iGB Awards - why we don't stand a chance!

[tehsik]

First of all I've tried to enter long time as I try now , asking affiliate managers if they want to nominate me ... but in recent years i've seen a dodgy pattern ... and today decided to post about it (i post this so that new affiliates can see the truth about igb awards or whatever awards are given ).

there are just few sites that just stand up there on top and claim these so called awards...

there are brands like affutd or other trashes that nobody bothers to promote ...

Why we don't have the chance to vote in the forum for them .... ?

i bet they will not stand a chance on getting on top lol ...

Anyway lets get to the affiliate side....

Well i've tried to get into the mobile area where i believe i could have a good chance since i am still the only one with a proper MOBILE APP as well a PC one and have decent traffic from these certain areas...

anyway ... What I've noticed is that every single year i see the same ***** ....

New comers are not new comers and so on .... and if these so called websites are new then they are owned by the same big affiliate networks ....

Give a chance to new proper affiliate sites and make things transparent.

Well we all know that YOU HAVE TO PAY THE FEE TO GET THE AWARD , i can afford to buy it but i won't ... !!!!!!

What I'm asking is to let us decide in the FORUMS , and stop doing this within closed doors hahaha ... (and stop getting paid for it, u make money on conferences anyway lol ) ....

PS: DON'T VOTE FOR ME ANYMORE, I know it will look a bit dodgy cause it will look like i asked for it, but at least this post will help others who actually deserve it...

THANK YOU,
Chris,
Slots4play

[MMM]

To be honest, I couldn't care less about the awards. Don't think you should either. It's nice to get an acknowledgement for your efforts, but the money in your bank is the most realistic acknowledgement you will get.

[tehsik]

To be honest, I couldn't care less about the awards. Don't think you should either. It's nice to get an acknowledgement for your efforts, but the money in your bank is the most realistic acknowledgement you will get.

you're right... but still ....some things must be told ... lol

[RacingJim]

I don't believe any of the awards. It's just backslapping nonsense for the most part between business friends, mutually beneficial.

Most of the people presenting themselves as an 'award giver' have not got the impartiality to be able to do it fairly. they have got business relationships with the programs so it's hard to believe. Even worse with forums like this one that take sponsorship payments from programs, which then affects their ability to police the programs or take any meaningful action when a program does something dodgy.

[Planet Mark]

....backslapping nonsense...

Very diplomatic of you RJ... I think the term circle-jerk would be a lot more appropriate

[MrBinaryAff]

What fee do you need to pay?

I am one of the judges there. In my categories last year I haven't seen any dodgy stuff, all who won actually had a really great presentation and answers to the question.

[alexpratt]

Hi Guys,

I wanted to comment on a few things here as I obviously disagree and really feel strongly that we do our best to generate the correct winner.

Firstly a bit of background to give you some perspective on the awards.
The 2017 event will be the 10th awards and since the start they have never been about making money, in fact if they were we would have closed them years ago.... They are about rewarding excellence in the industry... The process to identify the winners has changed and evolved every year to try and get the best result possible. The biggest changes took place last year which included a number of key changes to the event itself which I have listed below

* We got rid of voting
* We introduced a nominations board
* We increased the size of the judging board and made it a lot more international and based across multiple verticals
* We decreased the amount of categories and companies that could be shortlisted
* We made the judging a lot more detailed with a set criteria for each award that the shortlisted companies have to put answers against with specific points assigned to each piece of criteria. The encourages accountability and transparency.
* The criteria focuses purely on the last 12 months so winning is about momentum and change not size of company
* We made the awards free for everyone to attend to make it more inclusive

I personally believe these changes were a game changer for us and although it made the process a huge amount of work it drove us further towards our goal of rewarding excellence in a transparent and accountable way

In 2017 we have strengthened the nominations stage further by making reasons madataory and getting a lot more detail at the submission stage... We have also invested in an awards technology platform to make the process easier but also help drive transparency.

If you have further suggestions or thoughts on the process please do post them here or email me on alex AT igamingbusiness . com

With regards to the specific comments above:

"there are just few sites that just stand up there on top and claim these so called awards...

there are brands like affutd or other trashes that nobody bothers to promote ..."

