Exclusive Q&A with Alex Morgan-Moodie, Senior Director, Worldpay

Over the years, there have been numerous attempts to transform the way programmatic advertising is produced by marketers.

Creative Studio is likely to be the missing piece of the jigsaw on both sides of the Atlantic. But how will it change the landscape across different jurisdictions in Europe? We sat down with BETEGY’s award-winning CEO, Alex Kornilov, to gain his insights into how this will give Europe a huge push in the right direction.

Congratulations on the launch of Creative Studio! You first demonstrated the Creative Studio at ICE in Feburary. How much interest did you gain from delegates at the event?

The main aim for us in launching Creative Studio was to completely revolutionise the way marketers approach programmatic advertising in our industry.

The use-case for our technology is clear – marketing spend on acquisition and retention needs to become far more efficient. Operators know this, and this is where Creative Studio comes in – providing a completely new way to automate marketing campaigns. Of course, it was fantastic to unveil it at ICE in February, arguably the biggest European gaming show, with anything up to 30,000 delegates.

The lure of ICE and other trade shows is that we can get feedback and initial views in real time – making it an invaluable part of the development process, as we were able to take it “into the wild” and show it off to customers. We were also able to find out challenges / weakness / areas of improvement for the product, and this is incredibly vital for us, as such an approach can never be replicated just by beta testing internally.

For our European Gaming readers – talk us through Europe, how will this be a game-changer for European brands? Which region in Europe might benefit most from this?

In terms of development, Europe is far more advanced over the US in media buying strategies, so therefore, when we talk to European brands – they instantly understand what we do and any advantages that Creative Studio brings or has the edge over the competition.

Creative Studio is designed to deliver targeted with Swiss-level efficiency. In principle, the advantage that Europe has over the US is the cost of advertising, which is cheaper. Conversely, marketing, and the acquisition of betting customers, are incredibly expensive across the US – just look at DraftKing’s strategy of offering 1,000 USD as a sign-up bonus. Conversely, Europe is a far more mature market in terms of this – with a very different playing field. Given that we can transform efficiency and cost even more, we truly believe that we have the perfect product, and this aligns well with what we want to do in Europe. The cost of implementing this is much lower, and that is what makes the continent such a game-changer in using the technology.

Over 1,000 ads can be created from imported images without coding. Why is being able to import images without coding such a vital tool?

In a nutshell, it radically reduces costs and time. This is such a unique product for the industry that we’ll be able to revolutionise the entire process around using tools and deploying strategies.

So – when creating Creative Studio – we created it with the perspective of “how can we solve pain points for the design and wider marketing department”. In effect, we’re providing the technology that can remove the need for engineers in the process.

After all, we all know that it’s all about the personalisation of ads and targeted demographics – and I have no doubt that Creative Studio will transform results, as well as putting in-house marketers in the driving seat for managing campaigns, rather than the need to outsource to agencies.

How much of a challenge was it to design the Creative Studio and add it onto BETEGY’s award-winning platform?

There were three key steps in how we wanted to take designing Creative Studio forward. The first was approaching the thinking of what our design department requires to facilitate this process were they to undertake programmatic for themselves. We felt Creative Studio, although hugely innovative, would be a relatively quick fix to design and be made available to our partners within 12 months of inception. Which it has been!

We then wanted to create the product in a way that leaves the door open for it to continuously evolve as time goes on. Was it challenging? It really was – but we approached this with a specific goal and a plan in place. I have no doubt, given that such technology is entering new space, and we’ll be upgrading it as time goes on – just like any new technology. For myself, I am intrigued to see how Creative Studio can continue to add value as it develops further, as I feel we will be in a different ballpark altogether by the time 2024 comes around. After all – greatness comes from creating an innovation and then scaling it in real time.

Are there any other projects in the pipeline that could grow BETEGY’s platform further?

That’s a great follow-on question. Our key strength as a company is the personalisation technology we put in the hands of our partner.

When it comes to plans for the future – we’ve got a serious pipeline in place, so much so – we have to be careful over which routes to go down first!

We know exactly what we’ll be delivering in each quarter over the next year – each of those are designed to provide products and solutions with a real use-case, as well as truly fill gaps in demand we know exist in the market. However, for now, Creative Studio is the jewel in our innovation crown for 2023, and we have high hopes for this feature to prove to be a real game-changer for marketing departments across every vertical in the industry.

Related