Are you struggling to keep up with the ever-changing affiliate landscape in iGaming? Introducing Affiliate 2.0 - the revolutionary model that's transforming the industry.
Dmitry Belianin, a seasoned expert, candidly addresses the flaws of the traditional affiliate approach. He unveils how the transactional nature of the current model has led to short-term thinking, neglecting the long-term sustainability that operators crave. Affiliate 2.0 shifts the focus to building trust, credibility, and brand awareness - empowering affiliates to educate users and forge deeper, more transparent partnerships with operators.
By prioritising user behaviour and traffic quality over quick conversions, this new model promises to maximise marketing spend and boost ROI for operators. Join the Affiliate 2.0 revolution and unlock a future of lasting success in the dynamic iGaming landscape.
0:00 What is Affiliate 2.0?
1:37 Challenges with Traditional Affiliate Model
3:50 Building Trust and Credibility with a New Model
5:55 Impact on Traffic Verticals
10:10 Operators' Perspective and Benefits
13:48 The Future of Affiliate 2.0
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Welcome to “15 Minute Mastery,” the ultimate show for iGaming professionals, hosted by industry veteran Dmitry Belianin. With over 17 years of experience, Dmitry brings unparalleled insights and wisdom from top industry experts in just 15 minutes. Each episode delivers actionable strategies from all iGaming verticals to improve your personal and business performance. As the founder of Belianin, Dmitry also shares his expertise in nurturing high-potential iGaming startups. Subscribe to “15 Minute Mastery” for concise, high-value content and stay ahead in the competitive world of iGaming.
it's not the same business as ten years back you know it's not as easy as you've done at ten years back so I think if it should do well they should look to find operators which are you know willing to cooperate in the same way and which are open to to cooperation in a more transparent and the more integrated manner when it happens then everyone's going to be happy. You're listening to 15-minute mastery a show that empowers you with insights from leading iGaming experts to enhance your personal or business performance. The show is brought to you by the ei-powered data analytics platform Blask and supported by ten driven affiliate and media company already media. Voila starts the leading casino partnership program and next.io the world's iGaming community. Hello and welcome back to 15-minute mastery. Today with co-host Dimitri Bellanin we're diving into the concept he has named affiliate 2.0. We're here to explain how this new model aims to transform the affiliate landscape by prioritizing trust and credibility over quick conversions so let's dive in Dimitri. Hey John thanks a lot for having me. You've stated that the current affiliate model is broken and we've published a lot of content about this. Can you elaborate on the key issues with the traditional affiliate approach in iGaming? I think the affiliate industry is transactional by default. I mean this is not really bad or good it's just the way it is. So by transactional nature of this industry not the industry sorry but the traffic source I mean that most of the affiliates the only thing they care about is just getting paid. I mean and it happens for a reason. A lot of times affiliates were screwed a lot of times affiliates you know were shaved and you know there are so many big things happened with our industry in the past in regards to affiliation. So what happened essentially is affiliates they only care about chasing short-term returns and not thinking about building a long-term sustainable revenue coming from the operators because they're scared right. So and this led to the point where affiliates they have no idea what's going on with the user behavior on the operator side. So they think all right I'm spending let's say x means that I can charge for my CPA 2x or 40 percent on top of x and this is how I make money but no one is asking the question like whether the other side makes money. Whether the payback period is within the comfortable range on the operator side and what is the most comfortable model you know based on the stage of the market entry of the operator or on his growth how it sits within his marketing mix right asking questions like this so no one really cares on the affiliate side. So this is why I think you know affiliate model has been there for a way too long and it just all dated right and transactional nature of this of this model right now is not allowing it to scale and not allowing you know most of the operators to build a long-term thinking sustainable business at the same time so they try to apply some of the shady techniques in order to you know make the payback period sit within the comfortable range. So I do feel like the changes are needed and like as you mentioned I keep talking about it but I'm not only keep talking about it we're you know implementing some of the stuff I'm talking about and you know back in IGB a few weeks ago we had a chat with a few first partners we've launched this model with and they're insanely satisfied and happy and yeah we can talk about more how this model works a bit later on I guess and thinking about it from the user perspective as well one thing you've said a lot in your content is how affiliate 2.0 prioritizes trust and credibility building a brand how does that fundamentally change the affiliate guy? Yeah I think if you look at the user journey essentially you got brand awareness you got consideration you know based on how complex is user journey you could have either three or five or even ten stages sometimes so affiliation is strongly seats within the consideration stage where some of the users they're already aware that the iGaming industry exists and they're already aware that they can go and find a better bonuses a better odds a better you know operator based on their criteria so this is where the affiliates it's but at the same time you can always go one level above in this user journey and go straight into the Warner stage where affiliates based on the marketing mix and based on the keywords the targeting they can also start building brand awareness for for the operator and this is where I think the most sustainable and long-term model comes in place where the affiliates are not just purely sending the players but they're educating the players they're building the niche they're you know essentially allowing users to become more self sophisticated and then come to the operator in a more prepared manner so this is where I think you know the affiliate 2.0 model comes in place in such a perfect manner where you're not only sending the player but at the same time you're forgetting the player and making sure that he's passed in the operator site on the operator site will be as smooth as possible so one of the one of the examples here I think if you're looking at the US affiliation these days because I think this is the most complicated and one of the most competitive affiliate markets in the world most of the affiliate companies there they're not just a pure review website they're not just a pure content website these are brands these are communities these are multi marketing mix affiliate products which are driving traffic and brand awareness to affiliate from the multiple angles and this is where you know essentially the deeper cooperation and trust comes in place between the affiliate and operator as well so that that's my take here and obviously this impacts multiple traffic vehicles seipepers ppc and media but how does affiliate 2.0 approach each of these differently compared to like a more traditional affiliate approach yeah I think I mean going back to the same to the same concept of of the user journey the brand awareness bit is quite tough to achieve with with the traditional review website because you need to target a different set of keywords right and some of the keywords which are sitting on the top of the funnel they're