Gaming Corp -- Gaming Corporation, which owns casino portal casino.co.uk, has purchased online media planning and buying agency Eyeconomy in a £0.6 million deal that will be settled through an issue of 20 million new ordinary shares in Gaming Corp at 3p per share and also through an inter-company loan of £0.14 million that Eyeconomy owed to its parent Eyeconomy Holdings. With Betfair, Ebay and Multimap in its management portfolio, Eyeconomy experienced turnover of £1.4 million in 2003 and operating profit of £0.2 million. Commenting on the acquisition, Gaming Corp's CEO Justin Drummond said, "This is a strategic acquisition which substantially bolsters our marketing infrastructure. The objective of the acquisition is simple - to drive traffic to our gaming assets. That is what Eyeconomy will do, and in a cost-efficient manner." Gaming Corp raised £520,000 in December through a share placement.
Google's Sponsored Links -- Though Google stated it would remove all online gambling advertisements by the end of April, the company seems to be having difficulty in extinguishing them. MediaDailyNews reported that on Monday Google searches for phrases like "online casino" and "sports betting" yielded several sponsored link results for online gambling companies. MediaDailyNews questioned Google about the ads the next day and found that some of them were later removed. Today, however, many of them had returned. At the time of this posting, a search for "Internet betting" turns up sponsored links for five I-gaming sites. Apparently Google's ads are posted by an automated computer system, and the gaming sites have been successful in resubmitting their ads. Google provides sponsored links and text ads to its partner Web sites iVillage, Ask Jeeves and About.com, so similar results are popping up on their search engines.
Poki's Poker Academy -- Biotools Inc has created Poki's Poker Adademy, a software program designed to assist the play of poker players, from beginners to experts. Biotools says the program is a complex learning tool that learns patterns and adapts to various playing styles. It also displays odds and variables and can graph the likelihood of certain situations. It forces players to adapt by exploiting any weakness or predictability it finds their playing style.
Merger -- PlaceMyBet.com, which is part of a public company traded on the AIM of the London Stock Exchange, is merging with SportingParlor.com. Both sites offer online sports books and casinos that will experience no change in their customers' current service or account.