Q&A: Google on the next wave of RMG Play Store apps and the power of YouTube

Google’s omnipresent role in the igaming industry might not be evidently clear to everybody, but the inner machinations of the Alphabet-owned tech giant continue to have a profound impact at large.

Take, for example, the latest repeal in real-money gaming (RMG) apps in the Google Play Store in 15 countries, including the US. This rollback opened up a world of possibilities for operators, suppliers, affiliates and customers as days of side-loaded apps and awkward UX came to an end.

Now, Chris Harrison, Google industry head for financial trading and igaming, tells EGR Intel what to expect in the next set of repeals. Elsewhere, Harrison touches on Google’s new gambling advertising opt-out feature, as well as the intricacies of keyword searches, paid and organic search and understanding changing user behaviours.

The former Betfair exec also speaks to the power of YouTube and how the industry has failed so far to tap into its undoubted potential ahead of his appearance at this week’s iGaming NEXT ‘Bright Future’ event.

EGR Intel: What are Google’s plans regarding further repeals on its RMG app Play Store ban following the latest repeal in March?

Chris Harrison (CH): We opened up in 15 countries and that was on top of the three that we already had open. We were already live in the UK, Ireland and France and then we added a further 15, which we’re seeing as a phase one launch. We’re seeing it as let’s open these 15 and then we’ll work out what then needs to happen.

As far as sub-Saharan Africa, there’s a bunch of countries regulating there. It’s just where we feel comfortable with the degree of regulation and feel comfortable that we can go live with the Play Store in those territories. We’ll also look at parts of Latin America and parts of Europe. 

EGR Intel: Why was there such a lengthy period between the first initial repeal (UK/France) and the repeal in March 2021? 

CH: I’ve been poked and prodded about trying to get it rolled out quicker. From a product point of view, we build everything for scale and we build everything with a degree of machine learning, and therefore, automation. And if there is one thing this industry isn’t; it’s scalable. When we look at how a country like the UK regulates, it’s fundamentally different to how Brazil regulates.

From a back-end point of view, we don’t necessarily want to put human reviewers against all of our policy changes so we’ve gone back and forth multiple times and built a fresh bunch of new processes and practices in the background in order for us to set ourselves up. There’s been a bunch of things we’ve needed to get right.

The US regulating gave us a bit of a jolt and that certainly helped but we essentially wanted to build a sustainable platform with the right back-end that wasn’t cobbled together and therefore would break, as we had that a little bit with the UK, Ireland and France.

EGR Intel: In December, Google launched UI features that allowed customers to further control gambling advertisements. What sort of levels of engagement/success can you report since its implementation? 

CH: We haven’t necessarily marketed it with any great degree at this stage. We’re in talks with the Betting and Gaming Council as to how we can promote it. We are in talks with GamCare as to what we can do through them too. We’re doing the same thing in jurisdictions around the world, including the American Gaming Association to work out what we can do in the US. The same across Europe, Asia and Africa as well.

At this stage, it’s only a couple months out of the box and we would certainly expect more take up as we start promoting it.

EGR Intel: What changes have we seen over the last decade in terms of keyword searches?

CH: For anyone in marketing at the moment, it is trying to switch between keywords and users, and that you are no longer managing keywords, you are managing people. And that means you are now managing auctions, which allows us to do a lot more and change the product set quite significantly.

When we are talking to digital marketing teams, that is perhaps the hardest switch to get across. We have seen with the US they’ve had to bring in practitioners from different industries. We’ve noticed they are already more adaptable to the new normal which is the idea of users.

Fifteen percent of Google searches are new every day. Through voice search we’re seeing queries that we haven’t seen before so by getting away from being attached to the keyword and thinking about users, that is perhaps the single biggest change.

One way to get your head around it is with every single auction, someone would query online casino. There are tens of thousands of different signals that we would consider as to what ads get shown to that user. The query is just one signal, there are probably around 9,000 signals that we then consider as to what ad is shown. When you are fixated purely on the keyword, you miss out on all the others.

