Day Trip Media: New And Dodgy Bingo Affiliate Promotion Technique

Tuesday, 6 May 2008

New And Dodgy Bingo Affiliate Promotion Technique

I'm sure what I'm about to mention could be applied to any number of affiliate programmes, not just bingo, and in applied, I mean by braver people than me. Why brave? Well, partially because it involves breaking copyright laws. Ok, so I'm checking a video feed on one of my sites to see the latest bingo videos, when I spot one for Madonna and Justin Timberlake. Slightly surprised, I visit this video to see what's going on. It's quite a clever little trick when you stop and think about it, let me explain.

Find a video that's going to be insanely popular, put you're branding on it and get it out on YouTube. Notice the prominent link on the right side? Here's a grab below.

Dodgy Bingo promotional technique

Ok, marketing stuff on YouTube is far from new, I realise this, but to be honest, I've never seen it being done like this with bingo. Now, obviously Madge and Timb have nothing to do with bingo, but the idea is you get enough eyeballs, some will filter through and sign-up. So far the video I've featured has had less than 300 hits, but others by the same poster have had in excess of 30,000 and 20,000 hits.

Now, the more enterprising affiliates out there would be rubbing their hands in glee at the thought of that sort of traffic, but stop for a second and think about it. This poster is using copyrighted material that I'm 99.9% sure doesn't belong to him to push his affiliate site. How well does that sit with the likes of Mecca Bingo who are having their brand promoted in this mendacious fashion? If it was me, I would be less than impressed.

Ok, so there's little likelihood of the guy getting caught out, unless some bright spark looks at his whois information (oops) and it's in fact actually correct whois information, but given the music industry's recent attack on the copyright theft industry, it's quite possible the affiliate could land themselves in legal trouble. There are ways this technique could be applied with out the copyright infringement element and others are already utilising such methods.

Legal issues aside, it would also be interesting to see how well this technique converted for the affiliate. We've all tried advertising alongside non-relevant content, and whilst you may get lots of eyeballs, conversion rates generally tend to be very poor. To me it's akin to using the content network on Adsense or advertising on Facebook or something similar. Unless you're hitting the audience in the right place with the right intent, you're not going to see the rewards on the same level. That's in my experience at least, but maybe I'm just doing it wrong...

Posted by Dio Bach at 09:07

2 Comments:

David Fiske said...: I like the concept though in this case it has been actioned wrong. Granted, a DIY video about bingo would probably not get the site owner many hits but at least it wouldn't land him/her in legal hot water.

Then again, there are some people in this industry who couldn't care less about legalities.

It would be interesting to see what the response is from the Bingo sites concerned.; 06 May 2008 11:16
Dio Bach said...: Yeah, it's a great concept, but as you say in this case, actioned wrong. I doubt the bingo companies will take much notice. They don't seem to care (or at least take action) with people putting ads on their brand names and the like, why would they bother with this?

One thing that just struck me looking at the grab, and in particular the arrow I'd used to highlight the link, you could stick the arrow on the video at the end or something, and line it up with the link. Using original viral content of course. That said, would it be a lot less likely to become viral with a thickset arrow text brand across the top and bottom like that one!?; 06 May 2008 23:34