The Undeniable Power Of Search Engine Marketing

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Bing Network. All opinions are 100% mine.

If you could choose just ONE form of digital marketing, what would it be?

I get asked this question from big brands all over the world, and my answer is always the same…

Search engine marketing.

It often shocks people, because social media and content have been such a big contributor to my success. But in reality, search engines are where I continue to get the best return on investment.

In fact, 55% of the traffic for this site comes from organic search alone. And for me, more traffic means more earning potential.

Search engines are the lifeblood of digital marketing, not just because they deliver the most sustainable traffic to websites, but also because they are an essential component of our every day life.

Without search engines, life from a digital sense would inevitably stand still, stop functioning and most likely create widespread panic.

We are reliant on our ability to get answers and information at the click of a button, and that's why search engine marketing is such a powerful tool for you as a marketer.

But don't take my word for it, let me show you what I mean…

Powerful search engine marketing stats

There is more to search engine marketing than just website traffic, and to illustrate why you should consider it an integral part of your digital strategy here are some statistics:

• 96% of marketers use search engine marketing to provide content to their prospects


• Organic and paid search engine traffic contribute to more than 60% of total website visitors


• 48% of consumers start mobile research with a search engine


• 18% of local mobile searches lead to a sale within one day


• 81% of B2B purchase cycles start with a web search


• 57% of B2B marketers say SEO has the biggest impact on lead generation


• The highest spenders are most likely to turn to search for purchase information


• Conversion rates are 10 times higher from search than from social media

Of course these are just stats, but they tell a compelling story. Search engine marketing is here to stay, and it's importance will only grow as the global adoption of mobile devices continues to accelerate.

So how can you make the most of it?

A unique opportunity

A few weeks ago I wrote an article that encouraged you to diversify your search engine marketing strategy; in order to stay competitive and create a distinct point of difference for your website.

The most natural place to start if you're looking to diversify your strategy, reduce your overall risk and tap into some unique opportunities, is with the Bing Network.

Bing has come along way in the past decade, and it's much more than just a search box on a webpage. It's now a powerful connector between technology, information, people and knowledge.

Beyond being your typical search engine, Bing powers over 14 billion searches around the world across the Microsoft ecosystem; from Cortana, Xbox, Twitter, Apple and Amazon.

This means as a search engine marketer, Bing offers a unique opportunity to reach MORE people, in MORE ways and on MORE platforms.

Bing helps search engine marketers reach people at times when they are ready and willing to spend money – in their everyday lives. They connect you to prospects where and how they want to be reached.

More than just keywords in a search bar

Search engine marketing isn't just about dropping a few keywords into a search bar anymore…

It's much more than that.

Now search is present in everything we do, from interacting on social networks, to purchasing products, to finding a local restaurant.

As the digital marketing space continues to evolve, so will search, and you need to be prepared to ride that wave and capitalize on opportunities when they surface.

Networks such as Bing help you diversify your search marketing risk and tap into a growing and unique opportunity to reach your ideal customers.

Learn more about Bing Network

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11 Advanced Tips To Be A Successful Digital Marketer

How effective is your digital marketing strategy? Would you consider yourself a successful digital marketer?

If that question makes you feel queazy, you're not alone. Digital marketing is hard to get right, and it's changing every day.

The only way to keep up with these changes and get ahead of your competition is to innovate. Get out of your comfort zone, experiment, and test new methods to improve the effectiveness of your digital marketing.

If digital is a big part of your business, then you'd be familiar with terms like link building, content marketing, social media marketing etc. These are umbrella terms covering a number of marketing techniques that can really up your game.

But knowing this alone is insignificant if you don't know how to make the most of each technique with new and interesting tactics. So let's walk through some techniques that can increase the effectiveness of your online marketing.

1. Guest posting

While you may have heard arguments that guest blogging is being overused as a tool for link building, and losing value as a means of useful content deliverance, none can deny its effectiveness in the marketing world.

Guest blogging is here to stay, so you better make it part of your marketing strategy!

Ironically, the hardest part about guest posting is not the content creation; rather, it's sourcing the blogs. Thankfully, the internet is a great place where you can find solutions to every problem imaginable.

BuzzStream is one solution to the ordeals of guest posting. It carries out a number of tasks for guest bloggers, such as:

• Prospecting links


• Keeping track of unique projects


• Keeping track of good links


• Analyzing results for you.

2. The Skyscraper Technique

As interesting as its sounds, the skyscraper technique requires that you find the tallest skyscraper content in your niche and improve it with stories of your own.

Once you get going, you will realize the numerous ways you can edit and improve people's content and make it so much more useful. Also, you will be amazed by the grand attention your content receives through the skyscraper method!

Here are three fairly easy steps to guide your way through the skyscraper technique:

• Dig out linkable assets – topics and content that are already faring well and earning laurels in the niche of your business.


• Make it better. You can make it longer, update it, better design it, and/or add more detail to it.


• Reach out to people to provide you backlinks. The website you choose should have already posted something relevant to your linkable asset, be part of your business niche, and should be ranking higher than your own.

3. The Moving Man Method

This relatively new term coined by Brian Dean of Backlinko has taken marketing agencies by surprise. The method is the marketing equivalent of revamping old clutter to create something way more useful than the original.

