GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 29 - July 2014

them in building and segmenting their player databases. There is tremendous value in building and gaining insight from a database of players, which helps guide future real-money gamingmarket- ingdecisions. Once iGaming legislation passes in a state and a new market opens up, affiliates can start publicizing the state’s newly launched iGaming brands, using their marketing expertise and industry knowledge to introduce their U.S. social players to the newworld of real-money onlinegaming. Strategizing for social gaming success While the financial and strategic benefits ofdiversifying into thefieldof socialgam- ingarenumerous, iGamingaffiliatesneed to invest time indeveloping a sophisticat- ed strategy to succeed in this space. Social gamingand real-money iGamingarevery different animals, and affiliates shouldn’t be fooled into thinking that, just because they have extensive experience promot- ing real-money brands, they can simply startmarketing social gaming sites by ap- plying the exact same approach. The foundation of affiliates’ social gam- ing strategy should be detailed research. Tomaximize convergence, affiliates need to study how social gaming compares and contrasts with real-money iGaming at an industry, brand and player level. A good starting point for a broad overview of the social gaming industry is thegrow- ing collection of market research reports availableonline.Affiliates should then re- search the major social gaming markets, placing amajor focus on theU.S. but also looking at Europe and the emergingmar- kets of Latin America and Asia. Within each market, affiliates should focus on the top social brands, evaluating their marketing strategies and test-driving the games themselves. Armed with their research, affiliates are then ready to begin developing new websites or diversifying their existing websites’ content so that it appeals to the social gaming demographic as well as to real-money players. Beyond their sites, affiliates need to ensure that acquiring social players feeds into their approach to search engine marketing (SEM) and, above all, socialmedia.A strongpresence on the latter channel and Facebook in particular is vitally important, given that all social brands have a presence on the world’smost popular social network. Once affiliates have optimized theirweb- sites and offsitemarketing channels, they can begin exploring performance mar- keting opportunities available in the so- cial gaming space. As in the real-money iGaming industry, joining an affiliate network is one of themost effectiveways todiscover new and existing affiliatepro- grams. The social gaming industry’s ex- pansionhas led to the recentdevelopment of social gaming affiliatenetworks,which focus exclusively on publicizing affiliate programs for social brands. After registeringwith several social gam- ing affiliate programs, affiliates then be- gin the challenging task of promotion.As with their real-money brands, affiliates should consider themarketingof their so- cial gamingbrands as awork inprogress. Through in-depth reporting and analysis aswell as close collaborationwith opera- tors, affiliates can constantly recalibrate their social gaming strategies. Given the continuing expansionof the so- cial gaming industry and the vast finan- cial rewards offered by its convergence with real-moneyonlinegaming, therehas never been a better time for iGaming af- filiates to diversify into the social space. By developing and implementing a con- stantly evolving social gaming strategy, affiliates can gain access to additional revenue and finallymonetize traffic from the largely unregulated U.S. market. As theworld’s largest economygradually le- galizes real-money online gaming, social gaming offers iGaming affiliates the key to the future. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A senior accountmanager at Income Access, HarryBienenstock focuses onoverseeing thedevelopment of the company’s recently launched Social Gaming Network. Hemanages the project in full, from business development and social gaming brand integrations to top-level strategy. Previously an Income Access affiliate manager, Harry holds a bachelor’s degree in commerce. “ There are currently approximately 35.4million social casinoplayers in theU.S. Affiliateswho arenot promoting social gamingbrands are therefore ignoring ahuge revenueopportunity.” 13 The rise of the social gaming affiliate