GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 29 - July 2014

You started your career working in cus- tomer support for Euro Partners be- fore moving on to become an affiliate manager. What was it like working with players? And howdoes that compare to working with affiliates? When I worked in support, I had no experience whatso- ever and I was working at the time with the American market. This was back in 2005. The responsibility was different because you would do a shift and you'd be done. I would work night shifts and weekends and it was almost always ex- citing. With affiliation, depending on the time of the year, it feels like your job is never over because the stats never stop and there's always something going on andyoucanalwayscloseadeal.Thereare a lot ofnice thingsabout beinganaccount manager like being able to travel, work- ing with people all over the world and doing creative things whereas working withplayersdirectly, in thiscase inpoker, givesyouaglimpseofwhat theplayer ex- perience is and it taughtme how to think quicklyonmy feet and learn thedifferent promotions and deposit methods. It also gave me a good basis for the marketing involved in thebusiness as awhole. When did you join the Prime Gaming team? And what attracted you to the company and the position? I started working at Prime Gaming in September 2013, and the thing that attracted me to thecompany is thatunlikesome reallybig companies, Prime Gaming is a relatively small group of very talented peoplewho are working to build this company the right way, being transparent all the way through, and it gaveme a feelingof being able to contribute ina reallypositiveway, teaching young junior account managers along theway and also being able to give my input onvariouspromotions that oth- erwisewouldn't necessarilybeheard. Prime Partners runs the affiliate pro- grams for seven online properties, in- cluding Prime Scratchcards, Prime Slots and Mega Casino, among others. Are all these brands operated by the same ownership and management team? The brands that are being run at Prime are indeed all run by the same manage- ment team but the operators are differ- ent. So for examplePrimeSlotsandPrime Scratchcards are operated byNeoGames and have Net Ent games on the sites, whileMegaCasino andMegaCasinoDK are operated by Skill OnNet, so the rules on the internal marketing side tend to be different. We do tend to have a nice way of organizing eachmonth andknowvery distinctly where to put our efforts based on a game plan, which makes it a bit more interesting. What should affiliates know about the online scratchcard market? Compared to Prime Slots, how many active play- ers do you have at Prime Scratchcards? What are some of the key differences between scratchcard players and slots players? Scratchcards in general are a niche product appealing to a very spe- cific demographic. In most cases the sites that do well with scratchcards are focused either just on that specific prod- uct or have a female demographicwhere scratchcardswouldbe agoodfit. The key difference between PrimeSlots.com and PrimeScratchcards.com is the association with the casino. Slots are games you see on every casino brandwhile scratchcards arenot.What surprisedmeabout scratch- cards after starting to work at Prime Gaming is the quality of the players com- ing invia scratchcards. Several of your properties serve very targeted markets. Indogvind.dk, for ex- ample, targets Denmark, while Prime Fortune serves the Belgian market. Do you think country-by-country proper- tiesare the futureof the industry?Ordo you envision open competition across bordersdown the road? Ido think there's a place for country-specific products but I still have hope that there are groups of countries out there thatwill not go in that direction. There are some countries like France, which used to be by far the big- gest market in the industry and is now nonexistent. So while I am sure there's a place for all these brands like Prime Fortune, Indogvind and many others, I thinkmany countries are still far from it and will hopefully encourage those who are not necessarily focusing just on one country to really put their full efforts to making it in an industry that has a lot of great benefits to it. Oneof themost important issuesonline casinos must address is problem gam- bling. What do the Prime Gaming casi- nos do to try to identify and help play- erswithgamblingproblems? Looking at eachandeveryoneofourbrands,youwill see that we link to gambleaware.co.uk, which helps those who have a gambling problem to seekhelp. It’s important tome that every company I work with should let players have the ability to opt out of what they're doing if they need to, and that is totally covered inPrimePartners. It's one thing to bring in a new person to a site. It's another thing entirely to get them to stick around. What do your properties do to retain players sent by affiliates? I agree completely. I think the traditional style ofmaintainingplayers in the affiliate industry is definitely chang- ing. It'snot just technologybutmanpower thatmakesabigdifference.A lotof factors contribute to conversionbut I'vegrown to realize that my responsibility inworking withaffiliatesdoesn'tendwhen theplayer deposits. I have to keep thinking of ways togetplayers tostickaroundbecause they honestly have so many other options. I think it's important tokeep a close eye on themarket, listen toaffiliates,who I really believe know better than anyone what it takes, andof course thenumbersdon't lie. I thinkaswell that beingable toknow the time zones of the players and give them the feeling of a localizedproduct is a key toour success inmarkets suchasSweden, wherewe’ve reallygrown a lot. Prime Gaming offers affiliates revenue share of up to 50 percent and CPAs up to $400, "depending on various fac- tors." What are those factors? And how can affiliates reach the top tiers of your commission rates?What are the starting commission levels? I think this is really a case-by-casescenario. Iknowhowcompet- itive the market can get and, as with any company, it's important to change with the timesand identifydiffering factors that make up player value. I think the best af- AFFILIATEMANAGER INTERVIEW SERIES CHRISZELVER PrimeGaming AffiliateManager Interview Series