One way that the online poker community is trying to get its message out is through social media. As Rich Muny, the Vice President of Player Relations at the Poker Players Alliance (PPA), explained to WebProNews, interaction on social networks is very natural for poker players since the Internet is where they play their game.

Since the 2008 election, many politicians see that a presence in social media is important. In return, the poker industry is using this trend to get their message out. Muny told us that the perception is that all online gaming efforts are driven by lobbyists and not the players. However, through social media, the players themselves are able to show that they support legislation.

Social media outlets have also helped poker players provide education to lawmakers not only on legislative matters, but also on other areas involving the game of online poker.

“There’s education for legislation, education for what we’re seeking, education for what it does, and education on the fact that a lot of people support the right to play,” said Muny.

He calls the impact of social media “astounding” and said that it is especially important that poker celebrities such as Doyle Brunson, Phil Hellmuth, and Daniel Negreanu are actively participating in the conversation as well. Even if these stars don’t address the legislation issues specifically, they still help to create buzz around online poker. What’s more, organizations like the PPA can capitalize on the buzz to create further awareness.

Muny said that the social media efforts have been a “very effective” means for getting lots of information out quickly. The PPA even has a daily action plan that includes preset tweets and Facebook posts that target the exact legislators that need to be reached.

Muny told us that the online poker community hopes that its message is heard and that online poker will be regulated in the near future.

The move comes from actions taken in June, when the U.S. froze assets totaling around $33 million belonging to Allied Systems and Account Services.

In its motion filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, Account Services argues it and the online poker players are not in violation of the Illegal Gambling Business Act (IGBA), a law passed in 1970 to reduce organized crime.

"There is no evidence whatsoever that the individual players for whom the seized funds were being held were in any way engaged in financing, managing, supervising, directing, or owing all or part of an illegal gambling business," documents say. "Accordingly, the players are not in violation of 1955 (the IGBA), nor are the funds seized proceeds of an illegal gambling business."

In the motion Account Services also says it is liable for checks that were cashed at check cashing businesses and later bounced due to the governments seizure of funds.

"ASC (the company) is now exposed to demands and threats of civil suits from check cashing businesses that cashed individual players’ checks which subsequently bounced," documents say. "ASC’s ability to function as a business has been severely impaired . . . ASC will likely have to close its doors if the money is not returned and the bank accounts are unavailable for operation of business."

Advocacy group the Poker Players Alliance (PPA) voiced its support of Account Services and said it plans to get involved.

"The PPA will likely seek to get involved in this action to ensure that the voice of U.S. poker players are heard and their freedom to play the skill game of online poker is preserved – without the threat of the government seizing their money."

The frozen payments are owed to 27,000 online poker players at four offshore sites, including PokerStars.com and FullTiltPoker.com, according to John Pappas, the executive director of the Poker Players Alliance (PPA), an advocacy group.

Alfonse D’Amato

The PPA says on June 4, a federal agent working with a federal prosecutor from the Southern District of New York contacted two banks in the Los Angeles and Scottsdale areas and requested that accounts containing around $19 million in player deposits and payouts be immediately frozen until a seizure warrant could be obtained. The prosecutor acted and the banks responded without a warrant being issued.

The government crackdown surfaced over the weekend after checks issued by payment processing companies Allied Systems and Account Services on behalf of the sites began bouncing. The PPA says it has contacted the affected poker websites and has been assured that all players will be reimbursed.

PPA Chairman Alfonse D’Amato called the actions taken by the federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York questionable.

"The PPA is disappointed that this unprecedented action has been commenced against law abiding poker players," D’Amato said in a letter to the prosecutor.

"The payment processor funds frozen by the Southern District of New York belong to individual poker players – not operators of poker websites – and do not represent the proceeds of any gambling activity, much less illegal gambling activity."

"The current law regarding the activity is far from clear, and policies from various levels of government are inconsistent at best. In fact, no federal or state court has ever found a payment processor or a player accessing an Internet poker site to have violated the federal laws alleged by the Southern District in this case."

John Pappas

"Poker players around the country are speaking with one voice to protect the game they love, and the White House is hearing that message," said PPA Executive Director John Pappas. 