EGR Intel: Can you dive into the merits of paid search versus organic in terms of importance to the igaming industry?

CH: Each certainly has its own use case. The world shifted across to mobile five to 10 years ago, that’s not news to anyone. The real estate on mobile is obviously very different to desktop. The real estate on mobile, certainly for the gambling industry, is where we would classify a lot of the queries being highly commercial. One of the factors that determines this is the depth of the auction. The number of advertisers looking to appear against certain queries.

When that happens, there is a fairly deep ad load which means there would probably be four ads on a mobile device and that takes up one to two scrolls. For high volume of either bringing new customers in or influencing returning customers, you can see the merits of paid advertising.

Organic can have huge value in the long tail and organic can have huge value as search starts to shift and we start to think about the importance of video content or other sources of content that can be ranked.

They should always go hand-in-hand, they’ve got complimentary advantages. It shouldn’t be one or the other, it’s always an “and” when it comes to organic and paid search.

EGR Intel: What are your thoughts on YouTube’s potential for the igaming industry?

CH: I think for the industry itself there is what is coming out of the pandemic. In the UK we have what you can define as the Joe Wicks effect. We have 20 million individuals in the UK now watching YouTube via a TV screen, so from an advertising point of view that completely changes the playbook.

YouTube for a long time was pocketed into the social media bracket, then it was a mobile opportunity and now it is very much a TV opportunity. In the US, that’s 120 million people watching YouTube via TV.

On the advertising side, YouTube partners with the likes of Nielsen and connects to media mix models which will always support data flows between YouTube and operators or aggregators. In terms of content, Paddy Power do content really well, PokerStars do content really well but it has to be a value exchange.

There’s no reason why operators who don’t feel as though they have the right to play within that content space can’t partner with already established YouTubers. If you look at the US, FanDuel has a partnership with Pat McAfee. That’s a really interesting space where we have dipped our toes in but haven’t really gone as far as we can do yet.

EGR Intel: Why do you think the industry has only dipped its toes into the YouTube space so far?

CH: If I think through a typical marketing team at a large operator, YouTube in itself can fall into quite a murky space. Does it sit in the performance teams? Does it sit in the brand teams? Does it sit in the social teams? It can be a struggle for ownership and once ownership has been defined and ownership is on the paid side of marketing, then there is very little understanding to the social or content benefits of the platform.

In order for YouTube to work, it really has to be split out into different functions. Sometimes it can be a struggle where operators are resource limited. Also the type of personalities that have that type of audience are just starting to emerge. In the pandemic, people engaging with and watching digital content changed significantly.

I think it is now the right framework for more of these types of relationships where operators feel comfortable partnering with a content producer or YouTuber.

EGR Intel: Is there any appetite from Google to follow Yahoo into a sportsbook model? And if so would this be done via a JV or other by other means?

CH: No, I think on the Yahoo side they have got a legacy within fantasy sport which is very significant over in the US and that legacy means they have a whole bunch of content attached to that product. I think for a company like BetMGM; that is a significant opportunity. Yahoo are one of the biggest fantasy sports players in the US and that is just not a product we offer and it just doesn’t align naturally to where we are.

EGR Intel: Are there any additional gaming/gambling innovations Google is working on currently?

CH: It’s tough to say are there any specific igaming innovations. Getting the Play Store change was big for us, getting to the point where we were comfortable with gambling ad opt-out took a while for us to roll. Now, when we think about innovation, it’s more in line with what we already have in place, or product that will roll out across the whole market.

There will probably be more machine learning, embracing that and getting the most out of it. Media buying is already becoming commoditised so it’s then how do operators win in the age of machine learning advertising and that is through data and the ability to get the right data.

More YouTube, with different product coming out and how the industry can partner with, and take advantage, of that.

So perhaps not specific to igaming, albeit that’s not to say we won’t bring anything else out, but it’s more how does the industry align with innovations in general and not get left behind, simply through being stuck through old habits and bad practice.