This marketing technique requires you to:

• Search for sites that share your market but have moved to a new URL, changed names, stopped offering services, stopped updating resources, or have completely shut down their online business.


• Produce content that is up-to-date, more powerful, and more relevant than what the defunct website had to offer.


• Access the hundreds of people still linking to the old website and ask if they would be interested in linking to your webpage in lieu of the defunct, outdated webpage.

Simple and witty, just like what we expect from marketers of the twenty-first century!

4. Internationalizing SEO

Internationalization is a method not too common but of great significance. You make your website/blog accessible to more people by offering it in languages of more than one country. Makes sense!

Offer translations of your website in multiple languages and localize words to get your fair share of an international audience.

Image Source: Moz

5. Psychological techniques

Many times while implementing your marketing strategy, you will have to think like more than just as a marketer; you will have to think as a psychologist.

Understanding the psyche of your audience and creating content that they can actually relate to are skills possessed by only rare, true marketers. If you learn the art you can conquer the hearts and minds of your audience.

This psychological effect is sometimes created by the use of powerful words. Don't hesitate or fall short of researching such power words within your niche as they can compel new customers to join your community.

Image Source: Buffer

The second strong psychological effect is that of social sharing and caring. Use social media sites and communication to your full advantage by being humanistic and generous in your approach. Connect with people and other companies as people. When they share your content, always remember to return the favor.

6. Increasing your website's click-through-rate (CTR)

Increasing your CTR in search engines is a time tested method of improving search engine ranking for websites.

Business blogs and websites have been going through the struggle for a long time. However, it's really not that hard if you have a systematic approach to it.

CTR can be increased fairly easily by:

• Wise keyword selection


• Quality content


• Eye-catching titles


• Comprehensive, engaging descriptions


• Prompt Calls-to-Action


• Using breadcrumbs in the URL


• A Table-of-Contents plugin


• Getting Google sitelinks

7. Sharing through LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn is a wonderful place to run into new businesses and clients, stir up conversations, offer deals, and market your products in the process. In order to provide value and engage in a conversation with members of your target audience, share content through LinkedIn groups.

• Comment on and share popular content


• Begin conversations by asking a question


• Post your own content (videos, blogs, Infographics, etc.) in the group

Image Source: Soho Tech Training

8. Innovative emails

Who hasn't tried email marketing in order to address a wide audience? But the process and content of email marketing has become so monotonous and predictable that most companies usually get ignored by email recipients.

It's about time we start getting innovative with email marketing;

• Instead of blindly sending your emails into the vast expanse on the internet, aim for specific people with certain interests. You can email all the people who tweeted about a certain product in your niche as an example.


• Long gone are the days of pesky looking emails. If you wish your emails to be read by recipients, design and compose them with grace and wit.


• Use less text and more compelling images in emails.

Learn from the geniuses, such as Dropbox which designed this sleek, beautiful email you just cannot ignore!

Image Source: HubSpot

9. Innovative link building

There's no point in trying to target and build connections with random websites which have no correlation to topics in your niche. You can better spend the effort on reasonable prospects. Companies employ a number of methods when trying to identify and reach to potential websites which can backlink to their content.

One such technique is email marketing to people who have backlinked to relevant content already. Get in touch with these websites which have established positions in the market. Break the ice with them and ask politely for a feature or two of your own website.

10. Using advertorials

Advertorials are the way forward in the present age of content marketing and promotion. They are unique and unlike traditional advertising because the content imitates editorial content but serves to fulfill the goals of a brand.

Following are ways to make advertorials advantageous for your brand:

• Find the right match of magazine/online publication for your advertorial.


• Make sure your advertorial is clearly labeled as 'advertisement' as per the FTC's latest laws and guidelines, or else it may get banned.


• Remember, advertorials are more like blog posts. You don't directly sell the product; you sell content related to your product.


• Don't forget to share your advertorials on social media sites.

11. 301 redirects

Redirection is a process of sending both users and search engines to a URL different from what they requested. A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect which transfers almost all of the link juice to the new page.

A 301 redirect is the most preferable type of redirect because it indicates to browsers, search engine bots, and the users, that the page has been permanently moved. Search engines may take some time to discover your new page but once they do, they will take your new page to the same rankings where your former page stood.

Wrap

The 11 ways of making online marketing more effective are the latest and most responsive of their kind. However, online marketing is a long, on-going process which cannot be summed up in 20, let alone 11 techniques.

Go beyond your threshold, employ all the methods discovered here and you might eventually find what works best for your business.

Guest Author: Junaid Ali Qureshi is a digital marketing specialist who has helped several businesses gain traffic, outperform competition and generate profitable leads. His current ventures include Elephantation, eLabelz, Smart Leads.ae, Progos Tech and eCig.

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YouTube reveals RNC and DNC livestreams were viewed over 9 million times, average watch time was 25 minutes

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YouTube today shared some numbers for the official livestreams of the Republican National Convention (RNC) and Democratic National Convention (DNC), the political events where each U.S. political party chose their respective candidates for president: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The two events were viewed live on YouTube over 9 million times, with viewers tuning in for 25 minutes on average.

