The Future of Affiliate Marketing with AI
About This Episode
At the iGB L!ve Pitch in London 2025, I got asked a tough question by Karolina Pelc which is how does StatsDrone avoid getting eaten by AI?
I have had time to think about that question and digest a better answer and I think this comes down to affiliates trying to get more value out of their existing traffic whether it is staying the same or decreasing.
Full Transcript
Show: Revenue Optimization with StatsDrone
Episode: The Future of Affiliate Marketing with AI
Host: John Wright
Published: Wed, 09 Jul 2025 00:34:00 +0000
Duration: 3:14
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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John Wright: Welcome to the affiliate BI podcast. Today, I want to talk about a question I got on stage from the IGB Live Pitch Contest. So Carolina Pelka had a really good question, which was, how do we know that you as a company, like Stathstone, is not going to become obsolete? What is the future of affiliate marketing as AI has been kind of disrupting quite a few things? So I gave an answer on stage, and now that I have a bit of time to think about it, the answer is very similar, but I'm just going to elaborate a little bit further. We have some customers that they're telling us that rather than trying to gain more SEO traffic,
John Wright: they're trying to optimize what they currently have. They believe that this is actually part of the best strategy, that they're not going to have the same SEO traffic that they used to, and that if they can actually build a good product and a good website, that they'll be able to both convert those users better, and they're going to find their own ways of retaining it, whether it's like creating a newsletter, getting some sort of app, which implies that you would get first party data, or maybe you're a streamer of some sorts, and you're creating an audience, and you have a chance for people to follow you. So I think this is kind of part of the new era of affiliate marketing, where it's not going to be the same as it used to be. There's not going to be more of these low quality affiliate
John Wright: sites with tracking links, and it's basically spray and pray. Now I think we're going to see more quality sites, so it's going to take more effort to win those people over. And I think the probably, everyone loves shortcuts, and I think the only shortcut that exists today is basically AI. Can you use AI to build an app that's going to create an audience that's going to just catch on fire? My opinion, these things are happening all the time. I just think a lot of people aren't really aware of how and what that looks like. So if you're either a developer, or maybe you're someone who's got a lot of creative ideas, or more importantly, if you have a lot of experience in one area,
John Wright: or niche, or niche, that's going to work in your favor. So my answer is that I don't think we as a company have too much to worry about. Like we do have something to worry about where, yeah, it just, there's not a lot of easy money going around, but at the same time, our job is to be more than what we currently are. We can't just be another stats app aggregator. We want to be part of helping affiliates understand their data better, and that involves getting, I don't want to say getting access, but it's like working with affiliates and going, can we find a way to use AI to estimate the player values
John Wright: in every product, in every geo, in every iGaming vertical, or any part of affiliate marketing? I think once people have any of this data, then they'll be able to make smarter decisions on it. And I think that's when we'll see a change in affiliate marketing. And to answer Carolina's question, I think that's what we need to do to make sure that we just don't become obsolete. And by no means are we sitting on the sidelines waiting for the business to come to us. We're looking to create it, and we're also looking to go, how can we be part of the future of affiliate marketing when it comes to innovation and data and big data? So there you have it.