As far as I know Affutd has NEVER won an award - In fact look back at the winners and often they are clients that don't spend anything with us or minimal amounts

"Well i've tried to get into the mobile area where i believe i could have a good chance since i am still the only one with a proper MOBILE APP as well a PC one and have decent traffic from these certain areas...

anyway ... What I've noticed is that every single year i see the same ***** ...."

This award I believe only existed in 2015 and the winner was Flashscore who did have an app and mobile traffic. This was the summary of the judges thoughts

"Flashscore.com/mobile's combination of Mobile app quality and their traffic Player value is second to none. For years Flashcore has delivered phenomenal amounts of excellent value traffic from their mobile pages and their apps. one Judge stated it was very simply the best mobile traffic they get. Also, what makes flashcore special is the fact that they have managed to dominate the mobile betting affiliate market in multiple markets which realy sets it apart in this category."

New comers are not new comers and so on .... and if these so called websites are new then they are owned by the same big affiliate networks ....

Give a chance to new proper affiliate sites and make things transparent.

Originally when we launched this category we weren't clear enough what a newcomer was and the first year I believe Goal.com won as it had been sold and relaunched etc. However since then I believe the winners have been correct and would love to know which ones you believe shouldn't have won.

I remember there was criticism of Gambling.com winning the category and they defended this in the forums which I have pasted below again:

"I manage Gambling.com. Every positive thing you had to say about Gambling.com was achieved within the past year. The current site, by the way, was launched in January 2012. We only purchased the domain from its past owners- no players, no deals, nothing else but the domain. At the time of purchase the site was:

- doing on average 0 new players a month
- had recently been penalized by Google
- was predominantly worthless US traffic at a very small scale
- had negative brand equity with operators, thus making it quite hard to make deals

Based on your standards, only domains purchased/registered for the first time in 2012 are eligible for this award? I suspect that most sites in this category would be out of the running based on this logic.

In the past year we have grown Gambling.com into one of the top Casino and Gambling affiliates with second to none marketing and UI. All these items you mentioned- pagerank, number of google index results, etc have been achieved in the past year. Thus I think there is plenty of validity to saying that we are the best newcomer, being that we have seen such dramatic results in one year. We have done this through hard work, great execution and a smart strategy.

Nothing about this current site is related to whats previously been on that slice of internet real estate.

The fact that there is this much discussion of our inclusion being so unfair actually makes me feel great. I know we have done our job, because one year ago nobody would have complained or said anything. The best part is we are just getting started."

As an aside the criteria is now clearer in this category: "All newcomers must be a new launch to the igaming affiliate market from Oct 1st 2015 to Nov 1st 2016, unfortunately a redesign or re-launch will not be accepted in this category."

"Well we all know that YOU HAVE TO PAY THE FEE TO GET THE AWARD , i can afford to buy it but i won't ... !!!!!!"

No real comment here but show me a single piece of evidence and I will hold my hands up as this is 100% not true.... With judges from across the industry and almost 10 years under our belt don't you think someone would be able to prove this.

Its also pointless from a business perspective as awards can only work if they are believable which is why the judges and myself work crazy amounts of hours to make sure the process is the best it can be and the winners are right.

Sorry its long but this event is important to me and its important people understand what is true and not true.... I am more than happy to admit we don't have the perfect process yet and to be honest I don't think we ever will but I will work as hard as I can to get to that point and welcome your feedback so we can improve even more

[Dmitriy Joen]

Alex, it is good that you gave comments. I have no doubt that all to be honest.

[RacingJim]

Very diplomatic of you RJ... I think the term circle-jerk would be a lot more appropriate

Diplomacy is my middle name.

[tehsik]

Even if Alex posted , with the proof of what so called Gamnbling.com reply on this matter , still i can't believe that nonsense ...
if I would buy something I will of course protect the source haha ....

