iGB Affiliate 18 Dec 09/Jan 10 by iGaming Business

DEC/JAN 2009/10

MOBILE AFFILIATE MARKETING 2010 AFFILIATE OUTLOOK INDUSTRY MEGA DRIVE SEGA GAMES INTERVIEW LINKS - ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW

Is There a Future for Black Hat SEO? INFORMATION, INSIGHT AND ANALYSIS FOR THE BUSINESS OF INTERACTIVE GAMING

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CONTENTS 04 Affiliate Events Calendar 06 Webmaster News 10 Graphic Design – The Dangers of Stylistic Compromise 12 Video Content Monetization 15 Competitive Link Research 18 Reputation Management – Protecting your Good Name from Harm 21 All you Need to Know About Links 24 Is There a Future for Black Hat SEO 27 Affiliate Interview 28 Affiliate Program Interview 31 The Mobile Platform – Affiliate Opportunities 35 Mobile Affiliate Marketing Round Table

I am off to the Scandinavian Affiliate Super Summit, a brand new iGaming Business Affiliate event dedicated to the Scandinavian market. With high-profile speakers such as Mangus CEO Per Widerstrom and Unibet Head Petter Nylander on board, the event is surely the start of something big in the Scandinavian affiliate market. But this is iGaming, so expect big things to happen in our industry around the globe. Peter Wilson gives us insight this issue into the ever-dynamic US market and we take a look at the global mobile iGaming boom which can no longer be ignored. As you saw by the image on the cover, in this issue we delve into the arcane world of Black Hat SEO and teach you how to use SEO to maintain the reputation of your brand. Don’t miss our interview with SEGA Games, and find out why you may want to ditch your fancy website for something more mundane.

38 Maximising the Mobile Web Opportunity 40 The Winds of Change in the US 43 Socially Acceptable Entertainment 46 Affiliate Relationship Management 49 SEO Challenges for Gaming Sites 50 Real-Time and In-Game 53 The Changing Face of Social Networking 54 Cause and Effect – Traditional Marketing Methods 56 Interview – SEGA Games 58 iGB Espana 60 Webmaster Insight with Income Access 62 Content Management Systems Overview 65 Google Vince Update 68 Facebook and MySpace Games – Impacting on your Revenue? 71 Emphasis on the Future – Affiliate Outlook 74 Industry Outlook 78 Interview – Lorenzo Pellegrino, Moneybookers

By the time you get this issue, you will have missed our Stockholm event, but I will be happy to tell you all about it when I see you at the London Affiliate Conference (LAC) – which we expect will be the biggest event we’ve ever hosted. Since you’ll be in London for LAC, let me personally invite you to the legendary Fire & Ice event on January 27th. Now in its ninth year, Fire & Ice is the industry’s biggest networking bash and this year’s event promises to leave you breathless. Trust me – you don’t want to miss it.

Michael Caselli, Editor in Chief

Editor in Chief: Michael Caselli

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iGB Affiliate DECEMBER/JANUARY 2009/10

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.

LONDON AFFILIATE CONFERENCE LONDON, ENGLAND JANUARY 28 – 31, 2010

INTERNATIONAL GAMING EXPO LONDON, ENGLAND JANUARY 26 – 28, 2010 Summary: This is the show where the whole of the gaming world descends on London for the biggest event on the calendar. Held at London’s Earl’s Court Conference and Exhibition Centre, IGE also contains ICEi, ATEi and the Betting Show in bringing together the most renowned showcase for land-based gaming, iGaming and betting and amusements. www.ige-exhibition.com/104/1300/index.php?

IGB AFFILIATE AWARDS LONDON, ENGLAND JANUARY 28, 2010 Summary: Every year, over 500 people from the iGaming affiliate community gather to honour the ongoing success stories within the industry, announcing the best and brightest stars at an extravagant gala. The iGB Affiliate Awards are held the night before the London Affiliate Conference, the industry’s biggest annual exhibition and conference, providing the perfect opening to this landmark event.

Summary: The London Affiliate Conference (LAC) is the flagship event on iGaming Business’ affiliate conference circuit. As ever, the 2010 event directly follows the IGE exhibition and is expected to attract over 2,000 affiliates, operators and vendors. The third annual iGaming Affiliate Awards will once again mark the opening of this event, and based on last years sell out event, this is definitely not one to miss. www.londonaffiliateconference.com

www.iGBAffiliateAwards.com

FIRE & ICE LONDON, ENGLAND JANUARY 7, 2010 Summary: This is the industry’s biggest social gathering with 200 industry executives cutting loose at the 9th annual installation of the famous Fire & Ice party. The affiliates won’t want to miss this event. www.FireandIceparty.com

AFFILICON INDIA, MUMBAI, INDIA FEBRUARY 8 – 11, 2010

IGB DOWN UNDER SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA MARCH 24 – 25, 2010

Exhibitors will finally have an opportunity to meet Indian affiliates and business colleagues including SEO experts, out sourced development companies, graphic designers, content writers and more.

Summary: iGaming Business returns down under following the success of last year’s event. With the Australian iGaming market in the news almost on a daily basis, this show is essential to attend if you are promoting in the Australian market or looking for an additional niche to target. iGB Down Under guarantees up to date and informative content on the Asian and Australian iGaming market, a new look expo, the Affiliate Series of Poker, as well as some of the best networking parties in the affiliate calendar.

www.affilicon.com/India/index.html

www.iGBDownUnder.com

Summary: Affilicon India offers an opportunity to discover the untapped affiliate market in India. Thousands of affiliates from various cities in India will gather in Mumbai at this large scale event.

iGB Affiliate DECEMBER/JANUARY 2009/10

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WEBMASTER NEWS

PARTYGAMING ACQUIRES WPT

PARTYGAMING HAS continued its acquisition cycle with the purchase of the World Poker Tour (WPT) land-based poker tournament series from America’s World Poker Tour Enterprises (WPTE) Incorporated. PartyGaming revealed that the deal would cost an initial $12.3 million in cash plus an additional minimum aggregate payment of $3 million over the next three years relating to an ongoing revenue share agreement. “PartyGaming has been an important partner for a number of years and we are conﬁdent that it will be an excellent manager of our brands in the future,” said Steve Lipscomb, founder of WPTE. “Combining two of the pioneers and leaders in the poker and online gaming

markets will create a strong vehicle for the WPT brand to continue its global expansion.” This follows PartyGaming’s purchase of CashCade Limited for up to $158.82 million to ensure it presides over leading brands such as FoxyBingo.com, MirrorBingo.com, ThinkBingo.com and CheekyBingo.com. The assets being acquired in this latest deal include those to a number of land-based events in the US and Europe alongside all other intellectual property rights associated with the WPT. In addition, PartyGaming takes possession of an extensive library of over 150 hours of poker programming broadcast in more than 150 countries alongside the ClubWPT.com subscription

poker offering with in excess of 16,500 paying subscribers in 37 US states. “This deal brings together two of the biggest brands in online and ofﬂine poker, PartyPoker.com and the WPT, that we will market internationally to build our poker business,” said Jim Ryan, Chief Executive Ofﬁcer for PartyGaming. “Our plans also include using the ClubWPT.com subscription platform to leverage our 12 million-strong US player database via a Party-branded website and the launch of a European WPT-branded poker and casino site. “We are excited about the opportunities that the WPT, a proven marketing channel for the group, will create for PartyGaming particularly if the US regulates and licenses online gaming.”

THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK THE WAR FOR DOMINANCE in the online search market continues to gather pace, as for the third month in succession, Microsoft’s Bing search engine increased its foothold in the US search market. According to Income Access, Bing accounted for 9.3% of US web searches for the month of August, a 0.4% increase

iGB Affiliate DECEMBER/JANUARY 2009/10

from the 8.9% share it achieved in July, as it wrestles with arch rival Google for market share. However, Google’s dominance remains intact, leading the US search and advertising market with a 64.6% market share in August, albeit down 0.1% from July. Yahoo! also dipped, sliding from 20.1% to 9.3%. The results, taken from a report by

comScore, suggests that whilst returning marginal gains, the process of playing catch up to its main adversary may prove to be a lengthy one for Microsoft. It will be of interest to monitor the scale of growth for Google’s new PC Operating System, forecasted to make serious inroads into Microsoft’s Empire when it launches towards the end of next year.

HAS THE UK’S POKER BUBBLE BURST? RESEARCH FROM MINTEL would suggest as much, as it reported a sharp slowdown from previous ‘spectacular’ levels. The UK’s Independent newspaper ran with the story in November suggesting that Britain’s once dynamic online poker sector had regressed to a “busted flush”. The ‘spectacular’ levels mentioned in the report took place between 2004 and 2007, where poker celebrities lead the charge for a virtual generation of followers to aspire to their status. However, the 72 percent growth in that time stagnated last year, with the report finding a gross gaming yield of £265 million, a figure which is expected

to fall by another 7 percent next year to £247 million. Indeed, the recession, to which many publically declared iGaming to be immune, accounted for a change in habit for many players – playing the game less and for smaller stakes. Average spend per year has fallen by nearly a ﬁfth in the past two years, down from £345 in 2007 to £281 in 2009. However, it is not all doom and gloom, with the global online poker market forecasted to reach $6.2 billion (£3.7billion) by 2012, which represents a four-year compound annual growth rate of 12 percent. And that’s without the US Market…

DRAGONFISH ENTERS PARALLEL UNIVERSE THE NEWS EMANATING from the revolving doors at Dragonfish HQ at the minute, appears unrelenting. Not content with aiding and abetting Harrah’s much hyped entry into the iGaming market, the independent B2B division of 888 has announced a partnership with Linden Lab that will see it providing e-Payments, fraud and customer support management services to the name behind the virtual reality site, Second Life. The announcement caps a seemingly successful 12 months for Dragonfish, and signifies the company’s first forays into the wider retail sector, adding ‘Total Payment Services’ to its existing ‘Total Gaming Services’. Readers of this magazine may remember our interview with Linden Lab Founder, Philip Rosedale in our June/July issue. Founded in 1999, Linden Lab is the creator of Second Life, the world’s leading 3D virtual world environment. Since Second Life opened to the public in 2003, Second Life Residents have logged more than one billion hours and generated more

than $1 billion in user-to-user transactions on the platform, representing the largest user-generated virtual goods economy in the world. Gabi Campos, Managing Director of Dragonfish, explained, “We have many gaming partners interested in our e-Payment solutions but this is a giant step beyond our core operations into the retail environment. It’s an excellent complementary business for Dragonfish which will provide incremental revenue.” Mark Kingdon, CEO of Linden Lab, added, “Second Life Residents log into the virtual world from nearly every country around the globe and participate in a virtual economy that will exceed $500 million this year. Dragonfish has a strong track record in unlocking new markets through its unique and secure payment processing solutions, and as Second Life continues to grow internationally, we’re pleased to work with them to provide easy and secure payment options for our users outside the United States.”

GOOGLE RANKING TO INCLUDE LOADING SPEED According to Digital Media, the speed at which a website loads will soon be factored into Google Rank following changes to next year’s search algorithms. Google’s Matt Cutts was quoted as saying, “We are starting to think more and more about whether speed should be a factor in Google’s rankings. We haven’t used it yet in our web rankings, but a lot of people within Google think the web should be fast, it should be a good experience. “Its fair to say if you’re a fast site you should get a bonus, and if you are a slow site, perhaps people don’t want that as much.” Cutts also mentioned that although ready for launch, Google would be delaying its upcoming Caffeine search infrastructure update until the New Year to ensure retailers don’t get any unexpected web results over Christmas. WALL STREET JOURNAL ACKNOWLEDGES UK MARKET STRENGTH The Wall Street Journal has reported that Internet casino and online betting stocks in the UK have been ‘upgraded’, based on a ‘buy’ rating placed on the industry by Deutsche Bank. Deutsche Bank reported that “the sector benefits on clearer legal issues regarding tax and regulation of online gaming, the convergence of online operating models, and increased merger and acquisition catalysts.”

BWIN CLOCKS IN WITH iPHONE BWIN HAS THROWN its considerable weight into the world of mobile apps with the launch of its iPhone poker tournament clock application. The application will allow poker players to organize their home poker events in the utmost convenience whilst offering various options to personalize blind structures, re-buys and the like. Carl Klingberg, managing director of

bwin Games AB, said in a statement that, “Setting up poker tournaments should be easy and fun, just like the iPhone. We will continue to keep our sights set on bringing the most user-friendly applications to the mobile world for whatever platform people are using.” The bwin Poker Clock is available for download in the European iTunes Store.

iGB Affiliate DECEMBER/JANUARY 2009/10

WEBMASTER NEWS

KAPLAN JAILED IN US FOLLOWING A LONG and international

GAMEACCOUNT FORMALLY LAUNCHES FRENCH NETWORK Skill gaming developer GameAccount has announced the formal launch of its French network together with the submission of its application for a license in the country. All eyes are now looking to France to follow in the successful footsteps of the Italian model where licences are awarded and taxes paid locally, with those not licensed effectively banned. The announcement follows an earlier release stating that GameAccount had penned a white-label agreement to provide international sports and lifestyle firm Born.com, with its portfolio of skill games including dominoes, multiplayer blackjack and backgammon. GameAccount is pinning its hopes on replicating its own success in Italy, which has seen the company secure licenses with over 60 per cent of the country’s sportsbetting, scratch card and poker operators including SNAI, Sisal and Cogetech as well as national lottery operator Lottomatica over the past year. GameAccount plans to offer localised games to the French market, such as Belote, slated for development next year. Eric Guedj, GameAccount’s newly appointed France Country Manager, commented, “It’s a very exciting role and I’m pleased to be working with GameAccount at such an important time both for the company and for French skill gaming in general. “The success with which the Italian network developed puts a lot of pressure on us to achieve a similar rate of growth, but it’s a challenge that we are confident about and very well equipped to meet.”

iGB Affiliate DECEMBER/JANUARY 2009/10

manhunt, a US court has ﬁnally jailed the founder of BetOnSports for more than four years and ordered him to forfeit more than $43 million (£26 million) in illicit earnings. Gary Kaplan, 50, had admitted to various charges of fraud and racketeering related to his company, BetOnSports. In August, Kaplan admitted setting up offshore businesses in Antigua, Costa Rica and the Caribbean island of Aruba, to provide gaming services for US

residents through the Internet and toll-free telephone numbers. Kaplan’s lawyers’ pleas for leniency fell on deaf ears as US District Judge Carol Jackson, in St Louis, Missouri, claimed that Kaplan was unrelenting in his decision to disrespect the law, saying, “Mr Kaplan made an educated decision, a gamble if you will. Now, here’s the payoff.” US authorities have been investigating offshore sportsbetting since 1997, and BetOnSports since 2001.

ULTIMATE BET RELAUNCHES UNDER NICKNAME ULTIMATE BET, the online poker room boasting the endearing charms of Phil Hellmuth and Annie Duke, has gone under the knife – rebranding itself as UB.com. The rebrand comprises the overhaul of its website, poker client and new name, which company directors claimed better represented the site’s focus on the next generation of poker players. “The launch of UB.com represents a turning point for our company,” explained Paul Legget, Tokwiro’s Chief Operating Ofﬁcer. “We have assembled a great group of professionals who are passionate about

poker to build the UB brand. Our goal is to create products and services that poker players really want.” Poker rogue, Phil Hellmuth also had his say. “In the ten years since I have been involved with the UB brand, I have never been prouder to represent the company as much as I am right now. “We have great people captaining the ship, we have a great vibe and some serious swagger. I look forward to the day when we are the largest poker site on the planet.” The new brand, UB, reportedly stems from the nickname given to the poker room by its professionals.

GAMBLING PROVIDES BOOST FOR EU SPORT THE REMOTE GAMBLING Association (RGA) has announced the ﬁndings of a new study that suggest some 3.4 billion is contributed annually to sport in the European Union by public and private sector gambling operators. The RGA revealed that the study was undertaken on its behalf by independent consultancy Europe Economics with 62 percent of the yearly total coming from private sector organisations. Representing some of the largest remote gambling companies in the UK, the RGA released the results of the report at its annual general meeting in London at a time when the ﬁnancial and commercial relationship between betting and sport is the subject of much debate across the continent. The group stated that the aim of the study was to provide an independent assessment of the current level of funding

in order to provide an “evidence base for any future consideration of the issues”. “We are currently undertaking a wider study into the funding and integrity issues that are associated with sportsbetting but this report is important in its own right because it demonstrates the scale of funding that flows through the gambling industry and into sports,” said Clive Hawkswood, Chief Executive Officer for the RGA. ”If nothing else, it must serve to counter any claims that sports do not benefit from the link with gambling or that the amounts they receive are inconsequential. However, this is an objective report, which provides a context for those sorts of questions to be considered. Therefore, it deliberately does not look at whether this sum is too little or too much and nor did its remit extend to assessing how these considerable funds are used by the sports once they receive them.”

TRAFFIC

SHOOT YOUR GRAPHIC DESIGNER IN THE HEAD TO INCREASE YOUR CONVERSION RATE Let me tell you an inconvenient truth – your baby is ugly Your landing page has severe and fundamental problems that are contributing to low conversion rates. This is costing you a lot of money. To make matters worse, this predicament was completely avoidable. To make matters even worse, you have been a willing accomplice in your own undoing.

How did this Happen? You were led down the garden path by your internal creative team or outside interactive agency. Because of the limitations of their unique perspective you have been forced to sacriﬁce conversions in the name of “coolness”. So you have actually come to think that your baby is beautiful and have in fact grown very fond of it. Let’s take a look at the origins of this situation, and begin with the end in mind. The “end” should be pretty obvious – to have the most efﬁcient sign-up or registration process possible. This requires putting aside your own corporate and personal needs and considering everything from the perspective of your visitors. Only they matter, and without them you would not have a business. You may have in the past paid lip service to the notion that “the customer is always right”, but have probably not done anything about it.

The key to effective landing page design is clarity. The purpose of your landing page must be clear. The visitor should be focused on taking a simple path that leads to the desired

conversion action. This simple path should arise out of the Zen-like stillness of your landing page.

Worst Practices Unfortunately most gaming landing pages are at the opposite end of the spectrum from this desired state. They scream and demand the visitor’s attention. They are a visual assault on the senses that force the visitor to determine which of the many striking visual elements on the page are the important ones. Graphics designers are rarely trained in maximizing conversion. The best ones pride themselves on their ability to be non-conformists, and their ability to “think outside the box”. They are bored with doing regular production-oriented graphic design work and like to keep themselves entertained by doing something new and interesting on every project. Here is a short list of the more common transgressions found on online gaming landing pages: ● Wild background colors – Many online casinos use dark and dramatic color themes. Often the background of the page or large sections of it are black or fully-saturated bright colors. Commonly used colors are gold, green, red, or burgundy. Ostensibly this is to simulate the rich and luxurious atmosphere of a physical casino. Unfortunately these kinds of color choices often create a dark and brooding atmosphere, or imply something so exotic that it would only appeal to teenage male adrenalin junkies who like to play video games. ● Garish text – Page text and headlines

Most online casino sites incorporate multiple worst practices as shown below in the home pages of 888 and Rushmore:

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are haphazardly placed on the page and often use very large font in high-contrast colors. Font sizes are often enormous, and are further emphasized by the use of edging effects, drop shadows, color transitions and fades, and fill patterns. Visual embellishments and flourishes – Even simple page elements such as box edges are emphasized y drop shadows, glow, or other effects. Simple round disks in bullet lists are replaced by colorful graphical checkmarks or other icons. Neutral background space to the sides of the landing page is often filled in with intricate patterns or photographic images. Animation or video – All of the other design sins on the page pale in comparison to the aggressive use of motion, animation, and video. Images and text pulsate or revolve, image slideshows use wild fly-in transition effects, intricate animation sequences draw the eye, and full-motion video auto-plays on the page. These attention-grabbing tactics are very powerful. Unfortunately they are rarely tied to the desired conversion goal on the landing page, and only serve to squander a few precious seconds of the limited visitor attention. Too many choices – The landing page usually has a single immediate conversion goal of downloading software or activating a free-trial account. However, the landing page tries to be all-things-to-all-people and also includes content about cash bonuses for depositing cash in the account, or other downstream premium services that will likely not be seriously considered by a new visitor who is considering signing up.

Best Practices However, you are not doomed to suffer from low conversion rates. What if you shot your graphics designers in the head instead? I am just being metaphorical – that might be a bit extreme. However, I would strongly advocate that the creative team be kept on a very short leash. You should repeatedly ask a simple question:

Does the graphical element in question directly support the desired conversion action?

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If the answer is “no”, you should not allow it to clutter up your page. Here is a quick guide to the best practices that apply to direct-response signup pages: ● Clear page headline – Each page on a website (and each stand-alone landing page) must be about something. It must have a clear purpose, and that that purpose must be spelled out in a headline that spans the top of the page. ● Well-defined “action block” – There should be a single place for the visitor to interact with your page and that place should be visually called out with a subtle background color. This action block should draw the eye towards the desired activity on the page. The rest of the page should be plain and visually restrained. ● Sub-headline in your action block – The purpose of the action block must be clearly stated. What are you asking the visitor to do in the action block? What specifically is going to happen within it? ● Clear call-to-action – Within your action block, you must have a single clear call-to-action. The call-to-action must describe what happens next and what the visitor can expect when they are done interacting with the action block. It should not be general or generic like the “Continue” or “Submit” text that is commonly used on websites. The wording of the call-to-action must be from the visitor’s viewpoint, and not your company’s. To put yourself in the visitors shoes try using button text that completes the following sentence – “I want to …” ● Well-designed forms – Very little thought is given to the details of the form. In fact, designing effective forms is a very subtle art, and can have a dramatic effect on conversions. The form information should be grouped into clear high-level section to help the visitor understand their purpose and information flow. ● Unnecessary fields should be removed from the form. For every field you have to ask yourself “Is this information absolutely necessary to complete the current transaction?” If you cannot answer yes to this question in the affirmative, the field should not be on the form. Don’t leave “nice to have” field on your form, or collect information that can be gathered later in your interaction with your visitor (perhaps even on a subsequent visit). ● Page purpose tied to user intent – Your visitor did not just materialize out of thin

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air. They came from somewhere. This “somewhere” could have been another page on your site, a search engine result, a link in a blog post, or a banner ad. Regardless of the origin, some kind of expectation had undoubtedly been set. It is critical to match the visitor’s upstream experience and intent to maximize the conversion rate. The way to do this is to align your page with the messaging and promises made upstream, and create a clear information scent trail that makes the visitor feel that they are making progress towards their ultimate goal. Proper use of credibility and trust symbols – Unless you have a trusted world-wide brand working behind you, you must overcome the fears and anxieties that the visitor brings with them. Before they will transact with you they must know that you are trustworthy and credible. Several techniques can be used to do this – testimonials & other “social proof”, client or partner company logos, media mentions, and trust seals (such as safe shopping indicators, or guarantees that you offer). Although trust symbols are

important, their role is supporting and they should not become an unnecessary distraction that competes with the primary call-to-action.

