Profile: Natural Intelligence

Asaf Gozlan, head of gaming at Natural Intelligence, discusses the performance-based marketing firm’s focus on the high value end of the player spectrum and how he aspires to develop the firm as a market leader

We don’t regard any other affiliate in the gaming industry as a direct competitor of ours,” Asaf Gozlan, head of gaming at performance-based marketing firm Natural Intelligence, says. It’s a bold statement for a company with only four gaming comparison portals in its portfolio, and operating within an increasingly mature affiliate marketing sector, but one which doesn’t seem too out of kilter with reality.

As an acquisition channel the Tel Aviv-based firm aims to do things a little differently and, more importantly, set the agenda by doing them before anyone else. “You will notice that the format we have favoured for our portals since 2010, have been replicated in terms of the look and feel many times over in other comparison portals,” Gozlan adds.

Natural Intelligence has developed a highly lucrative marketplace and works just in the channels that offer high quality traffic, placing itself at the top for aggressive keywords. Through a very granular optimisation funnel and an ability to target in real-time, it aggressively targets only the highest spend of the player spectrum traffic through PPC campaigns, sending customers through its comparison shopping portal and onto what it claims is a simplified shopping experience.

The focus on high-intent customers forms the basis of its business model and the value it provides its partners. “Our ability to identify, target and optimise off data to proprietary systems for specifically that point in the customer lifecycle, that’s exactly where we work through the comparison shopping portal and developed a simplified shopping experience,” Gozlan says.

“Within the entire player value spectrum, we specifically know how to target the high-intent new customers, those people who are looking to learn about an experience and to understand a product which in this case would be casino, poker, sports betting or bingo.” Natural Intelligence understands better than most the vast spectrum of traffic available in the industry and sends approximately 12,000 first time depositors (FTDs) a month from all four portals and although poker falls back slightly, all verticals are a lucrative part of its gaming portfolio.

High end of the spectrum
The way Natural Intelligence operates within poker means the vertical continues to be an important acquisition channel for the company despite the much publicised difficulties of online poker as operator revenues, with only a handful of exceptions, continue to dwindle. Few egaming affiliates can now claim to be a significant traffic channel in poker and the fact the marketing firm can claim that and uphold to the certain volumes of traffic it’s able to provide, is a statement within itself.

“We understand that the volumes might not equal those of sports betting or bingo but that’s fine as at the same time the traffic is still very high quality. We target players with a very high gaming acumen,” Gozlan says. “Our average registration to FTD is insanely high because we’re very proficient in developing a funnel for shrewd players who have a good experience with gaming and those who register in our portals are more than likely to develop real relationships with our partners.”

Natural Intelligence aims to offer players something more than just an entry-point to the brand itself and is really the raison d’etre of what its portfolio of top10 websites does, offering the high value customers an experience which is above what they are familiar with. The firm has an exclusive fast track
VIP upgrade which it developed with its partners to boost progression towards the VIP programme for each of its partners, recognising not to target through malicious black hat methodology when promoting to really shrewd players who have vast experience, enjoy gambling and do it safely.

Gozlan believes that much of the UK-based online gambling industry gets bogged down with focusing on first time deposits and then the evolution into an exclusive first-time deposit. “We understand that our traffic isn’t just people who are going to test something once and leave and never really want to come back,” he says. “The players there are offered a deeper engagement and a more sincere relationship with our partners.”

The firm offers a shorter amount of deposits and, whereas some operators might require deposits of about £10,000 to reach a certain level within their VIP program, provides a way through its site on a second deposit to fast-track players into that program for either a two-week, one-month or three-month trial. It’s a carefully thought-out proposition with one thing in mind; to provide an experience for players who don’t like to be insulted by misinformation or false advertising. “This is what we aspire to do, to be able to offer a simplified shopping experience which has an added layer of a very evolved approach to your official new relationship with a specific brand,” Gozlan says.

Top of the gaming tree
Natural Intelligence was founded in 2009 by current CEO Nir Greenberg and is active across a number of different industries, including online gambling, with more than 160 employees working in an office based in the heart of Tel Aviv’s thriving egaming sector. The firm works under a matrix management system where every department has either a service provider or stakeholder which is reliable and responsible for each individual industry Natural Intelligence is active in. And as the firm’s head of gaming, Gozlan operates as the industry manager, connecting all the departments and requirements, as well as being the outward-facing representative for the company’s gaming business.

Gozlan lives and breathes online marketing having been active in the industry since his teens, before making the leap into online gaming in 2009 and later being named head of gaming at Natural Intelligence in August 2012. At the time of his appointment the firm’s gaming arm was much less mature than it is today with only very young poker, casino and bingo portals which bear little resemblance to what it offers now. The bingo portal itself was only about one month old at the time and Gozlan was instrumental in driving the launch of niches within it, and then within each product respectively. Approximately six months after joining Natural Intelligence, the firm launched the sports betting portal, completing its entire portfolio in gaming. Now it has four main URLs where it sends most of its traffic; top10bestonlinecasinos.co.uk, top10sportsbettingsites.co.uk, top10bestpokersites.co.uk andtop10bestonlinebingosites.co.uk.

