From basketball to investing and why Google isn't the Advertising God

Well, what do you know?! My daily blogging’s first day led to an… explosion of productivity yesterday, that’s Tuesday! At 7am I had written the Greek blog, by 10am I published it together with the English translation, till noon I had finished editing my next YouTube video, while by 4pm I had replied to all (20) of the urgent emails!

I did all that, while I spent two hours of playing with my little girl early in the morning. Not to mention the necessary hugging on waking up!

Rarely you’ll hear me satisfied of my day and that was one of them.

Knock wood.

Afternoon and evening were spent on family business, as we’re preparing ourselves for the first class in Preschool (Pre-kindergarten) and first dives in the swimming pool.

Let’s move on the interesting stuff.

So, I read yesterday that Kobe Bryant, the basketball all-star player, co-founded a venture capital firm. That’s a firm investing in startups, so to speak.

Basketball and investments. Let’s hope no one recommends him to also take a look on forex and blow out his NBA earnings on the Canadian dollar and the Swiss franc!

It would be interesting to see if his venture will score the same… field goal percentage as in his NBA career.

Moving on, I came across this news story mentioning the acquisition of an advertising company, that happens to be a partner of my digital publishing company, by a Chinese consortium. For $900 Million no less! Not bad.

Now, I hope they don’t change anything in their policies and tactics, as the revenue we receive from their business is bigger than Google AdSense. Yeap, we make more by Media.Net than Google! And that’s quite significant for the blogging industry and the monetization process of a website. In short, we should not consider Google as the monetization God and the only advertiser we should partner with.

For web developers and bloggers, do not depend on a single advertiser. Diversify your risk and your income streams.

Finally, Betgenius launched a new product for gaming operators that removes the need of in-house traders. But, who are these traders?

It’s them, who change betting odds at sportsbooks. They shorten that 2.00 to 1.80 a second before you submit your bet during the game in live betting. These people watch how you play, what leagues and sports you wager on, what stakes you are using. If they spot something funny in your betting activity, they will notify the risk management of the betting operator. And then it may be curtains for you (limited stakes, account closures).

You get the picture.

In plain words, the in-house traders are actually your opponents when you are gambling. No, it’s not the goalkeeper who saved the penalty. And it’s them whom Betgenius wants to avoid with their new system. Most probably by algorithms and complicated math models. Really, I have no idea how. It’s just that on this occasion, I had the chance to say a few words about bookmakers’ in-house traders.

I plan to write a lot more about them, based on what one of them has shared publicly on a forum. Have patience. It will happen.

That’s all for today. I’ll end this with some pictures I took yesterday. Talk tomorrow.

Find the full-resolution pictures at Flickr: jmks.co/flickr

PS: Truth be told, I wrote the original Greek text in Tuesday’s afternoon, while sitting in the pediatrician's waiting room. Not a moment to lose.