Interviews
Best ways to generate profit on iGaming with Affiliate Marketing
There are many ways to get high income on iGaming products and actually earn a great deal of money. In the article we’re going to speak about making money specifically on affiliate marketing, our today’s expert is a Chief Commercial Officer at RichAds advertising network — Anastasiya Kazakova.
Our guest surely knows what she’s talking about — the RichAds network has recently been awarded as the best iGaming traffic source by SiGMA. We’ll discuss all the necessary starting points and cover everything from the definition of the industry to the real working tips that help to succeed in it.
Tell us more about affiliate marketing. What is it and how can it help to earn on iGaming?
Basically, affiliate marketing is a process of earning commission on selling specific goods or services. It’s profitable for online casinos as a way of additional monetization and for marketers as it’s quite an effortless way to increase their income.
It works the following way — there’s a CPA network or a direct publisher, for instance, who provide iGaming offers (online Betting and Gambling programs).
A marketer, also known as an affiliate, in his turn clarifies the conditions (payout, GEO, settings, and desired cost per lead or deposit) and goes to an ad network that provides traffic and promotes the offer.
He just needs to choose the best traffic type for the exact offer and set up a campaign. If you’re a newbie, the best way is to consult a manager or try some automated tools at first.
Can you share what are the best traffic channels for iGaming offers?
Sure, I’ll explain how each traffic channel works and why they’ll bring leads and deposits for iGaming offers. I’ve been working with Gambling and Betting vertical for about five years now and I see that the top traffic choices are push and pop ads as well as direct click format.
Let me start with push ads and the definition of them. To put it simply, a push ad looks like a personal notification from a website that appears on a user’s phone. It consists of a text, icon and banner (optional) and allows to cover those users who subscribed to such notifications.
There are many advantages of the format, the most crucial ones for iGaming are:
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- Personal approach. As I’ve mentioned, it addresses a user directly and creates a sense of privacy, so this way you can convince him to try a specific casino by providing a bonus or bet on the upcoming game.
- Proven efficiency. Such a format has been showing nice results since its boom — 2018, and the CR of such campaigns is really high. Even if we take the last FIFA Championship in 2018, the outcome for marketers was amazing. This year the results for the World Cup are already skyrocketing which proves its continuous success.
- Personal approach. As I’ve mentioned, it addresses a user directly and creates a sense of privacy, so this way you can convince him to try a specific casino by providing a bonus or bet on the upcoming game.
- Target audience segmentation. Due to the usage of creatives you can target different people and imply their interests with the help of different headlines and pictures. It allows testing several approaches at once, which is perfect for identifying your potential clients.
One more format is pop ads. This is basically an ad that opens in a new browser or window as soon as you click somewhere on the page you’re browsing.
They are impossible to miss, that’s why it’s a great way to attract Gambling and Betting audience, as they’re very impulsive. Moreover, the traffic amounts are really huge for the format, so you’ll always get enough clients on your landing page.
Last but not least is the direct click format. Those are the ads that drive users to your landing page if they make a small misprint. For example, they look for the “1xbet” website and type something like “1xbed” and get redirected to your site. Obviously, the main advantage is that users are already warm and interested in similar offers, which means they will be more loyal.
How to make eye-catching creatives for iGaming vertical? Any tips from you?
It depends on the time you can and want to spend on making creatives. If you don’t have time to spend on making them, just contact your manager. For instance, at RichAds you can get creatives for a specific offer and GEO for free.
Another way is to use spy tools and research what your competitors create. There are tools for different formats, pay attention which options they provide if you’ve chosen a particular traffic source.
If you’ve decided to make creatives yourself, I can advise several working approaches.
- For Gambling stick to gamification elements, use spin wheels or some loot boxes. This way you’ll create a sense of winning and huge luck.
- Make sure you use bonuses both for Gambling and Betting. Everyone loves gifts and prizes, why not take it to your advantage? You can specify exact sum and time limits, for instance.
