Stop Wasting Budget: Structure Over Hype, With Valentina Diaco

[00:00]  1. Intro: from ballet to iGaming marketing

Guest:  What I can learn from my previous experience outside gaming, which I think was my blessing, is that there’s much more attention to building a sense of belonging. I actually love to be surrounded by people who know more than me and are smarter than me.

Host:  Welcome to Bet It Drives, the show that takes you up and over the iGaming world. What makes a brand truly grow and really glow? Clever ads, or a clear system? Valentina Diaco has done both. From working with Bulgari and PlayStation to launching into the iGaming business, she’s turned creative stories into real business results. Valentina, welcome to Rome, although you’re more local than we are.

Guest:  Thank you for having me.

[01:16]  2. Calabria, Rome and Malta

Host:  You’re Italian, but people get confused, Malta, Rome, Italy. Tell us about yourself.

Guest:  I was born in Calabria, in the south of Italy, and moved to Rome at 17 because I wanted to become a ballerina. Rome invited me to follow my dreams, and at the same time I started studying marketing, business and communication at university. Malta comes into the picture simply because my husband is Maltese, so I live in Malta now. I lived in Rome for 11 years.

Host:  With SiGMA coming to Rome, what are your top things you love about the city?

Guest:  Rome represents a lot to me, it’s where I feel I grew up and built great memories. It’s one of the most beautiful cities, full of history and art; you can walk for hours and still find a little corner that tells you something about the past. The food is amazing, the people are warm and welcoming. And because I moved here to become a ballerina, it represents my dreams and my passion.

[04:08]  3. What ballet taught her about discipline and creativity

Guest:  When you study ballet, even though it’s a beautiful discipline, it’s built on very rigid rules and very hard work. You have to transform passion into something that looks effortless, but there’s a lot of work behind it. That discipline helps me today in the way I tackle work without forgetting the creativity and the passion. It’s almost like that rigidity protects my creativity. I moved to Rome, fell in love with it, and met my husband, who’s Maltese and stole my heart, though in terms of city and country I wish we could come back and live here.

[06:23]  4. Luxury brands to iGaming: OMD, MediaCom, Casumo

Guest:  I graduated in marketing, business and communication, and was lucky to work with two of the biggest media agencies in the world, OMD and MediaCom. Early in my career I worked for big brands, Bulgari, PlayStation, Renault, Fox International Channels, and I was part of the Vodafone launch. I immediately saw digital marketing as an opportunity, so I started as a media buyer planning radio and TV, then after one year moved into digital, and became head of the digital department. When I moved to Malta, one of the most prosperous industries was gaming, so I entered the gaming space at Casumo for four years. The funny story is I was hired as country manager for Italy, but Casumo never got the license at the time, so I was promoted to Swedish market manager, even though I didn’t know a word of Swedish. My task was to understand how the branding and marketing budgets were allocated for the business to grow and gain market share.

[08:33]  5. Why the academic foundation mattered

Host:  University is sometimes seen by younger people as unnecessary. Was it really the foundation for you?

Guest:  For me it was fundamental. It’s true that university gives you a lot of theory and you become an expert when you execute. I did a classical liceo, studying Greek and Latin, and then university, and I think I learned the methodology. The application happens when you start working, but university gave me the chance to learn the history of certain marketing subjects that are still applicable now, with the systems. It was fundamental for me.

[10:58]  6. The shock: an industry over-reliant on affiliates and bonuses

Host:  Is there a parallel you can draw from luxury or retail into iGaming, or surprises you saw in iGaming that other industries never had?

Guest:  At the very beginning of my iGaming career, I was a little shocked, because iGaming has been built forever, and successfully, on affiliate marketing. It’s still the main channel driver, generating the majority of revenue. But at the very beginning I was impressed and shocked by the lack of strategy, the lack of branding, and the attention to retention was almost zero. Things have improved, and in the last five years I’m so glad brands, operators and affiliates are moving to a different approach on branding, retention and technology. I still believe the industry is a bit behind compared to others, but it’s a fairly young industry, evolving day by day.

