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This year’s Las Vegas conferences for affiliates, CAC (Casino Affiliate Convention) and GMC (Gaming Marketing Conference) were quite interesting. I am going to tell you about my personal impressions. This is not a serious report, nor will it necessarily reflect the message the various speakers intended to relate. Just my own two bits, generally irreverent and occasionally irrelevant.
Charles Buchwalter from Nielsen Netratings started us off, and he scared the dickens out of me. He says: “Regulatory concerns and proposed legislative activity dampen enthusiasm for online gambling”. As you would expect from Nielsen, he had lots of charts to prove it. An odd fact: while Cassava Enterprises cut advertising, the Riverbelle Group increased it by 183%! Wish I was a fly on the wall and could hear what these folks are thinking…I’ll tell you what I am thinking: It’s not the law that dampens enthusiasm, it’s the trouble new players have to go through to deposit after they spend all this time signing up. It’s enough to deflate anyone’s enthusiasm, sign up and tell all kinds of things about yourself you’d rather not, get your credit card declined (deflates everyone)and then fill the whole thing out again at neteller. Yikes!
Next we heard Kenneth Nwabueze from Sage metrics on Geo targeting. This was interesting, but it seemed to me to apply more to a combination of online and offline marketing – something I do not do. Casinos would do well to listen, though.
Next came Patrick Smyth from CYOP Systems. He spoke about marketing of online skill games, and I find this an exciting new direction. Skill games are fun, easy to learn, legal and have no depositing problems. Since I already carry skill tournaments of various description on my site, I was very interested and encouraged. I will definitely be adding to what I have already.
Next we heard from David Caruthers from Bet On Sports. I was very impressed with David’s speech on legal issues and lobbying. He stressed that this industry has to work together, and promised to do his part to help solve our industry issues. David pointed out that sportsbooks needed to be more open and transparent, to make their records more available and to pursue self regulation in general. This speech impressed me and I will be offering David any type of help he may be able to utilize in this endeavor. Go David!!!!!
The following panel on sportsbetting (David Carruthers from Bet on Sports, Peter Nolan from William Hill, Mickey Charles from the Sports Network and Gary Hoyle from Sportsbook.com) was lively. Mickey can always be counted on to raise a little hell. Yours truly opened her big mouth and asked if any of the sportsbooks were going to protect her should American authorities decide that promoting sportsbooks was against the law. Unfortunately no one stepped up to the plate and those of us promoting sportsbooks will have to look out for ourselves. Surprise, surprise! I was being assured, however, that at this time a trip to jail was still unlikely. I only promote a couple of sportsbooks and I guess for now that will stay the same.
Ken Magill from DM News spoke on successful online retail advertising. Unfortunately I did not attend this presentation.
Next we heard from Dan Ballister from Findwhat. This useful talk centered on selection of effective but low cost keywords. This whole payperclick business is going to be the death of me someday. I wish I could afford to just hire someone to do it for me.
Now came Carla Dunlap and Cheryl Sargent from Evaliant Services on competitive advertising. The online advertising industry here was portrayed as very healthy and growing, the casino industry in the pits. Between January and December of 2002 the online gaming industry decreased advertising activity by 76%. What is that all about? I got some good ideas about new things to try from this presentation.
The following payperclick roundtable was most interesting. Payperclicks are the bane of my existance. The table consisted of Dan Ballister from Findwhat, Michael Feeley from Kanoodle, Ben Trenda from Overture, Daniel Ishag from eSpotting and Jay Bean from Ah-ha.com. I know that findwhat and eSpotting have joined forces – but I am still unsure about how this symbiosis works. I meant to ask about this, but got side tracked when expressing my displeasure with payperclicks and their very annoying rules. Specifically I am unhappy with service at Overture – they forever want me to call them for one reason or another. Well, I do not like doing business on the phone – it disrupts my work too much. I am working online, have various messengers going, usually hold two or more conversations at the same time as I work on something else, and when I am on the phone I have to drop everything. You can’t multitask on the phone. So I reserve phone contact for creating or cementing relationships, and I do everyday business with email. Well, now Overture doesn’t even do any email at all anymore, you have to go to the site and fill something out, or – call on the phone. AAARRRGGGHHH! I am going to stop this topic now – lol – I could fill a whole book venting about payperclicks!
Gary Calderon from Trados spoke on international marketing and translations. This was old news to me – in another life time I used to run a brick and mortar Translation Service and I was well aware of all the pitfalls and problems mentioned here, and then some. The limited usable computer help in this was outlined nicely – as a pure cost saving measure, which is where it belongs.
Kate Kozak from Eclipsicom now talked about branding – interesting and nothing new to me.
Margie Taylor from Sitewire spoke on player retention – something more interesting to casinos. She stressed personal contact with players – makes sense.
Jeff Unze from SINA.com presented a talk about Asian markets, as did our own Ted Loh (Spearmaster.) Looks like Asia is the future of online gaming, but the diversity of culture is huge in Asia, and there are some nasty laws in place. Europe I understand well, in Asia I am a babe in the woods. Sounds like casinos would to well to confer with Ted and Jeff and get their sites ready for the Orient.
Casinomeister’s presentation could be counted on to be lively and – to me – somewhat humorous (just because of the befitting choice of words and the tone of voice)We saw some examples of investigating casinos, funky software, trademark issues, and yes – an evil player too! Casinomeister succeeded in presenting a case for affiliate ethics that even those who “could care less” should listen to!
Robert Cole from Casino Times News showed some examples of good and bad print ads and helped me understand print media better. He stressed branding again – I do agree with this. I am a firm believer in branding.
I missed Jay Stevens from Silverpop Systems talking about email marketing in favor of the alternate session – Kapil Juneja and Mary O’Brian speaking on search engines and payperclicks (yes, my favorite topic :grin:)Kapil held a very informative talk about search engine optimization and Mary (for you GPWA folks, that is Mary Poppins) impressed the dickens out of me and I am going to see about hiring these folks to help me market more efficiently. I highly recommend Mary and Kapil.
Next came the final panel – and the beer! Bet on Sports provided icy mugs we all took home with us – thanks! The panel dealt with affiliate and casino operator points of view. This can be an explosive topic at times, but in this case much useful information was exchanged. On the panel were Steve Baker from the Cyber World group, David Carruthers from Bet on Sports, J.Todd from Integrity Casino Guide, Ted Loh from Orient Gaming and I forgot the name of the gentleman sitting in for the Professor. Yes, the professor didn’t make it after all. The discussion was lively – one of the points of contention was the amount of paperwork some casinos require before they pay out winnings. Actually, personally I have abandoned winnings in the past rather than deal with all that stuff. Some of them want you to send in everything possible, including a stool sample as Ted joked. During this session I could be heard a few times – as I drank more beer I found the microphone unnecessary and likely made a nuisance of myself.
Overall this was one of the more interesting conferences I have attended. I learned a bunch, met a lot of interesting people, and of course attended the requisite parties.
I made some deals, accepted some new advertisers and cemented some old relationships. I especially want to thank those who made this possible for me. I am known to carry my loyalties well beyond the call of duty, so hopefully this will be as useful to my sponsors as it has been to me.
I am hoping the organizers will pay additional attention to one other point in future conferences though – the chosen Hotel should have an easy to find central bar in the lobby. People need a place to hang out and meet when not in the sessions. We all missed each other constantly at the Stardust due to the sprawling layout.
