“Innovation and creativity is central to everything that Clever does”

Can you describe the strategic vision behind Clever Advertising’s approach to content production, particularly with your BOLD division?

Of course! Clever’s approach to content production can be summed up in one simple sentence: we strive to provide the best-in-class, relevant content for our partners across a number of verticals and regulated markets. We achieve this through our BOLD division, which has been clever-ly designed to offer premium content services, centred around acquiring new customers for operators and providers.

At Clever, we fully understand the challenges that iGaming operators face; acquisition can be tricky in the face of heightened iGaming competition. We therefore wanted to support our partners in expanding their customer base through an affiliate model.

BOLD taps into our expansive, varied network of content producers to create targeted, relevant content for each individual market, thereby giving our partners heightened brand visibility and – as a result – increased customer acquisition.

How does BOLD’s content production strategy differ in the LATAM, Africa and European markets, and what challenges do you face in these distinct regions?

It’s super important that you don’t roll out the same strategy in Latin America as you do in Europe or in Africa. These are incredibly different markets, and as a result, require wholly different approaches.

Within each of these markets, our extensive network of digital content producers distribute campaigns via a diverse range of channels, including Twitch, YouTube and Meta. The key difference, however, is how we localise each of these campaigns.

You need to take a handful of key areas into consideration when creating these campaigns: content, regulation, payment methods, language and community styles. In Europe, there is much more diversity when it comes to languages, sports and regulatory landscapes – all of which have an impact upon the consumption of iGaming content. But in Latin America and Africa, yes you do have varying languages and regulations, but there is also a large cultural unity around football – creating much more consistency when it comes to developing betting-related content.

The variation in regulations impacts accessibility in Europe, while Latin America’s evolving regulations foster distinct marketing strategies. Europe’s established financial systems contrast with Latin America’s diverse, alternative payment methods.

From a content consumption perspective, the regions have shown a preference for mobile betting. But the platforms and community engagement styles vary massively. It is therefore imperative that campaigns are localised, both in terms of content and language, to engage with the relevant audiences.

How do you measure the success of your content production campaigns, and what metrics are most important to Clever Advertising and its clients?

There are a number of different metrics that you can look at when measuring success of campaigns, but these numbers aren’t important if your campaign doesn’t lead to a return in investment. And that, we believe, is achieved by creating advertising campaigns that resonate with your audience, resulting in new customers.

At Clever, we take great pride in being able to deliver highly-targeted, relevant, personalised campaigns for our partners. Ultimately, players aren’t going to engage with an advertising campaign that they think isn’t relevant to them. A sports fan wants to see adverts relating to odds on their favourite football team, rather than an advert for a new slot title, for example.

Once we have determined what adverts will engage audiences, we distribute our campaigns via our efforts across a number of channels, like media buying, including desktop and in-app, seo, and iinfluencers.

In the dynamic and competitive landscape of iGaming, how does Clever Advertising stay ahead in terms of innovation and creativity in content production?

Innovation and creativity is central to everything that Clever does. It is a core principle of our company culture, and something that shapes our day-to-day operations.

Staying ahead in terms of innovation is much easier said than done, however. We’re seeing some fantastic new technologies and trends emerge across our industry. But at Clever, we thrive on exploring new ideas, formats and platforms that resonate with our audience.

A big part of us staying ahead of the curve is through collaboration with our partners, and daring to deliver something new to the market. We always make sure that we listen closely to the feedback from our partners, as well as digesting the data analytics from the local audience, to understand what is working well and where we can best improve.

Compliance is a critical aspect of the iGaming industry. Can you discuss the measures BOLD takes to ensure compliance in its content production and promotion efforts?

Clever Advertising and compliance might as well be synonyms of one another. We place such a high importance on remaining compliant with ever-changing regulations – whether that be age restrictions, responsible gambling requirements or even promotions.

Across our entire company, we have stringent safeguards in place that ensure our campaigns are in accordance with local regulations. We also prominently display legal warnings throughout our content to reinforce responsible gambling behaviour.

It is important that we certify our content creators and only collaborate with those who adhere to the strict regulations in place across each market. Our content creators use real money when they play, which ensures authenticity and integrity. This dedication to vetted content creators promotes openness and trust among our clients and audience.

At Clever, we are in a very fortunate position that we can quickly pivot our operations according to changing regulations. We are able to turn off, and conversely switch on, our campaigns at the click of a button. This is so important, especially as new markets continue to introduce regulation around the world; this flexibility ensures that we are always compliant.

Looking forward, what emerging trends or technologies do you believe will significantly influence content production in the iGaming sector?

This is a difficult question, as there are so many different technologies which have the potential to revolutionise the content production space. For me, however, I think that one of the biggest disruptors will be artificial intelligence.

We’re seeing AI being used in multiple areas across the iGaming industry – from game design to data analytics and automation. And I think we’re only at the tip of the iceberg. We have been using AI for quite some time at Clever, especially within our AddApp Division, which is dedicated to in-app advertising.

By using AI, the solution has not only been able to analyse and understand changing market behaviours, but also understand product consumption trends – allowing us to tweak campaigns to align with changing bettor preferences. This happens at a speed that wouldn’t be possible if we were to solely rely on manually processing this information.