Paul’s Blog “We did not do anything wrong”, Nokia CEO
Paul’s Blog “We did not do anything wrong”, Nokia CEO
Hooray for Kansas for readying a bill to enable a fast launch of sports-betting once the U.S. Supreme Court removes the federal prohibition. And the pending bill will legalize sports-betting under the authority and management of the state Lottery. One of PGRI’s fundamental advocacy positions is that it is the government gaming operator, the Lottery, that is the best vehicle or agent to operate games-of-chance. The Lottery has the experience, the existing organizational infrastructure, the brand and connection to the market-place, and the resources to operate new categories of games as they are legalized and regulated. More important, though, Lottery exists to serve the citizens of the state. The games-of-chance business is unique for its ability to generate profits which, we respectfully submit, should be channeled to good causes that serve everyone in society. Too, Lottery has the culture, the governance model, and the proven track record for prudently balancing the goals of maximizing revenues while minimizing social costs. We hope that other states will see the wisdom of putting emerging new game categories like sports-betting and online casino-style gambling as well as iLottery under the management and operating purview of their own state Lottery.
Case in point: See article describing how and why William Hill was just fined £6.2 million British pounds for “systemic failure” to meet minimum standards of social responsibility, consumer protection, and prevention of money laundering. Unlike William Hill, Government Lottery not only complies with the letter of the law, it continually sets new standards of performance that embrace the spirit of the laws.
The Pennsylvania Lottery is just three months away from launching its first online games. Online casino and poker are also coming to PA, rollout expected late this year. Pennsylvania Lottery spokesman Gary Miller
Machine Learning, AI, and neuroscience are converging and will have profound impact on the way business operates in general, and on the ways that marketers connect with their customers in particular. According to the Gartner report, 54% of businesses surveyed stated that they have either implemented machine learning or have plans to do so in the next 1–3 years. CRM is being transformed by it. Extremely modest, tip-of-the-iceberg first steps that give us an idea of what machine learning does: Netflix and Amazon know what you like probably even better than you know. It’s “machines” have “learned” all about your likes and dislikes from your past behavior of inquiries and searches as well as purchases. Pandora translates your “likes” and “dislikes” into a profile that knows which songs you will like and what you don’t like, enabling it to automatically curate your play-list. The next steps include the ability of marketers to know precisely how to personalize promotional offers to elicit a positive response, exactly when to extend the offer, how the messaging should be, whether it should steer you online or to the land-based store, etc. But that does not even begin to describe the way the convergence of Machine Learning, AI, and neuroscience will reshape the way business operates.
“Machine learning is proving to be a valuable tool that retailers can use to maximize results and touch-points on multiple levels—whether it’s improving their ability to measure store efficiencies or optimizing offer targeting.” Machine learning not only allows retailers to estimate what a given location should produce, how to optimize ROI of each square foot of shelf-space, describe in-store shopping patterns that no amount of observational techniques can replicate, identify gaps in performance efficiency, but also lets retailers rank stores at a very granular level.”
Court of Justice ruled to support the rights of Member States to determine their own gambling regulatory regime. Arjan van ‘t Veer, Secretary General of the European Lotteries Association, said “This judgment now leaves no doubt that EU Member States are not bound by the European Commission’s Recommendation and can continue their stricter national policy.”
New way to sell consumer products, and a concrete example for how social media can be deployed to actually sell product: Nike executed a special pre-release of its Air Jordan III "Tinker" shoe through Snapchat, selling out their stock of shoes in 23 minutes. (It is clear that we are supposed to be amazed at this fact. Unfortunately, the press release did not indicate how many pairs were sold so I guess we don’t really know how impressive it is.) E-commerce platform Shopify and startup Darkstore managed order-taking and delivery for the special sneaker promotion. There are numerous on-line interactive casinos and sports-betting sites that accept cryptocurrency as a medium of funding player accounts. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service has assigned elite criminal agents to investigate whether Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies enable underground economies to avoid paying taxes. The challenge for enforcement agencies and taxing authorities is that cryptocurrency enables users to operate outside of the banking system and in relative anonymity, making it difficult to impossible to monitor transactions and collect taxes.
Walgreens ups third-party API game with 'Add to Cart'
Walgreens is planning updates to its API program, including the release of an API that allows users of Walgreens partner's applications to add items to a Walgreens shopping cart from their own apps. The Add to Cart API is in beta testing now, and Retail Products APIs (services that connect to various parts of the Walgreens retail business) are being created now as well. API development has been getting more popular among retailers and marketers in recent years as they have been seeking to expand the horizons of their brands and mobile user experiences. Walgreens has been one of the more aggressive retailers in the development of APIs over the last five years.