Marketing plays a fundamental role in the online gaming industry. As players, we may tire of the business gobbledegook, but advertising and promotion is crucial in maintaining and growing the sector. After all, how else are we to find out about new bingo formats or exciting new casino launches?

Tau Marketing Services are a company whose business is to be at the heart of this function. OK, they too are very fond of impenetrable business speak: they are apparently very big on “proprietary analytics methodologies” for example. But think of it as a kind of jargon where people who are in the club (i.e. other businesses) can communicate with each other effortlessly while outsiders (i.e. you and me) are clueless as to what on earth they are talking about.

The company has a strong relationship with gaming industry behemoths 888 Holdings, the owners of many online bingo and casino operations, and the ultimate owners of bingo giants Dragonfish. They manage and provide marketing services for many of their sites, including popular names like Hunky Bingo, Zinger Bingo, Slots Angel and Secret Slots. The company was founded in 2014, and has its registered offices in north London.

In essence, this company analyses important data, like site performance, financial returns for each game, player activity etc. in order to produce management reports. Site operators can then use this information to choose the best games, provide optimum site designs, decide on the best promotional offers and target individual communications such as e-mails to the most appropriate customers.

Hence there are two ways of looking at this: the glass half empty or the glass half full view. If you are a cynic, you could believe that gaming operators use all this big data analysis and jiggery pokery to ensure that their bingo sites and casinos maximise the amount of money they can make out of us players.

On the other hand, those of us with a more positive outlook on life (the pessimists would say that we are just naïve) point out that it is this kind of information which enables operators to give us what we want: the best games, in the best format, whenever and wherever we want to play. This enables them to maximise the thrills, excitement and entertainment we are looking for.

So in the end, both viewpoints have a valid point. The idea behind all this data analysis and targeted marketing is to maximise revenue – they’re businesses after all. But on the other hand, we want to play on well designed sites, with the most entertaining titles including all our favourite games. And it is the effort put into this side of the business that enables companies to provide what we want!