BOB (Big Orange Button) comes in. OK, big bright buttons are not the only way to lead the visitor to the close, but the point is that you need to find simple and clear mechanisms to let visitors easily and quickly complete the job they came to do. In general, I find many gaming sites ‘deaf and shouting’ – they don’t listen to what I want and they keep shouting the same monotonous call-to-action; “Get your Bonus – Click here”. To new visitors who are exploring, this might be too much too soon. They will become blind to the message and by the time they are ready to convert they don’t see it any more. You should keep your calls-to-action clear and highly visible, BUT, you should try to vary the copy and format to match various personas and stages in the visitor journey. ‘Get’ is great for a person that is spontaneous or competitive but for someone who is just looking around at this moment, words like ‘explore’, ‘find’
As an affiliate, one of the best ways of improving your business is to chase the operators’ affiliate managers to optimise the landing pages you send your visitors to. If these pages are designed to ‘keep the scent’ by including ratings, your logo and other elements that indicate a ‘safe handover’, the better your conversion rate will be.
Great conversion rate = the meeting of goals Good conversion is fundamentally about meeting the expectations of the visitor. But you also have a goal of the visit – a purchase, sign-up, a download or whatever it may be. Great conversion happens when your visitor’s objectives coincide with your own. Sweet music starts playing… the conversion is a fact. It’s your job to make sure this happens.
make sure that it doesn’t lose track. It can be done with images, text and various small cues that constantly show that our dog is on the right path, all the way to completion. If our canine friend at any point feels that it’s lost the scent, then it heads back towards the starting point, (Google?) and sets off on a new scent trail (to your competitor). So if your search listing talks about ‘free casino games’, make sure there are games and that they are free. One of the worst ‘scent breaks’ out there is when there’s a button that says ‘Play’, you click it, and end up on a deposit page. That’s a very, very good reason to abandon.
John Ekman is the Founder and CEO of Conversionista!, the leading conversion consulting company in Sweden. You will find inspiration about Conversion Rate Optimisation on Johns’ blog at www. conversionista.com. According to John, a Conversionista is someone deeply and crazily passionate about improving conversion rates. John previously held senior management positions at Net Entertainment and Betsson.
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Social Awareness Aideen Shortt, Author of the forthcoming iGaming Business Social Media Report, explains why social media is non-negotiable in the modern iGaming industry. Choose your networks wisely
Prepare and listen
Facebook is ubiquitous, with its 845 million users representing approximately 11 percent of the global population. Without exception, every social marketing plan should have Facebook activities at its core. However, there is a misconception that Facebook, and possibly Twitter are social media, and this is certainly not the case. Although they are the two largest social networks, they are not the only ones for affiliates to consider. In some emerging gambling markets, Facebook is not the dominant network; for example, Google’s Orkut network has 66 million worldwide users most of whom stem from Brazil and India, and even Google+, which recently launched to mixed reviews, acquired 40 million users in its first few months, is still growing remarkably and will continue to gain importance as Google merges all of its services into one super social juggernaut. Foursquare is having a remarkable impact and the latest social darling is Pinterest whose popularity amongst 18 to 34 year old upper income women should be of primary interest to bingo affiliates. In short, having a Facebook page and Twitter account is not the same as having a social media campaign and success will be born from understanding where your potential customers are and following them.
Before you launch your brand presence on social networks, check the availability of your vanity URL. Find one that’s simple, easy to remember and consistent across networks. Services such as Name Vine check domain names, Facebook and Twitter extensions instantly. Once you have that sorted, start listening. There are social media engagement and monitoring tools such as Radian6 that offer incredibly useful services but when starting out, such costly products are not always necessary – instead use Twitter and Facebook search functions and spend time evaluating who is talking, what they are saying and, most importantly, what competitors and gambling operators are doing and how effective they are. Social media is a two way conversation and listening to that conversation before joining in is singularly the most important step in starting a social media campaign.
Understand how social media is impacting SERPs and PPC Recently, Google has aggressively consolidated its product range by deep linking its social networks to the traditional search functionality. Independent of everything else in the social sphere, this has a dramatic effect on an affiliate’s business which is driven primarily by search. First came the incorporation of +1 functionality into the search algorithm, and in in January 2012, Google released ‘Search plus Your World’, a further development of social search. The feature, which is integrated into Google’s regular search as an opt-out feature, pulls references to results from Google+ profiles. There are two reasons for Google’s dramatic moves in this regard. The first is to ensure importance and growth of its own social networks and the second is to improve search functionality, as this is where affiliates are victims of their own success. Google has incorporated user generated content into SERPs because it is harder to corrupt or manipulate than clever SEO tactics.
