New Ads on AVP

[AlaskaGal]

I notice we have some new ads coming up in the forum. Are they going to be poker/vegas related? Doug's moving into the bigtime!

[LasVegasMichael]

Now that the ads are running, we can publicly thank Venetian for signing on as an official sponsor of AVP!

I strongly encourage all AVP members to visit the Venetian poker room website through the ads that are posted. It will take you directly to the DeepStacked Series schedule and give you all the Venetian poker information from the official source.

Long before the sponsorship, the Venetian was always considered the best overall room in Vegas, as voted by the members, and we are proud to call them our first major sponsor!

[allvegaspoker]

Huge, Huge, HUGE thanks to the Venetian poker room for having the resolve and confidence in AVP to spend a good chunk of its advertising budget with us.

My "official thoughts" about the new sponsorship deal are published in the news section on the main site, which you can read by clicking here.

With 100,000 visitors per month, the Las Vegas poker rooms are finally waking up to AVP and the power of the Interwebz ... and the Venetian is the first one out of bed .... bright eyed and bushy tailed!

Thanks V. We appreciate your support.

[AlaskaGal]

I never thought I would read AVP and Sexy in the same sentence! It's great to see the site moving forward. Congrats!

[minton]

Kudos to the V for sponsoring this site, I know it's already the favorite room of a majority of AVP, and this is huge...thanks for sponsoring our side of the interweb!!!

[thebreeze]

The V rocks! It is already my favorite room for multiple reasons and where I can be found most of the time but this just adds another reason to love that room.

[TI Poker]

Doug I am glad you were able to get a poker room to come online with you. I look forward to the enhancements this will enable you to do in taking AVP to another level.

Congratulations to you and to the V.

[Vince]

Two quick suggestions/comments:

- When I click the ad, it is blocked by Internet Explorer's pop-up blocker. To click through, I have to temporarily allow pop-ups. Not sure if that has to do with the fact that it's a Flash ad or what, or if it's an AVP or Venetian issue, but just wanted to mention it... you might be getting more click throughs if it doesn't get stopped by pop-up blockers!

- This is mostly for the V: just wanted to suggest having a better "landing" page that maybe had some text describing what the DSE was, hyped it, etc. I already know what the DSE is and that direct link to all the info is helpful. But if I didn't know what it was (for example if I'd never been to Las Vegas and stumbled upon AVP while searching about Vegas poker) and I clicked the ad, I could see myself being confused with the current page and it taking a while to figure out what the tournaments were all about, etc.

[allvegaspoker]

Two quick suggestions/comments:

- When I click the ad, it is blocked by Internet Explorer's pop-up blocker. To click through, I have to temporarily allow pop-ups. Not sure if that has to do with the fact that it's a Flash ad or what, or if it's an AVP or Venetian issue, but just wanted to mention it... you might be getting more click throughs if it doesn't get stopped by pop-up blockers!

- This is mostly for the V: just wanted to suggest having a better "landing" page that maybe had some text describing what the DSE was, hyped it, etc. I already know what the DSE is and that direct link to all the info is helpful. But if I didn't know what it was (for example if I'd never been to Las Vegas and stumbled upon AVP while searching about Vegas poker) and I clicked the ad, I could see myself being confused with the current page and it taking a while to figure out what the tournaments were all about, etc.

Hi Vince, thanks for the feedback. You make two excellent points.

1. Regarding the pop-ups, I don't know how to get around this. I'm using Firefox and haven't had the problem, but I'm not the average user. We'll do a little research.

2. I totally agree with you about the landing page ("LP"). Our original vision for V's the LP was for it to be a custom "sponsored page" hosted on AVP. I personally think this would be better for the users, and ultimately for the V.

Another benefit is that it could be easily developed and rapidly deployed, whereas modifying the LP on the V's website has a little red tape associated with it.

This is AVP advertising v1.0b. By the time we get to AVP advertising v1.3 I bet we have a hosted sponsored page solution, at least as an option for our advertisers that have something specific to promote (e.g., V's DSE Tournament Series)...

[Cashewz]

Saw the Venetian ad myself, and clicked on it.

I'm planning to play a DSE event this June, and it's only because I've read so many good things about the V on this site. If it weren't for AVP (the site), I likely would not have considered the Venetian as a poker destination.