- Keep track of current events. This is the most amazing approach for Betting, if you stick to the hyping events. As for now it’s football, but don’t forget about other sports as well — tennis, cricket and basketball are popular all over the world.
- Last but not least, use both men and women on your creatives. Don’t limit your target audience by gender, anything can convert — the key is testing, so both beautiful women and handsome men can work out.
If I’m a newbie in this industry, what’s the most effective way not to waste money?
Undoubtedly, I’d say that the Performance Mode algorithm is the hack that can help newbies. The thing is that it does all the work for you — just create a usual campaign, and the algorithm will update the best sources daily for you and check if they actually work. What’s more it’ll update blocklist daily as well.
Furthermore, no tracker is required to use the function. So anyone can launch profitable campaigns with it, basically no efforts or prior knowledge are required.
Not to be unfounded, our clients have been testing it for a couple of months already and it works like a clock. If we turn to statistics, it shows that the amount of conversions can increase by 253% while CPA decreases by 79%.
As far as we know there are countries that are a must to test for iGaming. Which ones would you recommend?
I’d advise to start with Asian and African countries, such traffic is not very expensive, and the demand for online casinos is huge. For such regions Gambling and Betting can be considered as an income source, not only entertainment, try to play on it.
What concerns current top GEOs at RichAds for iGaming, they are Brazil, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, and South Africa. If you want to target European countries, try Poland, Germany and Switzerland.
Of course, you can test Tier 1 countries as well, but it requires certain experience to become successful. Though, profits can be bigger as well.
Here I also want to point out that the hottest GEOs change from month to month and it’s important to keep track of it.
You can always consult managers for the best countries for exact verticals and offers. Don’t hesitate to ask for whitelists (list of best traffic sources) for your GEO and traffic channel, this is also free!
Ok, let’s imagine we’ve chosen a GEO and made creatives. How to actually make your campaign work?
The first answer that comes to my mind is optimization. No one wants to waste money and time, that’s why it’s vital to keep track of the campaign results. You need to check the cost of your conversions and source efficiency quite often to achieve a good conversion rate.
In order to speed up the process I’d advise to set up Automated rules. This is the quickest way to cut off traffic sources that are too expensive or don’t bring any results. You just need to write a simple rule in your settings, for example, if the cost of a conversion is twice as big as the desired one, the source will be blocked. Same with the amount of money spent, if a source spent twice as much money and didn’t bring any leads, it’ll be turned off. This is a great way to avoid overspending and is done automatically!
One more way to succeed is to test a Target CPA algorithm. This is also quite simple, you just choose all the necessary settings, write your desired price per conversion, and the algorithm does all the rest for you. It adds the most converting sources to your campaign while blocking not working ones. Though you need to set up a tracker, it’s crucial for the algorithm to work.
If we speak about overall settings, I’d highly recommend to focus on the following ones:
- Choose only premium group of sources. Those are tested sources that show highest results and guarantee to bring conversions.
- Set frequency cap. This is the advice for push ads, frequency cap is the amount of ads a user sees per day. Usually we recommend to set one per user a day, but for some event betting offers you can increase the amount to 2-3 a day.
- Test New Subscribers only. Again, a tip for push ads is to have two campaigns at the same time — one for the usual subscribers base, the other one for new ones. Those are users who subscribed to push notifications 7 days ago or less and haven’t seen much of them, so they’re more loyal. If you target two user bases at once, the amount of traffic will be huge and diverse, so the amount of leads will also increase.
- Use at least 5-10 creatives. This also applies to pop ads, try different landing pages at once! This way you’ll be able to test multiple approaches and segment your target audience.
Interviews
The difficult second album
Nik Robinson, CEO at Big Time Gaming, talks about the challenges studios face when it comes to sequel slots such as its just-launched Danger! High Voltage 2.
Congratulations on the launch of Danger! High Voltage 2. Tell us more about the game and what players can expect.
