- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
Personally I don’t see any harm in asking people to vote, as long as it’s not incentivised which would IMO be unethical and also cast a shadow on the validity of awards. Some awards have become a joke because everyone knows that people have been offerred incentives to vote, or the winners turn out to be big advertisers.
Take the William Hill “Best Support” award back in London in January (forget who awarded it but it wasn’t CAP). Now Will Hill are good at a lot of things, but anyone who knows anything knows that their support isn’t one of them! We had a good laugh about that one in the pub one night
Also, Intercasino used to offer players bonuses to vote for them in the Gambling Magazine awards. Now as it happens, Inter is a very good casino and they may well have won it anyway, but when word got out, the player forums had a number of threads that basically questioned the validity of the awards, the upshot being that a lot of players had no confidence in them.
@EPDirector 184134 wrote:
But is there anywhere to see live results of the voting results – otherwise it raises a bit of doubt no, and we must ask how reliable is this source of information?
No – having award totals kept discrete does not raise any doubts in my mind.
:hattip:No need to assume everything is run like a dodgy affiliates stats system?
:tongue:No such assumptions made on our behalf.
Its just that last year’s turnout was a bit odd. How is it that some rake-back affiliate is the #1 poker affiliate in the world as opposed to someone absolutely huge and dominating the search engines like poker.com, pokerlistings.com or the many others…. just weird to see J. Todd as “best overall” affiliate! Where is he in the search engines or ppc results?The bottom line is, if the results don’t get a bit more realistic it just takes away from their credibility. This would be a sad thing for us at Euro Partners, since we have faith in CAP and refer our affiliates here.
Bidding you all a great week and profitable month!
EPDirector
I don’t think that search engines has anything to do with these particular awards. The majority of the audiance would be CAP members and those that they introduce to the Awards.
What may be ‘realistic’ in your eyes may not be the same for others. I can see how someone like JTodd or Casinomeister could win due to popularity only because they are known at CAP, in igaming industry, have thier own online forums and very well known by voters.
I don’t see the anyone in your list that you mentioned that is very active here at CAP unless I’m missing something.
First I’d like to say two important things: Thank you for your response and in no way was I saying something negative about JTodd or Casinomeister as they are both stand out people who have a long and positive history here. Also, our company appreciates the influence they’ve had on us and the industry as a whole.
The main message here is that CAP awards doesn’t represent the industry as a whole. Just a small tight nit segment. So either CAP spread its wings at the help of its great budget and loyal advertising partners, or dwindle to a mirror of other forums and CAC.Europartners would rather not see it dwindle and that is why we’ve placed a link on our login page to let our 50K+ affiliates vote; amongst many other things. We hope to experience the same loyalty in return.
p.s. a live counter would be cool.
Kind Regards,
EPDirector
Really, I am not sure what you are getting at.
It has nothing to do with search engine ranking, it has to do with contributing to the community. It has to do with making the industry a better place to work.
Nominations are visible. If you made the voting process transparent, what point would there be in an award ceremony? You don’t know who wins the many awards handed out by Hollywood either until you find out at the awards dinner.
These are the CAP awards. Maybe you would like to see a different type of award in addition.
Giving an award for search engine ranking is a whole different thing.
I can’t speak for the CAP folks, but maybe you want to suggest additional awards to them.
Search engine rankings was just one tiny example. There are huge forums and groups that do a lot for the gaming player and advertising communities throughout the world. These are overlooked here and we’re expecting a bit more research done by CAP instead of the limited choices given.
Ok, enough talk – its starting to remind me of the dead end conversations at the end of CAC panel thing where the beer is free. And thats the best part.
Kind Regards,
EPDirector
@EPDirector 184154 wrote:
Ok, enough talk – its starting to remind me of the dead end conversations at the end of CAC panel thing where the beer is free. And thats the best part.
I see your point, it’s you that do not see my point.
You are saying that CAP is not running the awards in the way you think they should be ran. I got it. Everyone can’t be happy over the same situation all the time. :hattip:
@EPDirector 184141 wrote:
just weird to see J. Todd as “best overall” affiliate! Where is he in the search engines or ppc results?
My vote went there – it’s not always about who can make the most money. In this case it was about who’s doing something constructive for the industry, a view clearly held by a lot of others too.
@EPDirector 184154 wrote:
There are huge forums and groups that do a lot for the gaming player and advertising communities throughout the world. These are overlooked here and we’re expecting a bit more research done by CAP instead of the limited choices given.
As far as I know there were no choices given at all.
There was a nomination phase where anyone could be nominated. For instance Casinomeister wasn’t even a CAP member at the time he was nominated last year.
You could have nominated anyone you wanted to.