That being said, I'm hopefully that the V will update their site for DSE III soon; another post on this site from dcarp mentioned that they were going to tweak the structure of the DSE events. This tweak hasn't been updated to the site yet, and I'm very curious to see what will change.

Congrats to AVP on securing the V as a sponsor; congrats to the V for their wise choice in advertising on AVP.

[zzjitterzz]

Congrats to AVP on securing the V as a sponsor; congrats to the V for their wise choice in advertising on AVP.

+1

Of course, we hope AVP will not lose it objectivity when it comes to reviewing or talking about poker rooms. I don't think this will be an issue, but it's a fear every time an ad is accepted. Will we need a disclaimer with our posts?

The views in this post are my own and do not represent the views of All Vegas Poker, its hosts, management, or sponsors.

Grange, does that pass legal muster? I'm going to put it in my signature.

[allvegaspoker]

Of course, we hope AVP will not lose it objectivity when it comes to reviewing or talking about poker rooms. I don't think this will be an issue, but it's a fear every time an ad is accepted.

This was well thought out ... a lot of consideration and months of planning went into doing this deal.

Objectivity is one of the main reasons we brought LasVegasMichael on board as a paid AVP ambassador. We set it up like a car magazine. Mike handles the editorial content, including the poker rooms reviews, while I do my best to handle the business end of AVP.

[Local Rock]

Snazzy looking ad. Did V create it or did you design that for them?

I hope you eventually get the cure for any perception of a particular commercially motivated bias: every poker room in Las Vegas buying ads. Actually I think the free flow of information in the discussion forum from many points of view reporting individual experiences is what takes care of that for me. I'm not worried about it. Publication of news and information has worked on an advertising model since before the invention of electric lights, and how well it works always depends on who is doing the work. In contrast, I find the "reviews" in a publication like CardPlayer are mostly suitable for cleaning bug splatters off my windshield.

[allvegaspoker]

Snazzy looking ad. Did V create it or did you design that for them?

V did these ads in-house ... we've got some cool ideas for v2.0 ads, but they will take more creative dev resources. No shortage of ideas, however

[Local Rock]

I just tried both Firefox & IE and had no problem clicking through on the V advert, FWIW. I do have pop-up blockers on both those browsers, and did not disable them.

[Lou White]

Now that the ads are running, we can publicly thank Venetian for signing on as an official sponsor of AVP!

Stop the Presses !!

I thought PokerTek was the exclusive official sponsor of AVP. Did you get to be on TV to talk about Venetian ?

I dont think so

Joking aside.... grats to Doug for cranking up the next chapter of your business. I am sure others will follow , as AVP is unique real estate on the web, with a clear value proposition.

Venetian is a great room. I've known Kathy for a while dating back to Foxwoods days. She is one of the smartest folks I have met in the business. What she has done in building Venetian from dead stop to the largest room in Vegas is truly remarkable. Deep Stack concept is just another of her ideas that are now general practice in the industry.

Grats again Doug, Venetian and AVP !

Lou

[Bargeguy]

Way to go V! We'll be sure to spend some time with you in July when we're in town playing and watching the WSOP!

[Kinx]

Boo-yah!!! First of all, the V is my favorite room in LV, then I p/u 8K shares of LVS (parent co. of the Venetian) at an avg. cost of $1.94/sh. (up 300%, not counting today's 20% price drop) and now the V is sponsoring AVP, there must be some kind of cosmic alignment going on here, I guess I have to play one the DSE events when I come for the AVP meet in June.

[AdRock]

I have AdBlock running in Firefox and didn't even see the ads. In IE, I do get a pop-up blocker warning. Don't think there's a way around that other than to NOT pop up the ad or place the ad page on AVP.

Anyway, nice going. I know there have been lots of business talks around AVP and glad one came to fruition.

[allvegaspoker]

I have AdBlock running in Firefox and didn't even see the ads. In IE, I do get a pop-up blocker warning. Don't think there's a way around that other than to NOT pop up the ad or place the ad page on AVP.

We're working on this issue ... one of my friends, who is a bona fide Interwebz expert (also an AVP'er; "JCC3700") just sent me a note with some good info to fix the pop-up blocking problem in IE (thanks bro). I think this bug will be resolved / improved real soon.

I appreciate all the feedback guys...