YouTube was the official livestream partner of both the RNC and DNC. While YouTube has done this before, namely during the 2012 election season, this was the first time that viewers had access to 360-degree videos. And of course there were many other unofficial streams available on the site - these figures are just for the official livestreams, meaning the aggregate total is significantly greater.

The breakdown for the two events is as follows:

• The RNC was viewed live 4.5 million times while the DNC was viewed live 4.6 million times.
  


• Viewers watched both livestreams for 25 minutes on average.


• The maximum number of viewers watching the RNC at any given time (also known as peak concurrents) was 217,000 (during Donald Trump's Thursday speech came), while the peak concurrents for the DNC was 250,000 (during Hillary Clinton's Thursday evening speech).

YouTube has previously shared that since last year when the political candidates were first announced, viewers have watched more than 110 million hours of election content. The conventions surely grew that number significantly, though YouTube did not update its figure today.

If you want to watch coverage of both conventions now that they have concluded, head to http://youtube.com/gopconvention and http://youtube.com/demconvention.

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Dungeons & Dragons gets a new virtual tabletop - Roll20

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Niantic Labs' John Hanke will be delivering a fireside chat for AR/VR day (augmented reality/virtual reality) at GamesBeat 2016. Get a ticket here!

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Dungeons & Dragons is amid its biggest resurgence since the height of its popularity in the 1980s. It's already offered a way for players to leave the real tabletop for the virtual world with Fantasy Grounds last year - and now fans have a new way to play the role-playing game with their friends without needing a real table.

Above: How the Owl Bear looks inside Roll20.

Image Credit: Jason Wilson/GamesBeat

Roll20 announced today that it's offering Wizard of the Coast's beloved RPG (as the tabletop gaming site En World reported) as one of the products in its gaming-over-the-internet community. Roll20's approach differs from Fantasy Grounds in that you can play inside your browser, not inside a client. The first adventure, the Lost Mines of Phandelver, is available now for $20 (this is the module that came with the Starter Set in 2014).

You can also preorder D&D's next story arc, Storm King's Thunder, for $50.

“We're excited to begin our official relationship with Roll20,” D&D spokesperson Greg Tito said in an email with GamesBeat. “Dungeons & Dragons believes giving players more choice is a good thing, and we're pleased to add Roll20 to the roster of virtual tabletops in which you can get official D&D material, joining our partners at Fantasy Grounds. We've been aware of the popularity of Roll20 for a long time, and it's cool they are committed to getting more material available on the platform, including the next D&D storyline, Storm King's Thunder, when it comes out next month.”

According to En World, an online publication that covers tabletop gaming, Roll20 has 1.6 million users and that 46 percent of them play D&D.

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Create an Audience of People Who Spent the Most Time on Your Website

Back in May, Facebook made updates to Website Custom Audiences that gave advertisers more targeting power based on quality of website visit.

That launch allowed advertisers to create audiences based on frequency of actions taken.

In the example above, an audience is being generated of people who have visited JonLoomer.com at least 20 times during the past 30 days. But this update also included the ability to create audiences based on frequency of events occurring, like registrations, purchases and searches.

All of this was made available to advertisers creating audiences from the Facebook Ads Manager or Power Editor. There were a few other features made available to the ads API (accessed by third party tools):

• Time spent: How long someone spent performing an action or visiting your website


• Dynamic date: A range of dates when someone was visiting (rather than a duration)


• Aggregate values: Total amount someone has spent

The big news: You no longer need a third party tool to create audiences based on time spent on your website.

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Facebook advertisers can now create audiences of people who spent the most time on their website…
Click To Tweet

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How to Create

To create a Custom Audience based on time spent on your website, start by creating a Custom Audience within Ads Manager the way you normally would.

Select the option for website traffic…

Click the drop-down menu for Website Traffic and select “Based on time spent on your website”…

Now you can create one of these! Facebook defines it as follows:

This allows you to create an audience based on the relative amount of time people spend on your website. We recommend installing a pixel on every page for best results.

You'll recall that when creating an audience based on frequency of website visits or events, you entered the number of times someone visited. Not this time.

As you see below, you can create audiences based on the top 5%, 10% or 25% of active users on your website during the past 1 to 180 days…

A theoretical example:

Your website gets 100,000 visitors during the past 30 days. Those visitors are listed (hypothetically) in order of time spent on your website. So the first person has spent the most time on your website during those 30 days. We'll say they spent 10 hours. The last person spent the least amount of time. We'll say they spent one second.

To create an audience of the top 25% of active users on your website, Facebook takes the top 25,000 in this case.

How to Use Them

When creating these audiences, they will appear on the Audiences page along with other Custom Audiences, Lookalike Audiences and Saved Audiences.

You can then target or exclude this audience when editing the audience while creating an ad set within either the Ad Create Tool or Power Editor.

The Benefits of These Audiences

This option is awesome! Prior to the May announcement, you could create an audience of your website visitors, but it was difficult isolating the best ones. Some people may have visited once for three seconds while some others visited 30 times for 10 hours. They aren't equal!

Then came along the frequency option, and you could focus only on those who visited a minimum number of times. Very helpful.

The ability to isolate time on site takes it a step further. Sure, maybe you visited three times. But were those three quality visits? Would you rather target someone who visited three times for 10 seconds or once for one hour?

