On the latest episode of Footprints in the Market, Niamh Gallagher, Marketing Manager at Mindway AI, detailed how the company is harnessing AI and over a decade of neuroscience data to innovate igaming’s approach to player protection.

Speaking to Sharon McFarlane, Managing Director of Digital Footprints, Gallagher explained that Mindway AI was founded as a spin-off of Denmark’s Arhaus University, with a basis in years of neuroimaging, neuroscience and problem gambling research.

She said: “Our algorithms are trained by experts, so along with the ten years of research, we have an expert panel of psychologists and psychotherapists and experts in the field and look at the data and then the algorithm is trained on that.

“It detects normal but also problematic behaviour so that operators can make more informed decisions of how to interact and intervene early with those players to avoid problems escalating. So that’s our primary solution, GameScanner.

“We also have another solution which is a reinvention of the self-test. It’s more engaging than traditional self-tests. It’s an 80 card game and is based on the principles of neuroimaging and it gives people a chance to explore and learn from their gambling behaviour and it gives them feedback on their playing and what they can do with that.”

Navigating the challenge of the pandemic

The lifeblood of marketing in igaming are the many events, summits and conferences that take place around the world. However, the opportunity to meet in person was taken away in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Gallagher spoke about how she navigated the challenges of that period while working as Group Head of Content at EGR Global.

“There were a lot of things that we had to do and we worked quite closely with other events companies and with competitors to try and map out how we’d make it work so that we weren’t stepping on each other’s toes,” she explained. 

“You had to get to grips with the new event tech, which was a whole thing in itself. We recorded virtual awards with the green screens and everything like that. Some elements have stayed since then and worked out really well.  

“We tried out so many things. I think we had a virtual race at one point and we had treasure hunts around the websites to keep people engaged as well. I remember at the start we tried to replicate exactly what an in-person event would be like and have an hour for networking but no one wanted to come into a team’s meeting so we quickly had to rethink those kinds of things.”

Despite the success of virtual events, Gallagher conceded that there is no substitute for in-person events as the igaming industry is “very relationship-based”.

What we have learned so far

The Footprints in the Market video series is aimed at senior marketing executives in the igaming space and each episode will offer practical insights and expert knowledge from some of the industry’s top minds. 

Through the first five episodes of the series, “some of the biggest marketing minds in igaming” have detailed how igaming operators are wasting ‘astronomical marketing budgets’, how Google treats every industry differently, and the ‘untapped’ potential of women’s football.