This new year has been bringing many exciting changes and significantly transforming the gambling market. Lyudmila Milenina, CEO of First Sport Media, shares with the LoginCasino readers her thoughts and vision to identify the trends in the gambling industry for this year to be well-prepared for the upcoming challenges.
In addition to these aspects, Lyudmila Milenina talks a bit about prospective betting markets and the plans for the future of First Sport Media. Keep reading the latest gambling news to stay tuned.
What is a must-have set for a modern advertising platform for gambling to succeed?
There are three key elements that make advertising of these verticals successful:
- Permanent renewal of the user base on the sites, which are traffic sources In our case, First Sport Media works with SEO-oriented projects and traffic acquisition to the associated resources;
- Ability to offer and sell RON placement packages rather than individual websites;
- Smart banners rotation.
At the moment, there are not many webmasters working with advertisers of betting/gambling categories who can provide their clients with the ability to set up ad campaigns with different target options (frequency, audience, daily limits, etc.). This assumption is a big mistake.
The client should always be able to choose the necessary and effective settings with the possibility of A/B tests, creative rotation, etc.
What is the optimal media split to reach a wider audience?
I will describe it using three popular buying models as an example:
- 40% Revshare;
- 40% CPM;
- 20% CPA.
Revshare partly gives an effect similar to media placement (purchased by CPM). But in the long run, this model turns out to be more expensive for the betting/gambling client, so it has to be complemented by classic media placement.
Although in the first moment it may seem that Revshare is more profitable than CPM, every month, the situation reverses as you have to share the profits.
CPA is a kind of drug for those who are particularly desperate, who are not afraid to pay the partner the entire cost at once for a player attracted, and then spend the next 4-5 months figuring out whether the payback model will hold up and if the player will turn out to be profitable for betting/gaming.
How does the pandemic affect the focus of betting industry participants?
At first, it seemed that everything was bad and that we were about to hit rock bottom, but in the end, the situation became pretty good. Sporting events were postponed, the advertising campaigns – too.
Of course, during the pandemic, due to the lack of sports events, marketers were busy looking for additional sources of revenue. However, those who did not wait for an “upturn” but sought additional opportunities eventually survived the crisis.
Is it correct to say that Africa and LATAM are the next big things of the betting industry?
Africa has everything: from the mature markets of Nigeria and Kenya to a huge number of emerging markets. It offers opportunities to both compete and build betting and gambling markets from scratch.
LATAM hosts football and e-sports, which is a non-standard combination but easily manageable, especially working with niche ad networks as we have.
What trends are expected to be a massive hit in the betting industry in 2022?
Engagement mechanics will extend beyond platforms. It will be a priority for betting/gambling players to not only shape these mechanics for retention goals within their customer base but also to ‘let’ them into external communications.
Marketing will become even more complex and transcend a narrow understanding of “convert/not convert” – attribution models, understanding which marketing instruments affected the organic users’ acquisition to the platform. All of these will help accurately evaluate all traffic sources and understand what the purposes of certain advertising placements are. Those who have not dealt with eSports before will at least try.
What is the company’s main direction for the upcoming year?
The use of new technologies, an increase in quality, and a comprehensive approach to customer marketing strategies should become the main focus for any business.
We will see what time will bring us, but FSM is ready to rock in any environment.
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