Thanks! We’re absolutely thrilled to launch Danger! High Voltage 2—it’s an electrifying sequel we think fans of the original will love. When we released the first Danger! High Voltage, the response was phenomenal, and players kept asking for even more high-octane action. So, we set out to turn things up to 11 with this release.
The game cranks up the excitement with our Megaways™ engine, giving players up to 117,649 ways to win on each spin. The base game is supercharged with volatility and powered by the MegaDozer, perched right above the reels, ready to drop Scatters, Wilds, Multipliers, and other electrifying surprises into play. Then there are the two fiery free spin bonuses—Fire in the Disco! and Danger Danger!!—designed to keep players on the edge of their seats.
And, of course, it wouldn’t be Danger! High Voltage without the unforgettable soundtrack by Electric Six! Get ready for some serious foot-tapping and headbanging because this game truly brings the heat.
How does the second instalment differ from the original Danger! High Voltage slot you launched back in 2017?
This time around, players are transported to an electrifying thrilling industrial scene, and introduced the groundbreaking mechanic MegaDozerTM mechanic sitting up top, ready to unleash Scatters, Wilds, Multipliers, and surprises.
It’s amazing to see how much slot game design has evolved since we launched the first game in 2017, and Danger! High Voltage 2 is a testament to that evolution. This time, we’ve built it around our Megaways™ engine, which amps up the gameplay with up to 117,649 ways to win on every spin.
We’ve also kept the player choice element for the Free Spins round, but we didn’t just stop there. Fire in the Disco! and Danger Danger!! are brand-new bonus features that make every spin a symphony of excitement. It’s a whole new level of Danger! and a thrilling way for players to experience just how far we’ve come in delivering cutting-edge slots.
What made the iconic song from Electric Six the perfect soundtrack for creating a slot game around?
When we set out to create Danger! High Voltage 2, we knew we had to keep the core essence that players loved—the name and that iconic Electric Six soundtrack—but from there, this game is a totally new beast.
It’s insanely catchy and the perfect soundtrack for spinning the reels. For me, it stirs a strong feeling of nostalgia, taking me back to the early 2000s when the song was riding high in the charts. The more I listened to it, the more I became convinced it would be huge fun to create a slot game around the song. The lyrics lend themselves to bonus features (Fire in the Disco! Danger Danger! Or the original High Voltage & Gates of Hell), and the disco theme works really well as an online slot because it is so visual and colourful. With the original, we were able to capture the essence of the song and bring it to life, which is why Danger! High Voltage became a runaway success. Danger! High Voltage 2 turns the volume up to the max and we fully expect it to rise to the top of the charts, just like the original did.
Just how hard is it to launch a follow-up to a hugely successful slot game? What are the main challenges in doing so?
Launching a follow-up to a hit like Danger! High Voltage is no easy feat—it’s a bit like making the sequel to a blockbuster movie. You need to build on the experience offered by the original game, keeping true to the core theme and gameplay while making sure it offers something new and different. Stick too close to the original and it won’t deliver the excitement players are seeking, move too far away from it and you can end up with a significant disconnect from the original. But we reimagined the visuals and mechanics, integrating our Megaways™ engine as it adds massive win potential with up to 117,649 ways to win and to keep the gameplay engaging. We took risks with a completely new mechanic MegaDozer™ and introduced two brand-new free spin features, Fire in the Disco! and Danger Danger!! which had to be meticulously tested to ensure they deliver the right blend of fun and volatility. It becomes a bit of a balancing act whereby you need to keep core elements the same or similar and then bring in new elements that take the whole package to the next level. It’s easy to see why the second album is often the toughest for musicians.
Big Time Gaming seems to have cracked the code when it comes to sequel slots with the recent launch of Bonanza Falls so you must have been able to overcome these challenges.