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Content: engagement, not broadcast The old paradigm of creating a message and shouting it at the audience does not work in social campaigns, where the audience has a voice. In order to have success, affiliates must talk to the public rather than at them, and content should be relevant and timely. ●● Proactive: deliver compelling content that serves customers needs before they even know it – don’t wait for the community to initiate the conversation. ●● Systematic: create an editorial calendar so you know what you’re going to publish and when. ●● Persistent: distribute content on a consistent regular schedule. ●● Multichannel: engage in all touch points; establish a presence where the customers are likely to spend their time. ●● Two-way: listen to the way the community responds to campaigns and messages. ●● Relevant: any interesting or humorously original or shared/re-posted content has value, although the latter must be identified as shared.
Understand and maximise your Facebook EdgeRank Having volume of fans/followers on Facebook is an inaccurate statistic as to the effectiveness of marketing. This is because your message will only be seen by
a portion of fans; with this grouping being determined by Facebook’s own algorithm called EdgeRank.
EdgeRank = Affinity x Age x Type ●● Affinity represents the strength of
the relationship between you and the individual reader based on the direct relationship between both people, and the wider shared network. ●● Age is the time since the item was posted. Newer is better. ●● Type is the kind of item that has been posted – a news item, a comment, a ‘like’, etc. More authority is given to direct items, and less to comments; less still to likes. To see what your fans engage with the most, and when to post it on Facebook, third-party services such as EdgeRank Checker work well to determine: ●● Most effective day of the week to post content. ●● Popular keywords that drive engagement. ●● What type of media is best for your audience. ●● How often to update.
Use the technologies available Tools such as HootSuite allow you to publish once and distribute across multiple networks. You can integrate your Facebook page, Twitter account, Google+ page, LinkedIn profile and other social networks in one easy-to-use interface. Services like North Social and Pagemodo deliver the applications that most fan pages need. Most of these services provide a free version of some applications. This may be a good first step into the Facebook world if your budget is tight.
Use social plug-ins The most underutilised free tools are Facebook and Google’s social plug-ins. Google’s +1 button is served globally over five billion times per day, and a new study from Gigya shows that users who visit third-party sites through Facebook Connect spend 50 percent more time on those sites and view twice as many pages. Aside from use on third-party sites, social plug-ins can provide a deeper level of engagement, while driving traffic. It doesn’t matter how big or small your offering is, plug-ins are free to use and are a quick and easy way to market your brand or message through referral traffic.
26 & 27 MARCH 2012
The only B2B and affiliate event that provides the best insights on the French iGaming market Why you should attend ● Network and partner with 400+ key stakeholders in our exhibition room ● Position your brand or plan your entry strategy into this market ● Drive traffic, increase conversions, and keep up to date with the latest market specific strategies and SEO tactics ● Understand the key issues relevant to the industry in France
● Maximise your affiliate marketing with our informative workshops ● Join our CEO & Business panel for an insider look at those working this market successfully ● All the panels will be in French with a live translation, ensuring all delegates can take full advantage of the event and leave with practical and relevant information
Affiliates, Publishers, Agencies & Media Owners attend FREE Standard entry price €349 for two days www.igamingfrance.com/conference/
webmaster world
Go the Extra Mile: Engaging your iGaming Audience The role of the iGaming affiliate has become more refined as the industry has grown meaning that the pressure is on to not only deliver more value to business partners, but actively engage the players that come through your affiliate business. Affiliates in the iGaming industry are faced with a big challenge. Several years ago, affiliates had to establish a website, drive traffic to it and get clicks on their links to refer potential players to preferred operators, and reap the rewards. Today, this process is even more comprehensive. The reality is that affiliates are required to think more like marketers and not only work to attract new potential players, but keep them engaged as well.
time is precious and they are expecting to have an entertaining time placing bets or playing poker, slots, table games, bingo or any other game. That special experience doesn’t just begin when players make a deposit, this happens long before. Affiliates should be more involved early on in the player support process to ensure that they are building better relationships from the onset. Community managers can be part of that experience.