TIM ASH is the CEO of SiteTuners.com, a landing page optimization firm that offers conversion consulting, full-service guaranteed-improvement tests, and tools to improve conversion. SiteTuners’ interactive Express Review of a landing page can quickly identify major conversion issues. Tim is a highly-regarded speaker at Internet marketing conferences including CapEuro London 2009. He is a contributing columnist to several online marketing industry publications and is the author of the bestselling book Landing Page Optimization.

Case Study – SpadeClub.com Our client SpadeClub.com approached us with a home page that was relatively tame by the standards of the online gaming industry. However, it still suffered from many of the worst practices detailed above.

SpadeClub.com BEFORE: After we conducted a detailed Express Review landing page evaluation via online meeting, the Spade Club team redesigned their home page to incorporate many of the best practices above.

AFTER: The new page has a clear visual hierarchy and its conversion goal is clear. Such “clean” pages convert much better than the “loud” pages currently in use. So if you want to improve your conversion rate, shoot your graphic designer in the head and make your page more boring – then simply stand back and watch your cash register ring more often.

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traffic

Video Content Monetization for Affiliates and Advertisers 168 million US Internet users watched nearly 26 billion videos online during September 2009 – an average of 154 videos per viewer. 2010 is predicted to be the year that video breaks through to become part of the mainstream culture of online advertising worldwide. Advertises and webmasters understand the power of video; it engages the user, adds great content to their sites and even boosts their page rank and SEO efforts; more and more webmasters are using YouTube, Hulu etc, as a platform for their video content. Where would you like to be in that race?

Why video is such an effective means for advertising? Video in rich media ads can make or break a campaign. Rich media ad formats that contain video, ‘overwhelmingly’ outperform other types of creative media ad, such as images and simple Flash animation. On average, rich media ads containing video appear to increase purchase intent by 1.16% compared with a controlled group that did not see an ad. Compare that with simple Flash at 0.26%, and there’s a huge difference. In order to keep up with this fast paced trend and stay ahead of the competition, many businesses are deciding to use online video as part of their promotional strategies, thereby creating several key advantages for that business. Online video creates a more personal interaction between a business and its customers. The use of both visual effects and sounds is an effective way of gaining a viewer’s attention. In today’s fast paced world, it is much more efficient for someone to click on a video link than it is for them to read a page of text. People want fast and easy information, and web video allows them to have that. A recent study conducted by the Online Publishers Association, found that 69% of online users have watched a video online, and 24% do so at least once a week. Out of those surveyed it was found that 66% have viewed an online video ad. In addition, of the 66% of Internet users viewing online video ads, 40% visited a website mentioned in the ad, and 15% requested product information. In order to incentivize your potential users to get to your site, make sure the video is clickable. It is important to have a traceable link on it, so you can offer it to your affiliates. Advertisers should add layers to the video in order to make it more ‘call to action’ oriented.

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Advertisers may also gain high recognition for their brands by having their video circulating on the web. A good video can be the best way to virally spread a message, product or brand. Video is a more emotional media than banner advertising, and therefore, engages the viewer. Optimizing your video content to match search engine requirements, and promoting it with strong keywords and taglines can be a successful way of getting higher ranking for your site and increasing your volume of traffic. In addition, by providing affiliates with good video content (and participating in video networks), advertisers can widely distribute their video (and as a result, their brand, product or service) to targeted websites, effectively converting that video into a powerful monetization engine.

Affiliates For an indication of how popular video content is to surfers, you need only look as far as video sharing websites like YouTube, currently ranked as the third most popular site on Alexa. Users regularly share videos and download and view other people’s submitted content. Google currently lists over two million links to youtube.com showing its popularity with other websites. The concept behind performance-based video content is that affiliates drive the traffic directly to the advertiser and are paid a commission for this traffic (per view, lead, download, sale, etc). Video boosts sales for a participating affiliate. It captures the attention of the viewer and turns it into action, which leads to a higher CTR and conversion than on a traditional media ad, as it invites clicks and action. The result is higher revenues. Video also boosts the affiliate’s page rank and SEO efforts. To begin with, adding video content will engage your users and make them stay longer at the site. Forrester research suggests that video was found to be 53 times more likely to appear on the first page of a search result than a standard text page.

Video content and the online gambling industry Content is king and today, video can be your ‘Joker’!

While video and its advantages to websites and advertisers are apparent, the use of video content has great advantages for the online gambling industry. Since the competition and the commissions are very high, an increase in conversion, viewer engagement, and better ranking across search engines can all have significant impacts on the effectiveness of a video campaign. Affiliates can get higher volumes of traffic and engage their users by providing them with video previews about the casino games, TV shows, casino/poker tutorials, and news from the online gambling world (new casinos, new promotions, bonuses etc). In addition, by watching a video, the viewer can actually see the product before deciding to download the software and deposit money. Knowing where he is about to play can create a better ground for depositing, and higher conversions that lead to the increase of sales and commission.

Summary Video advertising is one of the fastestgrowing opportunities in today’s online world, as well as one of the most promising and effective advertising formats. The emotional draw of the video experience, consumers’ adoption of broadband and subsequent changes in Internet content, capabilities and consumption have all contributed to this explosive growth. There are great advantages in using video content for both advertisers and affiliates; it captures the viewer’s attention and creates action, enriches their site with new content, increases the engagement of users, improves SEO, increases conversion and sales and leads to higher revenues.

Liat Fuchs is an Affiliate Director at AffiliatePLY.com, a performance based video affiliate network. Liat has been in the online affiliate gambling industry for over four years, starting at 888.com. Liat has a BA degree in Political Science and Asia Studies from Tel Aviv University, and an MBA with marketing from the College of Management, Israel.

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When the ‘me too’ attitude is just the perfect way to go! USUALLY, A ‘ME TOO’ strategy is something that either sucks, or works out after a very long time – but only if done right and by Microsoft. But in one case – the competitive link research, ‘me too’ can be done right by every SEO and link builder to reach top organic search positions. The serious question that all online marketers have is: “How do I become number one in the search results?” The typical first answer to “what does it take” is, “I don’t know. Nobody does, not even Google.” But the truth is you just have to look at your competitors, the top ten ranking websites and try to copy their strategy and link power. If done correctly, and efficiently of time and budget, the victory will be yours. Every website in every industry has different competitors. In fact, you will have different competitors for different products within your industry. Think Poker versus Blackjack! When looking at your competitors you are trying to gauge why Google (and co) rank them well, and you have to take measure for a set of different dimensions, which are: ● Keyword Set (Poker, Blackjack, etc) ● Country (USA, UK, Germany, Austria, Switzerland) ● Language (English, German, French, Italian – with the latter three all spoken in Switzerland) ● Time, Seasonality, Context Now, looking at those dimensions the first question is “who are my competitors?” The answer is that your competitors are those that rank above you or in the top ten for your keyword set, and not necessarily those that you compete with in the ‘old markets’. Those competitors can be reference sites like Wikipedia (a classic), newspapers and agencies or, of course, affiliates for the operators and vice versa. In any case, they rank above you in the top ten because of one dominant reason: their links! What is needed here is a boiled down view on which of those gazillion links that each of the pages and domains have you think are the most important to approach first to get a link. For this we know two different strategies – first the ‘common backlink’ research for finding those hubs that power your competitors. If you get links from those sites that link to a multiple of your competitors, you should be a

winner too soon (see figure 1). The second strategy is called ‘common outbound link’ research to find those authorities that even your competitors link to – how great would it be to get a link from there? Getting links on those sites is also called ‘indirect linking’ by us, because you indirectly inherit all the trust from the authorities you picked (see figure 2). Finally, you are trying to emulate natural link growth (you should be – see our video post about the -50 penalty link 3)¹ and natural backlink and anchor distribution. So the next question is: “what makes a ‘natural distribution of anchor texts?’” The answer: “right, I don’t know – look at your competitors.”

Anchor Text Distribution – keep it natural to avoid penalties! So the ﬁrst way you analyze your competitors’ and your own website is by the backlinks and anchor texts. Thereby, you will already identify links which power your competitors. You can do this by looking at various search engine related analysis parameters for each of their backlinks – e.g. the number of Yahoo! backlinks, the number of Google backlinks, maybe even Google PageRank (don’t trust that at all!), Google Cache dates (again, don’t

believe it!), Alexa ranks, domain age, domain registration length, the number of natural phrases the domain ranks for and many more. This can be very time consuming and hard to track, but what is even harder to track is the anchor text distribution and whether the anchors look natural. The top ranking companies will deﬁnitely have a natural anchor text distribution, but unnatural anchor texts might be a reason why you are not within the top ten rankings. As you can see above, the number of occurrences for real money keywords is pretty scarce. In fact, one might envision why keyword domains work so much greater now – since linking to them with the domain name involves a huge amount of ‘keyworded’ links. Simple as that. You all have to be very careful about the anchor texts that they use for linking. I still hear that all the time – many people still believe that linking with one and the same keyword to a website improves the rankings for the speciﬁc keyword. This was true, but Google learnt the lesson of how it was gamed and realized that these links where unnatural and are, therefore, not valuable and even negative for your rankings (as shown recently).

Figure 1.

Figure 2.

Common Backlinks

Indirect Linking

lots of great sites

link to these

A + F are common backlinks for 1, 2, 3

and that’s what will get you links

your site

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A typical natural anchor text distribution could look like this: brand name

27%

brand name plus some stuff

19%

keyword and brand name plus some stuff

11%

domain name

weird keyword and some stuff

1.3%

weird keyword2 and some stuff

1.2%

weird plus money keyword and some stuff

1.1%

money keyword

0.1%

Needless to say, you need some automation to do such analysis for a page, a dozen pages for a dozen competitors. But ﬁrst, the question “What is even worth analyzing?” will ﬁnally be answered!

Common Backlinks of Top Ranks or Competitors Coming back to the question: “What do the top ranking pages have in common?” or “What do your competitors do have in common?” If you want to compete with the top ranking sites, you have to find commonalities between them. Every backlink that the top ranking pages share is a backlink that you have to get to your website. Why? This is the principle of cocitation, or good neighborhood: if one site is linking to the top ranking web pages and to your site then your website is seen as one of the ‘good ones’, too. Sounds simple no? Now we will play the same game with your competitors: you should know exactly what makes your competitors strong. You compete with them for the same keywords and wouldn’t you be happy to finally find out why your competitor is always one or more ranks above you? Or, you could, for example, just analyze the top three ranks of the five most important keywords. This would give you an overview of your top competitors and your target keywords – and the backlinks that you have to draw your attention to for those top spots. The possibilities are as endless as the web. Those common back linking sites are also referred to as ‘hubs’, as they power your competitors like a link hub. If you get links from those sites you should be a winner soon (see figure 1 that illustrates the concept).

Find Common Outbound Links of Authorities to find the SuperAuthorities When looking at the top ranking sites

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you should have a look at their out going links as well. If you ﬁnd a page that has backlinks from the top ranking websites for your speciﬁed keyword then you have to get a backlink from this super-authority, as we refer to it. The more backlinks this authority has from your targeted top ranks the more important it is for you to get a link from that website. You might think “why would I want to get a link from a website my competitors are linking to?” You have to see those web pages as co-citations and what can be better than getting a link from a website my competitors consider as important? In fact, it’s even better than if your competitor would link directly to you. The strength is similar to getting links from university or governmental pages – endless trust! The higher the commonality the more important this website is, but the harder it will usually be acquiring links from this webpage. But sometimes it’s just a piece of cake! Just try it!

But Where to Get Links From? I shouldn’t be telling you anything new when I say that spam links weaken a website – that means when your domain usually has more than 50% non relevant footer links, sidebar links, side wide or links from link farms, link broker networks etc, you won’t ever achieve a good ranking – or even lose your current rankings. Nevertheless, it is deﬁnitely very hard to get backlinks from strong web pages – and this is especially true for markets like online gaming. As mentioned above, a lot of people still think of Google PageRank as the most important factor when it comes to link acquisition and, therefore, getting Nofollow links is as useful as getting no link at all. But that is not true! It’s said that Nofollow links do not transfer Google PageRank but they are indispensable for every website that wants to rank for a speciﬁc keyword. Nofollow links are great, simply because they transfer theme, relevance and are counted as a vote – more often than not – if placed right. But please don’t think ‘Guestbook Spam’.

Find Link Worthy and ‘Juicy’ Pages So how will you ﬁnd important sites that are easy to link from? You can go two different ways. Either you start looking for pages that are ranking for the keyword you want to rank as well, or you can analyze your competitors and their backlinks as explained above. When starting from scratch you might ﬁnd very simple looking websites that look unprofessional and don’t show Google PageRank – but don’t forget

they are still ranking for the keyword you want to rank for. That’s what counts – and that means they are important for your backlink proﬁle.

Measuring if a Page is Juicy But what do you do if you don’t know if a site is ranking with its content or not? You might get a proposal for a ‘link partnership’ or another way to score a link on a page. We have this situation – many times a day – for our clients. By verifying that page in the so called ‘CEMPER.COM Juice Tool’ you can easily ﬁnd out if that page is worth pursuing for a link. This tool analyses the URL you entered and tells you if the webpage is actually ranking in Google for its content. So, if the target page has, for example, Juice/25, you can be sure that it is ranking for that whole content and therefore, your keyword as well.

Be Efficient! For each of the aforementioned tactics to analyze your own website or those of your competitors there’s one important golden rule to remember – be efﬁcient. That’s why we developed our own ‘Link Research Tools’ for our daily work. They help us to do common backlink and outbound link analysis on a daily basis and crawl dozens of detail analysis parameters for the thousands of links we look at, daily. We recently made those tools available to the public, so we encourage you to try them too at www.LinkResearchTools.com. ¹ Link 3 -50 Penalty http://www.cemper.com/seoknowhow/google-minus-50-penaltycure

CHRISTOPH C. CEMPER has been building links and affiliate sites since 2003, the time he founded his very own Link Building Company and worked his way up to become a well-respected guru in the SEO industry, especially when it comes to getting real juicy links on trusted domains. Before starting his own business, CEMPER.COM, in the online marketing industry, Christoph was building large scale transaction platforms for online betting and other e-commerce ventures for 15 years as a developer and project manager. With his team Christoph just launched a new powerful toolkit at LinkResearchTools.com a set of tools that the CEMPER.COM team has developed and been using for link building for two years already.

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Protecting Your Good Name From

ANYONE WILL AGREE that reputation is an incredibly important aspect to life and business. A good reputation will see people ﬂocking to a person, business or product in droves that can only ensure the continued success of the entity. A bad reputation may still draw people to a particular entity, but for all the wrong reasons and will often result in abysmal failure or some other such pathos. The reputation of something online works the same as it would ofﬂine, with a good reputation being something that is highly sought after and eagerly kept hold of. However, sometimes a reputation can be tarnished, either by accident, through thoughtlessness or via more malicious intents and purposes. Online Reputation Management (ORM) and Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM) seek to restore the balance lost with a negative reputation by bringing the good aspects of a person, business or product to the forefront whilst simultaneously pushing the negative back until it is all but lost. Essentially, SERM and ORM are just as they sound, a means by which a given reputation can be managed in whatever way the individual(s)

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asking for the service deem necessary. The most common way in which Reputation Management (RM) functions is that someone (e.g. the aforementioned person, business or product, anything that can be in possession of and affected by a reputation) approaches an RM company and asks for their management services. The reasons could be one of many (or maybe even a combination of numerous reasons), but generally the motivation behind seeking an RM company will be negative press or slander online, perhaps in the form of blogs or even websites that specialise in the defamation of others, which leads me on to my next point. ORM and SERM formed primarily as a response to the ongoing rise of Consumer Generated Media (CGM, also referred to as User Generated Content/UGC), the unpredictable nature of which has the potential to give rise to many a problem and, thereby, cause people to seek out RM specialists. The reasoning behind this being that as the Internet and its associated technologies (social media, anything with a user-base that could potentially as a virtual ‘word-of-mouth’ hub) grew, so did the amount of CGM ﬂoating about. The

Harm

sheer amount of this CGM began to have an increasing effect on the results of search engines and, thus, the desire to have this type of content managed to some extent.

Bad Press Examples of CGM that can negatively affect a given reputation can come under many guises, but primarily consist of useroperated blogs and websites. The negativity might stem from popular pages on those sites, or from the fact that the entire site itself is popular, as sites specialising in promoting ‘customer awareness’ of a product (often in a negative fashion) can carry quite some weight, as it seems everyone wants to hear about the bad stuff. The heart of the matter is that for whatever reason, unsavoury reviews or comments are ﬁnding their way from these sites and into search rankings, thus, leading to loss of customers/clients and other detrimental occurrences closely associated with a negative reputation. If you take a site like Ripoff Report (www.ripoffreport.com, one of many such sites), with its popularity and authoritative presence on Google and the like, it’s easier to understand the concept of gaining a

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LINKS – WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW SEO sage and counsel, Bob Rains, deliberates why one of the most important factors to search engine marketing is also one of the most misunderstood.

EVERYONE WORTH TALKING to in the SEO universe will tell you that while on-page SEO is essential, you won’t get far without great links. But what is consistently debated and misunderstood at almost every conference I attend or speak at is, “what makes a good or bad link, and how do you know?” The sad reality is the only people who know for certain (Google) won’t tell you, and are more likely to give you conﬂicting, or confusing information or straight up disinformation. I think we all understand the value of links in terms of trafﬁc; I wanted to explain a bit more into the value that search engines may allocate to a link.

Type of link (image or text) A misunderstood, and highly debated factor when it comes to links is the type of link, for example, a text link or an image, and its effect on the value of that link. In my experience, a text link carries more weight for its anchor than the alt attributes of an image link. You do have more freedom in using images in a menu, since what would be a text link with an anchor of ‘home’ could potentially be an image with an alt attribute of ‘Bettingwhatever. com home of (insert keyword here)’. Some would say that an image link with focused alt text is almost the same thing as a text link – I disagree. Images can and should have a title and an alt attribute, but this kind of text is not as strong as a link with a normal anchor text. It’s important to note that again, multiple factors play into the ultimate effect of any link, and it’s all worthless if the site has failed to show any trust in the past.

Anchor Text Exactly how much inﬂuence is carried from a link in the anchor text is still something of a mystery to most. Even with Googlebombs being all but destroyed in the last couple years, there is no doubt that anchor text can still make a signiﬁcant difference.

Multiple factors play into the ultimate effect of anchor text, and the reality is the best anchor text optimization in the world is potentially meaningless if the site has not shown trust in the past. At the end of the day, I believe it is a volume thing, though not linear (tons of non-anchored links can pass linkjuice), but the reality is it will be very minimal in comparison to the impact of well-optimized anchor text.

Age of the Link This factor is a huge consideration if you are advocating for the acquisition of paid links, and need to report on the effectiveness. The debate as to what is more important – the age of the link, or the age of the site and the page it’s on – is essentially part of the best discussions on this topic. There is no doubt that the age of a site plays into its ability to rank well, so it seems rational to assume that the same could be said about the link. Most would agree that a link ages within three to four months and after that, the value increase is minimal. Some people feel strongly that the biggest value comes from a new link, and that the value wears off a little overtime, and then grows again later. So the biggest truth is simple: old links from old sites will do well for you, so start building them now, and wait – they will bring value.

Surrounding Text (near-link relevance) For some time, SEOs, webmasters and afﬁliates have been asking the question “does the content of the text that directly surrounds a link have any positive inﬂuence in the value of the link itself?” I would weigh in that yes it matters – it’s not clear if it’s more a matter of the general theme of the page of just text in the area of the link, but it is a factor. I also feel strongly that anchor text is by far a more important factor; that being said, if the text is not on topic, or even worse not unique, the value of that link will decrease overtime for certain.

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Location of the Link on the Page I really wanted to discuss this myth in some detail because I have had to personally sit in long meetings, working between marketing teams and development teams, to help decide if where the link is matters. Now I do want to state that this is one of the factors that vary between search engines, and there is some research from MSN suggesting that they do indeed pay some attention to this. The debate is usually around when the link is placed in the blogroll, body or footer. As with most links, it really is more a factor of the page that is linking out than the placement of the link on that page. Modern algorithms are capable of detecting repeated portions of pages within a site or network, so if you are looking to link spam the footer or traditional navigational location, please take this into consideration as navigational spots tend to be less authoritative. The reality is that footer links can be on the top of the source code, so position shouldn’t matter, however, many aspects of link placement have been gamed in the past, so it’s best to avoid navigational site-wide linking, otherwise I would say that position is all but meaningless.

