Online Gaming - Internet Marketing News and Blogs

In the current economic climate, marketers and business owners need to take a close look at how they can improve the effectiveness of their websites.

Whilst the economic downturn is unlikely to result in any decline in online volume, we are already starting to see online business growth start to slow slightly, as consumers tighten their belts in the face of escalating food and fuel bills, as well as rising borrowing costs.

Raptr, a social network which tracks users' gaming activity on their Xbox, PS3, Wii and PC, has just launched in public beta.

Amongst other things, it lets you know when your friends are gaming, which is a nifty idea. I've signed up to see how it works...

Never has something seemingly so simple as page tagging caused so many problems. 

Poor tagging is costing companies thousands of pounds a month from wasted web analytics, duplicate affiliate commissions and marketing that isn't tracked properly. 

The last few years have seen football pools operators’ once-massive audiences dwindle as the popularity of the lottery and online gambling has soared. But Sportech, the company which now owns the main pools players Littlewoods, Vernons and Zetters, is attempting to see their luck turn.

Last month saw the announcement that it would bring all three brands into one website - footballpools.com - as well as the launch of radically different digital strategy centred around ‘social betting’. The company has also been investing heavily in content, improved analytics practices and new channels on MySpace and Facebook.

Following all that, we grabbed a few minutes with head of online marketing Dominic Starkey to see how challenging the whole process has been...

It seems that every day we read about the declining effectiveness of advertising. How viewers skip through the adverts, can switch off to the marketing noise, no longer respond to our messages.

Brands are increasingly looking at more diverse ways to engage consumers in their products, and I believe there is currently no better opportunity than the Nintendo Wii.

Microsoft’s Xbox Live may have surpassed the 10m user milestone but this is no time for ebullient press releases from the Redmond-based giant. Since Christmas, playing Xbox Live online has been nothing short of a nightmare.

Microsoft has totally failed to manage user expectations, to accommodate new Xbox users, and to cater for the spikes that were bound to appear over the holiday period. It’s a pity, since the Xbox Live experience, when it works, is nothing short of sensational, and should get better and better.

Virgin has closed Virgin Bets, its sports betting service, less than a year after it launched.

In a notice, Virgin says the site will be shut down for the short term and ultimately replaced by a "new and improved betting product".

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick is the latest person in US public office to take aim at online gambling, though his bill seems doomed to failure if you look at the numbers.

Patrick, who is essentially a leftist with an otherwise right-on record, has suggested that internet gamblers should be fined and jailed, marking a shift from the usual ‘prosecute the gambling companies, not the punters’ line.

Nothing unusual in that, you might think, but Patrick’s recommendation appears within a bill aimed at making room for three more casinos in the state that he currently oversees. A thoroughly bizarre move, if he is concerned about his reputation, and savagely hypocritical given the main thrust of the bill.

Dragons' Den investor Theo Paphitis entered the world of affiliate marketing on last night’s show, handing £200k to web entrepreneurs Emmie Matthews and Ed Stevens for 30% of their business.

Their site, GamingAlerts.co.uk, offers odds comparisons and an alert system from “major online casinos, online poker rooms, online bingo sites and online sportsbooks”.

It’s great to see web start-ups and online ad companies appearing so prominently in this year's Sunday Times Tech Track 100, published by the paper yesterday.

Doncaster-based online travel agency Holiday Rooms Direct tops the league table after increasing its sales from £184,000 to just under £7m in two years, while the top ten also includes DVD rental company Lovefilm and local search firm The Best Of.