“Today, affiliates are required to think more like marketers and not only work to attract new potential players, but keep them engaged as well.” Everyone in the industry is seeking a magic formula for attracting, and, more importantly, engaging potential players. The iGaming industry has quickly grown more sophisticated due to a wider variety of online games, more intuitive software, and progressive mobile and tablet apps being developed to heavily engage players. This, coupled with new gambling regulations introduced through various European markets, is an indication that affiliates will be under more pressure to deliver more to the partners with whom they work. This article details several recommendations that are geared to getting you thinking more creatively about how to drive more traffic to your affiliate website, and hopefully, keep your potential players more engaged to help you grow your business.
Community managers can attract and engage the interests of the potential players more easily by representing your company at conferences, building your social media profile and more importantly, establishing the trust of customers online and offline. Affiliates promoting multiple iGaming brands need a strong presence through one voice and can benefit from investing in a community manager, whether parttime or full-time, to achieve this. Having a community manager to take care of the relationships you gain online (and offline) creates familiarity with your visitors and is just one strategy that can be applied to build relationships long-term and increase conversions, with a hope for repeat business.
Join forces with competitors Enlist a community manager When customers land on an operator’s site to start the player experience, their
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Regulations that have been introduced in the last few years have challenged iGaming industry members on all sides, including
affiliates. You may feel that expanding to foreign countries is accompanied by too many legal obstacles and expansion into unfamiliar markets may not appear to be worth the return on investment. You may want to explore interacting and eventually forming business partnerships with other affiliates in other countries to ease your integration and familiarity. There is an old saying that there is ‘strength in numbers’ and in the iGaming industry, this is a big benefit. By creating a network of affiliate sites that are complimentary to one another, potential players may be more likely to trust your site, particularly if it is connected with brands across a variety of foreign locations. More importantly, creating a network of affiliate sites with those in other countries opens up the opportunity to cross promote more easily across different products and services.
Use PR and social media to gain exposure Super affiliates already know that PR is a necessary component for any business to thrive and gain the exposure it needs to attract new business. Publicity is a less expensive alternative to spending thousands of dollars on advertising. For affiliates that are seeking creative ways to draw more traffic to their site, developing relationships with journalists is an excellent way to do it. Get in touch with journalists in the media and establish a name for yourself. There are plenty of online sites that make it their speciality to connect sources (that’s you) and the journalists who want to write about the industry. Sometimes, all you
need is one short quote in a magazine or newspaper article to attract attention. Moreover, if you proceed with enlisting the help of a community manager, this is the ideal person to be on the front line of your social media presence. They should be your go-to person for interacting with your players on your Facebook page, on Twitter, through your LinkedIn groups and industry forums. Community managers should have excellent written and verbal communications skills, preferably in more than one language to accommodate the wealth of media with whom your business will be interacting.
Solicit feedback One of the smartest things an affiliate can do for their business is solicit feedback about their visitors’ experience. As data mining becomes more and more valuable, gaining your own information about (and from) your audience is a great method for you to learn more about who you are targeting. With the help of your community manager, you can provide a platform that allows your visitors to share their opinions with you and if they like the experience enough, they are sure to refer more business to your site through word of mouth. If you’re wondering what tools are useful in this case, try long-form and single-question polls, or even website or email surveys to generate this data for you. Additionally, if you are already using Google Analytics to track visitor data for your website, try complementing this with your Facebook landing pages and Twitter feeds.
“Creating a network of affiliate sites with those in other countries opens up the opportunity to cross promote more easily across different products and services.” Get interactive Many marketing professionals love video because it’s a simple and easy communication tool to drive immediate action. Using video content to speak to your visitors is a creative tool you can use to your advantage. Video is an excellent way to engage new customers on a website. If you have a community manager or some other spokesperson that is friendly and can interact with your audience, then they should be in your video and create a sense of familiarity with your audience. Additionally, having a communication tool like a newsletter to complement your website content or a blog is a great way to become a thought leader to your audience. If you are not sure what information your audience will care about then try signing up to all of your operators to receive their press releases and other sources of information so that you can be the one to inform players. You can then pass on news pertaining to those partners you promote to your audience and tweak the content accordingly based on what your tracking tools tell you.
