THE CANARY


CI: Carlton, as a customer, what does working with Inuvo enable you to do? What do they mean to you as an advertising technology provider? Carlton Saffa: Acxiom was the godfather of Big Data. So when I’m dealing with Inuvo, I know I’m dealing with many of the same guys who invented knowing who your customer is and compiling those datasets. Everyone who approaches you to sell you anything and,


especially in the digital space, says ‘we’re different’. The truth is when you look just a little bit, they’re not so different, Inuvo is. Their secret sauce is real, but it’s not a secret. Companies declare ‘we can tell you who your customers are!’ or ‘we can find you new customers!’. Most of these companies develop a profile of who they believe your customer is and then basically make a photocopy of variations of that. ‘Well, your customer likes to gamble! And maybe like to eat, and perhaps follow this and that…’ They just create webs of maybes and tell you that you need to throw money at that. My thoughts on that were, why am I spending money on digital maybes that are no more artful than a shotgun approach to broadcast TV? I had lots of doubts about the efficiency of digital, until I


was approached by Inuvo and learned a couple of things. First, they understand Big Data better than anyone. Second, their technology is entirely different to anything offered by anyone else in that it’s all proprietary. Rather than trying to guess who my customer is, then sell me services to target look-a-like customers, Inuvo said ‘To hell with that! Let’s see why your customers visit the casino and let’s go get more of the same’. Through a very smart use of pixel technology – as opposed to cookies, which we know are disappearing – Inuvo developed multiple profiles based on the different reasons why our customers come to our casino. This emerges every month in a slightly different fashion. The reasons why


customers come changes so quickly, which is another secret sauce component of the Inuvo solution: adaptability. What began as a core customer base has now moved into different areas, while maintaining that core customer. Here’s what Inuvo did for us – they verified for me something no one else could confirm and, as a result, I was able to validate exactly what I suspected with real data. They confirmed who I knew my customer was. But more importantly, at the same time they showed me these insights, I realized I also didn’t have a complete picture of my customers. The data was validated in that we knew our gaming customer was largely female and mostly 35+. The data validated what is universally true in slots, that the player is female and tilts to the older demographic. What they then showed me were things I had no idea about – interest sets among our players and people who are interested in our property. Not necessarily people that have been here, but people who have been to the website or already shown some interest. I get granular detail back from Inuvo like this all the time and it allows me to refine my overall marketing strategy accordingly – your player has a tremendous interest in outdoor sports; specifically we’re seeing a huge increase in interest in boats amongst our identified customers. There are all kinds of things we can do with that, from marketing to promotions and more. One month, as incredible as this is, we started to see huge


spikes in customer interest among things like recipes. Now, we’re not going to pay the electricity bill on a $300m building based on someone being interested in recipes alone, but what that allowed me to do was to go to low- dollar, high value places like Pinterest and put digital advertising in under-utilised spaces that the data shows will


SEPTEMBER 2021 37


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68