Google’s Gambling Uturn – whos does it affect?

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!