Target Page I think most people are ﬁnally clear on this, but it seems like a bit of a confusing factor given some of the questions I’ve been getting in conferences, so I think it might be good to touch on. One common question is “does the target page have an inﬂuence on the value of the link?” The answer is unfortunately yes, and no. It’s true that when links point to a homepage, the sub-pages get indirect value for them. Additionally, when links point directly to the sub-pages, they are more valuable. Generally for optimizing many different pages within a site, many deep links are the key, but it is just as important to keep the big picture in mind. The goal is to point the links to the pages that will bring you the greatest ranking/money/positive impact, so a mix of home and deep pages will do that.

Paid Link Triggers The presence of items that would indicate the link is a ‘paid link’, such as a TLA code, a PPP code, or inclusion in a ‘sponsored links’ section, can and will have an impact on the value of the link, if not potentially cause you bigger problems. One must assume in this day and age that Google can identify these codes as part of its paid link detection technology. Regardless of whether

iGB Affiliate DECEMBER/JANUARY 2009/10

you’ve paid for the link or not, if Google decides to push the red button the link will be instantly devalued. I also believe paid link discovery is operated in some small part, at least, by humans. So, given the importance of links and the potential risk involved in their acquisition, link building research is indeed very important. Search results ranking and SEO is a highly complex process governed by a multitude of interrelated non-linear factors more akin to chaos and fuzzy logic than to linear models of thought. Thus, any such research should be taken with a very big grain of salt. Commonsense can go a long way when appraising links and the risk involved in their acquisition. If it looks like it doesn’t belong, then it’s open to discretion, but if it makes sense and it’s too obvious, it might just give you the gas to take your SEO miles further.

“Regardless of whether you’ve paid for the link or not, if Google decides to push the red button the link will be instantly devalued.”

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Is there a Future for Black Hat SEO?

I’ve lost track of the times I’ve been asked about the black hat/white hat issue down the years, particularly whether one has more of a future than the other. The answer has changed a lot over the years. The ‘grey area’ in-between has probably never been bigger or more contentious. So how did we arrive at this point? My own experience might shed a little light on that – as well as where I think the industry is heading. Many moons ago, I was a pure black hat affiliate in competitive sectors like pharmaceutical and finance – and affiliates simply couldn’t compete in that space without a command of the dark arts. Actually, although I was unstoppable when it came to SEO, I was never particularly good at monetising. Other SEOs would laugh at me because I was number one for ‘credit cards’ with no revenue coming from it. What really drove me on was getting that top spot, and it still is, except the way I go about it had changed.

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2001 – 2003 was a heady time for guest book and blog spam. We built programs that would go out and build a million links overnight. Back then, this industrial scale spamming was pretty easy. There was no such thing as Akismet or nofollow and noone really understood how or why people would use their properties for someone else’s benefit. That put us in an arms race with Google. Blog spam was too easy to detect, so we moved onto sub domain spam. That worked for a time too. And then we moved to directory generation – using expired domains and republished content… and then on to the next technique… SEO, whether it is black, white or grey shares a commonality. Techniques have a limited shelf life before they get replicated. When too many people are successful, that makes it easy for Google to detect. Today, platforms like WordPress are constantly evolving to reduce spam and to protect their users before Google even gets there. Google has always valued one thing above all else: links. As loopholes close, black hat SEO has had to head further away from the middle ground to include hacking for links, WordPress exploits, exploiting authority from .edu domains, producing fake sites, etc. These days, I don’t go near that stuff. At some point, what seemed to be relatively harmless ways to build links and take opportunities have, to me personally, become more questionable. As a company, we moved away from building our own revenue model web properties around five years ago and headed into consultation and direct SEO for clients. We now offer good solid white hat SEO advice, maybe with a tinge of grey. That doesn’t mean being unaware of black hat techniques. Without that knowledge, no-one can understand how to rank in the most competitive industries, and we have now moved from being an affiliate to working with super affiliates and merchants on their overall SEO strategy.

How Have we Arrived at White Hat as the Way Forward? Because of the kind of brands we work with and the changing infrastructure of the web, we play on the safe side of the fence. If the client is aiming to build a long-term brand online then it is very important to protect the domain. In many black hat techniques you adopt a ‘build and burn’ approach to web properties. For a brand, that’s commercial madness. Unlike affiliates and black hats, many companies can’t take the risk of getting banned or penalised. Over the last year,

we have helped an increasing number of companies who have received poor SEO. These are sites have been banned or severely penalised and their priority is to clean up their site to get re-included. These are the companies that have found out the hard way that ‘the quick win’ to get high rankings can be a fool’s game. They enjoyed their time at the top, but it’s a long way to fall. We always stress to new clients that SEO has to be done steadily. Building a stable set of defensible rankings is not a quick process.

How Important is the Website? The main area that we focus on in the early months of a campaign is making sure the site has good, unique and well-structured content. To a black hat, that might not even be on the radar. They’re playing for numbers, whereas we’re in the business of building brands and long term results. Often, we actually recommend a new website to clients before they even reach the SEO stage. Poor structure and design can kill a site’s chances. Additional effort and finances put into building a new site properly is well worth it. We do this in-house as much as possible as fire fights between SEO agencies and developers can kill a project before it’s even begun.

Is Content King? Content writers love that phrase but it doesn’t really hold up. A strategy solely based on content is a very long term proposition. However, content is a very important part of the SEO process as it helps reinforce the importance of a site and in building an infrastructure. One piece of advice that I would give when it comes to content is to keep content writers in house. You’re the people with domain knowledge and insight and you should leverage that. If you are going to outsource and buy in content then remember that ‘you get what you pay for’. We have tried the ‘1 cent a word’ content and it’s not worth the effort of having to check it or even rewrite it. Paying decent money for content in the first place is easily and economical. It’s also good to produce a variety of content – whether blog posts, news articles, pages on site, press releases and social media content. It all helps in the attempt to get more authority for keywords, and ultimately attract links and visitors.

Is Buying Links Black Hat? Now here is the place where the arguments really start. According to Google, buying links is a black hat SEO technique and it specifically goes against its terms. Google’s analysis

states that buying links is all about trying to influence its algorithms. I argue that this is where it gets quite grey – with a lot of leeway in the intention behind a link. Links are something that all search engines value as a good scoring factor to determine relevancy. But one rule that we have always stuck to is that if a link is easy to get then it’s probably not worth having. Link building is one of the hardest parts to SEO and to get it right while protecting the domain is a skill in itself. Buying links outright from a link broker will not tend to add any value to the site visitor. We look for opportunities where the relationship is complimentary and (hopefully) useful to the readers of both sites. If someone follows a link from site A, we want site B to be of value to them. Whether it’s advertising or advertorial, links can be ‘bought’ – but not in a manipulative way. Thankfully, the emphasis is shifting to quality rather than quantity. The amount of money some companies spend chasing mere link volume baffles me. There are plenty of companies who spend big, but it needn’t be that aggressive. Spending more time acquiring a few great quality backlinks to a site is better than building hundreds of low grade fodder links. It’s all to do with making sure that you have a natural looking link profile for that industry sector. There are ways to acquire good links without going down the black hat route.

Conclusion… Whether you go ‘black hat’ or ‘white hat’ you’re in the same game. You need content, links and infrastructure to support your campaign. If you’re a brand with lots of money invested in what you’re doing, you don’t want to play at the blacker end of the field. You’ll get burned and there might not be a way back. For affiliates and the like, black hat is still an option. You can afford to experiment and take chances because the next opportunity is around the corner. If a property or two goes down you can take the hit and move onto the next thing.

David Naylor (DaveN) has been an industry leader in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Online Search Marketing for 13 years, leading large online marketing campaigns for many companies with excellent and sustained results. As the owner of Bronco, www. bronco.co.uk, he works with major online brands, merchants, operators and super affiliates. www.davidnaylor. co.uk Twitter @davenaylor / @bronco

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interview

Featured Community Member – LiveSport LiveSport is a Czech company specialising in the provision of sports and betting related websites focusing on local European markets. We talk to Martin Hajek, LiveSport’s co-founder and CEO.

How and when did you become a gaming affiliate? Back in 1999, I created, as a hobby, a website for punters in the Czech Republic where I published my findings regarding the winning rates of local bookmaker odds. It soon became a betting community portal with a busy forum. In time, I started promoting bookmakers to finance new website features. We helped introduce online betting to the Czech Internet audience at that time, namely Gamebookers, which became very popular in our country. Later in 2003, I introduced BetExplorer.com and the idea behind that was to connect pre-game stats for several sports with odds comparison. As I wasn’t experienced with affiliate programs, I started selling the ad spots for flat rates to pay my bills. Eventually, I was able to afford to experiment a little more with affiliate marketing. However, I accidentally made my first steps difficult ones, by heavily promoting one sportsbook oriented on high volume players – my referred customers were so successful that they soon killed the future for my account. What were you doing previously? Tell us a little about your professional background… I started my first website for the Czech betting community when I was still relatively young, and this ultimately accounted for my leaving university. The Czech Republic’s biggest lottery company acquired that site and hired me to develop it. The experience of

being at a big company helped me to see the whole betting business from a wider perspective as I could meet betting business professionals while still keeping contacts in the player community. This knowledge helped us establish LiveSport in 2006 and set up a portfolio of popular websites for bettors. What gaming verticals are you currently working across? As sports fans and betting enthusiasts, we focus on what we understand the most. Therefore, we run informational websites offering live scores, sports news, statistics, betting competitions or odds comparison, and this makes us a natural affiliate partner for several online bookmakers. We also started the biggest poker website in our country, but other gaming segments are presently out of our interest. Are there any new verticals or markets in which you see potential? Where are the real growth areas for 2010? We believe that the popularity of live betting will continue to increase, and we are making steps towards launching an in-running odds comparison service. Live odds will be a natural addition to our OddsPortal.com service and furthermore, we plan to launch a specialised micro site on live-odds.com in 2010. In the skill games area, we see a growing potential for online poker which is still undeveloped in many markets in Europe, although we have different priorities at present.

What are your ambitions as an affiliate? Do you look to build a stable and successful business or do you aspire to super-affiliate status to push your business as far as you can take it? We’re definitely looking to build longterm partnerships with all established bookmakers. I’m happy to say that an increasing number of affiliate managers are willing to assist us and cooperate closely. We can offer a different view in advising bookmakers to improve the quality of their translated language sites or that of their landing pages, and flag banners that are not available at weekends and out-of-date odds in their XML feeds. Our portfolio of 45 websites pushes hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors to bookmakers‘ sites, so even small improvements can make big differences to the benefit of everyone. What about those just starting out in the affiliate industry – is the overall gaming market saturated or is there still room for affiliates in certain (if not all) verticals to make a living? Definitely – gaming markets are still growing, which brings new opportunities for all involved parties, despite some complicated legal landscapes. As always, new entrants should introduce something new and different from their competitors. What would be your advice to them? Hire a good designer who understands information architecture principles. I believe in the importance of usability which dictates if people enjoy working with your product/website or leave to find your competition. Explain to new users what’s hot on the site and navigate them directly to their destination of choice. Keep things simple. And of course, have fun doing it.

Info With well known websites, among others FlashScore.com, BetExplorer.com or OddsPortal.com, LiveSport speaks to millions of sports bettors every month. Thousands of sportsbook affiliates already utilize the free live score solution Livescore.in

iGB Affiliate december/january 2009/10

interview

We All StAnd together This issue, iGB Affiliate learns how Cobus Ebersohn of ReferBack, was compelled by the level of camaraderie in an industry of such competition.

Cobus, what brought you into the industry? I have always been in the entertainment industry; my first job was at the local cinema complex. I then moved to a Digital Television company. In December 2001, I heard about a position as a customer service agent for Belle Rock Entertainment which I thought sounded very interesting. One of my functions was answering queries from affiliates for ReferBack (the affiliate program of Belle Rock Entertainment) and when a position became available as a ReferBack account manager in 2004, I applied immediately. Even though I enjoyed chatting to players on a daily basis, the role of an account manager was more appealing and dynamic. I got to meet a whole new world of interesting and new people on a more personal level. What elements from your previous professional experience were you able to draw on in this industry? One of the best qualities to have is to be able to get along with people from all walks of life. I think this is a very important skill to have when you enter this industry. Best of all – I enjoy it. Did you have any preconceptions of the industry or of gaming itself before you joined? Not at all! I didn’t even know that affiliate marketing existed before I started in ReferBack, so for me this was a new and very exciting experience which I’m still enjoying today! What surprised you most about the industry, and the way it works? I was completely blown away by the closeness of the affiliate industry. The fact that affiliates are ‘competing against each other’ and yet stand together as one person when times are tough was something that surprised me greatly. Even more than that – they way affiliates get together, not only in a work-related environment but also personally, was just amazing to see.

iGB Affiliate december/january 2009/10

I realized quickly that gambling affiliates are down-to-earth, fun to be with and very hard-working. I will gladly call every affiliate that I every worked with my friend. Let’s talk about the current affiliate market and how it’s faring as we emerge from barren financial times. Are these particularly hard times for people in the affiliate space? I heard this quote once from Confucius (no, he didn’t tell it to me personally): “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” I believe that even though these could be tough times, affiliates have managed to take a previously bad situation and turn it into a good one. They are now focusing more on untapped markets which they realize have great potential. And yes, occasionally, times will be tough, but it will always get better and there will always be new ways to face a situation. What about those entering the affiliate market for the first time – bad timing or a good opportunity? It’s always a good opportunity to enter the market. There are new tools available on the Internet, new ways of marketing and it’s still very competitive. If you are hardworking and have a strong mind to be a success, chances are you will be successful. It may not always be the best time to do anything, but you will always have a good opportunity and that depends on you. Is the affiliate market a good barometer as to the health of the industry as a whole (if affiliates are doing well, people are still signing up to gaming sites)? Yes it is. The more players that sign up, the greater the earning potential of an affiliate. As a warning though, affiliates on revenue share should never become complacent simply because they are getting big cheques. They need to keep an eye on the number of players they are acquiring to ensure the longevity of their income. They should also keep in contact with their account managers about the retention activities of the casinos.

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” What do you feel are the biggest dangers/ challenges that affiliates and programs face or may face in the future? There is a lot of competition coming along, which is very healthy – but if you have a good reputation, a great team and the necessary knowledge, you can make it very far as an affiliate program. The same applies to an affiliate – the thirst for knowledge, the will to be successful and good marketing skills. One of the traps that we all may fall into, is to be too complacent with what we are doing – e.g. focusing on one specific market instead of widening your prospects and looking into other markets and/or products. Remember that online gaming does not only consist of casinos, for example at ReferBack, we offer a variety of products which included online bingo, online poker and a mobile casino – there are a lot of other gaming products to market which most affiliate programs offer. Finally, what will be the real growth areas in the space over the coming months? More products, more opportunities, more focus. We have identified what affiliates’ needs are, what they need more of and what does and doesn’t work for them. And if I could offer affiliates one piece of advice: your account manager is there to assist you wherever he/she can – use them; if you need something that is not available, tell us. I’m sure I speak for all account managers when I say: “We are account managers for an affiliate company, because, 1) we love the industry, 2) we love what we do and 3) we love working with affiliates. If we don’t have any of these, we wouldn’t be here. I would like to end with one of my favourite quotes of all time (and there are a lot of variations to this): “Work like you don’t need money, love like you’ve never been hurt and dance like no one’s watching”

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FEATURE OPINION

“The ability of mobile casinos to acquire users and take payment on device means that traffic from third parties is very easy to track and monetise – as a result, the casino players are leading the way.”

Opportunities for the casino affiliate industry. 2009 – The Year of Mobile 2009 has been the year the mobile Internet took off, with the game-changing success of the iPhone driving forward the entire market. Mobile handsets have become much more user-friendly for web usage as a result of touch-screens and improved browser technology. Network operators have finally begun to rollout flat-rate and lower cost mobile data access packages and are investing heavily in marketing mobile Internet services to consumers. The growth in ‘App Stores’ has opened up a new distribution channel for service providers and big brand mobile services like m.facebook.com are attracting mainstream users to the mobile web. As a result, many people in the affiliate marekting industry are now seeing mobile as ‘The Next Big Thing’. So what are the opportunities in mobile for the casino affilate industry?

verticals such as travel, finance and retail. Despite the massive improvements to mobile user-interfaces there are still barriers preventing mobile commerce from taking off. For example, financial products such as mortgages or insurance typically involve a lot of researching and, from a UI perspective, usually require lots of tick-boxes, which are not well suited to a mobile screen. However, there are some signs that this is beginning to change. iPhone applications are showing that users will purchase goods and services using their mobiles if they are given the right user interface. For example, Pizza Hut recently announced that it had generated $1m in sales in three months from its iPhone application. eBay also began to break out mobile commerce revenues for the first time earlier this year which showed that they are already generating $380m of sales over mobile in H1 2009/10.

Mobile Commerce is Developing Whilst mobile Internet usage has reached the mass market, commercial transactions have been slower to develop on the mobile platform. Spending is currently concentrated in mobile-focused areas such as downloads (applications, ringtones, games) with very limited activity in key

Affiliate Marketing on Mobile is Not New Affilate marketing on the mobile web has been around in some form since the very early days of ‘Wap’ with some of the first mobile adult sites developing very basic affiliate systems. The major ringtone

players such as Jamba have also used afﬁliate marketing heavily to promote their subscription mobile content offerings. These were promoted mainly on the PC web, driving users to the mobile Internet for content delivery. However, following the consumer and regulatory backlash against these subscription services, the ringtone players have retrenched and are no longer leading innovation in mobile web afﬁliate marketing.

The Casino Sector is Now Leading the Way As a result of the collapse in the subscription ringtone market, and the slow development of mobile commerce in other sectors, the major mainstream high-value mobile service category is casino gaming. Consequently, affilliate marketing on mobile is now being lead by casino players in terms of both service development and affiliate technology. Simon Liss from the mobile agency, We Love Mobile says, “Mobile affiliate marketing only really works when the deal can be done via the device. The ability of mobile casinos to acquire users and take payment on device means that traffic from third parties is very easy to track and monetise – as a result, the casino players are leading the way.”

iGB Affiliate DECEMBER/JANUARY 2009/10

FEATURE

Specialist Casino Affiliate Networks Quicker to Roll Out Mobile Services A number of the specialist online casino networks have already moved to develop mobile affiliate offerings. Typically, services are provided as downloadable applications which provide access to the standard range of casino games including poker, bingo, roulette, blackJack and slots. These mobile applications are linked to a credit card account enabling them to function in a similar way to an online/PC-based service. Affiliate payouts are linked to the download of the application (CPA) or spending by a particular user (revenue share). Some of the casino affiliate networks offering mobile services include: ● Brightshare which offers the All Slots mobile. All Slots iPhone and Wild Jack mobile services on an affiliate basis. ● Income Access runs affiliate programs for the mfortune and Gold Mobile Casino brands. ● Europartners has developed a mobile affiliate program around the Casino Tropez mobile service. ● Probability is developing an affiliate program around its Lady Lucks mobile gaming offering.

Tracking Mobile Affiliate Sales Requires Different Approaches PC/online based affiliate services typically track sales using cookies. However, this approach does not work effectively on mobile. As a result, affiliate networks need to use alternative approaches such as serverbased tracking. To date, the major generalist online affiliate networks (Trade Doubler, Commission Junction, Zanox) have not yet extended much into mobile and the major in-house affiliate APIs such as Amazon also haven’t been adapted for mobile affiliates. However, there are also some mobilefocused affiliate networks emerging that offer a range of programs, including casino: ● Mobpartner is a french mobile affiliate network which operates across a large number of small mobile-web based affiliates. ● MPEX is an adult-focused mobile affiliate platform and site building tool that also offers casino services. ● Sponsormob is a German mobile ad network which works directly with merchants and advertisers on a CPA basis.

Traffic Generation For afﬁliates, generating mobile web trafﬁc requires a slightly different approach to the PC-web. Natural Search/SEO is not yet effective on mobile, as Google

iGB Affiliate DECEMBER/JANUARY 2009/10

Mobile Search largely ranks sites based on their PC-driven scoring, which provides little if any room for mobileonly players to achieve high positions. As a result, affiliates have to focus on paid traffic generation, but this is not easy as at present, “demand for quality mobile traffic is growing faster than the supply of it” according to Peter Glaeser from the mobile CPA network Sponsormob.

Paid Search Paid search on the mobile web is effective but there is a limited inventory and as a result, CPCs are high, especially for competitive keywords. The main sources of paid search inventory include: ● Google – easy to use, you can buy mobile search terms through the same interface used for web-based ad sense/ad words. ● Yahoo! – highly rated by media buyers, but more difﬁcult to deal with (the signup for mobile search purchasers needs manual approval). ● Specialist mobile search services such as Jumptap and MCN.

Analytics and Campaign Management Getting ROI from mobile ad spend requires the same level of attention to creative and campaign management as on the PC-web. Affilliates need to track click-throughs and conversions carefully and ensure to include handset types in targeting. A common error with many casino affiliates is not checking the types of handsets which different mobile casino services support and targeting advertising accordingly. Similarly, with many mobile ad networks saturated by casino affiliate based advertising, it is important to develop strong creative, varying and optimizing banners and keyword text. There are a number of specialist analytics tools for mobile which can be deployed in order to track and manage campaigns. Existing services such as Google Analytics do not yet work fully on mobile-based sites or applications, although this is beginning to change as more phones start to support Javascript. Analytics services mobilefocused affiliates can use include Bango analytics, Admob analytics, Mobilytics and Amethon.

Direct Deals Buying advertising space directly on other mobile sites is another way of generating traffic. Operator portals are the major place to go for high volumes but outside of these sites tracking down potential deals can be more difficult. One issue is that there is no equivalent of the ABCe or Comscore for mobile so it is difficult to find high traffic sites. Also, many of the big online or media brands do not necessarily have high mobile traffic. On the other hand, ‘mobile-only’ services such as communities and chat networks can drive huge volumes of usage, despite being relatively unknown.

