Category Archives: Las Vegas

Viva Las Vegas for Casino Profits

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This Hotel Interactive article offers some great data about the Las Vegas Casino scene in terms of economic impact. As you’d think it’s a staggering cash flow – some 2.1 billion profit on 24 billion in revenues from the 274 properties in Nevada reporting more than a million in profit for the year.

Here are some notable items from this report:

Gaming accounts for 49% percent of total revenue = $11.8 billion.
Rooms = 20% = $5 billion
Food = 14%
Average revenue per casino hotel resort was $88 million (!).
Casinos paid $928 million in state gambling tax and license fees (!).

Slot machines accounted for 67% of gaming revenue.
Poker accounts for only 1.4 percent of gaming revenue.

The Las Vegas Strip: $14.9 billion revenues and profits of $1.25 billion.
Downtown Las Vegas: $1.2 billion in revenue and a profit of $140.6 million.

Hey, here’s my brief Las Vegas History based on the PBS show about Las Vegas.

Las Vegas Blog

PodTech Bloghaus with Robert and Maryam = glimpse into future of reporting = very cool

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Although Apple’s release of the iPhone at MacWorld sort of stole the show away from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this year, I think PodTech / Scoble’s brilliant idea of setting up a “Bloghaus” at CES is one of the neatest conference ideas to come out in a long time.

Unlike some of the other early bloggers, Robert Scoble has been a strong advocate for the powers of blogging as cornerstone of commerce. His book with Shel Israel, “Naked Conversations”, was an excellent introduction for corporate suit people to blogging’s significance and also to blogging’s importance to a smart corporate strategy.

Many of the suits are still fretting about this and failing to grasp the obvious, but Robert’s new gig, PodTech, is proving a leader in innovative blogging, and I think the CES Bloghaus has set a new standard in the effectiveness of alternative reporting approaches and frankly what a “cheap date” good bloggers will prove to be. One prominent blogger wrote down there that he was heading over to bloghaus because he was running low on cash. “Feed me”, he begged. So for the price of a few beers and Pizza bloghaus gets a good writer and a good plug. And that’s good! I’d sure like to see a bloghaus at the next conference I attend. Sure, you can blog from anywhere at the conference with your laptop and WIFI, but wouldn’t it be more fun to be hangin’ at the ‘haus?

I’d like to compare some of the professional reporting coming out of CES with the blog reports. In other venues blogging generally wins, offering personal insight and expertise rather than a superficial skim of the topic. Also, bloggers tend to speak more frankly so you avoid the sort of “legally / commercially sanitized” fluff that sometimes constrains are reporter’s ability to tell the real story.

Bravo Podtech! Bravo Robert and Maryam and your team down there at CES. I only wish I could have been writing this … from there!

The Flamingo Hotel, in 1946. Bugsy Seigel’s Desert Dream

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The Flamingo Hotel, in 1946. Bugsy Seigel’s Desert Dream

Originally uploaded by JoeDuck.

An image of early Las Vegas – the Flamingo Hotel – from pictures on the wall at the Tropicana. I was struck by how modest and small these original hotels seem by modern standards, especially those of Las Vegas where resort palaces like the Wynn and MGM now tower above the Flamingo and Tropicana, themselves huge versions of their original humbly gangsteresque Las Vegas beginnings.

Las Vegas – Bodies… The Exhibition

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The Las Vegas to Minnesota to home trip had two big “educational” highlights. The first was the Tropicana’s Bodies Exhibition in Las Vegas which showcases human bodies preserved using an advanced technique of injection and plastination. A similar exhibit called “Body Worlds” is touring many major cities and I’ve since learned that Body Worlds is actually the first such exhibit, with other copycat (or CopyHuman) exhibitions like the one I saw in Vegas. Nonetheless it was a fantastic exhibit, gazing as you did into dozens of hearts, brains, and bodies of amazingly preserved human cadavers.

The circulation system, injected and illuminated in all it’s full body glory, was the most stunning of the exhibits for me. Like a giant plant the arteries and veins extended throughout the body.

