SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Jon Bale, Managing Director Digital Marketing at BetGenius, provides some insight to SBC on betslip re-targeting functionalities and current capabilities for the betting sector. Bale details BetGenius’ product development with regards to data collection and creating effective acquisition and retention points for its partners.
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SBC: There’s a bit of a buzz around at the moment regarding betslip re-targeting. How does the BetGenius approach work? How do you harvest the data from the betslip?
Jon Bale: Technically, it is quite complex however deployment to the operator could not be more straightforward. We have developed a new tracking tag that when placed across the operator’s website, be it on desktop or mobile, it can lift data from the betslip. These tags allow us to exactly pinpoint the event, market, price and stake for bets which have been added to the betslip but are then abandoned. This gives us a unique opportunity to tailor our advertising and replay an abandoned bet to a customer, highlight a price change, or offer an opportunity to bet on a similar event with a similar stake if that market is no longer available.
SBC: How does the system decide who to re-target, which products to push and when to promote?
JB: We drop a cookie at the point of abandoning the betslip, which helps us to identify the same punter again and the market they abandoned. Identification could be through a programmatic campaign or the operator’s affiliate network, it doesn’t need to be run by Betgenius. Importantly, this process helps us to establish if the punter is a betslip abandoner. We will try and re-target as soon as possible, while the wager is still fresh in their mind and the market is likely to still be available.
SBC: What kind of success have you had so far around re-targeting?
JB: There are many benefits of this technology, from both acquisition and retention standpoints. We have learnt that the cost per acquisition is lower with betslip retargeting technology compared to the more traditional digital marketing techniques and, we have seen an increase in the number of bets completed via retention campaigns. This is the first delivery mechanism I’ve seen which is genuinely at home in the retention space.
SBC: Obviously a betting market is a fluid, dynamic thing – how does the system keep on top of price changes?
JB: This is one of the unique elements of the technology. There is a live data feed from our ad-server into the template, so whenever the ad is shown the price will always be relevant. We can even highlight where the current price has changed from that originally abandoned adding a sense of urgency to the opportunity. Connextra – Betgenius’ proprietary ad-serving technology leverages its unique position and close integration with the data services part of the business.
SBC: Can the product (or the technology behind it) be adapted to in-play markets? Or Cash-In?
JB: Absolutely. The technology currently focuses on replaying a pre-match abandoned bet, but will be developed further to offer an in-play market where the event abandoned is now underway.
SBC: How is it being used away from betting?
JB: The concept does exist in other industries but in a simplistic form. For instance in online retail, the same idea is used by Amazon to retarget its customers who may have abandoned their shopping basket. The differentiator is that we are sympathetic to market expiry and price fluctuations by utilizing the Connextra platform.
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John Bale Managing Director Digital Marketing at BetGenius