Lots of Opportunities for the Casino Affiliate Marketing Industry So, although it is still very early days, mobile does represent an important new channel for the casino affiliate industry. The platform continues to grow in terms of adoption and usage and there is more and more activity in the market. Success will come to players who can master the differences between mobile and online in terms of traffic generation and campaign management and continue to move up the learning curve as mobile services continue to evolve. Find out more about mobile affiliate marketing on mobyaffiliates.com and mjelly.com

Ad Networks Mobile ad networks are the most common channels mobile web affiliates use to buy traffic. There are well over 30 different mobile ad networks, the largest of which is admob, recently acquired for $750m by Google. Other networks to try include Imobi, Buzz City, Adfonic, Deck Trade and Quattro Wireless. Prices for particular countries or handset types can vary significantly across networks so there is a real advantage to working with multiple players. The majority of networks sell based on a CPC basis with higher prices for specific countries and greater targeting control. However, traffic quality on these networks can be low, and conversions poor. There are also premium mobile ad networks which can demand a CPM-based fee for their inventory, sourced from higher-quality partners such as branded sites or operators.

JAMES COOPS has been involved in mobile-web affiliate marketing for over five years and runs mobyaffiliates.com and mjelly.com. Mobyaffiliates.com is a resource for the mobile affilliate marketing industry which lists all the major mobile web affiliate networks and programs and provides information on useful tools, techniques and approaches. Mjelly.com is a directory of mobile sites and applications where mobile affiliates can list their sites and apps in order to drive traffic and improve app store and mobile search engine rankings. The mjelly blog covers mobile marketing and advertising topics with tips on how to promote your mobile site or application, and reviews of the major mobile ad networks.

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ROUND TABLE

The level of interest in the mobile affiliate marketing concept prompted us to throw the topic open for discussion to those monitoring its plight within gaming. Marcel Puyk – CEO, Cellectivity Affiliate marketing has been a very important factor behind the astonishing growth rates in online gambling over the past ten years. It is a completely integral part of the industry now and is likely to stay there, continuing to drive traffic to online gaming sites. Mobile gambling is in many ways just another form of online marketing, so how does affiliation work in this environment? The answer is that there are few mobile affiliates driving traffic to mobile gaming sites. The market is in its infancy and is mainly driven by a few ‘super-affiliates’ who have made it their business to be the first entrants in this market. For most people, mobile browsing provides a very inferior experience. Apart from iPhones, and potentially Google’s Android-type phones, the vast majority of mobile handsets provide a relatively poor browsing capability. Aside from restrictions of screen size, the user experience is also impacted by network speed, and the inconsistent and rather ‘hit and miss’ nature of the appearance of mobile websites on different handsets. Even simple things, such as enabling text input in a box of a registration page can become a fraught issue, depending on the type of handset you use. Just try and see the difference in experience between, say a Nokia N95 (with normal keypad) and a Samsung Tocco (completely touch screen). As a result, most people browse within the confines of what the mobile operators provide on the portals they offer, such as Orange World, O2 Active and Vodafone Live. This relatively restricted environment is one that cannot easily be influenced by the gaming operator. Over the past few years the mobile operators, at least in the UK and now also elsewhere in Europe, have started to take an interest in mobile gambling as a new and potentially significant revenue source. Cellectivity has been working with most of the mobile operators in the UK now for a number of years to provide an outsourced solution of aggregated mobile gambling

content, becoming a ‘super-affiliate’ in the process. For most casino companies wanting to offer their services in the UK, this was the only way in which they could be represented on these portals. Outside of the mobile operator portals there are very few mobile sites that attract any kind of consistent traffic to work with. Good quality traffic is, of course, a prerequisite in providing a good quality affiliate service. Apart from only a few sites, such as the BBC in the UK or, more appropriately for a gaming audience perhaps, Flirtomatic for example, very few mobile sites generate sufficient traffic to be able to become efficient affiliates at this point. I expect all of this to change over the next few years although, quite slowly at first, but accelerating after 2010. Currently, significantly less than 50% of mobile phone users are browsing on their mobile at all. The proportion of people starting to do that however, has been increasing steadily as mobile operators start to push data services, lower data package prices and are including a ‘free’ data package to the vast majority of phones sold on contract to encourage customers to browse the mobile web. Once browsing becomes more common, and data pricing for pre-pay customers comes down, other mobile websites will see an increase in traffic. Two key factors will affect how affiliation will work. The first is how search technology will finally, truly work within the mobile environment. Despite recent advances in the algorithms used, many searches will still serve up lists of websites rather than mobile sites. This does not only provide a bad browsing experience, but it deters browsers from returning. The second is how SEO will translate to the mobile. Mobile SEO is still very much in its infancy, but once it performs at the same level as online SEO and alongside improved search engine performance, affiliate models will become much more common. Until then, the key for mobile casinos is to work with the few affiliates out there, to advertise, and keep developing

their expertise on how to reach those mobile users.

James Hilton, joint Managing Director, Inside Mobile Back in the days when online casinos were launching on the Internet and affiliate marketing was introduced to the marketing mix, within no time at all, affiliates became a very strong source of new users making a great deal of revenue. Mobile casinos have been around for several years and with affiliate marketing being very established, mobile casinos were expecting the same support/sales; but what went wrong? Naturally, there is no simple answer but there are various factors which, when all combined, emphasise what needs to be done. A large issue is the distinct lack of mobile media available for driving acquisitions. Most inventories are being sold directly via CPM or through remnant media networks which pay a relatively high cost per click back to publishers. One of the largest remnant networks is AdMob, recently purchased by Google for $750 million in shares. With the business being just four years old it is clearly a compelling way for publishers to monetise and with this being the case, it is hard to persuade publishers to entertain revenue share agreements for mobile casinos. A traditional affiliate marketing strategy is to buy search (PPC) traffic, but unfortunately, mobile search volumes are relatively low and command high bidding prices. With only a few results being visible on the mobile screen there is no real strategy of bidding low to expect low volumes – bidding low results in virtually no traffic at all. If you took all the PPC activity out of online affiliates you would witness dramatic negative results, and mobile is no different. Additionally, the majority of wellperforming, available premium traffic is being purchased directly by agencies like ours on behalf of mobile casino operators. We continually source new media opportunities and there is no shortage

iGB Affiliate DECEMBER/JANUARY 2009/10

ROUND TABLE

of clients who will purchase it. This ensures it is all purchased before being offered at a discount to potential affiliates. Whilst remnant and search media remain ineffective, the mobile phone operators have a strong opportunity in this space. With the majority of users still visiting operator sites, the operators themselves are perfectly placed to capitalise and to date, most of them have. If you have significant user numbers your cost per acquisition is very low and the returns can be vast. For now, the largest ‘affiliates’ in this space are in fact the UK’s leading mobile operators. As well as a lack of media there is also one large barrier for affiliates – mobile gamers generally spend less, meaning lower payouts. The small screen is generally for ‘on the move’ gaming and people without fixed line access. Whilst the experience is very enjoyable it does not compare to playing in-front of a PC monitor. This being the case, affiliates entering this space can be disappointed if they are used to online affiliate commissions. One final issue is the lack of mobile tracking. Presently, there is no comprehensive, universally accepted cookie tracking solution on the market. This issue makes it impossible to track post click and view based conversions. The majority of online acquisitions rely on cookies so this is a barrier which needs to be overcome. To compound all of the above, the UK audience are continually changing handsets which means they have to be marketed to re-download which again can increase churn. One area where mobile affiliates can gain traction is using their Internet skills

iGB Affiliate DECEMBER/JANUARY 2009/10

to migrate users from the ﬁxed line Internet to the mobile Internet; many companies are trying this and perhaps it requires the specialist skills of afﬁliates to lead the way. As the market matures there will undoubtedly be more inventory available – the continual changes in the space such as the emergence of the iPhone, will again grow awareness and user adoption. It does not help that Apple will not allow gaming applications but like with everything, if you are ‘in the know’, there are ways around the problem.

Patrick McKay, Founder, Gobetya Google has just invested $750 million in the purchase of ‘AdMob’, one of the leading mobile advertising providers; could this be a sign that there is a real fundamental shift from web to mobile? With smartphone sales to outsell PC by 2011, I would suggest that mobile content has finally arrived. AdMob claims to serve “more than 8.5 billion mobile banner and text adverts per month across a wide range of leading mobile websites and applications in more than 160 countries.” What’s more, last month, Google said that searches by mobile users on its sites increased by 30 percent in the third quarter. So how can the gaming sector benefit from this shift in consumer behaviour and buying habits? How can affiliates and content providers make money from the gaming sector? From a personal perspective and from someone who runs a multiplayer software gaming business, I can tell you that we’ve been discussing this exact subject with non gaming companies, and we expect these companies to make their move in 2010.

It appears that we will witness a significant migration of the non-gaming content providers into gambling products; which I for one will welcome and embrace. For the mobile content sector, the penny has finally dropped that there is a new product in town – and it pays better to be involved. In a recent report, AdMob said that iPhone and iPod touch traffic “increased 19 times worldwide between September 2008 and September 2009 in the AdMob advertising network.” Currently, affiliates and marketing content aggregators to mobile have to split their income with the mobile operators as they are paid by reverse billing (i.e. the consumer pays for content and the charge is added to their mobile bill; the mobile operator takes a slice and then pays out to the aggregator or mobile content provider maybe 45 to 90 days later). A simple example of a £1.50 transaction means that you could end up with £0.80p of that transaction. So if you are an affiliate in that chain then you will only receive a slice of that transaction and get paid out months later. Due to significant developments in software, hardware and cellular network data provision technology over the last few years, mobile gambling is now a genuine alternative to retail and online gaming, in terms of quality of product and user experience. Via mobile, consumers can bet and wager on just about anything they wish to – from sportsbook to casino and poker – and all safely and securely from virtually any location. As most gambling transactions are done via credit or debit card, it means that mobile operators don’t get a slice of the pie. Plus, payment terms are normally each calendar month where it concerns paying a white label or affiliate. So why start moving into the gaming sector? Simply because in the gaming business we pay better! From the perspective of a mobile content affiliate or aggregator, they will get a bigger slice of the pie and get paid quicker. The success of this commercial dynamic has been proven with the huge success of Apple’s iPhone ‘App Store’ business model. So that’s the mathematics behind why we will see that the shift in 2010 isn’t rocket science, but that it’s taken nearly ten years to get to this stage. To be honest, we have seen several false starts before in terms of real movement in the mobile gaming sector, but with Google and Apple investing heavily in smartphones and mobile advertising, I genuinely believe the revolution has begun.

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INSIGHT

By David Flower, VP EMEA, Gomez

TEN YEARS AGO, very basic web browsers began appearing on mobile phones. These primitive browsers combined with the lack of suitably formatted mobile content held back the adoption of the mobile web. But today, mobile web usage is considerable and growing fast. Figures released by Cisco Systems earlier this year predict a 66-fold rise in mobile trafﬁc by 2013. And speciﬁcally for the UK, a recent mobile Internet report estimates UK mobile Internet users currently range between a low of 7.2 million and a high of 17.4 million. Mobile betting has completely changed the way people think about this increasingly popular pastime. Once, you had to physically go to the racetracks or the high street betting shop. Then came mobile betting and everything changed. Today, you can place bets on any race or game that you like, without having to get out of bed. You can now place bets from wherever you happen to be, simply via your mobile phone. Mobile gambling is booming despite the recession and legal issues with the technology in markets such as the US. Independent experts, Juniper Research, estimate that the global mobile gambling industry will be taking $16.6bn (£11.3bn) worth of bets – ranging from casino betting and lotteries to sportsbetting – by 2011, up from $1.35bn in 2006. This rapid adoption of the mobile web and connected mobile applications is

iGB Affiliate DECEMBER/JANUARY 2009/10

driven by the proliferation of smartphones, unlimited data plans for fast 3G networks (the launch of the 3G iPhone last summer gave the market a boost) and high-quality mobile optimized content. Yet device proliferation, conﬂicting standards, limited tools and a lack of established best practices combine to produce an environment where delivering great mobile experiences is difﬁcult.

There’s business value in the mobile web – for both operators and affiliates More and more companies are using the mobile web to generate revenue through mobile commerce and mobile advertising – a view confirmed by Sabin Brooks, chief marketing officer at BETNOW. Just last month, he was quoted as saying “mobiles are a constant companion, and as such there’s no doubt in my mind that mobile betting will take a significant share of bookmaker turnover in the near future, particularly for in-play betting”.

Operators Today there are 2.2 billion people with a mobile phone but no PC. Add the billionplus PC owners who, from time to time, leave their desks and you get a glimpse of the untapped reservoir of potential new gamblers which makes up the ‘m-gambling’ marketplace.

Affiliates Affiliates are the engines of the iGaming industry, driving huge levels of traffic to the operators. As the sector has increased in size, introducing both new games and territories, so too has the importance of affiliates. But affiliates need to be sure that the special links they are promoting take the user to a mobile site that actually works – which leads us full circle back to the operators who need to ensure their site is optimized for mobile browsing.

Mobile user expectations have evolved You know about the success of Apple’s iPhone. Recent statistics from Comscore showed that 93% of UK iPhone owners used the device to access the web during the month of January. Smartphones with 3G connections have led the charge in redeﬁning users’ mobile web experiences. Mobile phones, by their very nature, are within arm’s reach. And so the constant presence of the mobile phone puts a greater demand on your site’s availability and performance than does the PC. The success of your web applications will depend on them being useful and well-executed. If they are useful, you will acquire users. If they perform as intended, you will retain users. If your application doesn’t work as intended, users will desert out of frustration. Web page load time is the biggest source of dissatisfaction for mobile

“A mobile service that is slow – or worse, down – not only has a negative impact on your revenue but also damages your brand equity through customers’ word of mouth backlash.”

Internet users around the world. And remember that users will compare your mobile website’s performance against the best in class, such as Yahoo! or Google. There is no doubt that the performance of mobile initiatives will be one of the critical success factors for iGaming companies. But with 74% of UK and US mobile users unhappy with their mobile web services, there’s a lot at stake. A mobile service that is slow – or worse, down – not only has a negative impact on your revenue but increases your customer support costs and damages your brand equity through customers’ word of mouth backlash.

Delivery of great mobile experiences is difficult Offering a mobile service (in any context) comes with its own challenges. Technology is bespoke – and needs tailoring to an ever changing kaleidoscope of mobile handsets. Distribution is also different: mobile network operators and mobile manufacturers are the gatekeepers to customer attention. Regulation is harder because mobile telecoms themselves are regulated in a way that ISPs are not. Finally, customer expectations are different, and games which work brilliantly on a PC with a keyboard and quiet room (such as full or multi-table poker) simply make no sense on a mobile with patchy signal, tiny keys and that tiny screen. Device diversity, conﬂicting standards, limited management tools and a lack of established best practices combine to produce a perfect storm in which delivering fast and successful mobile experiences is difﬁcult. Delivering mobile web applications

involves a complex set of services and layers called the “Web Application Delivery Chain”. These services must all work together to carry the application all the way to the end-users – from data centre to mobile device. And because of that complexity and lack of established best practices, a lot can go wrong – and it will be your brand that takes the blame.

The well-executed mobile experience Building a useful mobile website and application is a matter for your designers who are intimately familiar with your business’ and customers’ needs. But execution is a different issue. Execution is an internal management discipline controlled through measurement. It’s easy to measure the number of users and the number of business transactions performed, but this does not capture the degree of customer frustration that drives newly won customers away. To effectively manage your mobile web experience, leverage existing and proven technologies and best practices from the traditional web performance management world including key metrics such as: ● Availability – customers expect websites to be available 24/7/365. ● Response time – how long does it take your customers to perform a transaction, such as placing a bet? ● Consistency – your website’s response time should be consistent in that the variability from transaction to transaction should be low. When monitoring the performance from an end-user perspective, you need to

consider not only which mobile phones your customers are using to access your services or which mobile network they are connected to and where they are located, but the mobile browser they are using as well. The performance in London on Vodafone will be different than using O2 in Bracknell, which will be different than on Orange in Bradford. All of these variables need to be considered as dimensions to your metrics. You should be able to determine which objects, servers, networks, locations, times of day and phone types give you the most problems with response time, consistency and availability so that you can ﬁnd and resolve those problems and improve your end-user’s mobile web experience.

DAVID FLOWER, VP EMEA David joined Gomez in March 2007 in the newly created role of VP, EMEA. His remit is to extend Gomez’s market leadership in the region. He directs all of Gomez’s business operations in the UK and Germany and reports to Gomez’s president of worldwide field operations, Bruce Reading. David was previously Group Vice President, International Operations at MapInfo Corporation, where he was responsible for 400 staff and revenues of $85 million. During his tenure with MapInfo, he was directly responsible for growing EMEA revenue to $60m per annum, from less than $3m when he joined the organisation. Prior to his 12 years with MapInfo, Flower was the UK Commercial Manager for Lotus Development (now IBM) and held director-level positions with Ventura Software Inc. (Xerox Corp.).

iGB Affiliate DECEMBER/JANUARY 2009/10

INSIGHT

Peter Wilson, Partner at Memery Crystal LLP, explores the momentum in the US towards the regulation of online gaming following a Congressional report stating that such regulation would generate up to $42 billion for Federal programmes over the next decade.

DESPITE THE FACT that the US continues to remain outside the mainstream of Internet gambling, there is still a lot of activity on several fronts. There are three recognisable themes: ● Ongoing enforcement activity by US authorities; ● New law proposals at both Federal and State level; and ● Challenges to existing laws at both Federal and State level. Everyone in the iGaming sector is familiar with the aggressive attitude of the Department of Justice (‘DOJ’) towards Internet gambling. Regardless of the legal argument that the main Federal prohibition, the Wire Act 1961, only covers “the placing of bets or wagers on any sporting event or contest” the DOJ has always taken the view that all interstate gambling is illegal. Although arrests of foreign executives are few and far between, the consequences are almost always very serious. One of the longest running cases against Bet on Sports founder, Gary Kaplan, came to some conclusion in November when he received a prison sentence of 51 months following a plea in August 2009 to Wire Act, conspiracy and racketeering offences. He will also forfeit

iGB Affiliate DECEMBEr/JANUArY 2009/10

around $46.3 million. The NASDAQ listed Canadian company Optimal settled with the DOJ for its historic involvement in iGaming payment processing for some $19.2 million. Since PartyGaming settled for some $105 million and one of its founders, Anurag Dikshit, forfeited $300 million, one might wonder whether the DOJ sees the Federal Government making more money out of continuing to prohibit iGaming than legalising it.

Legalisation However, the US Joint Committee on Taxation reported in October that the introduction of an online gambling licensing scheme would reap in the order of $42 billion for the Treasury over 10 years. Clearly, there is a better return from legalising and taxing iGaming than continuing to (try) to ban it. This was the line taken by Barney Frank, the Chair of the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee, when he introduced the Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act (‘the IG Act’) in May 2009, along with Congressman Jim McDermott’s Internet Gambling Regulation and Tax Enforcement Act of 2009 (‘the IG Tax Act’). The IG Act is seen as having more

chance of success than previous attempts to legalise online gambling as, amongst other things, it excludes betting on professional or amateur sports, thereby, aiming to placate the powerful sports league lobby. It also gives individual States a 90 day period in which to decide whether they want to opt out of the proposed Federal licensing scheme. The IG Tax Act will tax all funds deposited by customers during the preceding month in their online gambling account at the rate of 2%, thereby, raising easy revenue for the Federal Government without having to take more unpopular measures of increasing personal income or corporate taxes. The IG Act provides that applicants iGaming licences will have to undergo background checks to establish that an applicant is “a person whose prior activities, reputation, habits, and associations do not – (i) pose a threat to the public interest …or (ii) create or enhance the dangers of unsuitable, unfair or illegal practices, methods, and activities in the conduct of the licensed activities …” People who would be considered unsuitable for licensing include anyone who, “is delinquent in filing any applicable Federal or State tax returns or in the payment of any taxes, penalties, additions to tax, or interest owed to a State or the United States.” Therefore, those companies that have taken bets from US residents in the past may find themselves deemed unsuitable due to their prior activities in breach of US law and/or their non payment of US taxes on those bets. It may be that the existing offline operators in the US have the best shot at obtaining the new licences should the IG Act or a similar scheme ever become law. Nevada casino operators might lack the expertise and knowhow required to succeed in the highly specialist world of Internet gambling. That is partly why the recent deal between Harrah’s Interactive and 888.com’s B2B provider, Dragonfish, created so much interest in the industry. Perhaps it is a precursor of what is to come as US operators take an increasing interest and involvement in the European iGaming market in preparation for the eventual reopening of the US iGaming market. It is still early days though, and whilst the IG Act continues to gain support, there is a long way to go before anyone can really predict with anything near certainty if, and when, interstate gaming or sportsbetting will become regulated in the US (some existing interstate horse racing and second draws in lotteries are operated already). In the meantime, at the individual

State level, there are ongoing proposals in California to licence intrastate poker. Following a study bill, one bill that was defeated and another that was withdrawn, supporters of the licensing of poker are still looking for a congressional sponsor and a way to engage the support of the powerful tribunal gaming lobby. There may be a committee hearing on the issue in the New Year but there is no definite sign of a new law in the near future.