[13:29]  7. Retention is not a luxury, it’s day-one

Guest:  What I learned from my experience outside gaming, which was my blessing, is that there’s much more attention to building a sense of belonging. You don’t only work on an acquisition plan, you establish full mechanics to acquire players, retain them and build trust, almost treating customers as part of your building process.

Host:  So retention isn’t a luxury for big brands only, you have to embrace it from the very beginning.

Guest:  Very beginning, it’s key. Spending money only on acquiring players, and we’re talking about significant cost per acquisition, is just insane if you don’t think about how to retain them, how to take the customers you acquire to the next step and make them loyal. There’s still a bit of a gap, but it’s much better than five years ago.

Host:  Operators consider LTV and retention rate, which convert into paybacks, ROI and break-even. How can you hope only on acquisition if players don’t stay? Sometimes retention rates are less than 10%.

Guest:  It’s not sustainable, it’s a waste of money.

[15:08]  8. Profit Matches: align profit with purpose

Host:  What are the tools?

Guest:  It’s a methodological, systematic approach, connected pieces that work together. It’s almost a 360-degree lens, like a camera. When you launch a product, a brand or a platform, you need to look at things with purpose. My company is called Profit Matches, and the motto is “align profit with purpose.” Because if there’s a real meaning and purpose behind any launch, it means there’s a strategy, and you’re looking at the long-term sustainable goal, not just short-term objectives. It might be controversial, but sometimes in our industry we think purpose means not making money. That’s not the case for me; purpose isn’t charity, we will all make money. But especially today, with the AI shift, purpose is a very strategic asset that guarantees your longevity.

Host:  My observation is that 90% of this industry is still startups and rookies who want quick money, and they’ll fail unless they look at their clientele deeply and long-term: who they’re servicing, the meaning of the brand, the brand promise.

Guest:  Correct, 100%. And the controversial part is that many businesses have been extremely successful with this purpose-led approach too. The industry is lucrative, but things are changing. Consumers are much more aware of advertising, so it’s essential for brands to invest in building trust. Players want to be part of the journey, and they want to stay with brands they trust. Why would they need a second choice?

[18:58]  9. Loyalty by experience, not just bonuses

Guest:  A main difference I saw between the luxury brands I worked with and gaming: in our industry we incentivise players with bonuses, so we measure loyalty by transaction. Luxury brands measure loyalty by rewarding with an experience, to build trust. The majority of operators spend lots on affiliate marketing, paying 350, 400, sometimes 600 to acquire a single player in certain markets, then have a month-two retention rate of 10%, which is crazy, you’ll never recoup that money. And what do they do? Increase the bonus spend, trying to capture an expensive audience with low intent by giving more and more, so the real cost of that player is much higher than the acquisition figure suggests. In other industries, first of all they never rely on only one channel. Diversification has to become a strategic asset; you need omnichannel, with coherent, consistent branding, tone of voice, content and brand promise across the board, balanced between creativity and a measurement framework. And loyalty isn’t based on a discount, they send you a nice invitation to an expensive show, an experience, making sure users feel the brand rather than just spending money short-term. iGaming isn’t luxury and isn’t travel, but a few learnings apply across all industries: building brand, nurturing trust, and thinking about the purpose behind it.

[22:35]  10. Do conferences deliver ROI?

Host:  Are conferences part of this omnichannel approach?

Guest:  To some extent, yes. But that opens another topic: are these conferences really bringing ROI for each company? There are too many in a short period, which can dilute effective time. Still, presence is important, I’m here with you partly because of that. It gives visibility, builds trust, and measures authenticity. We all love posting our image, but there’s a point where what you post has to be authentic. So today I’m giving proof of who I am, the real individual behind the brand. It’s the same when we launch a product: we sell a promise, then we have to deliver something players can truly relate to, because that’s the only way they stick around. That’s how trust is built.

[24:19]  11. Christmas campaigns and overplayed songs

Host:  We’re approaching Christmas. If a song is overplayed it stops working from a marketing standpoint. What song comes to mind?

Guest:  Marketing is repetition, right? So Mariah Carey, “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” is definitely top of the list. Overplayed, too much.

Host:  And when a campaign you designed goes viral and is a real hit, what song accompanies it?