"The popularity of online poker continues to grow, and the fact that poker is the top technology issue – and the 11th issue overall – proves that this is not a niche issue, but a national public policy that this Congress and this president should advance this year."

As part of President Obama’s transition, the White House asked citizens to submit a policy proposal that would be voted on through their website, change.gov. Those with the strongest support were included in a "briefing book" to the president, and the number one technology issue was "Boost America’s Economy with Legal Online Poker," which received 46,890 points.

In addition, House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) introduced legislation last week to establish U.S. licensing and regulation of online poker, providing greater protections for consumers.

"We hope the Administration hears and acts upon the clear message sent via the Citizen’s Breifing Book – keep online poker legal through thoughtful regulation," said Pappas.

"The poker community stands ready to work with President Obama and Congress to make sure the will of the people is acted upon."

The Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act would create a federal regulatory and enforcement framework allowing Internet gambling operators to obtain licenses to accept wages from people in the United States.

Alfonse D’Amato

The legislation is in response to the enactment of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), which restricted the use of the payments system for Americans who gamble online.

Frank’s bill received criticism from a senior Republican lawmaker opposed to gambling. "Illegal off-shore Internet gambling sites are a criminal enterprise," said Representative Spencer Bachus, the top Republican on the financial services committee. "Allowing them to operate unfettered in the United States would present a clear danger to our youth, who are subject to becoming addicted to gambling at an early age," said Bachus from Alabama.

The Poker Players Alliance, a poker grassroots advocacy group applauded the proposed legislation.

"Online poker is a legal, thriving industry and poker players deserve the consumer protections and the freedom to play that are provided for in this legislation," PPA Chairman and former Senator Alfonse D’Amato said.

"We are grateful for Chairman Frank’s leadership and will be activating our grassroots army made up of over one million members to help him drive legislation."

The Act prohibits gambling businesses from accepting payments from unlawful Internet gambling sites, including payments made with credit cards, electronic funds transfers, and checks.

"The final rule requires U.S. financial firms that participate in designated payment systems to establish and implement policies and procedures that are reasonably designed to prevent payments to gambling businesses in connection with unlawful Internet gambling" the Treasury Department said in a statement.

"For purposes of the rule, unlawful Internet gambling generally would cover the making of a bet or wager that involves use of the Internet and that is unlawful under any applicable federal or state law in the jurisdiction where the bet or wager is initiated, received, or otherwise made," the Treasury said.

Businesses have until December 1, 2009 to comply with the new rule, the Treasury said.

The Poker Players Alliance, a poker grassroots advocacy group condemned the move by the government. "Today’s action finalizes a truly bad public policy-one that even the banks and Federal regulators called unworkable in Congressional testimony," said PPA Chairman and former Senator Alfonse D’Amato.

"However, the PPA remains optimistic that the new Administration and the new Congress will recognize the failings of UIGEA and will act swiftly in the New Year to overturn this flawed policy."

A flaw in the regulations to enforce UIGEA is that they leave banks to interpret state and Federal gambling laws, which do not make clear the difference between legal and illegal Internet gambling activities.

Even if you had no intent to monetize a post, it just became easier to monetize accidental rankings. If you use analytics to track your stats and notice that you start ranking for some good keywords you can use Triggit to embed links to merchant products directly in the text of your blog post.

Shoemoney created this quick video to show how Triggit works

Unlike the automated ad solutions like intellitxt or AdSense, these Triggit ads

• look like other regular links on the page (so they should get a high CTR)
• can easily be applied on a page by page level (so you do not have to clutter up every page to monetize the few pages that can make a lot of money)
• link to products recommended by the editor (to preserve editorial integrity)
• can link to merchants that pay via affiliate payout or CPC (offering multiple monetization models)
• allow you to keep your pages clean (and easy to link at) until they rank, then have you add monetization after you have a leading market position for related keywords

Triggit ads are easy to set up and should require little maintenance on the end user’s side, but they are still a small start up, so if you start doing well with them make sure you remember which pages do well so you can keep monetizing the pages if the Triggit partnership stops working, and so you can track which pages you should try to monetize more aggressively and/or build links to.