This development will allow advertisers to target their most engaged website visitors.

Potential Issues and Considerations

It's still early in this rollout, so I don't expect this feature to be perfect yet. And it's not! Here are a few things to consider…

1. Limit of 20 Audiences

After I created just a few of these, I received the following error message:

I hadn't created 20 audiences for time on my website, but the others I created for frequency of visits contributed to the limit of 20. If you hit that limit, you can always delete the audiences you aren't using.

I fully expect this to be a temporary restriction that Facebook will eventually remove when the rollout is complete and the feature is proven to be stable.

2. No Domain Filter

Go back and look at the screen grabs above of the process to create these audiences. You'll notice that there is no way to filter by URL or domain.

This is something you can do when creating a typical Website Custom Audience…

And it's also available within the frequency of website visits feature released in May (though not available for frequency of Events)…

This is a problem for any advertiser who has their pixel on multiple websites. While I wouldn't advise having one pixel on different websites you don't own (like for clients), I've personally had my pixel on two unrelated websites I do own.

Not having a domain filter would make this feature worthless for me because it would create an audience of the most active visitors from both sites combined.

3. Past Traffic Checkbox

Because of the second issue above, I decided to create a separate ad account for my other website and replace the pixel with one that is unique to that website.

Of course, since I just did that on July 26, I'd want to be sure to uncheck the “Include past traffic” checkbox when creating the audience since I would not want to include the traffic that hit that pixel prior to removing it from my other website.

Upon creating that new audience with past traffic unchecked, however, I quickly realized there was an issue…

As you can see above, the audience that included past traffic for the past 180 days is the same size as the audience that was created on July 26 and wasn't supposed to include past traffic.

I again alerted Facebook of this issue.

4. Slow Build Time

If you've created Website Custom Audiences before, you know that the audiences tend to build very quickly - within minutes - assuming you've had the pixel on your website for a while.

Well, that's not the case when creating these audiences. I found it took several hours to build. My assumption is that it's again because this is a new feature. It's likely that instead of running every few seconds, there is currently a process that only runs a few times per day.

I expect this to eventually change and mirror the real-time building of other Website Custom Audiences.

5. May Not Be Fully Rolled Out

I know that the number one comment below will be “I don't have it yet! When will it come to [X Country]?”

I don't know. But like all rollouts, these things tend to take weeks if not months.

Your Turn

What do you think of this update? Do you have it yet? How will you use it?

Let me know in the comments below!

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GamesBeat 2016 will cast a resurrection spell on your old franchises

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Niantic Labs' John Hanke will be delivering a fireside chat for AR/VR day (augmented reality/virtual reality) at GamesBeat 2016. Get a ticket here!

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VB EVENT:

Strong intellectual property remains a key to success in the game industry. Just look at how Pokémon Go benefits from having one of the biggest franchises in gaming behind it. But what about injecting new life on an old IP - and making it a success again? We've got you covered.

At GamesBeat 2016, we'll hear a panel about three companies who are in different stages of revitalizing their long-term IPs - which include some of the most iconic in gaming, be they video games or played around a table with friends.

You can register for the event here. Check out the new agenda here.

Dungeons & Dragons is riding higher than at any time since its height in the 1980s - and it may even be doing better now than it ever has before. One of the architects behind this comeback, Wizards of the Coast director Nathan Stewart, will detail how D&D pulled this off - taking advantage of not just a built-in customer base but reengaging lapsed players and showing how social media can bring new people into one of gaming's most beloved brands.

He joined Wizards of the Coast in 2012 to help lead the franchise into the future by expanding the brand blueprint into videogames, movies and new entertainment.  Previously, he has worked on other big game brands such as Xbox, Grand Theft Auto, Madden Football, Pac-Man and more.

Above: Brian Fargo, CEO of InXile Entertainment

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

Brian Fargo of InXile Entertainment showed how powerful crowdfunding could be to revitalizing an IP with Wasteland 2, a continuation of a RPG from 1988. It raised $2,933,252 in 2012 and released in 2014 to critical acclaim (including a 94/100 from GamesBeat). This model proved so strong that Fargo and InXile did this for two other games, Torment: Tides of Numenera, a spiritual successor to 1990s RPG landmark Planescape: Torment. The second came from another successful Kickstarter in 2015 for The Bard's Tale, a franchise he debuted in 1985 and saw three games.

Fargo founded Interplay Productions in 1983 and quickly became renowned as one of the most successful video game developers of the '80s and '90s, and the driving force behind some of gaming's most iconic properties including The Bard's Tale, Battle Chess, Wasteland, Fallout, Baldur's Gate, Torment and more. After leaving Interplay and founding inXile Entertainment in 2002, Brian became an innovator in video game crowdfunding and development, securing over $8 million on Kickstarter across three titles.

David Reid is bringing back another game from D&D's shadow - Tunnels & Trolls, a more accessible RPG that saw a paper-and-pen rebirth in the 2000s. But Reid's MetaArcade will give it a digital platform, though more as a choose your own adventure-style experience than a full game. Reid is a long-time veteran of the video games business, with over 15 years of executive leadership in online games publishing and marketing at Xbox, NCsoft, Trion Worlds, CCP Games, and Motiga.