Guest:  When something goes extremely well and we see high engagement and reach, I play something, though I really don’t know how to sing, so I apologise.

[26:20]  12. AI Match: a “Tinder for business”

Host:  Tell us more about your company, who it serves and how it differentiates.

Guest:  Profit Matches is a marketing consultancy, motto “align profit with purpose,” built to help companies operate with a system and structure. It’s now launching its first product, AI Match, launched three months ago and still in beta. It’s a B2B matchmaking directory listing AI solutions dedicated to gaming and crypto, so companies, affiliates and game studios can find their perfect match, a kind of Tinder for business. AI has become a buzzword, almost noise rather than strategy, so I wanted a platform where people can search by parameters: if they need a tool to predict the retention cohort, or a solution to produce slots using LLMs, they go to one place and find the perfect match based on their business goals.

Host:  So your clients are operators who don’t want to die within six months or get lost in the noise, and you help them find the right stage of development and leverage AI tools.

Guest:  Correct. I work with operators and affiliates, any company that needs to level up or launch a product with the methodological approach needed to build a long-term, efficient business, not just generate money tomorrow.

[29:59]  13. Affiliates becoming operators and brands

Host:  We see a lot of affiliates wanting to become operators, but keeping the same affiliate tactics without adding the retention layer.

Guest:  The core of any operator is building a brand that sticks, that players want to come back to and trust. Affiliates, especially now, need to act more as a mini-product rather than just SEO sites or social campaigns. They need to build experiences so users come back to their properties. And yes, more and more affiliates are coming to me for help.

[31:41]  14. The one metric: incremental growth

Host:  What’s the one metric every CMO should live by?

Guest:  Straightforward: incremental growth. CMOs often look at total numbers, unique depositing customers, retention and ROI, but few look at incremental growth. If you spend 10k on a channel, say YouTube, and generate 100, that’s great, but if you triple the spend to 50k expecting 500, it doesn’t happen, because once you reach a pool of players, spending more doesn’t obtain the same number of NDCs. You need to look at retention and at which stage of their journey customers come to your website. Incremental growth is the rate you see when you adopt that omnichannel strategy.

[33:52]  15. Network or Not Work (Christmas edition)

Host:  Launching a marketing campaign between Christmas Eve and New Year. Network or not work?

Guest:  Not work.

Host:  Launching a pre-Christmas campaign on December 23rd?

Guest:  Not work.

Host:  Letting AI decide your 2026 budget figures?

Guest:  Not work, unless a human creates a strategic plan first and then talks with AI about redefining it, because working with AI is a practice of prompting and asking the right questions.

[35:45]  16. When not to advertise at Christmas

Host:  What would you not recommend doing during Christmas, to avoid wasting money?

Guest:  Be careful running campaigns during Christmas, because the ad spaces are very expensive. Unless you have a genuinely bold campaign, where you choose not to let players play, to give them time with their family, and you’re ready to lose some revenue, I really recommend not going bombastically heavy during Christmas, simply because the prices are so high. Run your flight of campaigns a bit earlier. January, by seasonality, isn’t the best either, there’s a slight downtrend right after Christmas. So strategically, a campaign at the end of November is better than exactly around Christmas.

[37:26]  17. Confession Lane: never stay silent

Host:  In a mostly male-dominated industry, what rule did you have to break to stay relevant and be the smartest woman in the room?

Guest:  It’s never been about being the smartest in the room; I love being surrounded by people smarter than me, male or female. But in a male-dominated space, especially for someone like me who is physically petite, the rule you need to break, and I invite young women to do the same, is silence. You can’t be silent, or you risk being invisible. You break through by what you know and by voicing your opinion in a very polite way. That applies to men and women: be in a position to share what you think, so others absorb it and you get constructive feedback to improve next time.

[39:11]  18. Wrap-up

Host:  Valentina, our ride is coming to an end. We hope to stay friends and that you’ll keep growing your company. It was a beautiful ride, and we were lucky with the weather. I hope the questions weren’t too tough.

Guest:  Thank you for having me, that was amazing.

Host:  Valentina doesn’t just grow brands, she builds systems that last. Her rule is simple: don’t chase attention, build structure. Because when profit is planned with purpose, real success follows.