The 10th London Affiliate Conference (LAC) has officially kicked off at the Olympia and day one was as busy as ever. Delegates were spilling out onto the street this morning, queuing to get in the doors of the biggest- and growing- online gambling affiliate conference of the year.
Walking through the expo floor was an adrenaline-inducing experience as always, but this year we’ve seen more famous faces making appearances than ever before.
John Barnes was back as the EuroPartners booth this year as the TitanBet Brand Ambassador and participated in a Q&A session for delegates, including a taste of his famous rapping skills.
The EuroPartners booth also featured a “snooker meets football” field, a fun way to encourage some healthy competition between delegates.
Over at the RealDealBet/10Bet booth we found Evander Holyfield who is the face of RealDealBet. Holyfield was available for photos and autographs and he participated in a little competition himself, hitting a punching bag machine with a power ranking after each punch. You can guess who won this competition.
The LAC also features several conference tracks for delegates and this morning we sat in on an Ad Blocker session with speakers Scott Longley of Clear Concise Media, Fintan Costello of Revenue Engineers and Luke Cotton of Digital Fuel Marketing.
Costello does not see the rise of ad blockers as a huge threat for affiliates and said its easy to get around ad blocking from a technical perspective. He said ads slow down websites, they are boring and designed to be mis-clicked and the focus should be on how to engage people with the brand instead. Crafting fantastic articles and guides, focusing on every word on the page and text links or buttons that actually convert are examples of how to engage.
The importance of personalization was covered during the panel and according to Costello, “[The content] has to be tailored to me, and that’s what success is going to look like in the future”.
Costello also shared with CalvinAyre.com his top three pieces of advice for affiliates when it comes to ad blocking technology:
1) Analyse the impact, how many people are actually using ad blockers
2) move ads to your own servers, do not rely on operator servers
3) install every ad blocker and test
We also sat in on the “Keeping up with Technology” session featuring speakers Corey Padveen of t2Marketing, Laurence Jones of Colossus Bets and Sreeram Vanga of Cozy Games.
Vanga emphasized the importance of analyzing customer data in order to segment and target. When targeting millennials, optimising for mobile devices are of upmost importance and the promotions must be games they like, otherwise their attention will be lost. Millennials are looking for instant gratification and gamification, he said.
However, when sending messages to players, be mindful of timing- for example, don’t send a free money offer when a player is in the middle of a slot game. “Choose the right time”, he said.