Domain Name Seizures Of course, there have also been moves at State level to ban iGaming, and the strangest case in the last year or so was the order of the Kentucky District Court, obtained by Governor Steve Beshar in September 2008, to seize 141 domain names. Although the order was predictably overturned by the Appeals Court in January 2009, the issue is not quite dead as the Governor appealed to the Kentucky Supreme Court for recognition of the legality of the seizure. Opposing the appeal at a hearing in October was the Interactive Media Entertainment and Gaming Association (iMEGA), the Interactive Gaming Council and one of the bookmakers affected, Sportsbook.com. Publication of the judgement is likely before the end of the year and it is hard to see how the Governor could succeed, so defective was the seizure order in the first place. iMEGA has been busy elsewhere challenging the restrictive anti-gambling laws. It has issued a civil suit in the New Jersey District Court to challenge the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act 1991 that prohibits State regulated or sponsored betting on amateur or professional sports (excluding sportsbetting that was already existing in the States of Nevada, Delaware, Montana and Oregon). Whilst the case is still at an early stage, there was a positive development on November 2, 2009 when the Governor of New Jersey, Jon Corzine, succeeded in his application to be joined as a Plaintiff in the face of opposition by the Defendant, Eric Holder, the Attorney General. iMEGA has had less success with its complaint that the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act 2006 (‘UIGEA’) is unconstitutional and violates the rights of each State to determine their own laws on gambling. In September 2009, the Appeals Court in Philadelphia rejected iMEGA’s arguments but helpfully restated the principle of State primacy in matters of gambling when Judge Dolores Sloviter said, “Whether the transaction…

constitutes unlawful Internet gambling turns on how the law of the state from which the bettor initiates the bet would treat that bet, i.e. if it is illegal under that state’s law, it constitutes ‘unlawful Internet gambling’ under the Act.” Although UIGEA was passed in October 2006 by the Bush administration, it is only on December 1, 2009 that the regulations requiring financial transaction providers to identify and block transactions that they suspect are related to online gambling take effect. The regulations, originally published in late 2007, are problematical to enforce as, for a start, they fail to define what specifically constitutes an unlawful Internet gambling transaction. Of course, UIGEA had its greatest impact immediately after it was passed when the larger banks and gambling sites effectively enforced its provisions themselves as they pulled out of the US market. Congressman Frank and others have been attempting to delay the implementation of the regulations by a year. This seems unlikely and, besides the huge compliance costs for banks and other financial institutions (possibly exceeding $100 million in the first year), the effect of the regulations will probably be to drive even more iGaming websites to operate ‘under the wire’. US residents will not suddenly cease gambling via the Internet as they have not stopped so far. There are, of course, some very reputable US facing operators, but there are many others that are not, and without any regulation in the US, its citizens may end up risking their money with sites with less transparency, accountability and regulation than ever before. Disclaimer: The above does not constitute legal advice and you should engage a lawyer before deciding to act or not act in any given legal situation.

Peter Wilson is a Partner at Memery Crystal llP. Peter is a gambling law specialist with 20 years of experience. He has clients from over 15 different jurisdictions and advises on all types of gaming (casino, bingo, poker), betting (fixed odds, betting exchanges, spread betting, pool betting, pari mutual), lotteries, skill and prize competitions. Memery Crystal is an independent commercial law firm that combines high-quality advice with a practical and creative approach. pwilson@memerycrystal.com www. memerycrystal.com

iGB Affiliate DECEMBEr/JANUArY 2009/10

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INSIGHT

A glimpse into the world of social gambling.

ONLINE GAMBLING is a young industry with a short history among the more traditional formats that make up the rest of the gaming sector. Despite its youth, it is estimated that by 2010, UK revenue will have increased to roughly £1.6 billion1. Just as a point of reference, that is what the pet food industry was worth in 2005, or if you take the figure, but in US dollars, the reported loss by Harrah’s in the third quarter of 2009. So what has changed since the first few baby steps of the online gambling industry were taken? The industry has moved forwards in the development of products and the offering of payment solutions; it has improved security as well as increased transparency and compliance in general within the industry. But one of the main factors pushing the industry into the mainstream market is the increasing availability and interest in social networks and social gaming. Playing poker or bingo is not seen as gambling anymore, it has entered the socially acceptable sphere of pastime activities and players are eagerly sharing their experience and the excitement through various social networks. This social acceptance together with gambling’s (and its associated products’)

increased mainstream visibility and awareness, means that more and more people have started seeing it as a valid and highly relevant option when choosing their entertainment. It’s not just the hardcore players anymore either; it’s the average Internet user, and especially the much hyped, potentially highly profitable demographic group of women that are starting to show interest. But how, then, should companies be connecting with this new online world that prefers user generated content and social sharing?

Things that rocked the online world Looking at the evolution of the Internet and our ever-increasing technological world during the last two decades, the main things that have shaped the way people interact, gather information, purchase and entertain themselves online can be gathered into four categories. 1. The infrastructure The increasing availability of high speed broadband and reliable technology in a user friendly format, along with products that are intuitive, safe and easy to use for anyone no matter what their IT literacy level, lowers

the threshold to try it out and invites more and more people to get online. 2. Plastic – ‘aka’ credit cards Most people have at some point needed a credit card, and just up to a few years ago, it was even more important than before if you wanted to buy things online. With improved payment solutions and more options available, the main obstacles to purchasing online are being eradicated or simply facilitated in a more secure environment than before. The gender differences in usage and variations in country specific levels of credit card access are also converging fast. 3. Internet usage Over the last decade, Internet usage has gone through a substantial metamorphosis that can be seen in the changes that have taken place in the usage patterns. Going from Web 1.0, where information was the key factor and reason why you would log on, to Web 2.0, where connecting, creating and sharing became more important to the users, has brought multiple new possibilities of how to work with the Internet. According to Ofcom, women today are already spending more time online than men, with one of the main reasons being

iGB Affiliate december/january 2009/10

INSIGHT

the increased social interaction taking place through more advanced social networking sites and channels. 4. The rise of social networks Networking sites are getting women interested in the Internet, but they are also appealing to the average online user and are regularly listed among the top visited sites. The networks allow for instant sharing with countless friends, both close ones and more distant acquaintances, something that the online population, both from a personal and a professional perspective, has happily embraced. These four elements have established the ground for gaming to enter the mainstream in the online world. Providing millions of people access to the wide selection of games available online and other recent developments within the mobile world (such as the arrival of the iPhone and its applications or Zynga and its exponentially growing social games) have all helped in pushing games and gambling into the mainstream.

Why gambling? But why this sudden increase in the amount of people, and increasingly women, taking part in gambling and gaming related activities? Gambling is basically investing in the chance to win big for the chance of a small loss. But, any gambling in which the organizers take a profit will have a negative expected value, meaning that the act of playing such games is inconsistent with utility-maximizing risk-averse participants who are subject to diminishing marginal utility of income. So why are so many people eagerly throwing themselves into the game without a second thought? Over the last decade in particular, gambling has become more socially acceptable as a fun and exciting pastime activity and is finding new followers outside of the traditional user groups. The debates and discussions on gambling that have been heard over the decade, such as the relevance of monopolies versus open markets, seem to have enlightened the mainstream, removed the taboo over the subject and made the pro-gambling argument into the accepted ethical norm – one that the majority of the population now quite happily embraces.

Bingo – a socially acceptable form of gambling The history of bingo and the context in which it has been played for decades

iGB Affiliate december/january 2009/10

has meant it has always been seen as a socially acceptable form of gambling that all ages can play and even churches seem to approve of. The social factor related to the game, both live as well as online, has helped to increase its appeal by adding another dimension to it. Additional the excitement of winning a massive bingo jackpot adds to the alure. But it was the social aspect of the game that made it a hit in the social networkloving online world. Featuring the possibility to chat and communicate with other online bingo players while playing meant that the players immediately had something to bond over, which helped to create a strong and loyal community. And for social networking women, bingo offered the perfect one stop shop of entertainment, socializing and everyday excitement.

The new face of online gaming The social acceptance of bingo and other gambling products is epitomised in the change in demographics of the last few years. A large and increasing interest can be seen in women who are suddenly finding gambling acceptable by society and their friends, with a multitude of product variations increasingly available to them. The average age of the female player varies slightly depending on the products concerned, showing an average age of 33 for MariaPoker but slightly older at 38 for MariaBingo. In general, the face of the new casual online gamer and gambler is in their 30s and older than the male equivalent. Just like many other causal games sites, the average player at Maria usually has children, a partner, enjoys talk shows and is employed. Depending on country, but especially in the Nordics, she tends to live outside of larger cities, valuing the ease of what bingo offers when it comes to socialising and meeting new friends.

target groups. Today, finding and approaching female gamers will mean dividing your strategy up into targeting the established segment of experienced players through specific and traditionally used channels, while at the same time, tapping into the still untouched segment of novice players and mainstream Internet users via more generic channels in order to introduce them to this format of entertainment. So, in the end, traditional channels of communication are still among the best performing when it comes to marketing, and reaching outside of this already established group of gamers to find new revenue streams proves to be difficult. In today’s world, companies need to be connecting with, and adapting to, the world that the user prefers and enjoys. At MariaBingo, user generated content and social sharing has always been one of the driving factors for the development of the platform as well as shaping the way the employees at Maria interact with the players. But how do you introduce this novice player to the world of online gambling? At present, social games are on the forefront when it comes to this, by using the ever reliable ‘word of mouth’ format when spreading their products to new users. Using social networks, and through the sharing of the experience and information about the product with your online friends, these companies are tapping into the trust value a recommendation from a friend brings. This is a clever way of gaining value, and is a direction gambling cannot avoid taking, especially when it comes to reaching out to new players. http://www.articlesbase.com/onlinegambling-articles/a-brief-history-of-onlinegambling-601385.html

Location, Location, Location Given its pan-European presence, the Maria games platform sees national and regional differences in player behavior depending on where the player is from. Traditionally, gambling marketing and affiliation has been solely focused on gambling related and specific pages, targeting the experienced player who knows what he/she wants. With gambling becoming more socially accepted and moving into the mainstream, marketing has also dived in and advertising for gambling can nowadays be seen on any channel of communication, with very wide

Linda niskanen is working as the Marketing Manager for Maria, a female focused brand owned by the Unibet Group. she has been working with various products in online gaming since 2006, and has found her main interest within the female gaming sphere. Her current position involves working on marketing the Maria female gaming product range including Bingo, Casino, Games and Poker on a pan european level.

INSIGHT

Creating value by supporting valu

able affiliates.

THE KEY TO SUCCESSFUL affiliate relationship management is creating, growing and maintaining a good relationship with affiliates. However, given the human and other financial resource constraints, it is essential to devise a proper relationship management strategy that aims to establish a varying degree of relationship commitment based on the relative importance of the affiliate to the business. In my previous articles we have established that affiliates fall into the following segments: ● Low Tier – Either new affiliates or affiliates which generate low or negative return ● Medium Tier – Affiliates who generate average returns but have good growth prospects ● High Tier – Large affiliates who generate good revenues This article builds on my previous articles and explains how different relationship management strategies should be adopted for different affiliate segments. This is explained in more detail below:

Levels of Relationship Management: 1.Basic Relationship Management This level of relationship management is ideal for low tier and new affiliates since the income they bring to the business (if any) is minimal and cannot justify a high level of support. Having said this, it is essential to provide a level of support that will enable these affiliates to operate successfully and grow with the business. Below is a list of the basics that any company should offer to any affiliate (even the smallest one): Promotions: Allocate a specific monthly budget for particular affiliate segments, and initiate affiliate competitions. Such competitions should reward those affiliates

iGB Affiliate December/January 2009/10

(by means of a specific price or high commission percentage) who refer the most active customers or generate the highest net revenue in a specific period. Such promotions would act as incentives for these affiliates to perform better and will enable the affiliate manager to identify those affiliates who have growth potential. Content: Given the importance of content for affiliates, the provision of such content as newsletters and press releases, on a regular basis, will help small affiliates to create better websites and attract more customers with the potential of generating more sales. Media: You should make sure that you provide up-to-date media, such as banners, textlinks, landing pages and feeds that enable affiliates to effectively promote your products. It is also essential to have a good affiliate management system that enables the proper tracking of media. Account Manager: You should either appoint a member of the affiliate team who specifically deals with this affiliate segment or otherwise create a shared email and instant messenger account that is shared and taken care of by account managers on a rota basis. The above should ensure at least the minimum standard of support and communication that affiliates require as partners of the company. Such basic relationship management should also limit the amount of negative forum posts from small affiliates complaining of a lack of support from operators.

should make sure to provide them with enhanced support. Below is a list of enhanced services that companies should offer to their medium tier affiliates. Promotions: Start by segmenting this affiliate group into two sub-groups; those that are considered ‘cash cows’ (generate a constant level of net revenue with little room for growth) and those that have potential to grow and become high tier affiliates. In the latter case, it makes sense to set achievable growth targets for them that if achieved, will entitle them to a higher commission rate or a specific cash price. This will also enable you to continually identify affiliates with the best potential. As part of the support for medium tier affiliates, consider organizing social events such as affiliate parties and networking events where medium tier affiliates can mix with high tier ones and share improvement tips. Content and Media: Apart from providing generic media, consider offering SEO advice from your technical staff to enable these affiliates to further optimize their websites and generate more traffic. Account Manager: Given the importance of this group, consider offering them a specific account manager. This will help create a stronger relationship by providing them with a single point of contact. By providing this enhanced level of relationship management, the company would improve the satisfaction of ‘cash cow’ affiliates and enable affiliates with potential to move into the high tier segment.

2. Enhanced Relationship Management As affiliates start generating a good return for the business, they should be moved from low tier to medium tier affiliates. Given the potential that these affiliates show in becoming either ‘cash cows’ or developing into high tier affiliates, you

3. Partner Relationship Management As affiliates grow further and start generating higher revenues they gain in strategic importance. These high level affiliates, which usually account to about five percent of an operator’s affiliate base, should be viewed as partners rather than merely

â&#x20AC;&#x153;It is essential to devise a proper relationship management strategy based on the relative importance of the affiliate to the business.â&#x20AC;?

affiliates. It is thus important to provide a customized service to these affiliates to guarantee the best relationships. Below are some examples of customized services that could be offered to these partners. Promotions: High tier affiliates generate large net revenues and, hence, justify higher promotion budgets. Customer level promotions may be offered to specific affiliates (such as monetary prices for those customers that bet/spend most on the operators site) so as to attract more customers to the site. This would increase net revenue for the operator and in turn, commission for the affiliate thus resulting in a win-win situation. In addition to such promotions, it is essential to organize frequent social events where you meet and entertain the bigger affiliates. This will improve the one-toone relationship that would already exist between the affiliate and affiliate manager.

Content: Large affiliates are in competition with each other and fight to provide the best content to their customers. Therefore, it is recommended that exclusive content written by industry experts be made available to these top affiliates. Apart from helping affiliates improve their SEO they would have exclusive relevant content to attract customers. Media: Some of the large affiliates require specialized treatment even in the type of media provided. As an operator, you must consider the possibility of providing a limited number of co-branded banners and landing pages. Account Manager: The small number of large affiliates makes it possible for operators to appoint dedicated account managers. These should try to build and maintain a very good relationship with these partners to ensure continued satisfaction. Such individual attention will ensure a customized service to these

important partners of the company. By strategically thinking of and implementing these relationship management strategies, the company would ensure the allocation of resources according to the current and potential profitability of affiliates. Such strategies would ensure that good affiliates are properly taken care of and new affiliates are given the necessary support to grow while at the same time, keeping in mind the efficient use of company resources.

Matthew Castillo is an Msc international Marketing graduate from the University of strathclyde (Glasgow). having gained experience in international Marketing and the iGaming industry, he is now working as Key Client account Manager at NetRefer. his main duties involve the management of key client accounts and liaising with clients to ensure they make the best use of their affiliate Management system in growing a strong affiliate base. Matthew can be reached via email at m.castillo@ netrefer.com.

iGB Affiliate December/January 2009/10

INSIGHT

…by Adam Bunn, Head of SEO at Greenlight

“If you can accomplish thematic depth you’ll have also taken one step in the journey towards a unique selling point.” WE TALK ABOUT ‘gaming’ as a single vertical but this broad categorisation can sometimes blinker us when it comes to SEO. It’s a label that conceals a wealth of differences between the various products on offer on your average gaming website, and often leads to uniform decisions when a more nuanced approach to keyword research, site build and optimisation is required. Nowhere does this manifest more obviously than in sportsbetting. Sportsbetting search behaviour is unique in online gaming because it closely resembles the travel sector in its depth, which has a long tail consisting of searches by destination and type of travel (hotel, holiday, flight) qualified by specific star ratings and terms such as ‘luxury’ or ‘cheap’. Sportsbetting obviously covers many hundreds of possible sports but also within each of those sports there are numerous competitions, leagues, teams, players and matches, all of which can be optimised for. Most gaming sites do this very badly, if at all, and one of the main reasons for this is the fact that sportsbetting sites are developed alongside or as part of ‘gaming’ sites, where the prevailing mindset is of the small, top heavy keyword space. A second unique aspect of sportsbetting search behaviour is its seasonality. While other gaming related search terms remain fairly static throughout the year, sportsbetting websites need to contend with fluctuating – and often short lived – demand. That means you need to vie with

getting your own timing right and the fact that many other sites will be kicking their SEO activity up a notch as well. A case in point: the (football) World Cup is fast approaching, and it will be a cash cow for the sites that are ranking when the searches start rolling in next summer. Many sites are already gearing up for the event by creating and updating content, adjusting internal link structure to flow more link equity to World Cup focussed pages, and starting link building campaigns for the key traffic driving terms such as ‘World Cup betting’. This is the backdrop against which your own SEO will need to compete, and if you haven’t started seriously strategising for the World Cup yet, you’re probably too late. Conversely, if you were to apply a sportsbetting mind frame to developing a poker site (where search demand is essentially static and overwhelmingly concentrated around relatively few terms that drive 99.9% of all poker related search traffic) you’d end up with thousands of entirely unnecessary pages covering essentially the same ground that would actually hinder your ranking potential. In this respect, SEO for poker is very much like SEO for finance. These examples serve to highlight the importance of taking each sector covered by a gaming site as its own entity and optimising for it accordingly.

Content is king... but not for most gaming sites Another aspect of this ‘blinkering’ occurs in

the way that gaming sites tend to be built in a fairly standard, recognisable way; most of the ‘meat’ of the site is locked away behind log in screens, in downloadable apps or in otherwise inaccessible areas of the site, with just a few ‘gateway’ pages accessible to search engines. Indeed, most gaming sites are essentially identical in terms of structure and content. But content is what the engines thrive on, and creating more of it so that you provide more coverage of a topic than the competition can give you a significant edge. We call this concept ‘thematic depth’. Thematic depth is important for SEO not only because it allows your site to rank for a greater breadth of search terms, but also because it impacts on your rankings for generic terms such as ‘poker’ too. How so? Consider that generic terms are, by their very nature, devoid of specific intent. Is the person searching for ‘poker’ looking to download and play poker for money or simply play free poker online? What type of poker do they want to play? Or perhaps they’re looking for poker tips, a detailed walkthrough of the rules or a print out of the poker hands? Either way, search engines have to take a punt themselves and pick a site they feel is most likely to answer the generic query. And, all other things being equal, they can be more confident sending a user to a site with lots of content than they can sending them to a thin site, knowing that a content rich site is more likely to be able to answer the generic query by virtue of its broad coverage of the topic. If you can accomplish thematic depth you’ll have also taken one step in the journey towards a unique selling point. This is something that virtually no gaming site has and one of the biggest challenges facing anyone trying to do SEO for online gaming. How do you differentiate your site? There’s an argument that says whales – the big spending punters that all gaming sites hope to catch and keep – only really care about price point when it comes to selecting their preferred gaming site. While that’s true to a certain extent (meaning that whatever else you do you must be competitive on value), you mustn’t forget that it’s through search engines that most people first find the gaming sites they will then consider playing on. Sites in most verticals can rely on the potential for some natural links and buzz coming their way as a result of user engagement with a site or brand, but that’s usually not the case for gaming sites. But this is also a great opportunity for anyone who does manage to engage users on a deeper level, since you’ll instantly stand out from the crowd, both in the eyes of users and search engines.

iGB Affiliate DECEMBER/JANUARY 2009/10

INSIGHT

IT’S THE FINAL Grand Prix of the season. One driver has dominated all weekend, qualifying in pole by a mile and is odds on to win. Then the unexpected happens. This driver, who you put your money on to win, retires a third of the way into the race because of a brake failure. The race win is pretty much handed to the driver in second place. Sound familiar? Wish you could change your bet at that point in time? I would have put good money on Vettel taking the chequered ﬂag after Hamilton’s retirement if I had been watching live. Even with the best preparation, the form book can be thrown out the window when the unpredictable happens. Wouldn’t it be great if you had new odds and outcomes you could now bet on easily? This is why in-game online sportsbetting has continued to grow rapidly. Currently, most advertising of the latest odds for sporting events are advertised through targeted Pay Per Click (PPC) or online display adverts in the run up to it. PPC and display are great channels for this because of the ease and speed with which they can be updated, and because of their targeted nature. However, they aren’t as instant as some fast developing online channels. PPC can lack a certain level of immediacy for in-game betting. The process of writing adverts, uploading them and gaining approval from search engines can take around 15 minutes. This could mean odds contained are out of date by the time they are published.

iGB Affiliate DECEMBER/JANUARY 2009/10

Twitter However, recent moves in real-time social media and search engine marketing can benefit the advertising of in-game betting odds. Twitter is an unprecedented phenomenon that has grown largely due to its real-time nature. We have worked with a major gaming client to generate funded accounts using Twitter through in-game betting, with some success. Due to the immediacy of publication on Twitter our client has been promoting in-game betting odds through the medium. Not only do you reach your Twitter followers (which you can grow through exclusive free bet offers) you can also reach other sports fans who might fancy a flutter when they are using Twitter Search. Take the example of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. By pushing out tweets including keywords such as “Vettel”, “Hamilton” and the hash tags “#F1” and “#formula1”, F1 fans searching for these terms during the race see your latest odds. They are then tempted to have a flutter through links to betting pages in the tweet. This audience is about to grow too as Google and Microsoft have signed a deal with Twitter which means they can now display Twitter’s real-time results (Tweets) in their search results. This opens up your odds to millions more potential punters.

