STEPHEN CRYSTAL TRAVELING TO ALABAMA, TEXAS AND CALIFORNIA
Stephen Crystal in the process of planning and scheduling travel to Alabama, Texas and California, where he will be meeting with clients and partners in the next month.
If you are interested in reaching out to Stephen Crystal regarding these trips, please contact him directly at stephen.crystal@sccgmanagement.com.
DO YOU REALLY KNOW WHO OR WHAT DRIVES YOUR WEBSITE TRAFFIC?
Companies invest a lot of time, money and attention on websites, and we do so at an incredibly fine level of detail. Why do we do that? Because, research.
- Forrester, determined that every $1 invested in user experience (UX) returns $100 — a 9,900% return on investment.
- Price Waterhouse Cooper found that 32% of brand loyal customers would dump them after one bad experience.
- Lists with bullet points are read by 70% of readers, whereas only 55% look at lists without bullets.
All of these truths drive us to make huge investments in the aesthetics, design and usability of websites in order to have them serve the needs of our beloved customers, and we are right to do so.
But what if our beloved customers who drive the traffic — the lifeblood of our digital businesses — aren’t even human?
Half of all internet traffic are bots
Bots are programs designed to quickly and repetitively perform tasks that benefit their owners, at the expense of your real customers and the quality of your analytics.
Does your company have a huge population of user accounts?
If it is, there are easy economic upsides to automated account takeovers because of the law of big numbers. 83% of Americans use weak passwords, allowing automated account takeovers to inexpensively and quickly steal accounts from their actual owners. In 2018, over six million accounts were hacked every day — 158 per second.
Does your company control the sale or distribution of valuable assets or information?
Scalper bots are used by third parties to purchase high demand items with inherent scarcity, like tickets and limited run merchandise, and resell them with huge markups, damaging brands and relationships with their customers and fans. Scraper bots move through your website stealing your valuable data. Their owners can repackage and repurpose your work, and you have little to no practical recourse. This is the oldest form of bot traffic and very hard to prevent. Google scrapes the internet every day, constantly, to make their search engine effective, and for most websites, Google represents 80% of traffic. How do you differentiate the “good crawlers” from the bad ones?
Does your website allow customers to pay for items using credit and debit cards?
Congratulations! Criminals can use the transaction processing services you pay a fortune for, to test stolen credit card information to determine which are still active and can be used for fraudulent purchases. In 2019, this represented $27.85 billion dollars in credit card fraud and identity theft — a third of which is the United States’ contribution to the theft worldwide and making us #1 in credit card fraud.
Do you make significant investments in digital acquisition and retention marketing?
An entire category of sophisticated bot networks specialize in creating accounts that look and feel real, often using real people’s details, but without their knowledge or consent. With these fake accounts, networks can drive traffic, simulate trends and skew the perceived sentiments of your customers towards policies and products, generate sales spam viewed by your real customers, or spread fake news.
In the gaming industry, knowing your customer (KYC) is an essential part of fraud prevention, and there are tools that help us reinforce the walls of our digital fortresses, against the relentless attacks of malicious bots.
If you are interested in discussing how our client partner technologies, such as Netacea (http://netacea.com) can enhance your digital marketing and security, please reach out. We’re ready to talk.
WELCOME TO YOUR ROUNDUP OF EUROPEAN IGAMING NEWS
Our European weekly iGaming feature article summarizes the thoughts of Jake Pollard, an experienced journalist and editor who has covered the online gaming and betting industry for many years. He has written for the leading media outlets as well as operators and suppliers in the igaming space. His areas of focus are wide-ranging and include regulatory developments in the US, emerging markets in South America and how European countries are adapting to a decade of igaming regulation.
La Liga issues strong criticism of the advertising ban
Spain is set to bring in a gambling advertising ban in August that stakeholders say will have hugely negative consequences on the country’s sports clubs and organisations’ finances. In common with other European markets, online sports betting operators are major advertisers, partners, and principal sponsors of Spain’s sports clubs. Seven clubs in the country’s top soccer division, including major ones like Valencia and Sevilla, have betting firms as shirt sponsors. Another 32 out of the 42 clubs across La Liga’s top two divisions have commercial agreements with operators. La Liga president Javier Tebas told Reuters that the advertising ban would cost Spanish soccer nearly $110m in lost revenues. “It’s contradictory that in a country where gambling is a legal activity, advertising it is prohibited. We believe forbidding it outright is a mistake,” he said. The data and reasoning behind the ban have also been questioned. With the pandemic decimating stadium revenues and even club giants like Barcelona facing huge debts, the timing has been widely criticized.
Hard 2020 for Playtech as it readies for U.S. entry
Full-year results for Playtech showed 2020 revenues and EBITDA dropped 25% to €1bn and 32% to €253.6m respectively, while pre-tax profits (losses) came in at minus €73m. The group took a 231% hit to its 2019 pre-tax profits of €55.9m due to the retail closures and sporting cancelations caused by the pandemic. Playtech said its Mexico activities with Caliente Group and in Colombia with WPlay had recorded ‘significant growth.’ It is also gearing up to enter the U.S. with launches and licenses in New Jersey and Michigan following Bet365 and Entain. It also has a multi-state agreement with Parx Casino and Novomatic for self-serving betting terminals (SSBTs). The group said the terminals were very popular in Germany and Austria, and although it expected mobile to continue to dominate the U.S. space, for the time being, it expected strong SSBT growth in the U.S. in the coming years
B2C focus raises questions for DraftKings B2B
DraftKings’ investor presentation earlier this week did not specifically mention any European activities. Still, it was notable for CEO Jason Robins’ clear message that the acquisition of the betting platform provider SBTech was to power the group’s B2C activities. Not the most reassuring comment he could have given to the SBTech teams in Bulgaria and elsewhere, who (after significant delays) recently launched the online offerings of Sweden’s monopoly operator Svenska Spel and Finland’s Veikkaus.
