THE CANARY
to the major networks, cable providers and the like to get my message out. Every day the cord is cut by more and more people on cable and streaming outpaces broadcast in many markets already, especially with millennials. If I’m not with Inuvo now, I’m going to be playing catch-up in five years. Inuvo is my canary in the coalmine, for the digital
be impactful. Inuvo’s AI technology does all of this automatically. In a roundabout way, they said ‘yes, your customers are
exactly who you think they are – but hey, there’s all this other stuff that also tells us why they are our customers that you had no idea about’ and I love that. I cannot get that from any other partner. RH: Carlton doesn’t need our help to tell him his people are interested in gaming. That is obvious. Anybody can do that – of course they are, that’s why they’re coming to the casino. It’s these other things, we call them signals. The things you don’t know, the why? As Carlton knows, there was a preponderance towards
sports betting, but our AI told us that it was more about baseball than any other sport. This allows Carlton the flexibility to focus his spend and messaging around those interests most likely to be the drivers of the attraction to the experience. In a way, it’s like getting inside the minds of consumers, the ability to the message them online across channels at the very instant when they are asking themselves, “wouldn’t it be great if we could find a casino locally that has baseball sports betting?” Every one of our clients sees these signals that we are saying are indicative of the things that are different about their clients, and they say ‘a-ha!’ CS: In the old days in the US, coal miners would take a canary down in the mine with them, so we now have the expression ‘the canary in the coal mine’. I’m a big believer in that canary, it’s the first signal that something is happening. In a previous life when I worked in government, I always stayed close to the people that answered our calls, emails, and letters from constituents. I would always say to them ‘if you get a whole bunch of calls about an issue we have never heard of, please run and find me because something is about to happen’. There is value in that. And what Rich and Inuvo can do for us is the same thing. Let me give you a practical application of something Rich mentioned – baseball. As we do sports betting, if I know a little bit before baseball season begins that it’s more popular with my audience than expected, it allows me to plan promotions, deposit matches, parlay bonuses, and the like at a very practical, grassroots level. Knowing a little bit ahead of time what’s coming, when your customers are on the internet looking at something, right before they are calling and asking you about it, it allows you to be prepared for that. Inuvo allows me to future-proof our casino advertising. If I can get on the internet and place ads and know my patron, there is a time when I will not have to invest as heavily as I do in broadcast and cable television. The use of Inuvo and its other technologies in terms of digital capabilities allows me to future-proof the Saracen Casino. Today I am beholden
38 SEPTEMBER 2021
environment. RH: Europe has been leading the way with online privacy and America is lagging, but is getting there – it’s coming and will hit us in 2023 with the use of what is termed third-party data: the use of information that is not specifically authorized by consumers to be used. This is the backbone of conventional marketing, and the backbone of what we built at Acxiom and the cornerstone of every incumbent advertising technology provider. Unfortunately, it’s probably going to go away in its present form. Inuvo does not require third-party consumer data. We don’t need it – this is the magic of the AI that we have developed, it’s an interpretive technology. It’s like a brain – it can see content and understand the most important signals within it. It’s not using any other data; it doesn’t need or want it. We knew we had to find a different way to do things, one that’s not so focussed on knowing who that person is. Nobody gets too worried about this signal being given off – it’s not you, I don’t care who you are. From a marketing perspective, I don’t want to know who you are and I don’t want to be able to identify you, I just want to know that for whatever reason you have your hand up and you’re saying, ‘you know what, I may be thinking about some entertainment…’ That’s when Saracen wants to say ‘HEY! Don’t forget us, we have a bunch of good things going on for you!’
CI: Is Saracen your first casino customer? RH: Yes. There was a relationship there through one of our senior sales executives who brought us together as an opportunity to do something different. We were not thinking specifically of gaming when we developed this and we were exploring other opportunities because as you can imagine, there are a lot.
CI: That’s the moment this gets interesting – that intersection of data points… CS: I have this image in my mind, of football in a stadium, they might throw out t-shirts in a game to the crowd. I liken that to this: guy in the crowd wants a t-shirt and so he yells out, ‘hey, I want a t-shirt!’ The girl with the t-shirt cannon knows everyone there wants a t-shirt, but that dude really wants on, he’s standing up and waving. Nobody knows or cares who he is, we just know he’s a t-shirt-wanting dude, and we have some t-shirt-giving women down here. Inuvo allows us to get that t-shirt into the hands of the guy that really wants that t-shirt without me needing to know anything about him. Some of that data means I can also see there are others in
that crowd maybe less likely to stick their hands up, and if we tell them about the luxurious fibres of the t-shirt and its mystical powers, maybe they’ll stand up next time and shout for a t-shirt.
Come back for the second part of our interview with Inuvo about this brilliant product in the October issue of Casino International!
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