Thank you iGB Live

The last iGB Live 2024 by iGB Affiliate in Amsterdam has come to a close and I gotta say this conference kicked ass. I’ll summarize this conference from the lens from the affiliate marketing side but explain how it impacts all the other parts of iGaming.?

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Where are the new affiliates?

It seems like everyone is noticing this. The big affiliate companies seem to be mostly hiring a few more people with the exception of a few others that likely have been impacted by loss of Google traffic.

I started hearing this as early as Nov 2023 at SiGMA in Malta. In Amsterdam, perhaps it was a bit more noticeable. The show was definitely bigger but in terms of number of affiliate companies, there seems to be less of them. It does seem to be growing in terms of revenue and perhaps people employed, but this is different.

Affiliate managers are a source of data here and we’ll have to do a survey at some point to gain some insights.

More affiliate programs

StatsDrone has the following data and insights to share with you and thanks to Darrell Helyar for compiling a lot of this. Keep in mind we have been compiling this data since March 2021.?

• Total number of affiliate programs in StatsDrone 1324
• Number of programs with API support 713
• Number of closed programs 1033
• Approx number of new programs added per month: 50
• Approx number of programs closing per month: 30

As you can see, we are gaining almost a new affiliate program launched per day.?

We will work on some analysis of these closed programs and brands to see if we can gain further insights as to reasons why they are closing. Or rather to help affiliates identify new programs that might have a better chance of long term success.?

Revenue Leak: The compounding impact of closed affiliate programs

I don’t have the number of brands associated with all of these 1033 closed affiliate programs but if we make a rough estimate of say 1.25 brands per program, this is nearly 1300 brands.

You will always be able to find affiliate sites linking out to closed brands. The most famous example in the world is looking at how many sites link to the disgraced FTX that are still using a tracking link.

Quick insights into our StatsDrone database of supported affiliate programs. Sharing our list of affiliate programs supported in the app and showing the totals of the software.

We thoroughly research this data and we can also thank our affiliates as customers who proactively help us find more programs by requesting the integration. Also we have a few affiliate software platforms that have been helpful in keeping our list up to date for their respected software. I mean almost all affiliate programs are essentially public storefronts so most software don’t have a problem letting us know of their newest programs going live.?

This list does not include proprietary in which?we have 186 programs marked as being proprietary.

1. MyAffiliates
2. SoftSwiss / Affilka
3. Income Access
4. NetRefer
5. Cellxpert
6. MAP
7. PartnerMatrix / EveryMatrix
8. Post Affiliate Pro
9. RavenTrack
10. BetConstruct

SEO in iGaming

I think the demand for SEO has never been higher. I think there is already a lot of disruption happening with some affiliate sites not recovering.?

Shout out to new Head of SEO Hyun Lee at Mr. Gamble who’s clearly doing a good job.?

I have seen some affiliate sites outside of iGaming experience a rebound in lost traffic but for some of these sites, it wasn’t a full recovery.?

Here is a collection of the usual suspects mostly on the trending up side of things. You can see some changes in SERPs for sites that have lost previously held.

I like looking at product focused sites and we've got a few interesting ones in AskGamblers and Casino Guru .

Which markets are interesting to you?

Let me start off by saying one thing I’ve noticed about our StatsDrone customers as well as people that have yet to sign up, we do NOT look at your data.?

So my market insights come from talking to affiliate managers and affiliates that share their insights.?

LATAM and Asia seem to be the hottest markets. People still like Canada and everyone seems a little iffy on USA. One almost never mentioned is middle-east.?

State of Affiliate Managers

I’ll definitely make this a point in another newsletter but I still think affiliate managers are a bit of a bottleneck for our industry.

Many of them are eager to not just make a living but level up their skills.?

I still believe a lot of money is being left on the table with affiliate managers that are way too sales oriented.?

This can be the same mindset some operators have in general about wanting more FTDs but not caring about the player value, quality of player or doing anything that improves the retention.?Think of Genesis Affiliates (rest in peace) that comes to mind as a company that chased it's own FTD tail until it ate it.

Affiliate managers today are rewarded with the number of affiliates that signup to their program and the number of FTDs delivered. These is no understanding of quality of traffic, player values and retention.?

I don’t think affiliate managers have enough knowledge of data tools but I think it comes down to them simply not having much data to begin with. The data is there in the affiliate program but it isn’t being given to the affiliate manager so they can have an insight into the next question.

What is the conversion rate of all the brand’s landing pages?

Or what is the player value?

Does my affiliate program need postbacks??

The answer to the last question is absolutely yes. We’ll be publishing more insights into which affiliate software has S2S tracking like postbacks and dynamic variables.?

Until then, one company you can check out for postbacks is Voluum.

You can check out the Affiliate BI podcast here

• Affiliate BI on Apple Podcasts
• Affiliate BI on Spotify

I’ve had Martin Kumiega , the Business Development Manager, join the Affiliate BI podcast to talk about why S2S is a must have not just for PPC affiliates but is becoming important for SEO affiliates too.?

Listen to Marcin's episode on Spotify here.

In a future newsletter, I’m going to spend some time talking about the things operators can do to improve their ROI.

‘Wait, I thought you cared only about affiliates?’

I wouldn’t say I care only about affiliates but when you have healthy operators, it could lead to tougher conditions for new operators to enter the market because of more quality operators available to affiliates.?

Churned operators is lost revenue share and negatively impacts affiliates.

I don’t think I’m single-handedly going to slow down the loss of around 30 affiliate programs per month but I’d like to trade 10 new casinos for 10 existing ones that improve their business, which in turn stops more revenue leak from happening as pain experienced by affiliates.??

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