Our previously announced speakers include:

Above: Gio Hunt, EVP of corporate operations at Blizzard.

Image Credit: Blizzard

Gio Hunt, executive vice president of corporate operations, Blizzard Entertainment: He will do a fireside chat with GamesBeat's community manager Mike Minotti. Hunt provides leadership for the integrated marketing, human resources, legal, and business development teams. He joined Blizzard in 2013 as chief of staff, and he has been instrumental in helping the company's senior leadership team improve the operations of its global business. He played a key role in developing the company's franchise planning process and has also led several key partnership initiatives. He has had a 25-year career, starting in law.

Tammy Levy, the director of product at Kongregate; Greg Canessa, the senior vice president of GSN Games; Chris Heatherly, the senior vice president of Disney Mobile Games; and David Pokress, the senior vice president of monetization and publisher relations at AdColony. These aforementioned speakers will talk about monetization and retention.

Above: Sunny Dhillon of Signia Venture Partners.

Image Credit: Signia Venture Partners

Sunny Dhillon, partner at Signia Venture Partners. Dhillon is focused on a variety of new technologies, including games and virtual reality.

Phil Sanderson, general partner at IDG Ventures in San Francisco. He focuses on investments in gaming, music technology, ecommerce, search and adtech. He also recently ran a 100-mile race. Among his game investments are Telltale Games, Next Games, Mastermind Studios, and Free Range Games.

Above: Alice Lloyd George, associate at RRE.

Image Credit: RRE

Alice Lloyd George, associate at RRE Ventures. She works on emerging technologies such as the blockchain, machine intelligence and computer vision, robotics, virtual and augmented reality, and NewSpace. She appears regularly on Fox Business, was Forbes 30 under 30 (2016) and Marc Andreessen calls her “one of the unknown rockstars in tech.”  Before joining RRE Alice worked in investments at Bridgewater Associates, and in a prior life she lived in Beijing conducting research as a Brookings Institute fellow. Alice began her career at The Wall Street Journal in Hong Kong, where she reported on business and politics across Asia.

Above: Marco DeMiroz, cofounder and general partner at The VR Fund.

Image Credit: Marco DeMiroz

Marco DeMiroz, cofounder and general manager at the Venture Reality Fund. The San Francisco fund recently raised $50 million to invest in virtual reality and augmented reality startups. He was previously CEO of PlayFirst, the maker of the Diner Dash series of games, played by more than 550 million people. It was recently acquired by Glu Mobile.

Margaret Wallace, the chief executive of Playmatics. She was named one of Forbes “12 Women in Gaming to Watch,” and in 2014, she was highlighted by Fortune as one of “10 Powerful Women in Video Games.“ An entrepreneur with a strong focus on innovation, brands, and original intellectual property, she has built and expanded Playmatics across multiple sectors to combine games with film, digital media, and television.

Rick Johnson, a cofounder at CastAR, which is making AR glasses for tabletop games and other entertaining applications. He started the company as Technical Illusions along with Jeri Ellsworth. Both Johnson and Ellsworth worked at Valve Software. Johnson also worked in software at Gearbox Software, Activision, and Raven Software.

Above: Nick Beliaeff, vice president of production at Spin Master.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

Nick Beliaeff, the vice president of production at Spin Master. His company is making a game, Air Hogs Connect, that integrates a smartphone with an AR drone that flies over a digital battlefield. He aims to bridge the gap from physical play to digital play. He was previously principal at Game Concordium, the senior vice president of development at Trion Worlds, and studio manager at Sony Online Entertainment.

Pramod Sharma, the CEO of Osmo, a maker of the toy-game hybrids that take advantage of the iPad and its camera. Osmo has grown to 40 people on the strength of multiple titles that reinvent the way children learn by using the iPad camera to recognize physical objects placed before it. The company's most recent game is Osmo Coding, which teaches young kids the principles of computer programming. Sharma previously worked at Google, where he held a variety of roles from engineer to senior product manager.

Chris Fralic, partner at First Round Capital. Based in New York, Fralic joined the firm in 2006 and he has a number of investments in gaming, including Roblox and Mobcrush. He has over 25 years of industry experience.

Above: Clinton Foy, managing director at CrossCut Ventures.

Image Credit: CrossCut Ventures

Clinton Foy, managing director and general partner at CrossCut Ventures. He has been a partner at Crosscut since 2013, and he focuses on early stage venture capital investments in mobile, social, cloud, consumer, new platforms, games, augmented reality, and virtual reality. He was previously chief operating officer of Square Enix, and he has led investments into Super Evil Megacorp, Vulcun, and Mobcrush. He also cofounded and is chairman of the esports team The Immortals.

Above: Martin Rae of AIAS

Image Credit: AIAS

Dan Fiden, chief strategy officer at Funplus. He helps run a $50 million fund to invest in games and VR startups, such as Sirvo Studios. He was previously a founder and partner at Signia Venture Partners, and he was CEO of Wild Needle.

Martin Rae, president of The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. Rae runs the professional academy of game industry peers that stages the annual DICE Summit and the DICE Awards in Las Vegas each year. He has been the head of the nonprofit since 2010 and is a champion of the game industry. Rae has traditionally hosted our panel on venture capital investments in games.

