Betsson Group head of media Ulrich Gilot has warned operators to exercise caution when establishing media partnerships.
Gilot said that while igaming has the opportunity to acquire customers and build their brands via media partnerships, the way in which those partnerships are forged is critical to prevent reputational and compliance risks.
Speaking on the ICE Vox “Shared Experience: Integrating Media Into Your Operations” panel on Wednesday afternoon, Gilot raised the difference between paid media and earned media and the different risks attached to both.
“When I talk about media types, I talk about paid media, owned media, and earned media. So we’re talking in this context more about the organic earned media. The earned media is harder to control. And if it becomes hard for you as an operator or business to control whatever is being communicated, then it’s also subject to brand safety challenges”, he explained.
His comments came in the context of moderator Christian Tirabassi,”¯senior partner at”¯Ficom Leisure, saying his clients are increasingly interested in media M&A.
Gilot did not go into detail about whether he thought that trend would accelerate, although the unspoken implication was that it would. Rather, he urged operators to think about the kinds of partnerships they could forge without ceding too much control to the media companies themselves.
“We have an opportunity to enhance the integration between creative and media together. When we take it from a media perspective, which channel do we use when, on which platform, with which creative, so that we’re contextually relevant?” he said.
He urged the industry to become more familiar with advertising technology, which can enable very specific segmentation of the messages being sent to customers, and prevent data-privacy compliance issues, as well as excessive marketing or marketing to problem gamblers.
“It’s in the best interest of the organization to know exactly that we cannot amplify the message for these specific people. So I feel that with the evolution of the media landscape, allowing what’s called a unified ID, the publishers will have to provide to that exchange system, and connected to our CRM or whatever database we have, at the personalized level. We will be able to not only tackle contextualization of the message, but also proactively prevent reaching someone that has been deemed as addicted to any of the games.”
The ideal scenario, he added, would be for operators to connect with regulators in the market and come up with a solution that will allow all the ad buying to be centralised via the regulator.
He suggested that the reason M&A might be more widely mooted than strategic partnership with media companies was that the igaming industry had a history of being quite insular and not working with disruptors from outside the industry.
“The igaming industry still has been very much closed within itself, not always opening up its arms to disruptors or disruptive ideas”, he said. “Also due to the fact that there might be some reluctance from people working in the media world to make a step forward and you know, get into the gaming industry.”
He also highlighted that the traditional media, which operators most frequently associate themselves with, is now dwarfed by the influence of major social and tech platforms. The likes of Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple have a market share of 80%. He cautioned, “We will have first to look at what the future holds when it comes to the media world, because they pretty much control it”.