Explore new opportunities Online lotteries and gambling in the US market, as we have already seen in 2011, are heavily on the minds of iGaming industry members. In anticipation of this change, it does not hurt to begin talking to and even
partnering (if it is legal) with operators in areas that you have yet to add to your campaign mix. It is never too soon to align your business with markets and key industry members with whom you can gain ideas and resources, and receive support. As an affiliate, these recommendations can impact how well and how fluidly your affiliate business can thrive. If you run an affiliate website, then you are probably concerned about just how you will continue to grow your business in the current state where competition is high and getting noticed is a challenge. Now may be the time to consider not only how to better attract more visitors to your site, but also how to build a more loyal group of potential players that will translate to easier conversions in 2012.
Nicky Senyard is CEO of Income Access, overseeing their independent iGaming affiliate network, market-leading affiliate software and expert affiliate management services.
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DONT MISS! The mSport Summit 26th April
Join iGaming Business and Telemedia 360 for the only event dedicated to mobile gambling. With two conference tracks over one day, numerous networking opportunities and an exhibition floor to enjoy this is an event not to be missed if you are serious about the mobile gambling market. Expect to hear from and meet the leading players from the worlds of mobile and iGaming, and take the time to enjoy the first ever mGaming Awards and an exclusive networking party.
NEW FOR 2012 The mGaming Awards
April 25th, 2012 The King’s Fund, 11–13 Cavendish Square London, W1G 0AN
www.mgamingsummit.com
webmaster world
Ten Resolutions to Catapult your Affiliate Status in 2012 The stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve gives rise to the age old tradition of resolutions. Most of us come up with the same old promises: lose weight, quit smoking, save money. Why not try something new this time around? In celebration of 2012, the Income Access team has put together ten New Year’s resolutions to help you with your affiliate website and perhaps increase your productivity. 1. Set a goal Setting goals keeps you on track. Create a roadmap for your success by writing everything down; make it concrete, so that if ever you fall off track you will be able to guide yourself back in the right direction. No one is perfect, so attack your shortcomings head on and help improve your business.
faced with a term that does not fit into your business model. As an example, you may promote via PPC but suddenly discover six months into your partnership with the affiliate program that it does not allow this method of promotion. Protect yourself and read the fine print.
6. Try new things 2. Share your knowledge with the community We need to promote working together as part of a collective iGaming community. Share your knowledge, insight and experiences, leverage expert advice and relationships, and ask for help when needed. Perhaps you can team up with someone who may have strong skills in an area where you may lack and vice versa. For example, you may have strong SEO skills and may be less proficient with social media. We are all in this together and we need to work in-sync to improve the industry.
Out with the old in with the new... sometimes when you feel that you are in a rut, the easiest way to spruce things up is by trying new things. Why not try new marketing avenues? There are so many affordable options at your disposal and 2012 is a great time to see what is out there. Here are some examples of marketing venues you can explore: Facebook advertising, Google +, blogging, press releases, panda algorithm… the list goes on. Without exploring these marketing channels, it can be challenging to keep up with the rest of the industry. Take a chance and see where it leads.
3. Make time for more A/B testing Like going to the gym, this is something you know you should be doing yet seem to struggle to action. Set aside time each month to run A/B tests on different page formats, calls-to-action, banner sizes and placement, text link colour, etc. Google’s Website Optimizer is at everyone’s disposal and is easy to use. Your website is an important tool; make it a priority to assure it is the most effective that it can be.
4. Mobile marketing We have seen many marketing trends throughout the years and mobile marketing has proven to be one of the fastest growing. It is predicted that by 2015 mobile marketing will see an all around explosion in revenue. Mobile gaming is without a doubt one of the key markets in the iGaming industry right now and firms should be looking to begin optimising their mobile performance.
5. Read the terms and conditions The terms and conditions of an affiliate program is an essential agreement. This is a contract binding yourself and the operator with whom you partner. If you assume that every program has similar terms you may end up surprised when you are suddenly
promotions and prizes such as tickets or memorabilia. Social media can be used to spread the word. You can also engage users on your site by running competitions. Get ahead of the game and start your marketing campaign early; these events are time sensitive so it’s important not to miss the boat on this marketing opportunity. Do be mindful of the misuse of trademarks, copyrights and intellectual property.
9. Quality not quantity Choose your affiliate programs wisely by picking partners that are aligned with your interests and goals. It is better to focus on suitable programs and develop these relationships than spread yourself too thin. Too many affiliates make this first mistake of taking on numerous partners and then quickly realise that they cannot manage significant traffic generation and referral in equal measure and give up fairly quickly. Don’t jump the gun, take your time.