Niccolo Maisto cofounded FaceIt in 2011, and the company is now overseeing the Esports Championship Series league for the military shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. He drives the company's vision, strategy, and growth.

Under his leadership, the team at FaceIt comes together to server over 4 million users. The company now works in 6 different games and has provided the underlying tech for more than 12 million competitive-gaming sessions.

Above: Todd Krieger is the guy responsible for keeping an eye on what's new at Deep Focus.

Image Credit: Todd Krieger

Todd Krieger, Deep Focus emerging technology director, spends his days identifying opportunities for consumers and brands in the growing fields of esports and virtual reality. He caught the esports bug covering the Intel Extreme Masters in Katowice, Poland and is excited to help grow pro gaming domestically. Todd has led multi-disciplinary teams spanning product, sales, business development and marketing. Some of his career highlights include creating the world's leading celebrity destination OMG for Yahoo, developing award-winning interactive TV programming for Microsoft, and serving as the Futurist in Residence at the New York Times.

Above: Twitch esports boss Andy Swanson.

Image Credit: Twitch

Andy Swanson, vice president for esports at Twitch, is a 17-year veteran of the video game industry. His career began in 1998 in advertising sales at Future US where he eventually became the publisher of PC Gamer, OXM, and PSM in Future's Games Group. In 2007, he joined Ubisoft before moving on to GameFly. In 2013, Andy joined Twitch, with his current focus on planning, evangelizing, and executing the strategy around brand sponsorships and integrations within Twitch's esports ecosystem.

John Hanke, CEO of Niantic Labs, the creator of the mobile gaming sensation Pokémon Go. That augmented reality game is so hot that it has broken records, shooting to No. 1 in the top downloads and top-grossing mobile games charts in just seven days.

Above: John Hanke

Image Credit: LinkedIn

Hanke started Niantic with Google in 2010 to pioneer a new kind of location-based game. He wanted to promote exercise and an appreciation of public art. The company launched Ingress in 2012 as an invite-only Android app. It grew to millions of players, and it attracted the attention of Nintendo and The Pokémon Company Group. Now Pokémon Go is a huge hit.

Above: Julie Uhrman, head of platform business development at Jaunt.

Image Credit: Jaunt

Michael Metzger, a veteran speaker at GamesBeat events and a senior vice president at Houlihan Lokey. He provides M&A and financing advisory services to media, Internet, and technology companies.

Wanda Meloni, executive director of the Open Gaming Alliance. She will moderate a panel on monetizing VR. She is also CEO and senior analyst at M2 Advisory Group and editor-in-chief of the Gaming Business Review.

Julie Uhrman, head of platform business development for Jaunt, a leader in cinematic virtual reality. Prior to Jaunt, she made a big splash as the CEO and Founder of Ouya, an innovative Android game console that enabled any developer to publish a game to the TV.

Above: Christina Heller, cofounder and CEO of VR Playhouse.

Image Credit: VR Playhouse

Christina Heller, CEO of VR Playhouse, a Los Angeles production services company for the VR entertainment industry. She will speak on a panel on AR/VR beyond games.

Stewart Rogers, the director of marketing technology at VentureBeat's VB Insight. Rogers is crafting a new report based on his latest VR marketplace research, and he'll be talking about that in his session.

James Iliff, the creative director at Survios, the maker of the upcoming Raw Data game for the HTC Vive. I named that VR shooter game one of my top favorites at the recent E3 show in Los Angeles.

Tom Sanocki, the CEO of Limitless, a new VR startup that enables content developers to create interactive VR characters that respond to voice, gestures, gaze, and more.  Limitless is targeting the technology to film and game developers initially, as well as other vertical markets including education, advertising, and travel. Previously, Sanocki spent 11 years as a character lead at Pixar, where he built characters and technology on films from Finding Nemo through The Good Dinosaur, filed five patents, and won a VES award for Mater in Cars.

Above: Adam Orth, creator of Adr1ft.

Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

Adam Orth, the creative director at Three One Zero, the maker of Adr1ft, a pioneering VR game about a survivor of a wreck in space. Orth is a creative director, writer, and entrepreneur passionate about crafting immersive, interactive digital experiences.

A veteran of the video game industry, he has held high-level creative positions at Microsoft, LucasArts, Electronic Arts, Sony Computer Entertainment, and PopCap Games. He has directly collaborated with George Lucas and Frank Miller and has created digital entertainment for Lucasfilm, NASA, Nike, and National Geographic.

Jules Urbach, the CEO of Otoy. He's a pioneer in computer graphics, streaming, and 3D rendering with over 25 years of industry experience. He made his first game, Hell Cab (Time Warner Interactive), at age 18, which was one of the first CD-ROM games ever created.

Six years after Hell Cab, Urbach founded Groove Alliance. Groove created the first 3D game ever available on Shockwave.com (Real Pool). Currently, Urbach is busy working on his two latest ventures, Otoy and LightStage, which aim to revolutionize 3D content capture, creation, and delivery.

Above: Sylvio Drouin, vice president of Unity Labs

Image Credit: Unity Technologies

Sylvio Drouin, the vice president of Unity Labs at game engine maker Unity Technologies. Drouin is leading Unity Technologies' advanced research efforts, looking three to 10 years down the road. Unity Labs is a multinational team whose work has already resulted in cutting-edge graphics and VR technologies that are demonstrating what developers and consumers will be doing in the near future.