less transactional and less commercial keywords what it means that you're driving a traffic which will never be converted directly and via the last click attribution model which you know essentially where the the affiliates are making money so for affiliates it's very hard to understand first of all how to monetize this kind of traffic because they usually work on the performance market inside and on the operator end sometimes it's even a different team handling such a you know type of traffic because it's being paid differently being attributed differently and most importantly you know in all the dashboards on the operator side it's been shown differently so in that case even when a affiliate is getting this kind of traffic and it's kind of traffic which is very hard to get then they have to think right there how we monetize it how do we measure the performance and this is something which is becoming tougher but like as I mentioned with this model you know everyone has to be more educated you know both of the sites they need to understand more about how how to operate in the new environment and how brand awareness bit plays a role in the whole user journey impact and you know how to measure it and then how boss boss of the site should be paying and you know receiving money for it and then the consideration bit is usually just a very transactional one way forward when the the player comes to the website he just clicks on the link and it just goes to you know some operators website which he selected and then he's gone he's gone forever in most of the cases because you know the affiliates they don't have a strong brand means that there is no user retention the users are not coming back they're not you know they're not using this product any longer and you know the social media presence is also zero means that you know they won't be able to anyhow get a notification or any any morning that there is new content on the website etc because there is no retention element and build anyhow so and then that case if you're thinking about this consideration stage there has to be a more creative and even more technologically driven way on how to get this player's back how to you know build a multi-channel attribution how to you know retain the user how to get them back and this is also goes down straight to the consideration bit where sorry advocacy and loyalty bit where you start you know acquiring contacts of the end users so then you build engagement on your side as an affiliate and then you know you keep him engaged on your side you know we we've run a lot of experiments in regards to the techniques like this and I feel like it's driving a massive improvement on the retention bit sometimes even up to 30 percent on a certain market so you know I kept saying about it and you know this is where we feel like some of the operators we work with you know either on already media or traffic squad site they're getting more satisfied with the traffic we're sending because it's it's gone through a new approach where we don't really you know send the traffic via hybrid or CPA model but at the same time we integrate the operator on a more granular and deeper level where we understand more about the user behavior we understand more about you know the LTV the bed size the deposit size etc so then we can understand on our end you know which kind of marketing campaigns these users I came from which kind of levers we can use on our end in order to be able to you know make the worst looking guys make them look as the better looking guys on the operators and so and including many many many things like this so I do feel like the massive change should come especially with you know with the with the Google not really you know allowing SEO guys to you know go to the top in the easy manner you know when PPC is also going through a very dramatic change in the in the conversion funnel and things like this this is where I think every affiliate in the market should now start paying more attention to every single user on the website and think on how to maximize the value of every single click come into the website and you've touched it touched upon it very briefly but how does the affiliate model benefit operators compared to the traditional model why should an operator prioritize working with someone adopting this a new new approach compared to someone who is more than that transaction yeah so that that's a very good but very straightforward question and answer so you know working on the operator side for almost five years realized one thing if affiliate has no idea about the quality of the traffic in a deep and granular manner it leaves him a huge room for bargain and huge room for manipulation so in the heart of Philly 2.0 model seats a very interesting concept around revenue generation we not just want to drive traffic we want to understand more about the user behavior so then we can improve it on our end it's not just us sending you traffic and getting CPA back it's about us understanding more about the nature of the traffic and its quality so then we can improve it so for the operator if you can answer this question in a very simple manner it's more about getting your payback sorted in a very more performance given manner so you're not just looking at you know the traffic which you paid for and then its traffic remains the same over longer run it's not like that you receive the traffic we got the feedback you know we've improved the traffic so you received a better traffic right and then and it's getting better and better and better so for the operator essentially the amount of money they paid in the first month is becoming less they're going to be paying for the same traffic in the second month and obviously ROI will be dramatically improved so as i mentioned on a very short run we've noticed an uplift of up to 30% in terms of the ROI of the same of the same marketing campaigns just because we've done some optimization on our end so i think essentially operators are maximizing their their marketing spend improving their payback period and getting more money in terms of the GGR and revenue than before with the previous model okay awesome and just to wrap this up looking into the future how do you see the affiliate 2.0 model evolving the broader i-gaming affiliate landscape in the coming years yeah i mean it's i think it's um it's it's the same in every niche in in every industry in the world if you're not evolving and you're moving slower than the rest of the market you're essentially going to die so that's that's what's going to happen here if you're not adopting to the new reality as an affiliate and you keep chasing the same the same huge paybacks used to used to have before it means that no one's going to work with you tomorrow and this is what what's happening with some of the biggest affiliates right now they're losing its its previous precious reputation and in our industry losing the reputation is the worst thing which can happen with you so i think the market should evolve with the new reality of marketing channels the way they feel right now the way the performance marketing works and you know facebook you know google i'm not just talking about you know some of the major ones and obviously all the smallest ones this rule is also applicable there but if you if you're not involved evolving then the future not not gonna look bright for you tomorrow and i think affiliates they should learn a lot it's not the same business as 10 years back you know it's not as easy as you've done at 10 years back so i think affiliate should evolve they should look to find operators which are you know willing to cooperate in the same way and which are open to to cooperation in a more transparent and the more integrated manner when it happens then everyone's going to be happy so that's my take here i saw some Dimitri and thanks again as always for sharing those insights i think there's a lot of great information there for the audience and there's gonna get they're gonna get a lot of value from this awesome thanks all John [BLANK_AUDIO]