We’re fortunate to have such strong original titles like Bonanza and Danger! High Voltage as a foundation for our sequels, but make no mistake—it all starts with the team’s incredible work in crafting these iconic games in the first place. When you have a solid base, it gives us the freedom to innovate boldly. For instance, with sequels like Bonanza Falls and Danger! High Voltage 2, we introduced fresh mechanics like MegaDozer™, Win Exchange™, Bonus Coins, which add entirely new dimensions to gameplay. These features aren’t just updates; they’re true evolutions that deliver exhilarating experiences and keep players coming back.
Our team embraces these challenges head-on, bringing excitement and a touch of fun to every sequel we produce. And while these games build on the legacies of the originals, they’re crafted to stand tall on their own merits. Bonanza Falls and Danger! High Voltage 2 don’t just rely on the reputations of their predecessors—they’re outstanding games in their own right, designed to thrill players new and old alike. It’s about creating something fresh while capturing the magic that made the originals so beloved.
Interviews
Exclusive Q&A w/ Radek Pšurný, CEO at Match Hype
Match Hype has just won two industry competitions. Talk us through your product.
Match Hype brings engagement from social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram into the sportsbook. Our technology automatically turns raw sports data into short videos full of sports and betting insights. We have the capacity to create up to a million videos daily in more than 30 languages. We also provide hosting and streaming of the videos, and we track everything in the video thanks to our own player. The high level of video experience and the scale make us unique in the market, and we believe that this innovation is extremely needed in the industry—and the judges in the competitions probably agree with us.
What technologies are you leveraging to deliver such a cutting-edge tool/product?
We have more than six years’ experience in developing dynamic video solutions for clients like Microsoft, HBO, and SAP, and a decade in high-end video production for similarly well-known clients. Match Hype is the essence of this. We have developed our own robust cloud infrastructure that enables us to work on a huge scale. We can also leverage the integration of third-party solutions that help us make the video content rich and engaging. The AI boom came at the right time to help us make the experience for the viewer even better.
Who is Match Hype aimed at?
We focus mostly on sportsbook operators, where we think we can bring the biggest value. But we also have clients on the affiliate and media side. Our “competition” at the moment are creative professionals who are able to create one video at a time. To cover hundreds or thousands of events daily, you need huge manpower. With Match Hype, you don’t need that—it’s all automated. Anybody who appreciates this level of efficiency will benefit.
The end users are any sports fans who enjoy engaging videos. So basically everybody.
Has this industry been slow to embrace video content and unlock the potential it offers? If so, why?
It’s hard for us to talk about the whole industry, as we haven’t been part of it for that long. But iGaming feels like a conservative industry where only truly meaningful innovations make it. Fingers crossed for Match Hype being one of them. We are confident because of our track record in other industries, and mostly thanks to the results of our dynamic videos that are already used by significant igaming industry players.
What makes video content so effective at customer acquisition? How can Match Hype be used in this regard?
People just love video content. In the last review, TikTok said that the average user spends around 90 minutes a day on their platform. Platforms like Spotify used to be music and podcasts only; now they are full of videos. You just can’t ignore that. Video killed the radio star, and a static sportsbook is next to die.
And what about retention? How can it be used to keep players engaged and coming back for more?
Imagine that a 30-second video gives you the exact insights to help you make a betting decision without spending dozens of minutes on different resources to gather all the information. People don’t want to read anymore. This is probably an even bigger strength of Match Hype than user acquisition.
What can we expect from Match Hype in the coming months?
We will establish Match Hype as an industry standard for dynamic video content. We’ll bring many more sports like tennis, basketball horse racing and. We are preparing real-time video use cases—for example, half-time updates in football—and new distribution channels like integration directly into streams. The potential is huge. Stay tuned.
Any final thoughts?
For the last year, we have talked with literally hundreds of iGaming experts, investors, and executives. Almost every one of them sees fan engagement as a huge topic in the upcoming months and years. And video will definitely play a key part in it.
Video says more than a thousand words. Give it a go—watch one of our 30-second videos and see for yourself.