Alex I actually asked of "how to get this" , and somebody who actually took it 1-2 years ago admitted it was paid ... LMAO ....

anyway ...

even with your so called chosen judges you can still manipulate the results as long as we don't actually see what everybody voted...., why don't you post their votes (after the awards are given) after all ? that will be very wise !!! LOL ,

i say it again , cause you missed this part : TRANSPARENCY !!!

[RacingJim]

"Self appointed judges judge, more than they have sold"

Kurt Cobain knew the score.

[gaffg]

As a judge for the iGB Awards, I don't want my votes published. The end result would be me having 1 program or affiliate manager appreciating my vote while others not wanting to work with me for not voting for them. You can argue that this could happen on it's own now but it's just not the same when these people can see exactly who did what. I could use the analogy for the US elections where if votes were ever to be published, it would cause a lot of hell, people losing jobs because their boss didn't like who they voted for, etc... I would probably only comment if an affiliate program won't won an award I strongly disagreed with. I can at least say there are some winners in the past that I didn't agree with at all but over the past few years, I don't have major problems with the current set of winners and I personally believe iGB have done more to take the feedback and criticism into consideration. If I didn't think they cared or the previous years' results were rigged, I'd be quick to not put myself through the insane number of hours of reading and writing I have to do as a judge.

[Muppet]

Geez don't stress about it folks.



Do you think the visitors to your website even know or care about a self-nominated circle-j... sorry "industry backslap" as RacingJim so eloquently put it? They are the important people that you have to worry about.

As far as I know Affutd has NEVER won an award

Hahah that's funny, you have a very short memory. I remember it well as it was one of the best executed trolling manoeuvres I have ever seen. They and other anti-affiliate programs are nominated every year and there's always 1 or 2 that win. To be fair there's always whinging about the results but looking back now I think that was probably the year when you totally jumped the shark.
http://calvinayre.com/2013/02/09/con...wards-winners/

[TheGooner]

(From that link above)

And the winners were…

• Best Poker Affiliate Program: Unibet Affiliates
• Best Casino Affiliate Program: Affiliates United
• Best Sports Affiliate Program: Paddy Power
• Best Bingo Affiliate Program: Market-Ace
• Best Financial Affiliate Program: Etoro
• Best Overall Affiliate Program: bet365
• Best Newcomer Affiliate Program: Affiliate REPUBLIK
• Most Improved Affiliate Program: Sky Affiliate Hub

Wow - look at that lineup of rogues, scoundrels and outright fee rorters, with a smattering of respectables.

Why look ... AffiliatesUnited are the best casino program!!!, Sky are "most improved" !!! ... these two are considered outright rogues.
I'm not sure that any single person would have PaddyPower as the best sports program, or Unibet for poker - let alone award winners.

I have no feeling about Affiliate REPUBLIK, Market-Ace or e-toro (other than they are hardly best-of-breed)

So if that's Sports, and Poker program awards discredited, and the Casino, and most improved program ridiculed ...
WTF are the awards about then?

Is this a new use of the word "best" that I was previously unaware of ?

[tehsik]

;lol, hahaha nice job revealing the rogues, that should be "Worst affiliate program" ))

[tehsik]

and if u put all the links , you'll be amazed LMAO ...

[FictionNet]

As far as I know Affutd has NEVER won an award

I really thought AffUtd won something a few years ago which generated some negative feedback. I've attended the awards (brilliant night) and voted for a few candidates (Aff Edge, Full Cream, Mr Green) but I did think the awards were devalued by AffUtd winning something. Did I dream that?

Thanks for your in-depth post, btw, Alex.

[-Shay-]

The award buzz wasn't even over and Market Ace laid off the majority of their staff and began slow paying, not to mention retroactively changing terms.

[MrBinaryAff]

I agree with TheGooner, that's why I went there to give my vote on the industry, because every year there were probably same people who voted for their own projects or their friends projects. Also, by judging some affiliate programmes it is good way to give them some sort of feedback.

Like Ladbrokes, who got nominated for best affiliate casino award, and I was shocked, because they were like 5 years behind the industry or so.

[FictionNet]

[*]Best Casino Affiliate Program: Affiliates United]

That's what I remembered.