The Power 50 Affiliates
Affiliates have grown up, giving rise to a new breed of professional 'power affiliÂates'. eGaming Review has trawled far and wide to unÂearth 50 of the most influÂential...
AS the wider egaming industry has continued to grow and develop, so have affiliates, giving rise to a new breed of businesses a far cry from the one-man bands working from home that characterised the industry in its early days.
While Full Tilt’s US-backed liquidity recently enabled the company to make the move towards loosening its reliance on affiliates by capping rakeback margins to 3%, this is hardly reflective of the huge value still placed on affiliates by the bulk of the Europe-facing egaming industry.
Strong emphasis of this value and the rise of ‘super affiliates’ was provided last year by William Hill Online’s (WHO) chief operating officer at the time, Peter Marcus. He told eGR that the 70,000-strong casino affiliate database Playtech transferred to WHO as part of the December 2008 £144.5m transaction had been one of the main reasons for the deal. The assertion appears to have been borne out by WHO’s recent casino performance.
While those super affiliates turning over six figures a month are still hardly representative of the egaming affiliate space as a whole, an increasing number are developing into true businesses, by setting up offices, employing large teams of people, diversifying into operations, and undertaking the kinds of offline branding initiatives more usually associated with operators (for more on this, see the box-outs on RakeTheRake and on Betrescue on page 38).
In response to this growing maturity, eGR embarked on the task of pulling together a list of 50 of the most influential ‘power affiliates’ out there today, based upon invaluable input from operators, affiliate managers, industry associations (particularly the GPWA) and affiliates themselves.
So what criteria were used? High traffic, conversion stats and player values were the primary, but not only, criteria used. Other factors flagged as important by affiliate managers included speed of reaction.
“New promotions have to be as quick as possible. We don’t want to work with affiliates who are slow to bring down banners and content,” explains Oliver Scott, senior affiliate manager at Betfair.
And as listed operators with transparent practices become the norm for the egaming industry, so come demands for the same exacting standards of mature and professional practice from their affiliates. “Account management and relationships with affiliates are key,” says Scott.
“But the affiliate also needs to be strong on this. Some of our affiliates which are now set up as companies hold events and invite all their affiliate managers, for example, to the racing. It’s no longer just operators taking affiliates out to lunch.”
While for Sportingbet, affiliates’ ability to localise is of paramount importance, according to James McMaster, affiliate account manager for the operator. “We’re encouraging affiliates to work on a pan-European basis, rather than just be split between territories. Many have multi-language sites “ it’s down to us to provide the banners and links to enable them to localise their sites so they can market offers into new territories and convert players.”
However, it was perhaps revealing that casino, as the most valuable vertical for affiliate marketing, was by far the hardest to research. With operators tending to work intensively with a handful of affiliates in this area, many were wary of confirming their identities to competitors. The thousands of portals driving traffic to nearly 900 individually branded casinos, often made ownership difficult to ascertain.
Further, a limited number of keywords to fight over than in say, sports betting (witness the huge number of World Cup-related micro-sites out there now) means casino is where most black hat SEO activity occurs, with many casino affiliates consequently preferring to stay well below the radar.
But these obstacles aside, eGR believes it has trawled far and wide enough to bring you 50 of the most influential affiliates actively plying their trade in the egaming space today.
To read the top affiliats in bingo, casino, poker or sportsbetting, click the links below.
1) Bingo’s top affiliates.
2) Casino’s top affiliates.
3) Poker’s top affiliates.
4) Sports betting’s top affiliates.