each download is a valid, live email address for the casino to pursue. These are expensive because they are hard to come by.
I agree with this and think new sign ups should be compensated in some way. Targeted natural search has to provide the best converters. What could be more valuable traffic than this? An example: I’ve got a poker room this month that has had 40+ new registrations and have not made one dime. The new registrations are obviously interested in playing online poker, have downloaded the software, like what this particular poker room has to offer, etc. so what’s the problem? There’s all of these roadblocks trying to get good targeted converting traffic – spyware, banking issues, and then search engines not accepting advertising. You finally get a good consistent flow of targeted traffic for them, which took months of work to build, and there is no reward. Someone tell me how 40+ new registrations over a three week period is worth zero money.
As for terms like online gambling; I think ones like that are too generic. There could be people that search for that term that are just looking for general information, even a student doing research on it. Give me 10 “i want to play slots online” searchers any day over 100’s of “casinos” or “gambling” ones.