As blended semi-editorial in content ad networks like these evolve, the distinction between optimization and spam blurs. And since Google has a similar product, it is going to be hard to view this in a negative light without looking hypocritical in the process. From Google’s pay per action page:

Text links are hyperlinked brief text descriptions that take on the characteristics of a publisher’s page. Publishers can place them in line with other text to better blend the ad and promote your product.

For example, you might see the following text link embedded in a publisher’s recommendatory text: "Widgets are fun! I encourage all my friends to Buy a high-quality widget today." (Mousing over the link will display "Ads by Google" to identify these as pay-per-action ads).

Though the maximum length of a text link is 90 characters, we’ve found that shorter links perform better because they allow the publisher use the link in more places on her/his site and in different context. The maximum length is 90 characters but less than 5 words is best. Even better, just use your brand name to offer maximum flexibility to the publisher.

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Google Extending More PPA Invitations

Pay per action advertising allows the advertiser to define a conversion for which it will pay Google. The company just began rolling this beta test of PPA out to customers beyond the United States.

Google will manage the rollout at a measured pace, something they have done more and more since their launch of Google Analytics. Demand proved so great for the service that Google had to shutdown new account applications for some time.

As the invitations to try out PPA begin to move through Google’s system, certain AdWords clients will get the chance to participate, according to Google’s Inside AdWords blog:

…advertisers who use AdWords conversion tracking and receive more than 500 conversions from their cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) campaigns in the most recent 30-day period will be invited to join this beta test, on a rolling basis.

PPA ads will appear on publisher sites in the Google content network. Publishers are free to choose the PPA ads most relevant to their site and run them in new ad units.

Google mentions its content network, consisting of participants in AdSense, but doesn’t mention search. The Google search result pages would be the most desirable place for an advertiser’s PPA campaign to appear, though it seems that for now the beta test won’t extend into that part of Google.

Google Pay-Per-Action Goes Global

Pay-per-action (PPA) is a pricing model where advertisers pay only when a conversion has taken place on their site, such as when a user makes a purchase or signs up for a newsletter.

"Pay-per-action advertising helped our company make the most of our marketing budget," said Alexandre Douzet, Executive Vice President and General Manager, TheLadders.com.

"At TheLadders.com, we are big proponents of marketing efficiency, so the ability to supplement our existing cost-per-click campaigns with a model that rewards qualified leads makes a lot of sense to us."

Beginning today, advertisers in the beta will receive an alert in their AdWords account telling them that they can create PPA campaigns. Advertisers who have AdWords conversion tracking and have more than 500 conversions in the last 30 days will automatically be added to the beta on a rolling basis.

PPA ads only appear on sites that participate in Google’s content network. They will not be visible on Google or in its search network.

Publishers in the Google content network that want more control over the ads displayed on their sites can choose individual ads, a shopping cart of ads or a keyword that is related to the content on their site.

Google Whispers More Details About PPA

Since last week’s announcement that Google would start offering AdWords PPA ads, where the advertiser pays only when a predetermined conversion has taken place, plenty of buzz has swirled around the plan.

A lot of that buzz has focused on a few distinct questions about PPA on AdWords. The Inside AdWords team at Google posted answers to some of the more frequently asked questions they have received about the plan.

International advertisers will have to wait to participate, as Google has opened this limited test only to US-based clients. Advertisers must have a billing address in the United States, so even if an international business focuses on US customers, that isn’t enough to be eligible yet.

PPA ads only show up through being displayed on sites that participate in Google’s content network. They won’t appear on Google or in its search network.

An advertiser concern of content networks has been the prospect of being displayed on less than desirable partner sites. Since the condition of PPA requires some kind of conversion to take place, typical worries about click fraud with pay per click ads should not be a problem.

On the content network side, AdSense members can sign up for a referrals program. Search marketers managing clients through the AdWords ‘My Client Center’ product can select individual accounts to participate in the PPA beta.

The fixed rate provision of PPA through the new program probably won’t change in the near term. Some advertisers had asked about paying the PPA as a percentage of a sale, but Google is only doing the beta with a fixed price as the cost of conversion.

Got a tip that’s too hot for the comments section? Email me, dutter at webpronews dot com.