Live Streaming A further online real-time channel is starting to open-up for in-game betting advertisers, with the recent Ukraine Vs England World Cup qualifying match being

“PPC can lack a certain level of immediacy for in-game betting. This could mean odds are out of date by the time they are published.” the ﬁrst shown solely online. This trend is only going to grow and presents a plethora of opportunities for gaming companies. By purchasing the online rights to sporting events you can have free reign over the advertising around them, including the latest in-game odds. This will probably offset the cost of the rights. Alternatively, you can test the water by advertising around the live online streams such as ITV’s Champions League games using interactive adverts with in-game odds which link directly through to live betting pages. All in all, in-game betting just got a lot more exciting and instant online.

MARK JOHNSON has been at Latitude since 2006 and for over two years he managed PPC accounts for a number of gaming brands including Bet365, William Hill and Netplay. In his current role as a Gaming Vertical Strategist he monitors online marketing trends across the sector to help shape Latitude’s PPC best practice guidelines, carry out PPC consultancy, produce monthly online gaming summaries for our clients and do gaming account critiques. Essentially his research and insights into the online gaming industry form the basis of online marketing campaigns for a number of the biggest gaming companies in Europe.

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INSIGHT

WHEN IT COMES to hot topics within the world of online marketing, you cannot go too far at the moment without reading about the beneﬁts of social media in general and social networking in particular. The powerhouses that are Facebook and Twitter may not be everyone’s cup of tea but there’s no denying that they are key areas to consider as we look to promote our business online. But is it just a case of putting up proﬁles and seeing what happens?

Focus on where your target market goes The phrase “fish where the fish are” has become rather overused recently and yet it does still contain an important message to anyone looking at social networking as an avenue to market their business. While the major players in the space may grab the headlines and much of the attention, they may not necessarily be the ones which are best suited to our individual needs. Instead, we need to be aware of the value of specialist networks or forums which will let us interact with a focused group of people more likely to be interested in us and what we have to offer. This allows a much more targeted approach rather than the scattergun method required on larger networks. It’s true that finding good ones can take time, but blogs which target target areas are good starting points. So is tapping into the collective pool of information on the main networks like Twitter – you’re likely to get a whole host of links and ideas back for you to follow up on.

How about starting your own networking site? An alternative route is to establish your own network and create a community yourself focused on your area of interest. This is no longer as difﬁcult as it might sound – the increase in popularity of social

INSIGHT

networks has in turn given rise to websites which provide a ready made platform and the tools for you to do just that. Ning and SocialGo are two of the main players, and there are also systems such as BuddyPress which is part of the blogging powerhouse, WordPress. Taking this route puts you ﬁrmly in control of the network and allows you to develop it in the directions you want and, of course, gives you control over the content and focus it takes. This doesn’t mean that you should ignore the large networks – certainly not, they have the breadth that would be impossible for an individual to recreate. But bear in mind that they are all run by others with their own goals and priorities, which may or may not be in-line with your own. So use them as online ‘coffee shops’ – places to link up with people and chat before developing the relationships further by inviting them ‘back home’ into your own network – that way you can reap the beneﬁts that each of them offer.

Using the main social networks Whichever route you take, you should always make sure that you spend the time to create an individual profile, something which will set you out from the crowd. Ideally, it will reflect the way in which you want to use the account; whether you want an individual or a business profile. Choosing a user name, writing a short bio and customising the look and feel where possible should always be part of the set up process – taking the time to do this shows you are treating the network seriously and gives you the chance online to make that first good impression. However, be careful not to spread yourself too thin. Maintaining a presence in multiple networks can be time consuming and there is only so much time we can spend on networking after all! Use the

technology that is in place to help you deliver new content – posts from your blog can automatically appear on your social networking proﬁle, which is an excellent way to keep it looking current and help your visibility. Used cleverly, you can post in one or two places and have that spread across many different networks either as content or updates, leaving you more time to actually interact with other members – what you are actually there for!

Where will it go from here? Just where social networking will go in the future and which platforms will be leading the way is unclear – I don’t think that anyone could have foreseen the impact that Twitter has made, for example, as a social network and no doubt there will be others. What is certain is that new players will come and go, and the places which best serve our marketing goals will change. This gives us an issue in terms of continuity as it can be very time consuming to abandon one network and switch focus to dedicate efforts in a new one. For me, the answer is to use them for what they are, as the online coffee houses which are excellent places to meet and link up with people. Therefore, ensure that you have your own focal point online for your networking, whether that is with a social network platform or indeed your own blog, which in itself is an excellent tool to help develop a community. This will help to deliver marketing beneﬁts to your business now and safeguard all your networking efforts by ensuring continuity in the future as well. MARK WHITE is an e-marketing consultant and business blog specialist who works with companies to help them set up and develop business through online marketing.

iGB Affiliate DECEMBER/JANUARY 2009/10

INSIGHT

Are traditional marketing and PR methods now ineffective in the online gaming world? We put the question to Expekt’s Lloyd Purser. No, absolutely not! There is still a huge percentage of the population watching TV, reading newspapers and magazines, travelling on trains and buses, driving cars on busy roads, listening to the radio and going to the cinema. OK… radio and cinema are more debatable, but I hope you get the point… It is clear that since the Internet was born, offline channels have been in a slow and steady decline (some more than others) but even if this is true, traditional media still has a major part to play, especially for the bigger online gaming brands out there. Of course, you can operate and grow a successful online gaming business using online channels alone, however, you will not take the same step into the mainstream as those companies who can invest into traditional channels as well. The key is finding the balance of communication in line with your marketing plan. iGaming companies are, in most cases, experts in the arena of online marketing and many other more traditional industries could only hope to be at the level we are in terms of more sophisticated online marketing models. There have been various reasons for the marketing focus being online, the main one being that it’s a purely online business, most operators grew their brands from start ups which at their inception needed to concentrate on the Internet to ensure a manageable ROI. Other key reasons include legal restrictions on how and where we can communicate to potential and existing customers, having a very strong affiliate set up and in many cases, targeting a very online savvy audience. From this standing start, the iGaming industry grew at an immense rate and in turn, more and more investment was being made into offline channels. In the heady days just prior to UIGEA, many of the larger operators were too busy counting money to undertake effective ROI analysis

iGB Affiliate december/january 2009/10

on their marketing spend, especially if they were investing heavily in offline. The ROI was there because it was booming; most of the larger operators were making money whatever they spent on marketing. Since UIGEA, the European market has now become increasingly competitive with all the major players fighting for market share. As mentioned before, the legal landscape plays a major role in how we can do this and, therefore, dictates our ability to use online and offline media. In more restrictive markets, online is the focus which is another reason why affiliate marketing is so important to our industry. Affiliates create online channels for us to communicate freely in the markets where policy is less clear. In many of our key European markets, we cannot communicate freely with the major media owners, especially offline. By contrast, in those markets which allow more freedom in our messaging and ability to advertise, the level of investment into both offline and online advertising has soared. At Expekt, if we look at our key market, the total iGaming investment in mainstream TV and print advertising is now massive. It would be almost impossible to deliver the market share required to be a serious player without major investment in offline channels like TV and print.

Sporting Chance Further evidence to recent offline growth is looking at sports sponsorship in Europe, especially the Premier League. It is no coincidence that the main industry in terms of club sponsorship is now iGaming and that many clubs now have official betting partners. Apart from the obvious synergies between the two parties, the economic climate has played a major part in opening up these channels further for iGaming. Club sponsorship has now become a key

part of most of the ambitious operators’ marketing strategies. If we look to the future, it is not possible for offline media to develop like online. Except for TV, most of the channels are not technology based and therefore, cannot develop technically. Prior to working in iGaming, I worked with a large publishing company who planned within ten years to be purely online. I am sure that many publishers in the future will be forced to focus online as that environment develops and their print circulations decrease. Another key question for the future is what we consider as ‘offline’. The bridge between online and broadcast is converging – with growing bandwidth across the globe, traditionally ‘TV broadcast’ content like live sports events, TV shows and movies are already available online. This is the key to online as a growing media, it’s consistently developing with new ways of communicating and interacting with potential customers, in many cases more than marketers can keep up with. Although the complete picture of the future is unclear for many years to come, offline media will continue to maintain a major role in the development of the iGaming industry, our marketing plans and communication. As long as customers continue to consume offline we will maintain a presence there developing our brands and growing our business. Lloyd Purser is Head of Online Marketing at Expekt. With over ten years experience in both traditional and online marketing Lloyd has been managing the team at Expekt since 2007. In his role, Lloyd has responsibility for the affiliate program, media performance and tracking, social media marketing, offsite SEO, campaign management, global media planning/buying and business development.

interview

All puns aside, SEGA’s entry into the online gaming space is a significant footnote to a year that has seen an invasion, of sorts, from the entertainment industry into iGaming. iGB Affiliate spoke to Sophia Lai, Affiliate Marketing Manager for SEGA Games Ltd, to get the lowdown on the year’s highest profile entrant. It’s probably prudent to clarify the makeup of SEGA Games’ entrance into the gaming industry: how independent is your entry? Are you creating your own backend, software, platforms etc… Our initial platforms of SEGAPoker and SEGACasino will feature some of SEGA’s exclusive IPs; Virtua Fighter, House of the Dead and Phantasy Star and Nights. Our games were independently designed in Japan by SEGA’s Research and Development team in conjunction with iPoker, and you will see those IPs integrated into our games. Working with iPoker gives us great liquidity as well as providing our players with the highest volume of tournaments to take advantage of. Do casino and poker represent the best platforms to leverage the SEGA brand and its characters, or was the decision based on

iGB Affiliate december/january 2009/10

the profitability of the platforms themselves? Casino and poker are the foundation of gaming platforms today. From that base, we plan to expand and explore all opportunities to provide the most unique and enjoyable experience for our players. Looking forward, our fans will pleased to know we’ll be releasing other games which will be announced in the coming months. Fans of SEGA will always be able to find familiar IPs from the past incorporated into our platforms. A number of household name brands have come into the industry through the licensing channel, spreading their assets across several sites operating under the same software provider. Why go down the operator route? Is this simply a matter of brand strength? We believe with our strength and

experience in the gaming industry, we could provide a new type of online gaming environment for consumers today. We feel there was a void in the industry. Consumers want a reliable place to play where they can trust and experience cutting edge entertainment. With over 50 years in gaming, SEGA Games can provide that environment. Let’s talk about the SEGA Games affiliate program – how will this be structured? At SEGA Games we have a dedicated site for our affiliate program, SEGAPartners.com. Being a worldwide recognized brand, driving players to our site will never be easier for our prospective affiliates. Affiliates also know they are dealing with a reliable operator who they can trust to be a long term player in the industry. With so many shoestring platforms

today throwing everything they can at affiliates it will be a relief to work with an operator who will work hard to retain players, and that provides the kind of content and marketing materials SEGA can. We have an unparalleled range of promotional opportunities to utilize with our available assets. Affiliates will be very pleased to hear we can offer a tiered CPA and revenue share commission structures, hybrid deals and exclusive deals for affiliates with high quality traffic. Our goal is to provide our affiliates with a flexible structure that will fit all of their needs. Are affiliates likely to be promoting more than just another gaming site? A brand of this size is a golden opportunity for affiliates today. In a growing industry so many of the operators today blend together, SEGA will stand out. As well as our bonuses, exclusive games and tournaments, affiliates will be promoting one of the most trusted brands in gaming. Do affiliates really care about the type of brand they promote as long as it’s revenue generating? Or does SEGA provide an opportunity to be a part of an internationally renowned brand whist reaping the associated benefits? Affiliates are in this business for one reason: profit. They make profit by driving players to sites. SEGA will make the affiliate’s job as easy as it’s ever been. A renowned brand with no currently affiliated players is a goldmine in the affiliate business. With the unique environment SEGA can provide with SEGA branded casino games and promotions, this is an amazing opportunity for affiliates. How important do you envisage affiliates to be in the acquisition of new players? Very important. Affiliates provide local expertise in their areas. Putting that together with our service and the incredible amount of marketing materials we can provide makes it a perfect partnership. We have spent a great deal of time specifically on our affiliate program and

technology and have allocated a great deal of resources to assist affiliates. We know what affiliates need and will do everything we can with all of our assets to make this possible. We are also adding many new features in the coming months on player retention so this will greatly improve the amounts wagered by our players thus increasing revenue shares. Will SEGA’s entry act as a catalyst for other traditionally console-gaming companies, or is yours an isolated case? We view gambling as entertainment, and so entertainment companies will need to evaluate this and see how it might fit into their business. With the possibility of further regulation in the industry the growth potential is enormous. With SEGA SAMMY’s strong track record with Pachinko/Pachislot, and console games, there is no reason to expect SEGA to be anything but a leader in the online gaming industry. Do you think that companies such as yourselves will help to drive the gaming industry ever forwards, perhaps even with such things as changing the public perception (where there are stigmas) of gambling – the more internationally recognised and trusted brands, the better received the practice of gaming will become? Absolutely. SEGA has spent decades building its reputation as a global brand, so we will definitely take a long term view of this business and not make any sacrifices for short term gains. We will continually build and improve the SEGA Gaming products to fit our SEGA brand, and players will see significant changes throughout the year. I think given the SEGA brand, assets and resources, we have a unique opportunity to not only capture a piece of the existing market but to really develop and build a new market which does not exist today. Considering the scope of technology and the rate of its development, does the product offering of the future lean towards

a more overriding entertainment package than is available in gaming at present? With customer acquisition costs as high as they are today, and rising, it will be very difficult for companies to compete, and more importantly, retain their players without a more diversified product. Historically, the competition in online gambling has been focused on the same services such as bonuses or product diversifications such as sportsbook or bingo, but we feel, over time, a more complete entertainment experience will be demanded by the consumer. We feel with our long history in entertainment that we are in a perfect position to provide the environment that the market is currently lacking. Finally, let’s look at the whole picture: Vegas is coming online, different entertainment channels are buying into gaming in a big way – just how vast can the gaming industry become, and are there pitfalls that it needs to be wary of? With many of the world’s largest gaming markets not yet regulated, the possibilities in the online gaming industry are massive. But the key is responsible gaming. You have to have a long term view in this industry. The markets will eventually be regulated and being in a position to move into those markets with a proven track record of running a stable, legal platform will be paramount to getting licensed in the newly regulated markets. Establishing a strong IP and an understanding of consumer behaviour will also be necessary to succeed in what will only become a vastly more competitive market. Gambling is a form of entertainment; you need to offer more than just a slot machine and a poker table to make an impact on the industry today. You must supply a comprehensive gaming environment to stand out in what is becoming a crowded industry.

Sophia can be contacted at slai@segagames.com.

iGB Affiliate december/january 2009/10

Tailoring localised ProducTs in a global MarkeT iGB Espana marked the dawn of a new category of industry conference; one honed on insight and analysis relevant to a specific market. Its success serves as evidence that localisation isn’t merely a buzz word for operators – it is significantly more far reaching.

It seems a slight contradiction to refer to such a specific, localised conference, tailored specifically for a regional market as far reaching, but its success has implications that are acutely so. Of course, a certain degree of risk was entertained in the creation and implementation of such a niche event, but such jeopardy is an acknowledged bedfellow for things that are required, even demanded, that are not yet in existence. iGB Espana was clearly a risk worth taking. In the age of localisation and custombuilt regional products and services, similarly orchestrated conferences and expos become ever more conspicuous by their absence. The recent event in Madrid was very narrowly focussed on the

iGB Affiliate december/january 2009/10

Spanish market and its various nuances and digressions.

So what did we learn? Bearing the promise to provide the requisite insight to navigate the arduous waters of the Hispanic market, iGB Espana enlisted the services of those considered ‘royalty’ within the online Spanish market. Speakers such as Laura Guillot, head of communications for AEDAPI (The Spanish Association for Internet Betting) and Ismael El-Qudsi, Head of New Media at Havas Digital and previously the Spanish Country Manager of Live.com for three years (now Bing), gave true gravitas to the proceedings. Carlos Blanco of Group Itnet fame, and with one of the most read digital blogs in Spain, chaired the session with Laura and spearheaded a line up of

speakers whose companies served as a ‘who’s who’ of the main players in the Spanish market; Cmedia, 888.com, Sportingbet, Casino Claro, Winzingo, Crea Gaming, Everest Affiliates and Kanvas Media, to name but a few. Affiliates, as we have come to expect, turned out in their droves, accounting for upwards of 70% of the total number of attendees at the event; this turnout a success in itself. As was the appearance of former Atlético de Madrid player and now BetClic ambassador, Francisco Miguel Narváez Machón, aka “Kiko”. Above all else, we have learnt that the future in conferences of this ilk is bright, and in iGB Espana we have a shining example of the requisite structure, balance and insight. Next stop? Sydney!

Lucky winners at the Cantabingo.com party

...Others will network

Whilst some of us learn....

Business was the order of the day

Are those bricks of gold he is bringing to the party...?

Laura Guillot AEDAPI (centre left) and Juanma Moreno Betfair (centre right) our speakers mingling

Ismael El-Qudsi from Hava Media (centre right) dragged in front of the camera

Speakers Leo Magrets 888.com, iVan Garcia Lopez Cmedia and Patricia Benito Everest Affiliates, discussing the pros and cons of the Spanish poker world

iGB Affiliate december/january 2009/10

webmaster world

insight

IntegratIng google analytIcs Into your MarketIng strategy By Jamie Fortunaso and Olland Pallatz YOu’d think that after all the work it took you to set up your affiliate website that you could breathe a sigh of relief. You’ve chosen your domain name, got set up with a web host, maybe learnt a thing or two about scripting along the way, and then filled your site with content and features that will attract visitors and stimulate them enough to partake in whatever iGaming vertical it is that you’re promoting. But how successful is your website, really? Is it as profitable as it could be? Google Analytics (GA) is a web analytic solution offered by Google that can provide you with some important insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. This free software provides you with site details like user paths, sales conversion details, trailing of page views and other crucial information that will help you fine tune your marketing approach and improve conversions. GA can also track visitors from all referrers, including search engines, display advertising, pay-per-click networks and email marketing. In a nutshell, Google Analytics tells you if the money you are investing in various marketing tactics is resulting in a profitable return on your investment. The information you get from GA may tell you that these tactics need tweaking, or perhaps that they should be abandoned completely, in order for you to focus more of your time and money on what’s really working for your business. And one of the great things about GA is that it’s not just for techies. The software is actually designed for non-specialists, enabling even the most amateur affiliate to apply performance-based marketing. Plus, it’s free with a Google account, so really, even if you only use it to tell you what source your visitors are coming from, how much time they spend on your site, their country of origin, etc, then it’s worthwhile looking into. Getting set up with Google Analytics is pretty straightforward, and Google has lots of literature on the web to help you get started. Once you are set up with GA, here are some quick tips to make sure you are reaping its benefits: 1. Filter your own IP, or other IPs, that you don’t want to include in your stats. This will stop visits from your IP showing up in the analytics, and skewing your data. Here’s how you do this: a. Go to the Filter Manager from the Analytics Settings Page.

iGB Affiliate december/january 2009/10

b. Create a name for your filter such as ‘Exclude Company Traffic’. c. From the filter type drop down list, choose ‘Exclude all Traffic’ from an IP Address. d. Put in your IP address, but make sure to put in a \ (backslash) before each period i. For example: if your IP is: 65.23.214.109, then it would be :65\.23\.214\.109 *Helpful Tip: If you don’t know how to get your IP address, the easiest way is to go to: www.whatismyip.com 2. Set up Goals. A Goal, in terms of Google Analytics, is a measurable action performed by your website visitor. This may be having a visitor opt in to your newsletter, complete a contact form, download a sales document, or whatever it is that you have set as business objectives for your website. Usually the visitor action that’s associated with a Goal involves multiple steps. Together these steps make up the Goal Funnel. Here’s how to set up a Goal and Funnel: a. Define your Goal Funnel, by identifying what steps a visitor must go through to complete the desired action (Goal), and note down the URLs for each page in the sequence. (If the sequence only includes one step [the Goal] then you don’t need to define a funnel). This might look like this: i. Start-registration.html ii. Payment-preferences.html iii. Thank-you.html 3. Tracking Sub-domains. If you have a blog, a forum or a press room that is a subdomain of your main website, it’s a good idea to set up different goals for these areas too. Here’s how to set up tracking for your sub-domains. a. Add a line of code to your analytics JavaScript, for example: pageTracker._ setDomainName (“.domain.com”); b. Create a new profile with an Advanced Filter so you can separate your metrics. 4. Set up Tracking on Your Marketing Campaigns. If you’re investing in marketing campaigns like press releases, then you need to know what kind of traffic is being generated to your website to determine your ROI. For this you need to set up various dimensions, and Google has a convenient Campaign URL Builder Tool where all you have to do is fill in the appropriate fields and your tracking URL is created with the click of a button. These fields are:

a. Your source b. Your medium c. Your campaign Once you’ve done this you can see the tracking reports for your campaign in your analytics under Traffic Sources -> Campaigns

Bounce Rate Google Analytics provides indicators to suggest what is working (and what’s not working) for a site. To complement these analytics, affiliates should also look at their bounce rate. Google Analytics describes bounce rate as the percentage of single-page visits, or visits in which the person left your site from the landing page. Usually, when a bounce rate is high, the conclusion is that the information/ service is not responding to a visitor’s expectation, and (s)he is abandoning the site. In the case of an affiliate website, having a high bounce rate might be a good sign, indicating that you’re successfully meeting your end goal by sending visitors to your merchant’s site. Even when a visitor leaves your website to go to your merchant’s site it still counts towards your bounce rate, so keep this in mind. When looking at your bounce rate, it’s important to also look at clicks. A high bounce rate and low clicks could indicate the page is not converting. In this case, you may want to evaluate your keywords and their relevancy, or your landing page. If a user is clicking on a creative, but not expecting the kind of landing page you are presenting, they may well find it irrelevant, and leave. Your affiliate marketing software should also help you with evaluating your keywords. In the Income Access marketing software, you can use the Affiliate Custom ID (ACID) tool to track how well certain keywords convert. If you have a high bounce rate and high clicks, it’s a good indicator that the page is converting. You may still want to experiment with the page to see if you can enhance this further, and eventually, mimic the success of this page on other pages that are not converting. If you have a low bounce rate and high clicks, this may still mean the page is converting, but that your visitor may be looking at other pages before leaving your site. If this is not the behaviour you want, you might consider removing these links from your pages to minimize user distraction.