Affiliate Industry
Flying high: How RavenTrack is helping operators unlock the true potential of their affiliate programs
We sit down with Adam Rowley, Managing Director at RavenTrack, to understand why data, tracking and optimisation are key to a successful affiliate program
Your tagline is “win at performance marketing”. Tell us more about how you help operators maximise their partnerships with affiliates.
It is indeed. RavenTrack is a powerful affiliate tracking solution that allows operators to track, optimise and grow through their affiliate programs. Our proprietary solution offers an advanced affiliate tracking platform built by iGaming experts – this ensures it meets the unique demands of the industry, including the need to withstand the pace and complexity of affiliate marketing in the online sports betting and casino space. RavenTrack has also been designed to be flexible and customisable so that it can be adapted to individual client requirements. This combination of qualities has seen us become the go-to affiliate software tracking provider for more than 150 brands across the world, brands that are winning at performance marketing with the support of RavenTrack.
Why is tracking so important to the ultimate success of an affiliate program?
Tracking is the glue that holds marketing and sales together in the online arena. But effective tracking requires a platform that delivers reliability, accuracy and a seamless UX so that users can easily dig into the data and generate valuable insights. Speed and reliability are crucial so that operators don’t miss a single click or conversion. To track data effectively, operators (and their affiliate partners) need tools such as pixel and postback capabilities and geo-targeting. The former allows affiliates to track customer activity in real time which helps them maximise the revenue of the brands they work with. When it comes to intelligent geo-tracking, it allows users to identify and aim to funnel traffic through specific locations.
But tracking is just one part of the process and success of an affiliate program– online sportsbook and casino operators must be able to take the data they have tracked and use it to optimise campaigns, both internally and those being run by their affiliate partners.
What does optimisation look like? How does RavenTrack help its customers do this?
Traffic source provides a lot of spoke for optimisation, especially when it comes to things like which affiliate is performing best, changes to traffic, ROI and conversion rate optimisation. With RavenTrack, operators have the insight they need to do this. They can also give their affiliates access to data via their own internal reporting systems – this is done via our two-way API – to help determine which campaigns and creatives are delivering the best results. Operators also need to optimise the commercial agreements they have in place with their affiliate partners, and this means being able to offer them a range of options including CPA, revenue share, CPL, CPM and hybrid.
As operators – and their affiliates – get more experienced at using data and tracking, they will want to customise reports to a pretty granular level so that they can optimise to a much deeper and greater extent. Customisable reports (we have more than 20 reports available), marketplace and dashboards are just a few of the tools we provide to help operators and affiliates optimise campaigns and work to the commercials that deliver for both parties.
And how does all of this come together to help both operators and affiliates scale at pace?
Our fixed-cost model means operators can create as many campaigns for their brands as they like without the worry of additional costs. This in turn makes growing their program pretty straightforward. With a long list of commission structures available (which can be customised by the client) for their affiliate partners, operators can ensure the growth of the program is reflected in the growth of the wider business, ultimately allowing them to maximise profitability from affiliate marketing activity while at the same time ensuring their partners are fairly compensated for the quality traffic they send.
Migrating to a new affiliate tracking platform can cause major upheaval. How do you help operators through the process?
We know that moving to a new platform can be a big decision and a significant undertaking, but we have plenty of options to make it a seamless process from start to finish. This includes working with the affiliate program team to run their old and new program side by side to ensure there is absolutely no drop-off in traffic or lost data. Our UK-based account and customer support team is always on hand to assist during the migration process, and once operators are up and running with RavenTrack – this includes helping them get the most out of our platform and tools.
RavenTrack has only been around for a handful of years but has already achieved great things. What can we expect in the months ahead?
We hit the market in 2018 and haven’t looked back. Today, we work with 150 brands, processing more than one billion clicks per month and £2billion in deposits to date. The operators using RavenTrack to run their affiliate programs have generated more than £500 million in revenue and counting. Our numbers speak for themselves and no matter the size of brand or affiliate program, our solution is the key to unlocking the true potential of affiliate marketing. As for the months ahead, expect more platform updates, new tools and some big-name partnership announcements.
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