10. Use your software 7. Jump on the infographic bandwagon It has been said that when running an affiliate website you must increase your traffic to increase your revenues. An infographic is a new trend that is all the rage. This new form of visual representation stems from the fact that the human brain processes images three times faster than text. In order to create a successful infographic make sure to keep it simple. Don’t overwhelm your visitor with an abundance of colours and text. Furthermore, try not to use this infographic as a sales tactic. The goal is simple: it’s all about information. And finally, take into account that all information used in the infographic matches and/or represents the content on your website.
8. Leverage events Take advantage of popular or global events such as the 2012 London Summer Olympics that will be taking place in August. This type of worldwide event, when used properly, can help you attract new visitors and increase your traffic. Adjust your banners in conjunction with events such as the Olympics or any other sporting event. To entice your visitors, you can offer
Your affiliate program’s software can be used for more than calculating commissions and tracking traffic. The right software will also provide you with valuable data that will help you measure the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. If the right data is provided you can focus on what works best, and drop what doesn’t. The right software can be highly effective in optimising your campaigns and improving your performance. The great challenge in a New Year’s resolution is to follow it through consistently. If you can gather enough willpower and motivation, you will be able to make changes and improvements to your business and overall success.
Erica Anderson is an affiliate marketing team leader at Income Access. An integral part of our affiliate management team, Erica recruits new affiliates, works with current affiliates to maximise results and with merchants to develop the marketing tools that affiliates need to successfully convert players. For more information about the Income Access affiliate network and campaign management solution, please contact hello@incomeaccess.com.
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marketplace 7314 bet365 affiliates (148x52+3mm). 24/11/2011 15:38 Page 1
Welcome to the Market Place listings section of iGB Affiliate magazine. All listings are taken from the 2012 version of our iGB Affiliate Directory; a 150 page guide to the affiliate programs and service providers who are currently active within the iGaming sector. To request a free copy of this publication or to have your company listed please contact Richard W on E: Richard@iGamingBusiness.com or T: +44 (0) 207 954 3437 advertising & PR
Market Ace
Game On
www.market-ace.com
www.gameon-marketing.com
Star Games
Global Gaming Events
www.stargames.com
www.globalgamingevents.com
Virgin
Media Skunk Works
www.virgingaming.com
www.mediaskunkworks.com
Casino Affiliate Programs
Omni-lInx
888
www.gamb-linx.com
AFFILIATE NETWORK Bet365 www.bet365.com Betsson www.betsson.com CAP www.casinoaffiliateprograms.com CPA Industry www.cpaindustry.com Game On www.gameon-marketing.com
ALTERNATIVE GAMING Affstars
www.888.com 32Red www.32red.com Aff Europe www.affeurope.com
bet365affiliates.com www.gambleaware.co.uk
Commission Lounge www.commissionlounge.com Europartners www.europartners.com Everest Poker www.everestpoker.com/en Fortune Affiliates www.fortuneaffiliates.eu Gala Coral www.galacoral.co.uk Gambling Affiliation www.gambling-affiliation.com GURU www.gururevenue.com iGame www.igamefamily.com Intertops
Affiliate Club
www.intertops.eu
www.affiliateclub.com
Live Partners
Affiliate Lions
www.livepartners.com
www.wgmg.co.cr
Logispin
Affiliates United
www.logispin.com
www.affutd.com
Mr Green
Asian Logic
www.mrgreen.com
www.asianlogic.com
MyBet
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poker affiliate programs
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Commission Lounge
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Everest Poker
BetDaq
Victor Chandler
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www.brightshare.com CAP www.casinoaffiliateprograms.com Gala Coral www.galacoral.co.uk iGame www.igamefamily.com
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RGS Malta Ltd www.starlottosport.com SportingBet www.sportingbet.com Sportsbet.com.au www.sportsbet.com.au Stan James
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73
WEBMASTER WORLD
DATA FEED
This issue, we aggregate the latest demographical data from information specialists comScore and Experian Hitwise that determines the most popular gambling operators by visits in the UK, US and France. Media
United Kingdom and France (comScore) The first data set from comScore comprises the top ten sites in the UK and French markets in relation to total unique visitors (in millions). The total Internet audience statistic details the amount of unique visitors to the Internet for the month of December. If we assume that for each country, this figure represents their ‘online population’ for that month, then we can begin to see just how penetrative gambling has become in these regulated markets. If we start with France, we can see that of the 47.75 million unique visitors in December, 12.4 million of them were accessing online gambling related sites, accounting for just over 26 percent of all unique visits. Of those sites visited, it serves as no surprise to find the former duopoly of Francaise des Jeux (FdJ) and Pari Mutuel Urbain (PMU) leading the way with 3.7 million and 3.1 million visits respectively, while PRIZEE.com and bwin.fr make up the other seven figure-operators with respective values at 1.19 million and 1.18 million. It is useful to note that the collaborative figure of unique visits per site in the top ten accounts for more than the total value for ‘Gambling – Online Gambling’ due to an unspecified
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
The Experian Hitwise data for the month of December shows the top ten sites by share of visits, dominated, as you would expect, by state lotteries. The report also highlights the percentage of visitors of certain states to online gambling sites, as well a breakdown of the national gender split, and percentage of age ranges accessing iGaming points of interest.