Keep in mind, Google Analytics provides indicators only, and you should be comparing this information with data from your affiliate program. Look at creative metrics such as clicks and sign-ups, as well as financial data.

incorporating Google analytics into Your Marketing Strategy Google Analytics is definitely part of our marketing strategy at Income Access, and we also now have a team that is fully accredited in Google Analytics. We’re using these same tracking tools, along with our recent Google AdWords certification, to

help clients in starting up PPC campaigns and web analytics, as well as growing a company’s business through Google and other search marketing opportunities. Today, analytics have become a musthave for any website. In these economic times, businesses need tools that will help them determine what marketing tactics are providing the best return on their investment, and which ones need to be left by the wayside. The online market is strong and growing exponentially, so online marketers must ensure they are buying the right keywords, targeting the best markets and engaging and converting more

customers – and Google Analytics is great tool to help you do just that. about the Income access agency For the past seven years, Income access has built up a reputation as a niche igaming affiliate marketing agency, working with both merchants and affiliates to ensure quality campaigns and results. Income access works with partners to drive quality traffic to a site in order to increase the number of targeted visitors with an objective to create long term and sustainable quality in its referrals from natural search results.

enterIng new Poker Markets, wIthout eatIng your FIngers oFF! By Erica anderson and Louis deering. thESE daYS, it seems that poker tournaments on TV are becoming as ubiquitous as hot dog stands in New York. Everywhere you look, whether it is online, in print media or on television, you’re sure to hear something about poker on any given day. Poker has become so popular over the last few years that you’ll find tournaments almost everywhere. From the Friday night tournament in a suburban garage to iPhone apps for poker players — not being able to find a way to play poker is a thing of the past. Even Facebook has an application that allows its users to play for free. The market is so saturated with advertisers that attracting new acquisitions seems a daunting task, to say the least. So, how do affiliates and operators deal with the total saturation of the market and attract new players? One key strategy is to go after new customers in emerging markets.

Emerging Markets In the last few years, the popularity of poker has increased dramatically in Scandinavian and Eastern European countries, yet those markets are, as yet, relatively untouched. Affiliates who wish to move ahead of their competitors will find that turning their attention to these emerging markets and catering directly to the different languages and cultures can be very profitable. It is only recently that these markets have begun to be targeted directly by major poker houses, who have added offline marketing as a supplement to their online campaigns. However, there are many new poker players whose business is up for grabs and the popularity of the game is increasing with each passing day. In fact, a new awards ceremony called The Scandinavian Poker

Awards, sponsored by PokerStars.com, has drawn local media attention and thousands of online voters.

Entering the Market As with any other market, including language that embraces the target audience, rather than alienates it, is always the best strategy. Work with locals to ensure that you’re using correct phraseology and that you’re not making any local faux pas. A great example of advertising gone wrong in a new market was the Chinese version of the Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan, “Finger lickin’ good”, which was translated as “Eat your fingers off”. Obviously, poor translations can lead to serious misrepresentation, so make sure to pay great attention to this point. As with the English market, including search engine rich content with commonly used search terms will help to explore further opportunities once you’ve established yourself in the marketplace. Also, take full advantage of the communities and any rakeback sites that may be available.

exposure increases in that area and presents the opportunity for new acquisitions for anyone ready to meet the demand. With much of the groundwork already in place, now is a great time to start targeting these new markets and expanding your revenue possibilities. About Income Access: Poker Affiliate Management Income Access is a solutions company that works with over 80 of the industry’s leading brands. Income Access is a marketing solutions provider that has (1) award-winning affiliate software, (2) an affiliate network with over 18,000 members, (3) affiliate management, (4) search engine marketing services, (5) online marketing development and (6) an SEM Agency. Income Access works with the most trusted names in online poker, including Ladbrokes, Poker Heaven, Devilfish, Centrebet and Poker Strategy.

the Groundwork is already done Part of the reason for the recent interest in poker in these new areas is due to the amount of money being invested in tournament promotion in bricks and mortar rooms. In fact, the World Series of Poker (WSOP) has expanded to include a European version, with the inaugural main event being won by Danish player, Annette Obrestad. Indeed, fellow Dane, Peter Eastgate won the US WSOP the following year. Each time a local wins a tournament

iGB Affiliate decmeber/january 2009/10

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CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS OVERVIEW NOT EVERYONE HAS the time needed to

Joomla

put together a comprehensive website ﬁlled with visitor-luring content, or the coding skills necessary to bring anything more than a small personal site to fruition. Not everyone has the inclination to learn, or the budget required to pay a professional to do it for them. Even if you do prefer to roll your own code, maintaining all but the smallest of websites can be a drain on your time and energy. This is where Content Management Systems (CMSs) come into play. A CMS will help you to quickly and easily publish and manage content to the web, allowing you to build and maintain contentrich and professional websites without having to write any code at all (unless you want to). There are many different CMS systems available; let’s take a look at some of the biggest, best and most popular.

In terms of sheer numbers, Joomla comes out on top as the most popular CMS available; more people trust Joomla with their content than any other CMS. Joomla provides a broad range of out-of-the-box functionality and is highly extensible. Highly extensible may be an understatement; there are currently over 3,500 usercreated extensions that add a wide range of functionality to your site including everything from access-control and contentrestriction extensions to video players and galleries. It’s been around for slightly longer than Drupal although it used to be part of a CMS called Mambo and it didn’t split away into today’s Joomla until 2005. It is currently on version 1.5.14 so it’s also quite a mature and stable solution. It can be used to create a wide range of different types of website including large corporate portals or intranets, e-commerce and business oriented stores or community based sites. Like Drupal, it’s big and powerful, but it may involve a steep learning curve for new users and any clients that you hand it over to may have difﬁculty with it. It can also be tricky to use a completely customized theme and some see it as too much of a one-sizeﬁts-all package. For big projects that you continue to manage yourself, however, you could do worse than join the masses and go with Joomla.

Drupal Drupal is an open-source CMS that has been around since 2001, an eon in web terms. It’s been updated and extended many times since then and is currently on version 6.14 so it’s very refined and is packed with features. It’s an open-source CMS released under the GPL so it’s 100% free and is constantly improved and built upon by thousands of developers around the world. Drupal was picked as the winner of the Packt 2008 Open Source CMS Award. Straight out of the box, Drupal allows us to create all manner of different web sites including blogs, corporate sites, communitydriven sites, forums, e-commerce stores and more. Drupal runs on many common systems including Apache and IIS so you’re not locked into a single platform. It is also database independent, running on either MySQL or PostgreSQL. You can even add other SQL servers by writing your own backend if you prefer. Another great feature is that it has its own version control system built in so you can easily analyze all changes made to the site to determine who made the changes and what the changes were, and can roll back to previous revisions if necessary. It also ships with a comprehensive user management facility which lets you define different roles for groups of users, which is much easier than having to define each user’s level of access independently. Overall, Drupal brings a lot to the table, it’s big and it’s powerful. But as with anything of this scope it can be a little complex too. It’s great for hardcore development, but new or inexperienced users may struggle with it at first.

iGB Affiliate DECEMBER/JANUARY 2009/10

Magento Magento differs from Drupal and Joomla in that it is targeted specifically at the e-commerce market. It’s only been around since early 2007 and is, therefore, a relative new-comer to the CMS field but Magentobased stores have already handled over $25 billion dollars in transactions and are used by over 33,000 merchants world-wide. It also differs in the fact that to use the full Magento package you need to purchase a commercial license; these don’t come cheap and the least you can expect to pay is in the region of £5,500 ($8,900) per year. There is a free ‘community’ version as well, although this offers much less functionality out of the box than the licensed one. This CMS is really for the serious professional that seeks a return on investment. However, the enterprise edition does come with e-commerce-specific features not seen in the core packages of other CMSs, including out of the box support for things like gift-certificates, private sales events and a rich merchandizing suite. It also ships with a BridgeConnect module that allows

it to connect with common accounting and enterprise resource planning applications. You also get SLA agreed technical support. Like Drupal and Joomla, there are a wide range of extensions that can be used to attach additional functionality to your store; like the core Magento package itself, these come in both free and paid for variants.

Modx Modx is a popular CMS choice for freelance developers because it makes it easy and quick to create new sites and easy to hand over to clients who can manage the resulting sites themselves. Modx is billed as being AJAX and SEO friendly meaning that you can add cool Web 2.0 features with ease and maintain searchengine friendly URLs from the outset. The project was started in 2004 and version 1.0.1 has just been released in October of this year. This CMS makes it easy to create websites compliant in the latest HTML and CSS web standards and also provides strong JavaScript support without forcing you to use a particular JavaScript library. It promotes semantic and clean code, for example, the drop-down menus that you can add to sites effortlessly are built from simple list elements and links – something every purist web-developer will appreciate. Modx is geared towards small to medium sites that require easy and quick setup and easy maintenance, but that’s not to say that it can’t be used for other types of site when necessary.

Summary There are many more CMSs out there than we’ve been able to look at in this article, so if none of these look appealing, there is sure to be something out there for you (and remember that different CMSs will be particularly suitable for different projects so even if you choose one today, that may change under different circumstances). There is no ‘best’ CMS available, only what’s best for a single project.

DAN WELLMAN is a freelance writer and IT professional that lives and works in a thriving city on the south coast of England. He insists that he has other interests besides computers, and vows one day to prove this somehow.

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LIFE AFTER VINCE Can affiliates compete for big Hollywood keywords? Paul Reilly, Head of Search at Stickyeyes attempts to decode ‘Vince’ and address its associated issues.

THERE’S STILL SOME ongoing discussion about Vince. What really happened? Was it algorithmic or manual and more to the point, is it still possible for a thin affiliate to compete for big keywords? Before I get into my personal view of what happened on June 26 (AKA Vince), I can confirm that affiliates can still successfully compete for big keywords like ‘Casino’ and ‘Online Casino’.

Figure 1

So what exactly is ‘Vince’? ‘Vince’ – an apparent additional weighting towards larger brands which only impacted a few generic keywords. The impact in the UK began some time after ofﬁce hours on Friday June 26, 2009.

Google’s Matt Cutts Delivers the Party Line Taking what Google’s Matt Cutts disclosed when asked the question, “Can you verify that Google is putting more weight on brands?” his response included three key points: “I wouldn’t call this an update, but there has been a change... it affects a relatively small number of queries... most people haven’t even noticed it.” This ofﬁcial response raises three questions:

Figure 2

Why does Matt not want to call this an update? ● Why would this ‘change’ only affect a relatively small number of queries? ● How could this largely go unnoticed? ●

Let’s review the visible symptoms of the change, which Matt Cutts insists is not an update, starting with how the adjustment impacted the ‘Poker’ SERP.

iGB Affiliate DECEMBER/JANUARY 2009/10

WEBMASTER WORLD

Figure 3

Poker SERPs see a big shake up The chart above (ﬁgure 1) shows the moving and shaking around the time of the Poker ranking adjustments.

PKR.com moves into first place sometime before 20:31 on Saturday June 27. ● Partypoker.com enjoys a few hours in the number one spot as the Party brand temporarily displaces gaming giants 888.com and their new found natural search threat PKR.com. ● Two days following the initiation of the ranking adjustment, 888.com finds itself on the ropes with PKR. com posing a significant threat to 888. com’s dominance in Google.co.uk and by Wednesday July 30, PKR.com is the new leader of the pack. ● Wikipedia’s poker listing is repeatedly displaced, forcing the encyclopaedic reference standard down below the fold.

26, adjustments to the ‘Betting’ SERP (ﬁgure 2) began two days later on June 28. ●

●

Summary of Observations We can see that the adjustment to this SERP began in the early hours of Friday June 26 and continued through to Monday June 29. Online brand equity appears to be playing a role however, the parameters behind the adjustment remain diverse. We’ll look at the analysis from our data set tomorrow. For now, note that by contrast, the ‘Online Poker’ SERP was not impacted outside of normal ﬂux.

Betting SERPs Next we’ll look at the ‘Betting’ SERPs for any similarities or key differences. While the Poker example previously shows the adjustment to begin on the June

iGB Affiliate DECEMBER/JANUARY 2009/10

● ●

●

Betfred.com is displaced by media goliath Skybet.com sometime in the early hours of Sunday morning. Betfair.com is given a boost to third place, albeit ﬂeeting. High street bookmaker Williamhill. com displaces both Skybet.com and Betfair.com the morning of Sunday June 28. On Monday June 29, Williamhill.com and Skybet.com are both displaced by Ladbrokes.com. Bet365.com also joins the party ‘above the fold’ on Monday June 29, settling in fourth place behind the two major UK high street brands and a global media giant.

Summary of Observations While the impact occurs slightly later than the ‘poker’ example, we see a similar pattern of displacement, apparently by brand weight, leaving William Hill and Ladbrokes to battle for dominance. Note: by contrast, the ‘Online Betting’ SERP remained unchanged. What’s unusual about this is that the adjustment, which Matt insists is not an update, is clearly staggered with no apparent consistency. Why would this ‘change’ only affect a relatively small number of queries?

One Month Later... Something happened to changed everything. Between 03:40am on Monday July 27 and 11:40am on Tuesday July 28, something apparently impossible happened. Google claims that all its rankings are calculated algorithmically and while there

have been claims by SEOs that Google occasionally adjust SERPs manually, Google has constantly denied these claims. The graph below shows Vodaphone.co.uk appearing from nowhere in position three, climbing as high as number two during the night. Vodaphone.co.uk is a misspelling of Vodafone.co.uk, with no algorithmic right to be anywhere near the top 500, certainly not position number two for a query like ‘Mobile Phones’. This was spotted on the morning of Monday July 28 by a member of our International Account Management team. We had been monitoring this update for a whole month and by now, nothing would surprise us; yet, this made no sense (see ﬁgure 3). Our SEO team agreed that this was a ranking impossibility and made no sense whatsoever. Sure enough, it was replaced by the correct site (online.vodafone.co.uk) before 12 noon. Suddenly Matt’s comments made sense... perhaps this wasn’t an update; given that this impacted such a small number of queries, it would be feasible for this entire update to be handled manually.

The Million Dollar Question Q: If the rankings were manually adjusted, what’s the way forward for SEO? A: While some sites appear to have been given a ranking boost we know that they are not held in absolute position, the boost appears to be relative to the previous position, meaning that a manually boosted site can be displaced by solid SEO activity.1 1 For examples of this (subject to NDA), please email me at paul.reilly@stickyeyes. com.

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nder money? Regular columnist and fou …are they giving you a run for the be ue, explores why online games may of GamesandCasino.com, Dominiq es. impacting online gambling revenu

LATELY, I HAVE EXPLORED the world of Facebook games and I have come to the conclusion that they seriously affect the profitability of the online gambling industry. You don’t believe so? Look at the number of players these companies have attracted at the time of writing (see figure 1). But it’s all free, there is no money in it, you say. Not so! Zynga will make a minimum of $100 million in 2009. Some reports say it’s closer to $200 Million. Playfish expects revenues to hit $75 million this year. This industry draws millions of people playing for free – so where do these revenues come from? While anyone can play for free forever, paying for virtual items enhances the game and allows more enjoyment. Many, many people do just that. Even more people use the ‘free’ offers they are presented with. If they fill out a survey or rent a movie etc., hundreds or thousands in virtual currency are added to their game account. Recently there was a big scandal about scam offers being included, but while companies for the most part scrambled to identify and remove

iGB Affiliate DECEMBER/JANUARY 2009/10

these, players paid no heed at all. So what makes these games so attractive, addictive and proﬁtable? I am sure, initially, most start playing because it’s free, and it’s right there in their Facebook account. And their friends and relatives play. Eventually most of them pay to improve their game experience. Whether they pay directly or through the offers, they do end up paying one way or another. Here are some game components that jump out at me:

1. The Money Most games have ‘coins’ that you can earn by playing or buy with real money, and ‘bucks’ you can only buy with real money. At Forbes, I read that most players start out with $5.00. That buys you enough virtual money to make the game quite a bit more enjoyable. Hmm, so let’s try a twenty. That buys a huge amount of virtual money. I can buy almost everything offered for coins or bucks. Well, I bought coins, but now the things I want cost bucks. So I add $20 worth of these. Now I am all set. I can exploit all facets of

the game – except now some new items have been added, and you can only get them with bucks. So I spend another $20... and so it goes. Players will spend $100 to $500 on each game they play over time. Some pay thousands. It adds up.

2. The Allure The games become addictive because they are based on various character traits that most people share. Some games are based on power and prowess – how many ‘Maﬁosis’ can I ice? How many towns can I conquer or destroy? How many vampires can I rule? Of course, this works better if I have lots of energy or weapons, all of which can be bought with real money. Others are based on our creativity – for instance, I can’t draw a straight line and will never be an artist, but I can create a thing of beauty in Farm Town (at least in my eyes). Most of them allow you to customize. My Restaurant has the colours I like, the furniture I like and the food I prefer. Games like YoVille and Pet Society are all about shopping and decorating your place. These

Figure 1 1. Zynga 2. Playfish

183,840,076 59,903,917

3. RockYou!

40,630,240

4. Causes

35,222,871

5. Slide, Inc.

26,873,982

6. Facebook

26,595,891

7. CrowdStar

26,266,147

8. 6 waves

23,928,671

9. FamilyLink. com

20,898,851

10. Slashkey

18,430,454

11. eitandesign

15,962,212

12. MindJolt

14,827,071

13. Playdom

14,331,597

14. Quiz Monster

14,007,868

15. iLike, inc

13,722,750

games are about our nesting instinct and also self expression. All of them are based on achievement and wealth... move to the next step and buy fancier things, a house, a mansion, a ﬂeet of fancy cars.

“When you play these games, you feel that everything you do is about you. Online gambling by comparison is cold – you are just another player.”

your game, you will end up with bigger and better rewards.

Why Should We Care? So what do you think; are these games cutting into our revenues? You betcha! I invited a friend of mine to play Farm Town, and now she is busy planting corn and building waterfalls instead of playing slots, her former all-time favourite activity. So maybe our industry will have to change and adapt to the times. But how? Well, here are some thoughts:

1. Customization 3. Promotion Through Social Interaction So, spending money will get you ahead faster and obtain items not available if you don’t pay. What else gets you ahead is bringing your friends into the game. Every person you bring in will offer you continued ‘virtual revenues’ as you can visit their house, farm, restaurant, assist in ﬁghts or whatever and earn coins while there. You can also send each other virtual gifts that can be used in the game, leave notes for each other in the game and interact in various ways. You want all your friends there to help you along and to socialize.

4. Loyalty You also need to earn ‘experience points’ so you can ‘level up’. Every time you level up something new unlocks. The more you play, the more experience points you get. But that’s not all. If you don’t play regularly, awful things can happen. Your ﬁsh and crops can die, your friend who works at your restaurant can be found comatose on the ﬂoor for lack of food and sleep. You have to build this game into your daily routine or you will not be happy when you return. If, on the other hand, you are a perfect player and show up daily to tend

When you play these games, you feel that everything you do is about you as individual. It’s personal. Online gambling by comparison is cold and you are just another player. The games you can play look the same for everyone, the lobby is whatever a designer thought inviting, there is no way to make a personal imprint. So maybe online casinos can become warmer, more personal places. Maybe I hate blue and black and would like to change my lobby to purple and pink. Maybe I would like to customize the games shown to me ﬁrst instead of being handed ‘favourites’ determined by frequency of playing. Maybe I want to change my favourites every time a new game catches my fancy. Maybe I want a way to store my winning screen shots. I am sure a good developer can come up with lots of ideas to create a more personalized player experience. No big new invention here; Yahoo! has offered customization of landing pages for years.

2. Loyalty Maybe I would come to the casino and play more often if my ‘experience’ counted for something I could consciously work towards. Reward points are a step in the right

direction, but does the player go and look how many are racked up after each session? Does (s)he get excited in anticipation of reaching the next level? I don’t think so. Simple things like a frequent popup telling the player they now have reached level ‘xxx’ and can trade in their points for ‘yyy’ or play ‘zzz’ and collect an even higher reward. Build anticipation, and work on getting the player emotionally invested! Give out some real prizes perhaps, instead of bonuses with a ton of incomprehensible T&Cs attached. A coffee mug with your logo – these things are inexpensive and help promote you more. Give choices of rewards. Involve your player!

