SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Florian Geheeb, SVP of sales at Sportradar, explores how operators can maximise engagement, customer acquisition, growth and revenue. Delivering the right messages to the right customer, on the right platform, and at the right time, are an essential part of the process.
To attract eyeballs and get ahead in the competitive sports betting industry, operators are always seeking out the most suitable products and services to meet business objectives and drive commercial success.
In order to optimise marketing campaigns in particular, product efficiency and reliability is vital. Investing in the most suitable marketing platform and advertising technology is the key to unlocking significant uplifts in engagement, customer acquisition, growth and revenue.
This is especially true as operators increasingly spend on programmatic advertising. Having experienced a significant uptake in the betting and gaming space in recent years, effective Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) can optimise operators’ marketing campaigns by pinpointing target audiences quickly, efficiently, and at scale.
This ability to deliver the right messages, across both display and video, to the right customer, on the right platform, and at the right time, has been shown to result in increased success across the entire marketing funnel.
However, most DSP’s have been designed to serve a variety of different industries, and thus struggle to overcome the unique marketing challenges associated with betting and gaming. This feedback from clients is why we developed a dedicated betting and gaming Demand Side Platform (DSP) using Sportradar’s own proprietary technology.
Part of our ad:s multi-platform marketing service, Sportradar’s DSP has delivered significant results for operators across the globe since its launch in 2019. Built by and managed entirely within Sportradar’s business by our team of channel experts with industry experience from Facebook, Google, Amazon, Entain and Flutter, our DSP is relied upon by more than 175 operators globally, including Betway, FanDuel, Superbet and Coolbet.
Sportradar’s DSP facilitates 60 billion ad requests per day and provides a curated supply of more than 600 deals specifically for the betting and gaming industry, providing clients with specificity and scale. Clients have reported 60% reductions in cost-per-acquisition (CPA) and increased net gaming revenues (NGR) for programmatic campaigns by up to 110%, as our ad:s service has continued to deliver tangible growth, expand into new jurisdictions and support new clients.
Bespoke artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning algorithms process an operator’s collected data, enabling display and video adverts to be highly targeted towards only the desired audience. This technological capability means adverts are served to the most interested and engaged customers, translating to improved rates of acquisition and less advertising waste.
Moreover, lifetime value analysis conducted by our clients has shown that the customers acquired through the ad:s DSP actively use their services more and typically generate greater revenue for their businesses. This indicates the improved quality of the customers that are reached via ad:s – not only are they more likely to become first time depositors, but also loyal, repeat customers who contribute to business growth.
Some operators also rely on using multiple DSPs at the same time in their campaigns – an approach that may prove to be far more costly and not as effective as simply using industry-specific technology. Whilst this strategy may be employed in an attempt to reach a wider audience or to try and prevent customers being missed, using multiple DSPs can be counterproductive. When running simultaneously, DSPs often bid against one another to purchase advertising space, creating confusion and artificially driving up costs, making campaigns more expensive but not necessarily more successful.
Operating a single, betting-focused DSP from a proven and reliable company, however, allows operators to connect with inventory at scale and purchase the most relevant advertising spots at the best rates. Our clients report the benefits they have experienced after making this switch, with Sportradar’s ad:s enabling them to reach customers they otherwise would not have engaged through a generic or multiple DSPs.
Another benefit of using a DSP specifically configured for betting is speed to market. With ad:s programmatic technology designed and built solely for betting operators, our DSP can immediately begin targeting the most relevant customers from the start of a campaign. This allows not only greater brand awareness, but delivers results in terms of customer acquisition, higher returns on advertising spend and investment as ad:s achieves 40% cheaper CPAs on average versus the operator’s target. Generic DSPs on the other hand, need to find and adjust to a betting audience which costs precious time and resources, resulting in advertising waste.
With the use of programmatic advertising showing no signs of slowing down, digital marketing success fundamentally depends on the technology selected. To overcome the nuances of the betting and gaming market, selecting an industry-specific DSP enables ambitious operators to increase the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns and optimise their acquisition and retention rates and ultimately, drive revenue.
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Florian Geheeb, SVP of sales @ Sportradar
