Why Real-Time Data Engineering Matters in iGaming
The iGaming industry generates enormous amounts of data every second. Every click on a website or app, every registration of a new user to a platform, and every action that takes place within the industry results in valuable data that can be used to make critical marketing and business decisions.
For those who are actively involved in the industry as an operator, an affiliate, or a publisher, collecting this data is just the beginning. What really provides a significant competitive advantage is the ability to process this data in real time to gain valuable insights about the industry.
Engineering teams can build data platforms that analyze millions of events that take place in the iGaming industry every day. This helps businesses to fine-tune their marketing campaigns to improve their profitability.
What Is Real-Time Data Engineering?
Real-time data engineering is the collection, processing, and analysis of information as soon as it is collected from the various areas of the iGaming industry.
Instead of relying on reports to determine the current activities taking place within the industry, real-time data engineering makes it possible for the business to have access to updated information as soon as it is published.
Some examples of the events that can be analyzed in real time include the following:
Users clicking on an advertisement
An affiliate referring a user to a platform
The registration of a user to a platform
The initial deposit of funds from the user
The failure of a payment
The routing of traffic to various websites
Immediate visibility into these events allows a company to respond to them much faster than if they were relying on reports to determine the outcome of these activities.
Why Speed Matters in the Industry?
The value of the data collected within the industry decreases with time.
For example, if a marketing campaign is underperforming, waiting several hours to determine that the campaign is underperforming can result in the wasting of thousands of clicks on that campaign.
Real-time data reporting allows an operator to:
Pause marketing campaigns that are underperforming
Increase the marketing budgets allocated to campaigns that are generating high levels of success
Detect any technical issues with a campaign
Detect any anomalies in the traffic that visits their sites
Improve their conversion rates
All of these outcomes will directly improve the profitability of their iGaming operations.
The Growing Volume of Data in the Industry
Every interaction between the player and the platform generates data. For instance, when a user registers to a platform, the data that can be collected includes the following:
Traffic source
Geographic location
Device type
Browser information
Campaign used
Registration timestamp
Deposit activity
With hundreds of thousands of users in the industry, the amount of data that is generated by each of these attributes amounts to billions of records each month.
A robust data infrastructure is necessary for the effective management of this data volume.
Event-Driven Architecture
Many iGaming platforms use an event-driven architecture to collect information.
Instead of collecting and processing data in batches, the platforms track every action taken by every user in real time. Examples of these events include the following:
Number of visits to the landing page
Number of clicks on a button
Creation of an account
Payment for a selected service
Number of activities during a session
Building reliable data pipelines that can collect and process this information in real time is vital to the industry’s success.
Supporting Smarter Traffic Decisions
Many of the critical traffic decisions that must be made by the operators within the company rely on the accuracy of the information collected from players.
Real-time analytics allow an operator to monitor the following metrics:
Sources of traffic
Geographic trends in traffic
Device type users from
Conversion success rate
Traffic from blocked areas
Using this data will allow them to make smarter decisions regarding traffic routing to increase their revenue.
Improving Affiliate Reporting
The data that the affiliates rely upon to monitor their performance within the industry includes the following:
Number of clicks on their links
Number of users that registered using their links
Number of users that deposited money
Revenue generated from referred users
Conversion rate of their links
Having access to this information on the screen as soon as a user performs any of these actions within the industry will improve the relationship between the operators and the affiliate publishers.
Fraud Detection in Real Time
Anti-fraud systems within the industry use real-time data to monitor the traffic that visits their platforms.
The types of traffic that are monitored include the following:
Bot activity
Registration of users using suspicious IP addresses
Creation of duplicate accounts
Use of proxy servers to register accounts
Abnormal payment behavior from users
Any detection of suspicious traffic allows anti-fraud engineers to deal with the issue as soon as it arises to prevent the fraudulent actions from impacting the platform’s performance.
Monitoring Platform Health
Engineering teams monitor a variety of data points for the health and performance of the iGaming platform. These data points include the following:
Response time of the servers
Performance of the databases used by the platform
Availability of APIs
Processing of queues
Number of error messages generated during operations
Any of these metrics can impact the experience that users have with a platform. Therefore, monitoring them closely will allow engineering teams to prevent any issues from impacting the users of the platform.
Real-Time Personalization
Many platforms are turning to using real-time data to personalize the experience that they provide for their users. For instance:
Displaying bonuses based on the user’s activity on the site
Recommending other operators that the user may enjoy
Changing the content of the landing pages
Promoting specific offers to high-value users
These types of improvements to the user experience will increase the engagement and the conversion rates of users to the platform.
Data Quality Is Essential
All of the information collected by engineering teams will be only as valuable as the accuracy of that data. To ensure that the data collected in real time is accurate, engineering teams must continuously validate the information. They do this by checking for:
Missing values in collected data
Duplicate values
Tracking of the data collection process
Accuracy of timestamps used in data collection
Accuracy of the attribution of traffic to specific sources
These checks will ensure that the information is accurate so that business and marketing decisions are based on trustworthy data.
Scalability of the Data Pipeline
With the growth of the iGaming and online gaming industry, the amount of data that must be processed by engineering teams is also growing at a rapid rate.
An engineer must build a data collection and processing system that can handle the following data volumes:
Millions of events processed daily
High spikes in traffic to their platforms
A large number of simultaneous reporting requests
A vast number of users from various parts of the world
As the industry continues to grow, engineering teams must develop systems that can scale to support this data volume.
Supporting Regulatory and Compliance Requirements
Much of the compliance that gaming operators must follow relies on the accuracy of their data. For instance:
Compliance with gaming regulations based on geographic locations
Verification of the player
Responsible gambling compliance
Transaction history
Audit of activities
Having real-time data reporting will allow engineering teams to automate these compliance reports and reduce the number of reports that their staff must manually produce.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
Artificial intelligence is becoming an essential part of the engineering department and the efforts to collect and analyze data in real time.
Artificial intelligence algorithms can analyze the data in real time to provide insights and recommendations regarding:
The behavior of the players
Offers that can be given to them
Fraud detection within the system
Forecasting the success of marketing campaigns
Traffic routing to improve their revenue
By using machine learning and AI in their data collection and analytics processes, engineering teams can automate most of these efforts so that they take place without any human intervention.
Future Trends in Data Engineering
There are a variety of innovations that will shape the future of data engineering within the iGaming industry. These include the following:
Predictive analytics for player activity
Edge computing for faster data collection
AI-assisted reporting tools
Automated anomaly detection systems
Data streaming platforms
Real-time business intelligence software
Adopting these innovations will give companies a significant advantage in the industry.
Best Practices for Engineering Teams
There are some best practices that engineering teams should follow when building a data collection and reporting platform for the iGaming industry. These include the following practices:
Only collect meaningful data
Build a reliable data system over time
Automate monitoring of data collection processes
Continuously validate the accuracy of the data
Build a system that can scale with the company
Secure sensitive data and information
Create flexible reporting software for various departments
Following these best practices will ensure that engineering teams can build a system that can last over time.
Final Thoughts
Real-time data engineering has become a vital part of any company that seeks to thrive in the iGaming industry. From affiliate reporting and player acquisition to fraud prevention and regulatory compliance, every department within the company benefits from having access to accurate information in real time.
By investing in an accurate and scalable data engineering platform, all parties in the iGaming and online gaming industry can make better and faster decisions that directly benefit the company’s profitability. As the industry develops, the value of real-time data will remain one of the most valuable resources that every company can access and develop as a part of its operations.