3. Social Aspects Maybe I want to send my friend $50 to play with. Maybe I could leave them a note bragging about a super hit on the slots, complete with screenshot. Or any note they will see when they login. Maybe we could form a play group and every time any of us reached another goal point, we could all get a bonus. Let your imagination go to work here... So I guess what I have taken away from exploring Facebook and MySpace games is the realization that the Internet is a cold, impersonal place for most people, and customization, a level of anticipation and interaction with friends, makes it a much warmer and more fun place to be. And that a lot of people have that need. If we don’t ﬁll it and someone else does, we will lose a chunk of our customer base. The Internet never stops evolving, did you really think an online casino could be created once and would live on forever in that format? Think again. Adding new games is of course necessary and successful, but the trend to social interaction and personalization cannot be ignored. Sooner better than later, the concept of online casinos has to fall in step with the times or lose appeal for novice players.

iGB Affiliate DECEMBER/JANUARY 2009/10

webmaster world

Reports predict a bright future for the online gaming industry; with a weakened economic climate hopefully behind us, affiliates now face new emerging trends. With 2009 quickly coming to a close, we look back at the events that have helped shape affiliate marketing this year, and look forward to future trends that will affect affiliates in 2010. This year, we saw a weak economy bring closure to many companies and influence many others to consolidate their efforts. The reopening of PPC in iGaming made a significant impact to the industry, while key markets, like the US, considered allowing online gambling back into the mix. In 2010, we predict the industry will continue to gain momentum, with still more operators entering the market space. Reports by Ernst & Young predict a bright future for the online gambling industry, and we feel confident that iGaming affiliates will continue to prosper. In the New Year, we see new issues affecting affiliates in the industry. In this column, we look at affiliate program Terms and Conditions, brand bidding and

marketing through social media and video â&#x20AC;&#x201C; all of which continue to garner increased attention from industry stakeholders.

Program terms and Conditions In a predominantly unregulated industry, Terms and Conditions are the guidelines that govern affiliate programs. They are the rules and regulations by which affiliates and affiliate programs form partnerships, and are terms to which they are required to adhere. Historically, affiliate programs typically rewarded affiliates for the lifetime value of the customers they referred. Affiliates were regarded as playing a major role in the online acquisition and retention channels and until recently, this reward system was common practice. More recently however, a new trend of programs implementing revenue share limits to their terms has sparked heavy debates, with affiliates feeling

threatened for the long-term value of their partnerships. Similarly, retroactive changes to affiliate terms have also sparked wide-spread condemnation from affiliates. Terms that state an affiliate must refer a new player within a specified timeframe or face a pay cut for past referrals or risk having their account closed have been deemed unfair. Moving forward into 2010, affiliates will need to become even more aware of Terms and Conditions clauses. Where once affiliates opted into programs based on reputation and compensation structures, Terms and Conditions will now play a major role in the decision-making process for whether or not an affiliate chooses to partner with a program.

Brand Bidding Brand bidding is when an affiliate targets specific keywords associated with a brand, as

iGB Affiliate december/january 2009/10

webmaster world

opposed to a generic word, and sends visitors to a landing page that sells that product/ service. Usually when brand bidding, an affiliate is bidding on a trademarked name and is often, therefore, ‘competing’ directly with the operator. There are definite pros and cons to brand bidding; nonetheless, there is a strong division in opinion among those who allow affiliates to bid on their brand and those who disallow affiliates. Programs which feel positively about allowing affiliates to bid on their brand are of the opinion that many searches are executed by brand identity, and the more their brand is seen in the search engines, the better it is for them. Conversely, other programs feel that allowing brand bidding is essentially giving up control on their brand identity as they cannot manage where and how their brand is viewed, and also risk misuse by affiliates. A compromise can be found by some programs outlining restrictions on specific keywords, spelling of their trademark name and/or search engines, so as not to be in direct competition and drive up costs. Moving forward into 2010, with search

“Where once affiliates opted into programs based on reputation and compensation structures, Terms and Conditions will now play a major role in that decisionmaking process.” engines becoming more favourable to gaming-related ads, PPC will continue to be an important part of the marketing mix with affiliates, thus understanding the different restrictions will become key. The consequences for affiliates who do not look into these details can be quite dire, including the loss of commissions, or worse yet, being kicked out of a program completely.

Web 2.0, Social Media and Video With the advent of Web 2.0 and social media marketing, it has become noticeably easier to communicate and interact more fluidly. Affiliates are building and using communities to get their message out, gather ‘fan’ bases or followers and to interact more frequently with their customers and affiliate partners. The popularity of blogging and social networking saw Google and Microsoft

recently announce that social media updates will now be part of Google and Bing search results, making social media marketing all the more important to marketing in general, and specifically to search engine marketing. Adding Facebook and Twitter updates in the search engines will also no doubt change the way affiliates value these venues. The industry has essentially moved from a non-interactive format of websites, where users are limited to the passive viewing of information that is provided to them, to an interactive venue that allows for feedback and information sharing. Video has also become a mainstream advertising tool, with affiliates requesting video samples of games or advertisement clips that they can incorporate into their site. Recent statistics on video usage from comScore indicate that in the US, 21.4 billion videos were watched in the month of July alone, up 88% from a year ago. We predict 2010 will bring an even greater emphasis on videos, with affiliates and affiliate programs developing their own online videos in order to have: (1) better control for communicating their brand, (2) video SEO since Google introduced Universal Search which essentially includes images and videos in search results and (3) better analytics, from seeing not only how many times their video has been watched, but how users interact with their video.

Affiliates in 2010 The playing field is changing, so staying abreast of new inventions and shifts to marketing strategies, as well as the terms that govern affiliate relationships, will be paramount. Thus, while affiliates maintain certain practices such as being budget conscious and carefully measuring their ROI on campaigns, 2009 has taught us all that the impact of a weakened global economic climate can have strong implications on previously stable partnerships. Being savvy, flexible and demanding more to drive success will ensure the future of online gaming remains bright as we prepare to enter 2010.

Nicky Senyard is CEO of Income Access, overseeing their independent iGaming affiliate network, market-leading affiliate software and expert affiliate management services.

iGB Affiliate december/january 2009/10

TES AFFILIA E GO FRE

• Strategic Conference Programme: Hear insights from the leading experts in the industry, our panels and presentations will keep you informed about current industry trends and market updates. • Exhibition: With an expected 80+ exhibitors this will be the biggest iGaming exhibition, offering more exhibitors for you to meet, engage with and maximise your business.

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• Networking: The relaxed atmosphere of our events encourages the open exchange of ideas and experiences. Return to the office armed with increased understanding and top industry tips. • ASOP: The Affiliate Series of Poker is now open for all attendees to compete. Play with the chance to win big, big prizes. • Party! Clinch your daily deals with an evening drink or two at one of our many exclusive networking parties. ‘As always, the event was great. Good meetings, networking and socialising, increased commission deals and interesting concepts to develop for the future. Looking forward to next one already’ (AAC attendee 2009)

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webmaster world

2010, together with much else besides, heralds the dawn of a new decade, and one which promises much for the gaming industry. John Wright, Marketing Director at Rockbet and iGB Affiliate columnist, gives us his outlook on the year ahead and why preparation is everything. Welcome to 2010. Are you ready for some changes in the gaming industry and have you made any plans or strategies? If you are not sure what is in store for the next year you might miss out on some opportunities that are presenting themselves now. I will attempt to give my perspectives and outlook for 2010 based on my research, discussions with affiliates and competitors, and my eight years in the industry.

Computer Users, Habits and Technologies A few years ago, I bought a MacBook just so I could see what the hype was about and to get inside the heads of some of my future players. Sure enough I have made the switch to Mac and in the last few years Mac has exploded. Keep in mind that Windows is still the number one operating system but things are changing very fast; changes you absolutely need to stay on top of. I can’t really say that these are truly my predictions because they’re based on the

iGB Affiliate December/January 2009/10

predictions and estimates of others, but it’s time to know your players. Netbook sales will dominate in the next two years and that means Google’s Android operating system is going to become a big player in the operating system market. Ubuntu (Linux) users will steadily climb, along with more Mac converts meaning more competition. Netbooks typically use fewer resources than regular laptops and desktops so this includes graphics. The screens are smaller and while I have seen designers discuss how having a larger page is acceptable since desktop monitors have gone from 15” to 19” very quickly, your netbook users are looking for something different, smaller, compact and, of course, browser based. If you could somehow geotarget if the user is on a netbook, perhaps you want a simplified page that doesn’t use any flash and replace download links with instant play links. Another option would be to make landing pages for users on the Safari browser.

Afﬁliate Strategies and Planning Networking Of all the affiliates I talk to and meet it is a rarity if any of them do any affiliate to affiliate networking. If any affiliate wants to move forward in 2010 I highly recommend they find some affiliates they can trust and be willing to exchange information. It seems that most affiliates feel scared about giving away their secrets or sharing their mistakes and failures. As an affiliate manager, I end up watching a lot of affiliates re-invent the wheel. Some important and beneficial things you can share are:

how much money you make from each program ● which ones perform best ● your list of things that have failed and succeeded ● last but not least, try to find a mutual benefit you can provide each other ●

Here is an example: an American affiliate partnering with a European affiliate. By and large, European affiliates know a few languages and understand the cultural and marketing differences between countries. Americans know their market the best, and it’s a large market. This presents a great opportunity to share some skills and knowledge. If American affiliates want to diversify and get a piece of the EU markets it would be best to partner with someone who lives and operates there. The potential for resource exchanges is worth it, whether you need US English content writers, mods for any language or region and, of course, translation work. The potential for networking doesn’t stop here; you could trade casino knowledge for poker knowledge or even network with someone from outside the gaming industry (I personally learn a lot from the latter).

Implement geo-targeting and browser tracking You have to ensure you are maximizing your own conversions and traffic. The applications and uses will expand as programmers and companies write more code, landing pages and useful applications. Set up landing pages for your mobile traffic and capitalize on other languages. Target browser programs like Safari and mobile devices and track and target their browser language settings.

gaming site stays in business or not. This is especially true for new casinos where you’re unsure of whether they are backed by money, experience, or both. Sometimes it’s a gamble to take revenue share especially if it is a new software type or a new casino group. For the gaming programs that have the highest player values, you should stick to revenue share. If you are not so confident about the player values then switch your new players to a CPA plan that will give you a better value.

Search engines Where do I start? Search engines will evolve and hopefully for the better. Google’s caffeine update seems to have tossed the results for everyone. I believe part of this reason is that Google was tired of giving higher rankings to people who knew the SEO game well. These people would buy domains that look like www.keyword1-keyword2-keyword3.com and throw up some content, follow the rules and rank well for those keywords. I think Google’s way of deterring this is going to be by giving more weight to your rankings based on the age of your site and content. Remember, content is king! Google will still own the market but as Microsoft spends more money on Bing, expect a little bit more competition. I think too many affiliates spend all their time on Google results – I think it’s time to look at how you rank on Yahoo!, Bing and to stay on top of news on search engines.

Test your programs Sign up to all the programs you promote as a player and figure out which ones have the best set up and the best emails. It also wouldn’t hurt to try to get another account to deposit with, under your tracking. Not only will you see if the tracking works but more importantly, you want to see what every gaming company is doing to acquire and retain that player. Your new depositing player hasn’t deposited in three weeks – what has your program done for that player? Doing this may be a small violation of the terms and conditions but do it discreetly and just for yourself to do some testing. This is one great method for determining which gaming company is going to give you the best ROI for your traffic and might be a better method than sending traffic and waiting for results.

CPA versus Revenue Share Always a hot topic. In theory, affiliates would make the most money on revenue share but I see some top affiliates opt for some CPA deals to mix up their revenue sources. The pros of adding some CPA deals instead of just being completely revenue share are that you are locking up the income from your players regardless of whether that

Mobile sportsbetting will pick up in the next two years and become an industry worth making note of. Casino and bingo products will appear but they would never be considered as primary income Predictions and Recommendations New sites that are focused heavily on keywords are going to have a harder time achieving fast and top rankings. I would recommend if you have 50 dormant domains, to load them with content and let them sit. At least the domains will gain value over time and age like a fine wine, plus you might make some money.

Mobile Gaming It was written that mobile gaming would eventually take over the market and be worth more than the regular online gaming industry itself. According to many

commentators, this should have happened by now, but it remains a small slice of the industry. It doesn’t mean you should ignore it – you need to try it yourself to find out why it has taken longer than expected to take off. Mobile gaming has the biggest potential for sportsbetting, next would be casino and bingo with poker being last. Sports bettors could easily place a wager on their phone with very little time invested, especially if they are at the bar watching the game or even if they are at the game itself. It’s tough to concentrate on playing slots on a mobile especially when the graphics are good but not great. Poker is even more tedious as it requires more concentration and is tougher to play even while in transit. You can’t afford to lose a connection during a game while with sports and casino products, it won’t matter. My prediction: mobile sportsbetting will pick up in the next two years and become an industry worth making note of. Casino and bingo products will appear but they would never be considered as primary income, just something to increase player values and to make use of mobile traffic. Poker is best meant to play for free if you are going to play on a mobile device. My recommendations for affiliates are to implement geo-targeting/geo-tracking on your affiliate sites and make a special mobile page for your handset visitors.

Emerging Markets It is important to understand the trends and predictions before they happen. There are plenty of articles available for you to stay on top of these trends. The trends I think are worth noting are the improvements in mobile phones and services, the explosion of netbooks and some trends on Internet usage. The two areas set for a large increase in Internet connectivity and usage are South America and Asia. Netbooks, I have mentioned many times, will help regions like South America, Africa and Asia become more connected. There is room for increased usage in Europe while North America is saturated in comparison. Countries with room for improvement are Spain, Italy and Russia. On average, Eastern Europe is less connected than Western Europe but netbooks will help change things for everyone. Netbooks will explode in popularity around the world due to the low costs. Developed countries will buy them because they are cheap but very convenient for traveling or short trips. I think netbooks will also enable the baby boomers to get more connected online than they ever have been. In developing countries, these devices will flourish because they are more affordable

iGB Affiliate December/January 2009/10

webmaster world

than any other computer before it. This is why I think markets like China and Brazil are going to open up fast.

Legal Perspectives IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer) so take what I have to say with a grain of salt and maybe hire a lawyer if you need one. I don’t predict too much activity on the legal front especially with the laws in the US. I do see the market opening up in the near future but not in 2010. The UIGEA was passed in 2006 and over three years later, many aspects of those laws haven’t been implemented. If this law is going to be overturned I think it will take as much time again. I expect 2010 to continue without problems but always expect the unexpected. I am hearing a lot of companies that had left the US market are making their plans to return, so that when the US market does open up, they will be fully ready with their campaigns. Those gaming companies are making plans… are you?

Recession and the Economy As the word ‘recession’ was being unnecessarily blasted in the media for over a year, the discussion came about that iGaming was immune from any dent in the economy. Well, I was hoping that was true but I think all of us should be a bit realistic. If unemployment rates rise by five percent in the US, that’s a lot of money that people don’t have to spend on gambling. I think the interpretation at the start should have been that iGaming won’t crash but will do better than most industries.

Predictions It will take two to three years before the world markets pick up again but by the time that happens, people’s habits will have changed. Save your money when you can but by no means cut back on everything. There are more opportunities for hiring new employees, real estate and, of course, electronics. Expect netbook sales to skyrocket in 2010. Remember, history tends to repeat itself so learn your lessons from this period, diversify your business where appropriate and always have a plan B. Waste not, want more!

people will buy in to the reality and will start playing. It might take more TV commercials and more football/soccer sponsored teams to prove it is not only legitimate but here to stay.

Expect a few more sportsbooks to come into the market and add a more competitive edge. Mobile betting on sports will grow and I predict 2010 will be the year that players will use their phones to place bets. I expect some of the World Cup 2010 campaigns to push these features on players.

2010. Just when I thought the market was fully saturated, more casinos are starting to appear. I hear Top Game is launching a raft of casinos and RivalPowered casinos are springing up quickly as well. The pros for affiliates are that you have more selection and casinos will fight more for your business. The cons are that some casinos might not survive if they are not well funded or don’t have the experience to grow and stay in business. Perhaps this is a chance to take my previous advice and try these programs on a CPA basis.

Poker

Bingo

The only trend I can spot in poker at the moment is based on the news that Bodog is creating its own poker network. If any new poker sites are going to launch they will almost have to launch it on an existing network. I think poker has the potential to grow in markets like Brazil and China.

The bingo affiliates are telling me this market is treating them very well (maybe they didn’t want me to pass that onto you). Bingo players seem to be loyal with player values being generous due to that loyalty and the use of instant games included in the bingo platforms such as scratch cards and slots. This market is definitely underrated when compared to other gaming products and another reason worth getting involved with. May you all have a prosperous year in 2010 – and a bit of luck doesn’t hurt either.

Sportsbetting

Casino The casino business is already very competitive and I initially thought this would be a great advantage for casino affiliates but there are pros and cons. There are going to be many more casinos being launched in

Industry Trends I think 2010 is still going to be a year of growth for the gaming industry but not at the same pace as before the recession hit. The overall online gaming markets still have a long way to go which is promising for everyone in the industry. There still exists a large population around the world that does not believe online gambling is real. As more of their friends play online and with increased exposure in the media, more

iGB Affiliate December/January 2009/10

John Wright is the marketing manager for Rockbet.com online casino and currently lives in Toronto, Canada. After obtaining a Bachelor of Applied Science in robotics at the University of Toronto he decided a career in gambling would be more fun and exciting. In 2002 he began playing poker, card counting and bonus hunting despite the requests from concerned friends and family members to pursue a real job. In 2003 he began creating his own affiliate sites teaching players the rules and strategies for online gaming. In 2005, he provided marketing services for 400affiliates.com and became the affiliate manager for ThisisVegas in 2007. At the start of this year John helped to launch Rockbet and is not only the marketing manager for the casino but also the casino and affiliate manager. In his spare time John enjoys travelling, reading, surfing and Muay Thai kickboxing. He can be reached at john@rockbetmarketing.com

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Double Your MoneY Sounds like an interesting concept doesn’t it? To find out more, iGB Affiliate spoke to Lorenzo Pellegrino, VP of Sales and Account Management at Moneybookers about the company’s new Joint Affiliate Program.

Essentially, your new concept allows affiliates to double their commission routes by receiving extra income on every customer that signs up to use Moneybookers… Yes, the Moneybookers Joint Affiliate Program enables affiliates to receive two payouts for one referred customer. The Moneybookers gateway is integrated on nearly every website out there. We offer one of the world’s largest eWallets, enabling more than ten million customers to make instant deposits and withdrawals and transfer money in real-time – a crucial requirement for every professional player. Additionally, we offer over 80 payment options, such as credit cards and local banking options, which are directly integrated into the operator’s site. The player automatically opens a Moneybookers eWallet account when paying with these. If a customer comes through an affiliate and signs up with an operator, the affiliate receives his normal revenue share or CPA from the operator. If this customer then goes on and uses the Moneybookers gateway or one of the 80 supported payment options, the affiliate starts earning an additional revenue share on all fees which the new Moneybookers account creates. These fees are usually five to ten percent of a players deposit volume. Does this apply to all deposits or just gaming? Moneybookers is accepted at over 50,000 online stores, including the likes of eBay. com and Skype. The revenue share for affiliates will be based on all fees generated by that eWallet, no matter whether the customer uses it to deposit money at bwin or books his holidays online. What are the affiliate benefits? First of all, the affiliates make more money per customer. Second, it’s obviously a risk diversification – the affiliate’s revenue is no longer solely dependent on one single operator, but on the overall online spending of the customer. Third, Moneybookers offers special affiliate accounts, with special conditions

iGB Affiliate december/january 2009/10

for affiliates and a dedicated affiliate service. Many affiliates are already using us to receive their payments quicker or to have an easy, secure and instant way of paying their sub-affiliates or rakeback customers. What are the affiliate network benefits? As a network, I can now offer my affiliates and operators/publishers an additional revenue stream clearly increasing acquisition and attractiveness for all participants. For affiliates and operators alike, it’s a no-brainer to use a system which eventually pays out more and takes out some of the related risk. This leads to higher volumes and obviously to more revenue. What was the inspiration behind the concept? Was it simply an incentive based idea or had you seen trends that swayed your decision? Moneybookers is one of the most established players in the industry and has the comfort of spotting trends very early due to our birds-eye-view on everything. We have seen that competition for customers is getting tougher while the margins of operators are going down. The nature of our business lies in cooperation with operators and affiliates rather than competition: we make money when they make money. Therefore, we were looking to helping our partners while strengthening our relationship with them. Moneybookers has commitment to full service – if we enter a partnership, we make it work. Moving on to payments as a whole – we’ve seen a number of entrants into the gaming side of payments processing struggle to gain a foothold – one case in particular. How hard is it to get payments services right when it comes to gaming? It sounds like a cliché, but it’s the mix that makes it: first you need a reliable banking network. To build this takes many years and we don’t see a player in the market that has put as much energy into this as Moneybookers, which is why we have the most local payment options of all payment operators. This decides your margins and conversion rates, so work diligently. Then

you need to build your relationships: you simply can’t enter an industry as mature as iGaming without having at least 20-25 very strong partners who are willing to trust you completely with their most important conversion step. And lastly, and this is what we see missing in many providers out there: play fair. Don’t ever think you can outsmart your customers by selling something you don’t have. They will find out. How has Moneybookers fared during the last twelve months, where it concerns gaming specifically, but also in a wider capacity? I can’t give you exact numbers, but while some competitors had to take losses we are still seeing good double-digit growth in our revenues and will have record-results. Just to give you an example: we were integrated this year with GalaCoral, Eurosport, SEGA and eBay.com. We have doubled our numbers in deposits into the eWallet and within nine months raised the numbers of employees from 246 to 349. Has the recession affected people’s trust of online depositing methods? Are they more sceptical than ever? Hopefully; they should be! The damage dealt by online fraud goes into billions of dollars this year. This negative development is another case for an eWallet like Moneybookers which ensures absolute cost control and supreme protection against data theft. Finally, as we come out of recession (and hopefully not directly into another one), can affiliates feel safe that deals of this nature are going to appeal to their customers? Definitely. There are few real win-win situations out there. But consider it: the customer starts using a supreme product, the affiliate gets more revenue, the operator has a more attractive affiliate program and we strengthen our relationships. The feedback from all sides of the industry has been amazing so far and if you are not integrated with this program send me an email: lorenzo.pellegrino@moneybookers. com.

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