However in terms of intrigue I simply can’t get the little 3 pound brain exhibit out of my head. Or maybe I should say it’s so clear that you really CAN separate the 3 pound brain from the rest of the body. It would not work for long without the bodies supportive mechanisms but it’s reasonable to assert that it’s that little 3 pound organic computing mechanism where we find so much of the stuff that makes it fun to be a human.

Coming as I had from an Internet conference and very computerized sensibilities, it struck me how this little blob held all the answers to science’s elusive and exciting goal of conscious computing, or the creation of an artificial intellect that is aware of it’s own existence.

I’m using my own conscious computing mechanism to suggest that the debate over differences between our own brain and mechanized intelligences will eventually prove to be almost irrelevant to the issue of “consciousness”.

Clearly our organic computing mechanism, the brain, brings a lot more to the table than the current crop of silicon bretheren, but equally clearly the silicon versions have surpassed us in many respects such as mathematical computation, chess, etc, etc. In fact it’s hard to think of highly structured “intellectual” activity where computers can’t outshine humans. I’d predict that this superiority will increasingly move into the realms of arts, literature, and other abstract endeavors.

HBO Comedy Festival and Comic Relief in Las Vegas

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In Las Vegas you always have to re-orient yourself to being in a major center of the entertainment world. This week Caesar’s Palace is hosting the HBO Comedy Festival with a lot of household name comics, though major headliner Dave Chappelle has dropped out. After the HBO Comedy Festival event is “Comic Relief”, with proceeds going to Katrina victims.   That’s at Caesar’s Palace on Saturday with Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, and Billy Crystal.

I wandered into the promotional tent/event tonight where they are in the process of giving away cash, cars, T-shirts and cigars. AOL had a bunch of PCs with *superbly* fast internet and an espresso cart serving up whatever you liked. There were a couple of venues with “open mikes” for anybody who wanted to be a comic, but that was not going over very well.   In fact I was really struck (as usual) by how events here tend to be so awash with cash that does not create a direct return on the investment.     The sponsors would say these “branding” events have large indirect value but I think when we can better measure such things we’ll see how much is wasted by these approaches, especially when compared to online advertising methods.

One thing that really strikes me about Las Vegas, especially at the fanciest places, is the very high quality of customer service. Even if you are underdressed and obviously just looking around, the shopkeepers, security guards, and staff of places like Caesar’s Palace or the Bellagio are attentive and polite and even appear to be sincere. This is obviously the right way to turn a profit but ironically you’ll find inferior customer service at many mom and pop tourism joints around the USA even though they’d likely reap rewards for this as well.

Pubcon – ad optimizing session

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Jenstar is giving a great talk about the importance of testing, saying it can impact the publishing bottom line by as much as 10x current earnings. YPN vs Adsense –

Most of her testing uses the custom channels at Adsense.

Sometimes borders work better than borderless. Hyperlink blue” is generally the best link color. Second is the same color as other links on page. Try image ads enabled as test. Mix ads up to avoid “banner blindness”. AVOID right upper corner = low conversion.

I missed lots of good info here her blog is great for this stuff.

Cody Sims from Yahoo – What motivates publishers to publish? 4 things:
Lifestyle, Community Aspect, Technology enthusiastics, The “game” of publishing.

Measure of success = maximizing revenue and increasing traffic = same as Yahoo’s own goals.

Article text on the page is the most important in terms of contextual matching. Robots choke on i frames, flash, etc.

About.com as one of the best optimized environments on the web = high signal to noise ratio.

Do’s: Write the way a user thinks. Creates relevant content and ad matching.
Optimize key areas. Keep tags relevant to content.
LIMIT low content pages.
Don’t use unnecessary code.
Limit page to one or two topics.
Walk in the advertiser’s shoes – “would I want my ad here?”
Integrate keywords into URL structure. Permalinks>using IDs in links.
Strong keywords in anchor text.

www.ypnblog.com

Tom from Google: Shift in Media Consumption= opportunity. Approaching 40% of time online which will shift more ad money online soon.
Adsense: 76% reach via adsense publishers. 110 monthly page views per user
—Missed some of this —

Jay from ContextWeb, now 25th largest ad supported property online. Venture backed by same firm that brought Overture to market. Like Federated, looking to better match ads and publishers than can be done by the big players. Decision making engine works on the fly. Keyword sensing plus category taxonomy disambiguates the search. (got that?).

