Hi, everybody, and welcome to this episode of the Three Questions Podcast. And today I'm joined by the lovely Sarah McChesney Gordon from FreshAid Gaming. Hi Sarah. Hello. Nice to have you here with us today. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for joining the show. I want to kick off with just a little bit of background so that our listeners can hear a little bit about your business and then we'll kick off with our three questions. So I know you've been in gaming for quite a little while. You've worked at a number of different organizations, but tell us a little bit about Fresh Aid and your view on the state of the US market at the moment.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, sure. So I've been in the industry for probably about 10, 11 years now. Started applying my trade, uh, operator called 108bit Asia Market Focused. Really interesting learning curve, fell into the industry through complete fluke, and then from that went to perform gaming, which was um again a very interesting, big, big media outlet. So a huge focus on affiliates and content, working with affiliate teams globally, which was an interesting area of the space, and then took that expertise and moved over to TechSide. So Fresh 8 Gaming, which is a really interesting product or multiple products, really. So we focus on making advertising technology smarter for publishers and operators. We're really focused on trying as best we can to eradicate what we would call dumb advertising. So whether that is across affiliate, display, programmatic, video, social, we don't really care about the channel, but we're trying to move away from the old school days of put a 300 by 250 JPEG banner which says the same offer to you, to me, to every Tom, Dick, and Harry. They've seen it a million times. So we're trying to use data from operators to generate real-time advertising opportunities that make the whole system work a lot better, we hope.
SPEAKER_00Awesome, that's great. And I just want to throw in a quick question here because I know that you'll be able to answer it off the cuff, but what about ad blocking? How does that sit alongside your product? Because I know that's a big question a lot of people are asking.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we ask it quite a lot actually from clients. So ad blocking, obviously, we can't go onto people's computers and turn off ad blocking, so it exists, and we've got to find a way to work around it. So the way we try and improve the experiences through our products, really. So we're trying to stop people feel like ad blocking is a smart thing because I I probably would ad block a lot of the stuff that a lot of operators used to show me. I'm bored of seeing the same sign up for $100, 100 pounds bonus offer when I've already got an account, and you know that I have an account. So stop showing me that ad, is the attitude that we have.
SPEAKER_00And getting smarter, getting smarter.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, getting smarter. Yeah. Don't blame people for putting something on their computer that is quite valid if you're showing me rubbish advertising. So we're trying to we we do a native product for publishers in particular, affiliate, that um we believe looks like the content, complements the content, understands what you're reading. And by doing that, we don't think that we're spamming you with betting opportunities, we think that we're enhancing your reading, your sports reading opportunities, which I think um goes a long way to stopping people at blocking.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think that's brilliant. So let's talk a little bit about the US market because I know that you guys work a lot in that space. Um, for affiliates that are considering to enter this market, um, what do you think they need to think about in terms of their product and deal negotiations?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, sure. So it's it's a bit like the Wild West at the minute, we keep describing it. Obviously, huge amount of interest, not only from operator wagering company side, but also affiliates, I'm sure, whether they're European-based or they're US born and bred, they're looking at this and going, cool, there's so much opportunity here. I think a lot of the learnings that we're taking away are around organization. So it's it's far from as easy in the European markets at the minute where anyone can go in and create an affiliate account and literally take an affiliate tracker off and put it on an ad on their site. It requires um a greater understanding of state-by-state structure. So I think a key thing that you've got to start thinking about is uh geo-targeting, whether it's a WordPress plugin or or some more fancy geotargeting tool, you have to be able to fully service these clients, target your ads to the states that you're advertising because they um they don't want to run the risk of advertising FanDuel, New Jersey, for example, in a state that is not New Jersey.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, totally, totally get that.
