Tablet Marketing Anyone?

[Guard Dog]

Is anyone here doing marketing around iPad, Android Tablets, HP Touchpad? I would be interested to find out what might be going on in this space. There are several ways to promote here and not sure if our industry is taking advantage of that in any way..

here are the possibilities (limited):

• Apps - of course
• Adverts - Paid
• HTML5 website development

Those are just off the top of my head. What's happening in this marketing space?

[dominique]

Good question, we need to pay attention to this.

[Guard Dog]

Updated the thread topic to say 'Tablet' not 'Table' LOL. No wonder nobody is commenting! Everyone likely thought it was something else entirely

[WCD Admin]

Since I got my wife a Xoom I've been wondering about this. Mainly I 'm trying to understand why my logo and header are all screwed up on tablets even though I'm 1024x768 compliant.

what screensize do you optimize for. i also want to build an m.worldcasinodirectory.com for mobile phones. (ahhh,but I have no time !!)

[lojo]

Rebuilding some pages (based on alexa or other data) in html5 should give good tablet user coverage. The mix between rich interactive content you can deliver on a PC and the mobility seem exciting at first but tablets just aren't that 'mobile' in real life - they stay in the backpack, purse or briefcase unless the user is in time kill mode when in transit (commuting, waiting for appt, etc.) You cant really walk down the street using it.

People are buying them for the screen size and the amount ofvideo etc they watch is directly related to screen size - but - canalys found in April that

The findings of a recent consumer survey by Canalys show that current pad usage resembles that of a PC, rather than a media player or e-book reader. After web browsing, both pad owners and non-owners in Western Europe, linked pad usage to e-mail/messaging and social networking. Among pad owners, all three categories rated much higher than e-book reading and video watching. Non-owners, however, expected e-mail/messaging, e-book reading, and video watching to top pad usage after web browsing.

The kinds of pages i see going over well on a tablet are slotsville for an animated casino page and something like casino-lemonade for static, though animations and especially 'in page' real or fun mode gaming would be a logical evolution.
If I am understanding the bigger picture simply recoding certain pages for html5 is better than coming up with much new stuff if you aren't going to go whole hog.

An App that would integrate the top five used apps as a sort of portal, also forcing your content as the host is an idea worth looking at but app dev is costly compared to html5 conversion.

A revenue sharing agreement with an app developer (them as sub affiliate) to get your content pushed whenever the pad user's interests wandered near the gambling related subjects might pay.

For 'normalized' jurisdictions there are big possibilities but I'll keep those close to the chest for now

For the most part I wouldn't go too crazy - the tablet is justa PC with a little better portability. An easy way to feel focused on the niche would be to do some demographics, herd all your enhanced graphics(3D-ish) casinos on to one site.

A bit more, if you have the resources, would be to do the same but get some targeted space on FaceBook - maybe even go to a social network marketing consultant because last weeks FB policy change could be big for this angle.

Just some thoughts

edit: lol just noticed the forum thread is SEO. here are some quick tips from seosteve.com

Using browser detection, you can send your iPad user to a Special Offer for iPad (or GT) Users page
Add iPad and Google Tablet to your Quality Assurance and Usability checklists
Make your checkout process as quick, easy and tablet-friendly as possible
If you provide services to a specific geographic are, spend some time reading local SEO tutorials
Offer a way for users to toggle between iPad and “normal” view that only appears if the browser detects the iPad
Larger fonts are definitely helpful on mobile devices
Adobe Flash does not currently work on an iPad without applying a hack
Get your website listed on Apple’s iPad-ready website list. There homepage is only a PageRank™ of 9!
Use the pages already mentioned in the last bullet as a guide to reconstructing your own website

[Vladi]

To me there seems to be a split between people who think of tablets as "mobile" devices and regard them effectively the same as phones, and those who don't. I'm one of the latter. I don't think it is worth the time or effort to do anything special on your website to cater to tablets. The resolutions of the screens and pixel density are increasing quickly, which means that the tablets will be able to just about display any sized website comfortably as time passes. They are a PC with a smaller screen, and should be treated as such. Just don't go making websites with crazy widths and tiny text or buttons and you should be fine.

If you're after mobile phone customers however, then you should really look into a dedicated mobile site or app. The smaller screen resolution and physical size mean that the experience can be so much better on a properly developed and optimised mobile site.

Dedicated apps are a totally different thing. I see the various app stores as a pretty big threat to traditional website-based affiliate marketing as they can effectively cut out the middle man at very low cost and the audience on the App Store is far bigger than any affiliate site's. The app stores are the new super-affiliates. Eg a casino puts an app for free on the Apple app store, pays nothing to Apple, and nothing to affiliate marketers. You can be an app store affiliate but you'll earn nothing if the apps are being given away for free. There is no tracking solution that can track a player end-to-end from your site to the app store then to the casino app that they use to download and deposit. So you would probably have to rely on the player entering specific bonus codes or something if you want them tagged to you.

There is obviously an opportunity for affiliates to get in there early too but the question is what are you going to promote with your app? Do you just design an app that complements your website or forums? Or make it a sales tool in itself? Flash based casinos/poker could be a winner, but a massive chunk of market share is lost due to no flash on Apple devices. And I am not aware of a dedicated and full featured casino or poker app or HTML5 compliant sites that will work on an Apple device. There are a few crappy WAP based mobile casinos, which do tablets the disservice I mentioned above by treating them as mobile phones. And also one off apps, like 32 Red blackjack.

Its a bit chicken and egg to me at this stage. We as affiliates need the casinos to step up and produce something worth promoting, and better yet, worth playing from a player's perspective. But by the time they do, it could be that the casino sees affiliates other than the app stores themselves as unnecessary.

[vd752]

I think in the near future the difference between tablets and PC will be minimal - now there is no real choice of casinos/casino games to play on tablets/phones if compared with PC.

[lojo]

Agreed.

But - the small amount of time invested to take one or two pages and apply the simple techniques in the quoted part above may well be worth the effort, if only for a test, and it could possibly show results.

[lojo]

In this thread or another marketing post I mentioned the idea of providing top players with a tablet, of developing an app to push content, and a couple of other thoughts.

Amazon Kindle Fire is now selling at (probably) less than the cost of mfg. They will reap massive profits from sales of media and even physical products.

For those with big players there is definitely a niche here. It just has to be well crafted and specific.



(OT) Sorry for the two foul comments in another thread Vladi and yes, Andy, agreed, and point well taken.

[Guard Dog]

There is definitely possibilities of creating apps that will be good for promotion on a tablet. I haven't gotten my hands around what that might involve, though.

As far as the Kindle Fire... I'm not sure how 'locked down' it will be. It is a HIGHLY customized 'offshoot' of Google Android. It has basically none of the Google and all of the Amazon Meaning - no Google Marketplace, but will be replaced with Amazon Marketplace. No Google Services (apparently, but not 100% on this).

So..... does that leave it open for app placement? May be unique there too. But, yes, they are letting it go for less than the cost of manufacturing it. Because they are smart as hell. They will make up for it in Movie sales alone, IMO.