Above: Clifton Dawson, CEO of Greenlight VR.

Image Credit: Greenlight VR

A self-taught college dropout, he wrote his first applications at age 10 and worked as an OS engineer at 16. His early ventures include work on large-scale projects at companies that include Philips Advanced Research Labs, Eicon Technology, France Telecom, Toyota, Fujitsu, Matsushita, and Epson, as well as a variety of startups. He's been specifically responsible for driving innovations, product vision, and core technologies.

Clifton Dawson, the chief executive of Greenlight VR, which just published a report on virtual reality. Greenlight VR is a market research firm for the global virtual reality industry. Greenlight benchmarks thousands of companies and provides insights about consumer attitudes and behaviors. Greenlight also publishes the annual Virtual Reality Industry Report. Prior to founding Greenlight VR, Dawson was a growth and revenue analyst at Snapchat, the popular image messaging and multimedia app.

Above: Michael Condrey, cofounder of Sledgehammer Games.

Image Credit: Sledgehammer Games

Michael Condrey, the cofounder and studio head of Sledgehammer Games, the developers of 2014's Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and 2011's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. He was previously the chief operating officer and head of development at Visceral Games on 2008's Dead Space. Other noteworthy credits from his nearly 20-year development tenure include EA's James Bond, Need for Speed, and FIFA series, among many other titles. His studio has several hundred people.

Megan Gaiser, the principal of Contagious Creativity, a creative consultancy and co-CEO of Spiral Media Ltd. She specializes in creative leadership, strategy, and diversity. She is the former chief creative strategy officer and former CEO and president of Her Interactive, the maker of the Nancy Drew series of games that has inspired millions of girls and women. Gaiser is a veteran of our GamesBeat talks on creativity and diversity from previous events.

Ru Weerasuriya, the chief creative officer and CEO of Ready at Dawn Studios. His company recently announced the zany De-formers arena-combat game. It previously created high-profile games such as The Order: 1886, Daxter, and God of War: Chains of Olympus. He cofounded Ready At Dawn Studios in 2003, and he has more than 100 employees.

Above: Peter Moore of EA

Peter Moore, the chief competition officer of Electronic Arts. Moore will speak about where esports is heading. Moore is a former pro soccer player, and so he understands the emotion and passion around sports. He believes that esports can be every bit as exciting as televised physical sports. He was previously chief operating officer of EA, and he also served in executive roles at Microsoft's Xbox division and Sega of America.

David Baszucki, the founder, co-creator, and CEO of Roblox

Roblox is like a virtual world made from Lego-like blocks where players can build anything and even create their own games. A pioneer in pushing the boundaries of the imagination, Baszucki has helped champion millions of young and up-and-coming developers in the video game industry via the Roblox platform. He'll be part of a panel on our AR/VR day on August 1, focusing on the topic of user-generated VR.

Clinton Foy, managing director and general partner at CrossCut Ventures

Above: Mike Sepso of Activision Blizzard

Image Credit: Activision Blizzard

Foy is managing director of an early-stage venture capital firm in Los Angeles. Foy is also the chairman and co-owner of the pro esports team The Immortals, which just bought a Brazilian Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team. Foy has deep experience in running game and tech companies, including gaming giant Square Enix (where he was chief operating officer and general counsel) and Super Evil Megacorp. Foy has led investments in Mobcrush, Vulcun, Little Labs, and Instant Esports. In seven years at Square Enix, Foy oversaw more than 100 product launches across a dozen platforms.

Mike Sepso, senior vice president for Activision Blizzard

Sepso was the cofounder of MLG, which Activision Blizzard acquired last year. Now he focuses on esports and runs Media Networks, a division devoted to creating the best esports experiences for fans across games, platforms, and geographies at one of the world's largest video game companies.

Above: Richard Marks, senior research engineer at Sony Interactive Entertainment

Image Credit: Sony

Sepso played a key role at MLG, focusing on strategy, key partnerships, corporate development, and product and technology development.

Richard Marks, a senior research engineer at Sony Interactive Entertainment

He'll be one of the speakers at our AR/VR day, which will focus on strategy for the augmented reality and virtual reality markets. Marks' topic for his fireside chat is “What works in VR and what doesn't.” He should know, as he is one of VR's pioneers, recently running the Sony PlayStation Magic Lab that came up with the PlayStation VR technology. Sony is making a major investment in PlayStation VR and plans to launch it in October.

Above: David Haddad is president of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.

Image Credit: Warner Bros.

David Haddad, president of Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment

Haddad spoke last year at our inaugural GamesBeat Summit event, and we're happy to have him back. Haddad was appointed to his current post in October 2015. In this role, he is responsible for all aspects of WBIE's overall operations, including publishing, operations, sales, marketing, digital/mobile games, business development, and game production.

Under Haddad's oversight, WBIE creates games across all platforms utilizing its wholly owned, award-winning development studios: TT Games, Rocksteady Studios, NetherRealm Studios, Monolith Productions, Turbine, WB Games Montreal, and WB Games San Francisco. Last year, Warner Bros. had its most successful year ever with a number of hit games, including Mortal Kombat X on console and mobile and Batman: Arkham Knight, Lego Jurassic World, and Lego Dimensions.

