Pulse

Intelitics: Operators must change their approach to data

By Lewis - 4 March 2021

With many operators feeling they have reached a point of data saturation, Allan Petrilli, VP of Sales and Growth at Intelitics, explains why making a few small changes can leverage data power to drive growth.

Online gambling operators are fully aware of the power of data and the need to collect, store and analyse information in order to make informed decisions when it comes to growing their business. But this is something of a double-edge sword.

It is no good just gathering as much data as possible; operators must understand what problem they are trying to solve and then use the correct data to make decisions about what action or actions to take. Different problems need different data, and this is key.

But with so much data available to operators, it could be argued that we have reached a point of information overload. This is making it increasingly difficult for operators to identify the right data to solve the problem at hand – this means time is being wasted on data that is not relevant.

In order to deep dive into this, it is best to take a specific example, and explore. Given user acquisition is my focus day to day, let’s start there. This is just some of the data that operators now have access to:

Traffic type: Search, Social, SEO, Native, Push, Email, SMS, etc.

Targeting: Location, device type, demographic information, Interests, and additional targeting parameters

Player data: Gender, Age, Income, playing behaviour, favourite bets, etc.

Promotions: Type of promotions that are converting traffic, at what rates, and at what quality

Creative data: themes, ad types, sizes, copy, iterations

Time: when was a player acquired, day, time, event association, etc.

As you can see, we have taken on a very specific situation, and come up with a massive amount of data points to analyse, that each grow exponentially as you compare iterations across the above groupings.

Why have we reached a point of information overload? 

The rapid increase in available data is due to several factors. The first is down to how operators work with many different third parties, from games or odds providers, platform providers, payment providers and marketing partners. Each partner will provide operators with access to data.

Tightening regulations also require operators to gather and store more data than ever before. This is so that they can provide evidence on how players are being acquired, and also how they are then monitored and managed from a responsible gambling and safe gambling perspective.

At a time when margins are shrinking with competition, taxation and the above-mentioned regulation, operators know that this data provides the insight they need to determine where they are making money and the actions they need to take to drive growth.

The problem, however, is that with so much data and information to sift through, business intelligence teams are almost drowning under the sheer volume of data. Another problem is that data is not centralised and is pulled in from many different systems.

Take user acquisition again as an example. Operators will use affiliates, internal media buying, organic social media, and SEO. They will then use their business intelligence teams to pull data from each of these platforms and internal databases that these channels are tracked through, and use this to inform marketing strategies and spend.

Because the data is siloed, it takes a very smart business intelligence team and a lot of time to gather this data, analyse it and put the results in actionable reports.

The problem, of course, is that most traffic is now generated through paid channels (social, Google, ad networks, etc), and in order to get the best out of these platforms, operators and their marketing teams need to be able to test, analyse and optimise in real-time.

Delays of days, weeks or even months in being able to analyse traffic and optimise will mean a decrease in overall campaign performance.

Operators must change their approach to data 

Does this mean there is simply too much data available to operators? No, not in my opinion. The concept of too much data means that operators are not asking the right questions and don’t have the technology and processes internally to deliver the answers they are seeking.

Operators should look to centralise data and they should do this by investing in the right technology and internal processes to ensure that data is accessible and actionable across the organisation, top down. There is a monetary and time cost that goes into this, but the long-term savings are well worth it.

Operators also need to change how they approach data. Most look at data from a monthly perspective, but this often doesn’t paint the full picture and can then lead them to taking actions based on a misinterpretation of what the data is really showing them.

Back to a UA example, an online sportsbook operator may have acquired a bunch of players during the last week of the month or during a big event, such as the World Cup Final.

Simply reviewing and making decisions on data at a monthly basis would have some severe flaws compared to what is actually happening. Operators should batch this traffic and evaluate it over specific time periods – so focusing on cohort data more than period data is key.

Investing in the best technologies will streamline on-going costs and ensure marketing budgets are maximised. Yes, good technology costs money, but so does running inefficient campaigns that are unprofitable. Good technology will free up internal resources, like BI teams, to focus on improving product as opposed to running reports for marketing teams all day.

One small note: Yes, building the right team of smart, passionate people is key. Every organisation needs this at its roots, but powering these people with access to the right data, at the right time, and quickly, is a game changer.

The volume of data available to operators is only going to continue to increase, so taking action now to set yourself up for the future is key.