Google is NOT real time, but Context Web is. Dynamic content is therefore better targeted by Context Web. (the Samsonite Suitcase ad at Suitcase murderer story problem)

Quigo‘s introduced by Yaron Galai as another “cream vs milk” advertising optimizer.  I missed his very interesting slide suggesting how crappy publishers are effectively subsidized by current pricing models – hope to ask about that later.   I met Yaron in Boston I think and was really impressed by Quigo, but soured on it after talking with somebody else at SES San Jose who had a negative sort of pitch.  Probably a case where the founder’s a better salesman than the salesman.

John Battelle at Pubcon

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John Battelle, author of “The Search” is talking about “The New Age of Advertising” and making the case that search is the new computer navigation tool.

Search: Allows adverts to focus on “intent over content”. Shifting from pre-search to post-search world is frustrating, but essential, for advertisers. Google is that nexus.

Marketing as dialog. Attention is increasingly controlled by users, not distributors. Content is once again king and landing page is the queen. John says marketing is now an opportunity to engage the customer in a dialog.

Case studies: Microsoft dinosaur heads vs Wifi awareness. Changing the pitch to acknowledge the reader’s interest (wifi aware vs dinos) increased response 60%.

Cisco – Wikipedia happiness from respect by not posting company propaganda, rather waiting for a natural listing to appear.

Dice: Invited surly IT peeps=most IT peeps, to rant. Tech news “hummingbirds” became sticky stickarounds.

Demo of Federated media campaign manager. Hmmmm- keynote as a pitch?
I guess this is OK because John …. has a PhD.
Federated = bundling of quality sites with advertisers who want targeting.
750 million ad impressions from 100 sites booking a million per month in ads, 60% of which goes to publishers [ummm – why is this lower than adsense rev share of about 70%?].
Here’s the answer – they devote lots of staff time to take care of authors needs?

Questions:
How to separate editorial from advertising?: Blogging allows transparency and trust in a way print does not. Disclose and don’t sell words, but OK to blog about things you like/know/use etc. Ultimate test is whether audience stays with you.

Google radio vs Federated CPM advertising. Quotes Beth Comstock from Web 2.0 about needed humans in the equation. FM is in the “cream” biz where Google’s in the milk biz.
Federated will work to make sure every impression on the site is monetized in the best way.

What’s most unique thing you’ve seen a blogger do to increase traffic?
Lists are good. Blogoscoped asked for posts with most comments. But need the core essense of passion. High integrity voices always win.

Jason Calcanis suggests you should do in-house ad sales after 1 million page views (per month?).    John says he does not agree and thinks the Federated model is very viable as an intermediary.

Las Vegas Lions, IMAX, and Chinois at Caesar’s

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Almost time to find something to do tonight after the ASK reception winds up at 6pm.  Sometime during the trip I want to go to the Chinese place “Chinois” at the Forum Shops at Caesar’s Palace recommended by Zeke at About.com, arguably the best source for Las Vegas info anywhere. He says this might be the best place to eat in the whole city.

Last time here I missed the Lion habitat at MGM grand so I also want to head over there and then to LUXOR for an IMAX show. I’d thought I’d do a big show this time out but nothing looks worth the $50 – $100 price when there are tons of cheap and free attractions, as well as some of the best people watching in the world.

Pubcon – Mega site optimization session

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Andrew from Automotive.com / Primedia. Motor Trend magazine. He’s got some case study info about their optimization efforts in the Auto space.

Website Evaluation.
CMS challenges. No”policing” to make sure writers were optimizing content. Structure problems. (missed some here). “Site was not SEO friendly at all”. As an authority in the space, changes in structure helped a lot. Could use the brand and could monetize immediately …

sorry…too much info to capture here..

Shop.com

Aaron:  Shopping.com