Above: Kevin Chou, CEO of Kabam

Image Credit: Kabam

Lego Marvel's Avengers launched in January 2016, and the highly anticipated Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens launched on June 28, 2016. As the head of WBIE, Haddad also serves on the board of the Entertainment Software Association. Haddad joined Warner Bros. in 2013 as head of digital publishing.

Kevin Chou, CEO of Kabam

Chou runs Kabam, a maker of free-to-play mobile games such as Marvel: Contest of Champions. He cofounded a company in 2006 that morphed into Kabam in 2009. And since that time, he has navigated the difficult currents of the ultra-competitive game industry. By 2014, Kabam had grown to hundreds of employees and more than $400 million in revenue, with a valuation in excess of $1 billion. More recently, Chou has tried to take the lead in disruption, and he has focused Kabam around fewer, bigger games. He has secured licenses with Hollywood studios such as Disney, Lionsgate, MGM, NBCUniversal, Paramount, and Warner Brothers for games based on some of the world's most beloved movie franchises.

Above: Roy Taylor, corporate vice president of alliances at AMD

Image Credit: AMD

Last year, Chou launched a multipartner effort to take Marvel: Contest of Champions into the Chinese market. And most recently, Marvel: Contest of Champions hit the No. 1 game in downloads in China.

Roy Taylor, corporate vice president of alliances at AMD

Above: Jason Rubin, head of studios at Oculus

Image Credit: Oculus

Taylor is a seasoned veteran of the video game and semiconductor industries. He is currently an expert in AMD's relations with major retailers and specialty retailers, and he's an advocate for gaming content and VR that runs on AMD platforms. He previously held senior positions at Rightware, MasterIMage 3D, and Nvidia.

Jason Rubin, head of Oculus Studios

Rubin runs the team at Facebook's Oculus division that creates, funds, and works with developers to build first-party games and experiences for the Oculus Rift VR headset and the Samsung Gear VR. Rubin's job is to create exciting entertainment that will draw consumers to the new platforms.

A 30-year veteran of game development, Rubin was the cofounder of Naughty Dog, where he created the hit games Crash Bandicoot and Jak & Daxter. He also cofounded the media mashup tool Fleeter, which he sold to Fox Interactive, and he was president of THQ. He spoke at GamesBeat 2015 about how VR is the toughest learning curve in games.

Above: Peter Levin of Lionsgate

Peter Levin, president of Lionsgate Interactive Ventures & Games

Levin joined Lionsgate as president of interactive ventures and games in 2014. He is responsible for expanding Lionsgate's content creation into video games and other interactive ventures, including incubation of new properties, investment in existing games and digital media vehicles, and leveraging Lionsgate's franchises and other branded properties into the gaming space.

It's no accident that Lionsgate has announced a bunch of game-related deals, such as planting the seeds for an esports TV show and backing Hong Kong game studio Fifth Journey. He has been a frequent speaker at our GamesBeat events.

Our confirmed moderators include Geoff Keighley, game broadcaster and host of the Game Awards

Keighley is a seasoned game broadcaster and host of The Game Awards. The event last December drew 2.3 million viewers for a two-hour awards show. Keighley came to our event a year ago and interviewed Jason Rubin of Oculus Studios. He has been writing about games since he was 13.

Who should attend?

This event is specifically designed for gaming executives, investors, developers, and entrepreneurs. Here's our link to stories from last year's event. 2015 was all about the Game of Thrones, or the battle among game companies for supremacy. At our recent GamesBeat Summit, we focused on the underdogs of gaming. This summer, we have a bit of a fixation on Star Wars. Our theme is a nod to that and to the fact that gaming has a lot of new platforms arising.

Mobile has become ascendant as the largest game platform, with more than a billion users. But there are new platforms coming in the console market (hi, Nintendo) as well as virtual reality and augmented reality. The mobile, console, and PC platforms will see new innovations in game technology this year, and we'll be talking about all of them. Register today.

Our advisory board for this event includes: 

• Michael Chang, senior vice president of corporate development at NCSoft West


• Greg Essig, head of business development at Mobcrush


• Megan Gaiser, senior creative leader and strategist; principal at Contagious Creativity


• Perrin Kaplan, principal at Zebra Partners


• Ophir Lupu, head of games at United Talent Agency


• Wanda Meloni, executive director at the Open Gaming Alliance


• Ali Moiz, CEO at Vulcun


• Maarten Noyons, CEO of the International Mobile Gaming Awards


• Ian Sharpe, CEO of Azubu


• Mike Vorhaus, president of Magid Advisors


• Sunny Dhillon, partner at Signia Venture Partners


• Alejandro Manchado, strategic partner development lead at Google


• Daniel Cho, chairman of Innospark


• Mike Capps, former president of Epic Games

For general event information, please contact events@venturebeat.com and reference “GamesBeat”

For sponsorship information please click here, complete the form, and a member of our sales team will contact you.

If you are interested in volunteering at GamesBeat, please apply here

To apply to speak at GamesBeat, please fill out the form here.

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