Right few things:
Visable counter – This would be completely pointless….because
a) The awards night would be not nearly as good – There would be no surprises or anything – Would you tune into the oscars if you knew who had won already?
b) It would/could skew the votes – e.g. If I was going to vote for xxx casino and saw that they only had 1% vote but the casino I hate had 42% votes and then a casino I thought was OK had 39% I may either not vote because I knew I couldn’t make a difference OR I would vote for the OK casino to stop the casino I hate winning
Results from last year – Please remember when someone votes they see it from different view points – Here are just a few reasons why they believe that person to be their “favourite” affiliate:
a) They send loads of traffic
b) They rank really high for great key words
c) They support many newbie affiliates in the forums
d) They are an affiliate that person aspires to be
e) They fight for affiliate’s rights
f) They simply like the guy
The list could go on but remember the greatest thing about this is that it represents the view of the industry as a whole so what is good to you might not be to me, for example I think RTR is a great affiliate and has done bloody well in a relatively short space of time but you prefer another – C’est la vie the majority will decideThis years nominations
As Dom mentioned we have had nominations open from April – Sept for anyone to nominate affiliates and programs who they think should deserve an award – This is the same as last year and was sent out to thousands of individuals through, email, newsletters, direct mail, magazines and much more so with regards to people who you feel should be on there either you didn’t nominate them or they wern’t nominated enough but unfortunately it will have to be next yearThe Process
As per the website under “About CAP Awards” the voting isn’t just votes it is also influenced by a panel of some key affiliates, vendors and operators which keeps the final decision balanced and hopefully stops incentivised voting etc. – This is a straight quote from the siteThe CAP Awards are decided by two voting bodies. The affiliate nominations come via members of http://www.casinoaffiliateprograms.com and http://www.pokeraffiliateprograms.com and share around 75% of the closing result. The independent judiciary panel is made up of 10 respected operators, affiliates and vendors. These individuals add vital industry insight and expertise as well as ensuring that the nominations are well-placed and the awards operate a clean and non-biased system.
I do want to finish with one thing – We will all never agree 100% because as I say we all approach the awards in different ways BUT when I started these last year my one promise to myself was that I would make sure who ever wins through the vote definitely wins no matter what I or others think – I am 100% honest with these and disagree sometimes with what people thing but the fact is that is what the majority thinks so they are The Winner and we really can’t argue with that!
Anyway – I have typed enough just remember
No Vote, No VoiceIf they had a category for the most non paying affiliate program I would vote for your program Amit:hattip:
Maybe I am biased because I am up for a few awards (thanks again for the nomations) but I see this as a community specific set of AWARDS based around CAP. If someone wants to try to create another set of gaming awards based on say search engine results then they are free to do so, except it might be a little boring and uneventful. I think these awards are fairly straight forward and in my opinion fairly organized and fair. You have enough time to nominate whomever you wish and then you can do the same for voting. If you are going to get specific about what the “best casino affiliate” means then I think you just over analyzing this to death. If you have a CAP username then you can make your vote whether you think best affiliate means who makes the most or the best affiliate because of their participation in helping the gaming community, it’s your choice. Also I think the affiliate that makes the most doesn’t want to disclose how much they make and I know some of them just won’t bother with the CAP community but that is their choice.
I think it is safe to say that most people here understand what the CAP awards are about. I trust the people behind the scenes making it happen and I trust that the votes will be very reflective of who the real winners of the awards should be. Again anybody can be nominated and I know of some huge affiliates who are not on the list but what good is their listing going to mean if they don’t post or participate in any CAP forums or don’t even attend any CAP events? Why have an awards ceremony where the winners don’t show up and we know the results in advance? Just take it with a grain of salt, this isn’t the US Presidential elections it’s more like the MTV Awards. We could base the results on search engines or who has the biggest dick, I mean bank account but this is pointless and would truly throw out the credibility aspect of the awards.
Anybody can vote, anybody can win. I think it’s going to be a fantastic event and win or lose I’m looking forward to the show. :wink-wink
@bonustreak 184173 wrote:
If they had a category for the most non paying affiliate program I would vote for your program Amit:hattip:
LOL that’s a great one .It is CAP awards and was open for anyone to nominate or to vote .Maybe you can try to improve things so that you may get nominated next year
I was going to point out the big elephant in the room. What is the award called? CAP Award! What is CAP? A forum! So it shouldn’t really come as a surprise that it is centred around the members of this community and their votes will be a reflection of their values and judgements.
By the way EPDirector whilst I think everyone here appreciates your suggestions to maybe shift the focus of the award a bit I think this is the first thread from you outside of your forum. Also all the threads in there seem to be “payment related” most of the time.
