Influencers & Affiliate Networks

Show: Revenue Optimization with StatsDrone
Episode: Influencers & Affiliate Networks
Host: John Wright
Published: Tue, 03 Dec 2024 11:12:00 +0000
Duration: 8:39

Speaker labels are a two-speaker split from pauses (host vs guest). Timestamps are `[HH:MM:SS]` from the episode audio. Light ASR; names and brands may need a pass.

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[00:00:00] John Wright: Welcome to the affiliate BI podcasts. Today I'm going to be chatting about something that I've mentioned before which is this idea that affiliate networks or sub affiliation is going to be become a bigger part of affiliate marketing especially in the iGaming segment and I want to touch upon something that I'm going to write about in the affiliate BI newsletter this week which has to do with something that I'm going to butcher his name but it's Jesper Sogard from Better Collective. He said something that was really interesting and I think it was maybe in an Axios article recently and I'm

[00:00:38] John Wright: just going to give a short quote. He sees little competition for potential targets. This is talking about acquiring other affiliate websites and assets and he followed this up by saying waiting longer isn't risking the opportunity. So I want to translate what that means for me and where I think the industry is going in a very short period of time. What it means to me is that over the last I don't know 5, 10, 20 years it doesn't matter the big affiliate sites have been getting bigger so they're capturing more market share they're capturing more search and they're also acquiring a lot of sites and assets

[00:01:16] John Wright: along the way. So what you're seeing is a lot of consolidation and I've heard from a lot of people say at many conferences that it just seems like there's less affiliates like the business is getting bigger but there's just less of them in terms of numbers and volume. So I think that's the case. Now in terms of what's available on the market well when people are kind of growing up and getting bigger it's not like you can just go to companies like Game Lounge and Blue Window and say hey we want to acquire you. I mean these are big companies as well and they're acquiring other companies beneath them but the inventory is kind of a bit dried up and now in the last year when

[00:01:54] John Wright: we've seen a lot of affiliate sites get kind of pushed aside when it comes to all these Google updates it's starting to make people wonder where it's like where is the next player going to come from? Is it going to be coming from search or is it going to be coming from social? So I want to tie in a concept of why I think social media is going to play an important part and how it will play an important part. My answer to this has to do with influencers. Now what is an influencer? I mean we kind of know what it is. It's like you know it could be a podcaster, someone doing a YouTube channel, could even be a single

[00:02:29] John Wright: blogger. Doesn't really matter but the idea is this. We're moving into a space where you can't just be a website as a company or an entity. Like you can be that but we're seeing more people follow people rather than companies. So if that's the case then what we're seeing is we're seeing streamers get stronger in their reach, their potential, their ability to drive more revenue but not everyone can be become an affiliate in that manner or they don't even know what it looks like. And this is where I think the influencer space on one side is going to be connected with the other side which is going to be with

[00:03:06] John Wright: subaffiliation or with affiliate networks. So in trying to answer what I think better collective might want to do in the future is going well how do you acquire an influencer? You can't just buy people. So if you can't buy people what's the next best way of getting some sort of equity ownership of it assuming that's even possible? And to me the answer through this is through an affiliate network. And when you have an affiliate network it's like you're taking virtually the equivalent of 20% stake in their business. I mean we can look at both sides of the fence. We can say well what does the affiliate network have? They would have the technical ownership of the data, they

[00:03:44] John Wright: would own the player, they would own the revenue share accounts but there would be an agreement that says okay well we're going to own this on your behalf kind of like a custodian for the affiliate. So the affiliate in this whole ecosystem is getting a better deal and you're typically getting something done behind the scenes where it's a little less management. You're not chasing payments and having to deal with the industry and simply put I don't think a lot of influencers actually even want to deal with this. And I think what's going to be happening is that they're going to be presented with more than one solution. I think it's going to be more than just like a RakeTech affiliation cloud. I

[00:04:22] John Wright: think there's going to be more players on the market and I think this is going to be the next part of that iGaming player segment that everyone wants or another piece of the pie. So I think yeah we can say that things are going to be shifting away from SEO. I'm encouraging people that if you want to get started in iGaming as an affiliate I'd say maybe if you're going to do SEO try to make it unique and go super niche but I would say just go all in on media. I mean everything's moving towards media. I think Google the algorithm is already being adjusted such that even the AI overviews are essentially just basically

[00:04:59] John Wright: regurgitating things like reddit and social media. So I think this is where the new space is going. I think the M&A space in terms of iGaming for the affiliation segment it's going to be kind of drawing up and there's going to be not a lot of assets. So when Better Collectus says you know they will be patient well yeah they will be patient but I don't think it's for intentional reasons because truth is if there is a lot of amazing assets on the market to acquire right now they'd be going after all of them and simply put I just think these assets aren't available. Like there's amazing websites that you could technically acquire but I mean how many people are you gonna be able to go

[00:05:39] John Wright: to and say okay we're just gonna acquire about slots or casino grounds it's just like it's gonna be difficult if not impossible and when these are the trending affiliate sites growing in the right direction I mean it's like good luck trying to get an equity stake from them let alone buying them because the one thing I think is becoming even more difficult if not impossible is you can't just buy someone like you can say okay I'm gonna have 100% ownership or equity in your own brand name it doesn't quite work like that so I think we're gonna be in this new era where influencers have more power but they're not able to sell their own equity and the only way to sell their equity would be

[00:06:17] John Wright: through like a business relationship where I think an affiliate network actually facilitates that perfectly and maybe it's just accidental but I mean yeah you can have a contract if there's no equity contract but it's almost like if you are the affiliate network by having 20% stake in that revshare account it's like you are having 20% equity in that one play whether that plays worth a lot of money or whether it dies over time or maybe it has you know a long-term equity value I mean when you're dealing with like potential years of commissions I mean this is a great asset it's a digital

[00:06:55] John Wright: asset that you can acquire that's kind of like transferred off the back of someone else creating their own digital asset in themselves as a personality and just kind of relaying that so I think some affiliation it's definitely for 2025 it's gonna be probably one of the most talked about segments in affiliate marketing I think more affiliate programs are gonna realize that hey then the next best affiliate and the next best chunk of players they're all gonna be coming through these networks and I think this is the way of where the markets going and I think that's how people are gonna capture this market space so my prediction is we've already seen it you know Game Lounge has announced that

[00:07:34] John Wright: they've got something called kicker and we have I think Katenna Media has market play I'm pretty sure there's gonna be a few more so lookout for 2025 and some exciting disruption I think what we're gonna see with the the new affiliate network I've been calling this the affiliate network 2.0 is more than just your standard affiliate network it's not gonna be just here's a tracking link one affiliate manager one payment method we get you better deals that you would get on your own I think you're gonna see better things I think you're gonna see help with SEO or help with analytics or even help with ad tech

[00:08:12] John Wright: it's like if you can take some of these things off the plate of your affiliates then it's like well yeah if you had 20% equity ownership wouldn't you go out of your way to help that equity stake get stronger and be worth more so it's where I think the the space is going so look out for my article this week which is gonna be all about talking about influencers how people are gonna access influencers through affiliate networks