SBC Summit Spoiler Alert Interview: Rony Vexelman, VP Marketing at Optimove
Israel.- 17 September 2026 www.zonadeazar.com AI is no longer just a buzzword in iGaming marketing — it is fundamentally changing how operators understand, engage and retain their players. As acquisition costs continue to rise and personalization moves from broad segmentation to real-time, individual experiences, the question is no longer whether operators should embrace AI, but how they can actually turn it into a competitive advantage.
Ahead of SBC Summit Lisbon 2026, Zona de Azar® spoke exclusively with Rony Vexelman, VP of Marketing at Optimove, for a new edition of Spoiler Alert. From the rise of Positionless Marketing and AI-powered decisioning to the changing economics of player retention, Vexelman shares his perspective on where the industry is heading — and gives us a first look at what Optimove is bringing to Lisbon, including Optimove AI, its MCP capabilities and what marketers can expect to discover at Stand A421. And yes, there’s a spoiler…
1. As VP of Marketing at Optimove, you lead the company’s marketing strategy across regions and industries. What are your main priorities today, and what are the biggest challenges when building a global marketing strategy for such a fast-moving industry?
Right now, my top priority is making sure our own marketing team practices what we preach: Positionless Marketing. We built our platform so any marketer can move independently, without waiting on data teams, creative teams, or approval chains, and our internal team works the same way, with direct access to data, the tools to create their own content, and the autonomy to execute without bottlenecks.
Beyond that, two challenges stand out. One is consistency: different regions mean different operator issues, cultures, and buying behavior. We work hard to deliver brand consistency globally.
The other is speed: martech and AI move fast enough that a six-month-old strategy can already feel dated. Staying ahead means building a team that adapts constantly rather than one that is bolted to a fixed plan. As far as I know, we’re the only marketing team that ran a Claude Month across the entire department to get hands-on with AI as a coworker. We’ll continue this as we iterate on skills, Artifacts, and more to make sure we stay at the leading edge.
2. SBC Summit Lisbon is one of the biggest meeting points for the global gaming industry. What does Optimove have planned for Lisbon this year, and what can attendees expect when they meet your team?
I’ve been at Optimove for almost eight years, and the past six months have brought the most exciting product release in my time here: Optimove AI and our MCP. The uptake from operators, our clients, has been extraordinary. We’ll also be highlighting our data platform, which handles real-time, batch, and predictive data.
These new capabilities are being used by operators of all sizes, and helping teams with even only two people in iGaming startups work at the scale ten times their size.
A demo of all this will be a highlight of our booth.
Beyond that, I expect some great conversations, a chance to meet our clients and partners, and to connect directly with our leadership, including Pini Yakuel, our CEO. We’re the CRM marketing leader for operators from startup through enterprise. Attendees will walk away understanding the power they now have as a marketer to be Positionless. Oh, and we’ve got a spin-and-win game running at the booth with instant prizes, so there’s a bit of fun in it too. By the way we are at Stand A421.
3. Let’s go straight to the spoiler: will Optimove be showcasing any new solutions, innovations, features or major developments at SBC Summit Lisbon? What can you reveal to Zona de Azar® readers ahead of the event?
Honestly, I already gave away the spoiler in my last answer. Optimove AI and our MCP are the big reveal, that’s the most significant thing we’ve shipped in my eight years here, and Lisbon is where operators get to see it firsthand. Beyond that, I can’t give away everything, that’s what the show is for, but I’ll say we’re not done. We’re continuing to build out the agents inside Optimove AI, and the data platform work we talked about, real-time, batch, and predictive, is very much part of where we’re headed next.
4. AI has moved very quickly from industry buzzword to an essential part of marketing strategies. How is AI changing the relationship between operators and players, and where do you believe its biggest potential still lies?
It’s a bigger question than it looks, because the answer changed twice in eighteen months. To see it properly you have to start with where we were.
Eighteen months ago, marketers wanted AI more than they used it. Roughly a third were applying it to content and campaigns; far fewer to audiences. A year later, budgets had grown, but only about three in ten organizations felt ready. Intent had outpaced execution.
That was then. This is now. On 1 June 2026 we launched Optimove AI, which puts AI in all three places a marketer actually works: inside the platform with Native AI, outside it in Claude or ChatGPT through the Optimove MCP, and on top of it through custom apps. In August, OptiGenie brought that same natural language way of working inside the platform itself. It’s currently in closed beta. Marketing didn’t just adopt AI. It reorganized around it.
Two shifts I mention below sit underneath that, and both land in the same place: a better experience for the player.
The first is decisioning. Anyone who’s been in CRM marketing long enough remembers the choices: hard-code a journey, trigger a message off an action, or blast everyone at 6pm. AI Decisioning is a different level. Decisioning agents allow the marketer to set the strategy, then activate agents across journey, promotion, content, and send time, creating what amounts to infinite journeys for individual players across every channel. Clients using Optimove’s AI Decisioning Agents have seen an 87% increase in net revenue, 3x higher average bet value, and 13.8% more deposits.
