Industry mirror: Leanna Klyne on judging iGBA with a 360 view

Having spent over a decade in performance marketing, the 2026 iGBA Awards’ new judge, Leanna Klyne, joins the panel with a strong background in iGaming and payments.

Klyne entered Paysafe Group as a merchant account manager in 2007 and was introduced to the affiliate space by chance while working on one of the payment giant’s projects. She later became its B2C partnership marketing manager before leaving in 2017. During her tenure, she grew an online marketplace to $2.7 million within five years and expanded the merchant pool at her division from eight to more than 160.

The experience honed her expertise in shaping and scaling affiliate propositions in regulated markets, becoming the stepping stone to her current role as agency director at KonverJ, the new brand identity of Affiverse. Working alongside founder and former iGBA judge Lee-Ann Johnstone, she helps businesses build sustainable and human-centred affiliate programmes, supporting a wide client base, including Semrush and Deel.

As for the awards’ judging process, Klyne believes her breadth of insight lends her a unique lens for evaluating nominations based on both strategic and operational merit.

“I've worked across multiple sides of the industry – agency, operator, affiliate and network – which gives me a 360-degree view that I think is genuinely rare,” Kylne says. “Working across Affiverse and now directing KonverJ, I have a strong pulse on where the industry is heading, not just where it's been.”

“A mirror for the industry”

While the iGaming space never lacks awards, Klyne says she’s particularly drawn to iGBA since “the affiliate sector within iGaming is often underestimated in terms of the sophistication and professionalism it takes to do it well”. Describing the awards as “a mirror for the industry”, Klyne believes they signal to the market “what ‘good’ looks like”, thereby propelling companies to innovate to a high standard.

“In a space that moves as quickly as iGaming, it's easy to lose sight of quality in the pursuit of scale,” she explains. “Awards that genuinely scrutinise performance and innovation help counteract that tendency. They also build credibility with regulators and partners outside the affiliate ecosystem, which matters enormously as our industry matures.”

Against the backdrop of AI-driven search, 2025 was a pivotal year for affiliate publishers, as many of their traffic sources were squeezed and attribution tracking was disrupted. Klyne highlights that the industry’s conversation shifted from “how do we rank” to “how do we stay visible when AI intermediates the user journey entirely”. Meanwhile, mounting compliance pressure across regulated markets meant only genuine operator-affiliate partnerships beyond pure transactions could thrive.

This complexity, according to Klyne, makes awards recognising affiliates and programmes that adapt thoughtfully even more significant, as they signal “to the whole sector about the kind of business practices that are worth emulating”.

Submit human stories with data

Another key factor that draws Klyne to the iGBA Awards is the strict NDA standard of the evaluation process. All judges are obliged to keep submitted information confidential and declare any conflicts of interest before joining the panel.

As she explains, this framework ensures that “commercially sensitive information can be shared within a nomination and is protected, which in turn encourages entrants to be genuinely transparent and detailed in their submissions”.

Klyne strongly suggests contestants back up their nominations with real outcomes. “Judges are experienced professionals; they can spot inflated claims quickly,” she explains. “Without the data, we can’t pass a valid judgment. So it’s crucial that this is included in nominations for judges to consider, especially in popular categories where sometimes there are 20 to 30 applications to choose from and only one space for a win.”

Finally, given the people-first nature of the affiliate industry, Klyne adds that submissions should tell coherent stories that celebrate the human side. Nominations that charm judges aren’t those that read like flashy marketing copy, but those built on evidence-backed case studies.

“Start with the ‘so what’. Before you write a single word, ask yourself: why does this achievement matter? Not just to your business, but to the industry? If you can answer that clearly, your nomination will have a spine that holds everything else together,” she says.

“Don’t be afraid to show the human side of what you've built. The affiliate industry, at its best, is about people and relationships – let that come through.”