Affiliate marketing: dying or alive and kicking?

[Ash Ketchum]

In the last e-mail from GPWA, the above image caught my attention. According to this study, the affiliate market will grow exponentially, while in recent months I also hear a lot of negative noises.


Therefore this discussion. Do you think the affiliate market for online gambling will increase in the coming years? Or will only the strong survive? I have already realized that Google may one day directly enter into an agreement with gambling providers, similar to what they do at Google Shopping for example.

[Triple7]

It will increase as a whole, but for smaller parties so many obstacles do exist:

- privacy things with cookies, trackings, etc. Programs have no interest in solving it as it is free traffic for them.
- casinos trying to get more SEO traffic and spend less on affiliate marketing
- regulations, end of the .com casino serving dozens of interesting markets.
- casinos trying to cut costs, one of their biggest costs are affiliates and so far, it's easy to terminate or change deals.
- many brands will pull out, as a whole or on many markets.

[Sherlock]

It has peaked. For bigger parties there are also inefficiencies:

- banking problems
- X-inefficiency (classic corporate bs management)

[RickMare]

I would say alive and kicking hard

[MichaelCorfman]

Ash, thank you for posing the question. I think it is a good one, and I have moved it to the GPWA poll forum and we will will feature it as the question of the week in this week's GPWA Times newsletter.

I did lookup the paper providing that statistic, and so here is the link for anyone who is interested:

Networks Help Drive Affiliate Marketing Into The Mainstream

I think the report is interesting. However, I think it is important to point out that the report was published in February 2016, the underlying research was based on U.S. advertisers and publishers, and that the report is focused on overall affiliate marketing in the U.S. and not on gaming-industry specific affiliate marketing. The report did project a compound annual growth rate within the U.S. of 10.1% annually for the period 2016-2020.

Michael

[Cash Bonus]

I believe it will increase in the general sense. Though the competition has grown much stronger than only a few years ago, this industry is still quite successful and still doing very well and it certainly won't disappear any time soon.

[RacingJim]

I think it will do what it's doing now, i.e. big fish eating up little ones, more professionalisation of the affiliate space and much harder for the little guy to get involved in the big action i.e. big companies picking and choosing what affiliates they want to work with - and those affiliates tending to be pro companies rather than bedroom randoms.

There'll always be room at the bottom for long tailers, niche finders and new explosive affiliates with a great idea coming from nowhere, but I think in a general sense we can see the pattern emerging from the large companies not wanting to mess about with the admin/risk for small affiliates.

[sweetbet]

While big affiliates and advertising agencies might be OK, small affiliates will struggle as more affiliate programs close down or turn rogue, laws change and markets close, advertising becomes more restricted, internet browsers settings adversely affect tracking cookies, etc

[econfox]

For me it depends on a national gaming law. If the US Congress ever writes a law legalizing online betting in the US. Then Google, Facebook and Amazon will jump in and own the segment.
One little thing I noticed. When I use Google to get sports scores. The first link used to be ESPN. Now it is a result from Googles own website and takes up the top 25% of the page. Yes, I get the scores but it is just an example of how Google can take over any niche it wants.
Just looked at the MLB scores and Google owns that page.

[luckyga]

A growing market that is slowly making life difficult for the small time affiliate.

However, most big affiliates were small once and as other sectors have shown, dropping the small affiliates can have a disastrous effect on sales if you are not careful...here's looking at you Next. Like many other industries, it's all about the short term bottom line and many companies are failing to look at the medium/long term impact of their actions.

[Aidan90]

I agree with what a lot of people above have said. It's gone from an industry that anyone can get into to a huge case of shitting on the little guy.

Programs are shooting themselves in the foot by cutting off new affiliates with their quotas and closures. They're just making it so much more difficult for small affiliates to make it big.

Sometimes I wonder why I persevere with my site when I'm getting cut to 5% revenue just as I build up momentum with a brand or when I get an account closed without warning.

I don't envy anyone trying to set up a site in 2018 that's for sure.

[TheGooner]

The biggest issue with affiliate marketing is the movement of consumers to privacy options that include masking VPNs, cookie blockers, and a number of other techniques that make tracking clicks back to the affiliate almost impossible with the current systems.

This of course is a situation that favours the big destinations, as now many of the referred players arrive at the program untracked and "affiliate-free".

I estimate that as much as 50-60% of visitors are using blocking/privacy software.

You can be sure that if this issue affected the programs revenues negatively then it would have been fixed with additional tracking systems years ago - but as it is the big software providers like NetRefer and Income Access are happy to let the situation run.

[bookiesinfo]

We must be positive guys

[ocreditor]

Voted 'Decrease' as it's becoming more and more limited worldwide, so it's not as it used to be and if you want to be on the same level as 10+ years ago you need to work much harder, sometimes it's not worthwhile financially

[Tonny]

and, it is going to be more and more challenging. First off, big competition and saturated market, secondly, regulations and strict anti-gambling acts, thirdly, there will be a lot of bankruptcy, since only the BIG FISH can survive... I would like to be wrong in my statement

[Triple7]

We must be positive guys

It's better to be realistic and do something with things you're seeing happening.

[GlitzyBingo]

More challenging. Especially now Safari has introduced a complete third party cookie block (intelligent tracking prevention) which will effect many who have visitors from iPhone etc

[RacingJim]

We must be positive guys

One post wonder, what does that add at all to the discussion?!

[wonderpunter]

The biggest issue with affiliate marketing is the movement of consumers to privacy options that include masking VPNs, cookie blockers, and a number of other techniques that make tracking clicks back to the affiliate almost impossible with the current systems.

This of course is a situation that favours the big destinations, as now many of the referred players arrive at the program untracked and "affiliate-free".

I estimate that as much as 50-60% of visitors are using blocking/privacy software.

You can be sure that if this issue affected the programs revenues negatively then it would have been fixed with additional tracking systems years ago - but as it is the big software providers like NetRefer and Income Access are happy to let the situation run.

I have one program using tagged url's and they will manually add in any visitors without cookies every month, they are also my best conve
tor by miles.-. and I know it can be done yet no other program is doing it.. maybe this should be part of an affs decision to work with future programs..

[TheGooner]

I have one program using tagged url's and they will manually add in any visitors without cookies every month, they are also my best convetor by miles.-

The obvious question is which program ?
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