My hotel suggestion is the Flamingo.
It might be 5-10 dollars more a night then Imperial Palace.
Here is my reasoning.
1. The pool. The Imperial Palace pool sucks really bad, and it closes early (about 5-6pm). Flamingo Pool however is open until 8pm, and their hot tub is open all night from what I understand. Basically it's an all-night pool if you are discreet enough about it.
2. Location: Flamingo is right in the middle of the strip. It's actually pretty much right next to Imperial Palace in location, so we wouldn't lose anything there.
3. It's often rated as a 4 star hotel, which is a step up from Imperial Palace. For the price, that's well worth it to me. Having stayed at the Imperial Palace 3 times now, I'm up for a better hotel, and a different experience.
4. Again, the pool. It will be August, it will be HOT. For those that think they won't want to go swimming, I guarantee you will. And there is nothing worse than being hot and wanting to swim when your pool closes early. You can attempt to sneak into other hotel pools, but it's VERY hard nowadays, and you have to walk a mile to get to them, in the hot sun *_*. Not to mention, the pool looks like this:
For the price, I'm sold.
5. Flamingo is an easy to find hotel, you can't miss it. It also smells nice. Anyway, there are only about two other choices for hotels that are ON the strip, and I think this is our best bet.