Archives for posts with tag: gambling

Breaking News – Google to Allow Gambling Affiliates

January 9, 2009 //
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I have just spoken to a representative at Google who has revealed that as of Monday they will be allowing gambling affiliates to advertise on Google Adwords!

The affiliates will have to agree to Google’s terms and conditions which will mean that the affiliate is responsible for ensuring the gambling sites they advertise are legitimate, therefore removing all liability from Google themselves!  Another requirement is that the affiliate is “adding to the user experience” and not simply showing details of a single gambling site or regurgitating website copy available elsewhere.  The word “comparison” came up on more than one occasion int he call and so affiliates comparing gambling programmes is clearly an area Google is thinking for the new sites they allow on board.

All campaigns will be manually approved by Google by a specialist gambling tema they have set up.

Who will qualify?

  • affiliates comparing programmes or “adding value” to the user journey

Who wont qualify?

  • Affiliates direct linking to gambling providers
  • Affiliates copying or mirroring gambling sites or copy from gambling sites

So its open season for affiliates who meet the criteria and a potentially expensive time for gambling companies who’s own CPCs will rise and they will begin to see their affiliate commission payouts on the increase at the same time, double whammy!

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Categories Affiliate Marketing, Google

Yahoo! Combats Google Gambling Change

October 30, 2008 //
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In an attempt to combat the impending slump in gambling revenues following Google’s change in gambling policy Yahoo! has taken the unusual step of REMOVING some of its advertising listings from key sports keywords.  A search for football betting on Yahoo! UK will now return just 4 paid search listings at the top of the SERP and 2 at the bottom with the right hand inventory devoid of PPC ads, replaced only by universal searchelements such as image search results and Eurosport news results. This seems a rather strange attempt to reverse a decline in revenues by removing the elements that generate the revenue in the first place! The explanation given by Yahoo! is that this is a beta trial to determine whether the streamlined user experience out-ways the loss in revenue.  And the impression is their appearance will be done at a keyword level determined by whether the revenue out-ways the experience for that particular keyword. Ill be honest, I don’t think this is going to get out of beta testing.  Gambling has been one of Yahoo!’s key sectors and with the Google changes likely to see advertisers diverting their PPC funds away from Yahoo! naturally anyway.  The effective removal of available positions on page 1 will make pay per click marketers consider whether it is worth bothering with Yahoo! at all if they cant afford to be in the top 4 slots. Well done Yahoo! kick yourself while you are down!

Yahoo Removes PPC Listings for Gambling Keywords

Yahoo Removes PPC Listings for Gambling Keywords

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Categories Display Advertising, PPC

Google’s Gambling Uturn – whos does it affect?

October 22, 2008 //
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as you all should be aware Google made uturn on their gambling policy at the end of last week and now allows gambling advertisers, who can produce a valid gambling license, access to the Google Adwords programme.  I thought Id produce a quick list of the people this is going to have a major impact on as the change takes hold and more gambling websites start to go live on Adwords.

Google: Obviously this going to have a slight impact the company which made the change!  This is a massive market for online and is bound to generate a large amount of revenue for Google with some stories quoted figures as high as £300 million.

Gambling Companies: Google has opened up a huge new revenue stream for gambling advertisers which had been frustratingly out of their grasp in the past.  Having to make do with traffic and registrations from Yahoo and MSN had meant that these companies, who were willing to spend large amounts on new sign ups, were unable to reach all the available users.  This has all changed now and gambling companies are rubbing their hands together at the prospect of all the new sign ups they are set to receive from this new channel.

Affiliates: Affiliates willing to push the rules had for a long time been making the most of Google’s ban by employing out of hours bidding and trademark bidding to cash in through the gambling affiliate programmes.  With the new changes, and the requirement of a gambling license, affiliates will find it harder to bypass the system, but will also be priced out by the gambling companies as their returns are lower and so they wont be able to compete on CPCs.

Search Engine Optimisers: I’m not sure how big an impact this will have but I just wondered how the introduction of PPC listings is going to reduce the SEO volume in gambling on Google.  In theory it should remove about 20-30% of the available traffic which could impact the time and money invested in SEO by the big gambling companies.

Agencies: If you have gambling clients, rejoice!  Their value has just increased 10 fold.  So long as you are quick off the mark and get them live you could be looking at a good Q4.

Yahoo and MSN: Gambling has been a large part of Yahoo’s revenues for a while as they have made the most of the Google ban.  Now this is lifted they could see a large dent in their revenues from this channel as gambling marketers allocate more of their spend to Google.  The affect will be two fold, with advertisers looking to free up budget for Googled so reducing overall spend, and a natural reduction of competition on Yahoo and MSN which will  bring the market CPC levels down, so its a double edged sword for them.

The market is yet to settle down, and we wont know the full extent until it does but it is certainly one of the biggest announcements google have made in a while and should help their share price a little!

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Categories Google, PPC

Google Reverses Policy on Gambling Advertisers

October 16, 2008 //
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In a major change to its policies and its whiter than white ethical stance Google is set to announce tomorrow that it will begin allowing gambling advertisers onto its Adwords programme according a a breaking NMA article.

This is major news for the gambling sector as for many years now they have toiled with the use of just Yahoo, MSN and in the old days Miva to drive their PPC traffic and basically survived on 20% of the search market. This announcement by Google will open up a massive new revenue stream for them which was previously only semi available through out of hours bidding and “play for free” sites to bypass the Google systems.

There were over 11,000,000 searches for poker on Google in September and nearly 3,000,000 for gambling which shows the extent to which gambling sites without a strong SEO presence were missing out. Thousands of new players will become available once the changes take place for those quick enough to act on the news and hit the market before it becomes too expensive.

The pickup might not be as swift as you might think though as it is expected that new advertisers will have to provide documented evidence of their gambling license and if the process is as convoluted and long winded as the old trademark protection procedure then advertisers would be waiting a long time to actually see their ads live! This does however discount affiliate advertisers looking to make a quick buck out of the change.

So to the question of why has Google made this decision?  Their third quarter earnings are announced today and the figures aren’t expected to be great! 11,000,000 searches on poker, 3,000,000 on gambling, let’s work on a £1 CPC for now (though I can guarantee it will be higher!) and a click through rate of 5% (this too will be higher when all ads are accounted for). This amounts to a another £700,000 monthly revenue for Google, that’s £8.4 million annual turnover added overnight! That’s going to affect your share price! And this is just with my extremely conservative figures; the reality is likely to be a lot higher.

It just goes to show, that even the most ethical of company stances can fall by the wayside when it comes down to profit!

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Categories Google, PPC