SPEAKER_01So I think that's crucial, definitely geotargeting. I also think the other thing that uh bearing in mind is the legislation. So actually licensing yourself, you you can't get very far unless you're looking at getting yourself vendor approved. Uh, it could be quite arduous, so definitely get your organizational hat on and start. I'd say start start mapping out the clients that you're working with and work with them. We're finding that the wagering companies are being really helpful at getting whether it's us a tech supplier or affiliates helping them get the bits that they need in place to help them advertise better. They want to do the deals, they just need both sides of that kind of puzzle to be sorted.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And where do you think the future is gonna head for this market? Because there's a lot of talk about you know, European affiliates coming in, US-based affiliates, you know, shutting up their offshore shops and becoming more focused in the US. What do you think is gonna happen in that landscape? And everybody I ask has a different like answer to this. I'd really like to hear your take on it. But what do you think the market's gonna do in the next sort of 12 months? Do you think?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's in it's really interesting because it I feel like we've almost gone back 10 years, but looking at the most advanced, like America has amazing technology and amazing um infrastructure, they're just going back to where we started back in Europe many, many moons ago. I think we're I'm definitely seeing a really interesting blend of affiliates, starting with the US side. I think a lot of the existing US affiliates, their focus to date has been solely around promoting brands of wagering companies that exist, the offers that they offer, sign up for $500 free bet today. And they're used to trying to generate traffic off legislation conversations, so articles around bills that have been passed and senators' opinions and so on and so on. It's far, far, yeah, news, exactly, far removed from what we're used to, which is sporting content that either comes traditionally in our market as life scores, results, or literal written article content, drug bus moved to China. It's true.
SPEAKER_00It's really true that you should say that because what I've seen on my side is um there's no like niching. There's no like here, this this content niche. Affiliates have found their like niche, they talk an audience, they you know right down. Whereas everybody, as you said, is going for a more news-based approach in terms of what's going to happen next. And I wonder if we're gonna see a whole bunch of new affiliates come up that maybe focus on tools that assist betters and whether that's gonna mature like it has here in Europe.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, 100%. I think I think you've got this bucket of uh sign-up offers on this side, and then I think you've got the what I call the big boys, the big um, the ESPNs, the USA Today's, those big sport publisher content, it is around sport content and who's being picked in the draft and so on. I think that the niche sits in the middle a bit for me. I think there's a niche where, yes, it's such a new uh growing, maturing market. You do want to know about the news around the Senates and the bills and what have you, but then I think you also want the sport content, and I haven't seen too many examples yet of where those worlds have merged, collided, yeah. Yeah, and within that, then someone builds a platform that has those two pieces together, but then also whether it's the odds comparison grids or whether it's the tools like you talked about. Um, and also I think there's a big, big part in educating American punters in online sports betting.
SPEAKER_00It's um and I think tying in the experiential thing because while while I was over there, it was all about the experience of going to the pub with your mates and you know, watching the sport and having that um social engagement with it. And it's like who's gonna tie that in with the online stuff, and maybe maybe the big media partners like ESPN and all of them can with experiences or you know events or things that they can their audience with, but I think that's a real thing that um affiliates can take advantage of because they are agile and they can create businesses quite quickly. Um I think that's gonna be interesting for me too. And so in terms of like just to quickly um round up our podcast today, my last question for you is kind of what three things should affiliates do to enter and gain a successful return on their investment in what we know is now a fragmented market right now. What are the three things or three pieces of advice that you would give to affiliates who are looking to that to get into that marketplace?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, sure. So I think I've start with the infrastructure site. I totally agree that you can build an affiliate site in a day. If you want to build it, it would do a job. Just making sure that you are future-proofing your website, your ad serving opportunities, you have to get your tech in a good place. The other thing I would think about your um the wagering companies that you're talking to, make sure you understand progress as an organization state by state, and and what that means in terms of their advertising. Does someone like FanDuel is are they going to advertise the same banner across every state? Are they going to change their marketing approach? How does that fit into the content that you're producing or the tooling maybe that you're offering on your site? Because they they will want to make sure that their state by state brands are aligned to the sites that they're working with.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And I guess the last key thing is probably commercials. Just make sure that you're you're going into this, understanding what the options are. It's not the ref share market that I would say that we saw in Europe when it started, it's much more around CPA deals. Understand the benchmarks, understand what you're getting offered from each wager and company, and make sure you understand how the the lifetime value piece plays across that because these guys are starting at the very start. So you want to make sure that you're being rewarded uh ideally for for all of time, which should bring in better returns, you hope.
SPEAKER_00And that then leads into the kind of exit piece. So, you know, what are you what business are you building and how do you want to exit that business in the future? So just having a more of a long-term approach to the industry, I think, is is very good advice. 100%. Yeah. I want to thank you so much for being on our podcast today. It's been an absolute pleasure to talk with you, and I'm really looking forward to seeing you at the digital marketing forum where you're gonna have a very interesting panel on esports and sports betting and the convergence of that space. So um, thank you very much for joining us. Thanks for having me. Looking forward to it. Awesome.