But the story clearly doesn’t end there and Gozlan is constantly on the move with endless meetings both with existing partners and prospective clients as he looks to build on the solid foundations the firm has already created. “It’s an ongoing stream of Skype discussions in between meetings,” he admits. “The fact
we’re based in Tel Aviv, the whole Israeli gaming industry is situated around a 1km radius around our offices so I tend to make it to a lot of meetings for face-to-face discussions.”

Forefront of technology
Natural Intelligence very much considers itself to be a technology-based performance marketing firm and almost all of the systems that it operates on are proprietary. “What we use these systems for is really for our ability to develop a reputation which is a valued performance tracking channel and proprietary systems is what allows us to optimise this strategy and really benefits us,” Gozlan explains.

This is one of the main reasons it pushes to stand out among other portals in the egaming performance-marketing sector and the mobile channel is very much at the heart of everything it does. Google recently announced that mobile searches on the search engine have now officially surpassed those of desktop for
the first time and as Natural Intelligence aims to be at the forefront of the latest technology trends, mobile accounts is a key driver for the continued exponential growth of the business.

Gozlan says the firm is on top of the latest trends and was one of the first to notice that mobile search queries were taking over desktop in the sports betting vertical before any other vertical. “This is sort of indicative and like the canary in the coalmine because we can definitely identify that the mobile product for sports betting is the most evolved, it’s the most consumer friendly and mature,” he says.

Natural Intelligence has acquired a media channel – essentially its marketing department – and a highly skilled and talented product development team which aims to be the defining innovators of the comparison shopping portal space within affiliate marketing. Gozlan believes that what it innovates tends to often be replicated very quickly, particularly in mobile, and goes as far to request its partners don’t replicate or propagate its advancements to any other affiliate channel they have after recognising early that the trends and search queries of high end gamblers in the UK was trending towards mobile.

Online gambling affiliates have often been accused of being well behind the mobile curve compared to operators, for which a 50% revenue target from the channel is now becoming standard practice. Natural Intelligence aims to only work with the most proficient operators on mobile. “I don’t have enough insight
in terms of what other affiliates are doing on mobile but what I can say that we’re seeing on the partner end are those brands that which prepared themselves with a product and an ability to develop engagement and a real enjoyable experience with UX and UI and the look and feel of mobile,” he says. “At the partner end, we definitely see a difference between those which have prepared themselves for mobile and those that are completely behind the ball.”

Working with a framework
Unlike traditional affiliates in the egaming space, Natural Intelligence is 100% focused on the UK online gambling market, with only some limited exposure to the French market. Trust is an important issue in performance-based marketing and in many ways Google rules the roost. Its relationship with the search engine giant has proven significant for the company and as a business model was an important factor in deciding to only work in a regulated environment and stay out of grey markets. For an affiliate targeting the high intent traffic, the UK is really the one market where you’re afforded that ability.

For many affiliates the introduction of the UK’s new Point of Consumption (PoC) licensing regime, which now sees operators hand over 15% of gross profits derived from UK-based customers, led to a re-evaluation of their business model as operators prepared to offset much of the new burden to affiliates. However, Gozlan actually praises the new regime brought into place and believes a healthy market is one which is regulated and doesn’t afford any grey operators to abuse the market.

And he still sees a lot of potential for growth in one of the most mature online gambling markets in the world. “I think it’s a good thing because I’m never going to be opposed to any sort of regulation, and as it stands, gambling and gaming is a very big part of the UK traffic that we understand and it’s not something which will die off,” he says. “The only thing I would say is that because we operate as an acquisition channel and develop a portal that funnels in a marketplace in terms of a massive amount of players, then we’re available for who we consider the very best operators in the industry.”

This has essentially kept Natural Intelligence immune from all the PoC concerns compared to the vast number of affiliates preparing to feel the pinch. Affiliates working with the really low end and low value traffic are the ones most likely to be impacted by the PoC, while Natural Intelligence’s high-value player business model and the return on investment (ROI) it develops for its partners is so significant that it’s protected the company from any potential negative effects.

Within the discussion for regulated markets, few things are off the table for Natural Intelligence. Everything which is available is of interest because of the firm’s enviable capabilities for targeting customers within every single vertical at the point of inception. “We’re very skilful at targeting the beginning of a customer lifecycle and that’s exactly where we would apply ourselves if a performance-based industry was in a regulated market,” Gozlan says. “There’s obviously industries like binary and forex which we could get into; however, they’re a bit unregulated.”

And although Natural Intelligence appears content with its current capabilities, it is now seeking to take things to another level and is in the process of developing new traffic channels which it claims are “completely outside of the box” in terms of innovation. It is also in the process of completely renovating the design of its original portals for all verticals which Gozlan believes will again be replicated by the time the industry sees them.

With the kind of spend budgets Natural Intelligence dedicates itself to, it would not be a surprise if it’s still out in front in the years to come. “With innovation, there’s only really one thing that we have to hold ourselves to, and that’s to be the market leaders,” Gozlan concludes.