Most Popular Websites in Gambling ranked by Visits Share – Month of December 2011
74
Domain www.nylottery.org www.lotterypost.com www.flalottery.com www.freeslots.com www.palottery.state.pa.us www.txlottery.org www.masslottery.com
Visits Share 4.10% 3.90% 3.77% 3.61% 3.28% 3.04% 2.36%
www.galottery.com www.king.com www.worldwinner.com
2.36% 2.36% 2.27%
iGB Affiliate FEBRUARY/MARCH 2012
Total Internet Audience: Age 6+ Gambling – Online Gambling Cassava Enterprises Ltd. William Hill PADDYPOWER.COM JACKPOTJOY.COM SKYBET.COM bet365 Group Limited PartyGaming WOOGA.COM BetFair LADBROKES.COM
Media
42,731 8,430 2,425 1,049 843 735 639 571 567 557 528 527
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
amount of unique visitors frequenting more than one site and/or the same sites on more than one occasion. The overall data also shows that France had a significantly higher online population in December than was recorded for the UK. The UK’s 42.73 million unique Internet visits were comprised of 8.4 million to online gambling sites, equating to 19.7 percent of the overall total. Though markedly lower than the relative percentage of gambling visits in France, it still represents a fair proportion of online visitors. Cassava Enterprises’ multiple assets (888 Casino, Poker, Sports, Pacific Poker, 888 Ladies, etc) sit atop the pile in the UK with 2.4 million visits, followed by William Hill, Paddy Power and Jackpotjoy. There is also less of a skew in the numbers with regards
US (Experian Hitwise)
Websites 1 NY Lottery 2 Lottery Post 3 Florida Lottery 4 FreeSlots 5 Pennsylvania Lottery 6 Texas Lottery Commission 7 Massachusetts State Lottery Commission 8 Georgia Lottery 9 King.com 10 WorldWinner
Total Unique Visitors (000)
Total Unique Visitors (000)
Total Internet Audience: Age 6+ Gambling – Online Gambling Francaise des Jeux PMU PRIZEE.COM BWIN.FR WOOGA.COM PKR.FR ZETURF.FR GRATTEZ-ICI.COM BetClic Enterprises TURF-FR.COM
47,759 12,427 3,748 3,150 1,195 1,188 998 988 849 695 686 498
to ‘wandering’ unique visitors. Whereas in France, the total numbers of unique visits for the top ten (13.9 million) is some 1.5 million more than the total number for online gambling (12.4 million), the UK’s collaborative figure of 8.44 million eclipses the overall online gambling figure (8.43 million) by just 10,000. This could either point to sites further outside those listed picking up traffic, or that the propensity for French gamblers to visit numerous sites is far greater given that the country’s domestic regulated online gambling market is far less mature than that in the UK. Either way, both markets are showing positive signs of iGaming adoption especially considering that anything from a fifth up to a quarter of all visits are concentrated on gambling sites such as those displayed.
Region of visitors to gambling
<1% 1 – 5% 5 – 10% 10 – 20% 20 – 50% >50%
Gender of visitors to gambling
Age of visitors to gambling 31.80%
30% 22.73%
24% Male 52.43%
Female 47.57%
18% 12%
16.36%
17.67%
25-34
35-44
11.56%
6% 0%
18-24
45-54
55+
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