betonliamcasey

Tag: Online marketing

  • Marketing as Science or Art. Which are you?

    Saw this today. Thought it was a good summary of the paradigm shift to data-driven marketing VS the ever-present need for engaging with customers on an emotional level.

    If you don’t have the right blend of both – you need to get working on it fast…

    Marketing-Scientists-vs-Marketing-Artists

  • Content creation in 2014: what’s next?

    Content creation in 2014: what’s next?

  • Google Correlate: Your own trend data is your friend?

    Quick post this – I just came across this last night, so I thought I’d put down some thoughts.

    Google’s newest lab rat, is Google Correlate and it complements Google Trends in the sense that it allows you to upload your own data series and look for corresponding data trends.

    Google’s mission statement for this is: “Google Correlate finds search patterns which correspond with real-world trends.”

    What’s really interesting is that it works like Google Trends in reverse. With Google Trends, you type in a query and get back a series of its frequency over time. But what Google Correlate allows is to enter a data series (the target) and get back queries whose frequency follows a similar pattern.

    What does this mean in real world terms?

    My understanding of this, is that it allows you to upload a series of data, let’s say for example how may people visited your website (and you know that it’s during say a slower period of the year), and they came to your site looking for “widgets”.

    You could take the search term “widgets” and the data series (of visits), upload the info to Google Correlate – and it would spit out other related data streams that follow the same series. This means that (in search terms) you could possibly target online categories that follow a similar online cycle – and further optimise (or spread) your search budget.

    It effectively cuts out all the complicated data analysis required to try and find similar search patterns, but based on your own data. This is where it differs from Google Trends in that all the data is coming from Google in Google Trends – but with Google Correlate you can upload your own data to be queried against what’s already stored by Google. (It’s pretty chunky in that it goes back to 2003, too).

    The maths behind the algorithm etc is pretty complicated – the number wizards out there can check it out here.

    There’s a whitepaper on it here – and the Google FAQ’s are here.

    I haven’t played around with it enough to see of it’s much more than a number-crunching exercise in terms of Google showcasing their ability to generate relevant results, based on your data – but I’m guessing that if it proves to work that it’ll (no surprise) get online marketers spending more online dollars as they try and exploit other data (search) trends that mimic their own.

    In other news, the www.igamingsupershow.com was busy, and it was good to meet so many old faces that had made it to Dublin. I’ll wrap up some thoughts on that, and #bluemonday – when I get time to draw breath.

  • Is social gaming the future of online gambling?

    I’m still waiting to see how the US shakes out with its ongoing struggle to work out what it wants to do with online gambling. It’ll happen.

    My take is that poker will be first and it’ll regulated on a state by state basis. It’ll be for US companies, and as each state regulates, the company will require infrastructure in each state that it gets a licence in. That’s going to put barriers up for companies that are undercapitalised or who can’t get some type of top-end deal with a regulated network provider. See ipoker.it or pokerstars.fr for what I’m talking about here.

    Online casino games will be next, following a similar path, with sportsbetting being a very distant last. Could be a long time before the NFL / NBA / etc are happy to see it happen.

    However, whatever the DOJ in the US thinks, there’s huge appetite for online games, that have gambling elements attached to them.

    The massive continued growth of Zynga et al, is showing that the social gaming experience is becoming part of the standard online experience for the average Joe. Social gaming companies are big fans of publicising growth metrics and stats, primarily because many are marching on VC money, with IPO being the ultimate aim. The better the numbers, the better the bottom line. It’s not quite the same as many of the online gambling behemoths that are still privately held – so hard & fast numbers are difficult to pin down there.

    Personally, I think that the low barrier to entry and trial for social games combined with their natural brand associations with social networks (and Facebook in particular), are introducing a casual segment of the market to a type of low cost competitive gambling.

    One of the drivers of gamblers in particular, is the belief that they’ve got a more informed or more valid opinion than you, or the house. Why else would you stake your hard-earned cash otherwise? Social gaming is pushing the commoditisation of the gaming transaction. I think this will ultimately lower some of the barriers that stand in the way of online gambling brands, in particular for the US, when regulation happens.

    If you want to get some decent flavour of what’s happening in the social space, there are some good sources worth checking out – and you can make up your own mind about whether social gaming could be the future of online gambling.

    It’s either that, or does someone want to buy my 5 million Zynga Poker credits?

    Here are some good sources to form your own opinion on what Social Gaming’s impact for online gambling may be:

    http://www.insidesocialgames.com/

    http://socialtimes.com/category/social-games

    http://blog.games.com/

    It’s also worth keeping an eye on what Bruce Everiss is talking about – he predated social gaming, but as the guy who took both Imagine and Codemasters to being #1 in the market, he knows his games marketing – check out his blog at: http://www.bruceongames.com/

  • Full Tilt, PokerStars and Absolute Poker owners arrested & charged by feds

    Big news.

    On Friday, two (as yet unnamed) owners, out of 11, from PokerStars, Full Tilt and Absolute Poker were arrested and  all 11 charged with violating U.S. anti-Internet gambling laws, according to charges filed by federal prosecutors in Manhattan. One of the others is due to turn himself in later today.

    The domain names were also seized.

    Individuals named included Raymond Bitar, 39, of Full Tilt Poker, Isai Scheinberg, 64, of PokerStars and Brent Beckley, 31, and Scott Tom, 31 Absolute Poker. They were all were charged with violating the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act and other laws.

    The charges outlined a scheme by the company owners and some of their employees to direct the gambling profits to online shell companies that would appear legitimate to banks processing payments.

    The story was breaking on Friday when I’m writing about this. But it’s telling that 2+2 has gone down, it wouldn’t surpise me if it’s gone from weight of news traffic.

    What’s going to happen on the short term?

    There’ll be a savage run on withdrawals, particularly from US players, and already overloaded processors are going to go wallop. It’ll have an knock on effect across any US facing sites too.

    Watch this space…

    UPDATE: Here’s the 2+2 thread if you want to see what the Poker community is saying.

    UPDATE 2: Better in-depth piece from Pokernews – here.

    UPDATE 3: Mainstream news stories from:

    ABC News,

    CBS News

    CNN.com