The second is access to skills. AI is handing marketers the specialist capabilities that used to sit only with data scientists, creatives, and technical teams. A marketer can now open Claude or OptiGenie, describe what they want in plain language, and work with the agent to get there. Building a dashboard, designing a free-to-play game, instrumenting a real time event to trigger a campaign: all of it used to mean days of waiting, and now it takes minutes. The adoption tells the story better than we can. The MCP grew 7x week over week in its first five weeks. A dozen marketers across ten brands built a four-million-customer audience overnight. One operator now runs a ten-brand CRM from a single chat window. It’s AI a marketer can actually use day to day.
As for where the biggest potential lies, it’s in the way marketers operate and manage agents. About half of our customers’ activity now runs through a standing agent with a human in the loop.
The idea is that marketers stop doing the manual work required to create, measure, optimize, their CRM marketing plans and start thinking in outcomes and guardrails: what good looks like, where the limits are, when to overrule the machine. The building and launching moves to the agent. The judgment stays with the operator.
For operators, that’s the difference between reacting to a player and moving with them. A player about to disengage doesn’t announce it, and the window is short. Closing that gap, from days to moments, is what the next few years are actually about.
5. Player acquisition is becoming increasingly expensive and competitive. How has this changed the balance between acquisition and retention, and what should operators be doing differently to maximize player lifetime value?
The economics have flipped. A few years ago, acquisition was the growth lever everyone pulled first. Now that cost per acquisition keeps climbing, and regulatory pressure is tightening in many markets, the smarter growth lever is what you do with the players you already have.
The operators getting this right are treating retention and lifetime value as the primary growth engine, not the consolation prize. That means investing in segmentation that goes deeper than basic demographics, building journeys that respond to real-time behavior instead of static calendars, and giving marketers the tools to personalize at the individual level without needing a data science team for every campaign. It also means going beyond “just CRM” and leaning into gamification as a strategic lever. We’ve seen operators increase retention and first-time deposits by 3x by looking at gamification as a key part of their player lifecycle.
The operators still overspending on acquisition without a matching investment in retention are the ones who’ll feel the squeeze hardest as CPAs keep rising.
6. Personalization has become one of the industry’s most-used concepts. But what does truly effective personalization look like today, and where are gaming operators still getting it wrong?
Effective personalization today is personalized to the individual player, not the segment, and it happens in real time, not the day after. If a player is behaving differently today than last month, the marketing they receive should reflect that shift immediately, not three campaign cycles later. That’s the whole premise behind Optimove’s Native AI agents: they use real-time behavior and context, not a static profile, to shape the offer, the layout, and the content a player sees at that exact moment.
Where operators get it wrong is mistaking personalization for a first name in an email subject line. Real personalization means the offer, the channel, the timing, and the content are all shaped by what that individual player actually does. A lot of operators also over-rely on rules-based segmentation that was set up once and never revisited, which isn’t personalization; it’s just a slightly more targeted version of a mass campaign.
7. Optimove works with gaming brands across different markets and regulatory environments. Are you seeing significant differences in player behaviour and marketing strategies between Europe, Latin America and North America?
Absolutely. Treating these markets as interchangeable isn’t plausible. Any CRM marketing platform doing that is behind the times and out of step with what players and operators actually need.
In Europe, regulatory maturity means operators have to build compliance into personalization from day one, which actually forces more discipline.
Latin America is one of the fastest-growing and most dynamic markets right now, mobile-first behavior, high engagement with gamification, and a player base that responds strongly to community and social elements.
North America is a state-by-state patchwork quilt, so operators there need a marketing strategy flexible enough to operate under different rules depending on jurisdiction, sometimes within the same campaign.
What doesn’t change is the underlying principle: players everywhere respond to relevance and speed. The channels and regulatory guardrails differ, but the fundamentals of good marketing don’t.
8. From your perspective as a marketing leader, which trends do you believe will dominate the conversations at SBC Summit Lisbon 2026, and which ones are perhaps receiving more hype than they deserve?
AI will dominate the conversation, as it has for a couple of years now, but I expect this year’s conversations to shift from “should we use AI” to “how do we actually operationalize it.” That’s a healthier conversation. I also expect a lot of focus on retention economics, given how acquisition costs have climbed.
9. Time for our Spoiler Alert: is there something Optimove is preparing for Lisbon that the industry doesn’t know about yet? Give us one clue — without ruining the surprise.
Here’s the simplest clue: visit us at Stand A421.
10. Finally, complete this sentence for Zona de Azar® readers: “If you are attending SBC Summit Lisbon 2026, you should meet Optimove because…”
…we’ll show you what marketing looks like when your team isn’t waiting for anyone else to move.
Edited by: @MaiaDigital www.zonadeazar.com
