By
Scott
Longley
A volatile picture of collapsing funnels, opaque relationships with operators and the rise and rise of black hat paints a more uncertain future for gambling affiliation, writes Scott Longley in an extract from our forthcoming Affiliate Monitor report.
The gambling affiliate sector has always lived in symbiosis with Google. Search is the lifeblood of the industry, determining who captures the punter at the moment of intent. But two forces are now shaking the foundations of that model: the rapid rise of artificial intelligence, particularly its influence on search interfaces, and a series of sweeping changes by Google to how results are ranked and displayed.
For the major listed entities of gaming affiliate marketing – Better Collective, Gambling.com Group, Catena Media, Gentoo Media – the public line is one of steady adaptation, brand authority and diversification. But beneath the surface, industry insiders suggest a more volatile picture: collapsing organic funnels, opaque relationships with operators and a black-hat undercurrent that AI and algorithm updates may amplify rather than suppress.
Google’s changing game
Executives at the big affiliates are keen to downplay any immediate disruption from Google’s AI overviews. “We have not seen a significant effect of the AI overviews,” said Jesper Søgaard, co-CEO of Better Collective on his company’s Q2 earnings call with the analysts. “Google is clearly prioritising the paid ads over the AI overviews whenever it relates to commercial keywords. Performance has been stable”.
That message is echoed by Catena Media’s CEO Manuel Stan, who noted on his own company’s Q2 call that while volatility has been high, the “major Google Algo update which took place in early July has been more favourable to our rankings and confirmed our focus on good quality and SEO practices.”
Eighteen months ago, if you typed ‘best online casinos’ you’d see ten gambling websites. Today, you get three affiliates, Trustpilot, and four operators
But an experienced affiliate executive, who opted for anonymity in this report, painted a bleaker picture. “Eighteen months ago, if you typed ‘best online casinos’ you’d see ten gambling websites. Today, you get three affiliates, Trustpilot, and four operators. Seven affiliates have lost the clicks they used to get. The big guys get bigger, the smaller ones are done for.”
The executive added that the shift isn’t only about AI overviews. “Google has changed the composition of what makes a good search page result. It’s classic consolidation: trust and authority are rewarded, smaller sites are squeezed out. That’s the real story.”
Affiliates and the AI funnel
For affiliates, the core anxiety is not whether AI tools like ChatGPT or Perplexity will recommend betting sites directly, but whether they will erode the early-funnel search traffic that has always been their oxygen. One current affiliate operator who also spoke to iGB Affiliate on the condition of anonymity, described the situation bluntly: “The audience that we’ve seen generated organically by Google is in freefall, maybe 50% down year-on-year”.
Yet they added that mid-funnel economics remain intact. “The CPAs, the end point, the commercials, they’re broadly stable, if not increasing. Less traffic, but the quality that does come through still converts.”
The audience that we’ve seen generated organically by Google is in freefall, maybe 50% down year-on-year. [But] the CPAs, they’re broadly stable
For Gambling.com Group, the solution lies in diversification. CEO Charles Gillespie stressed that “traditional search is becoming less central to our digital marketing strategy. Contributions from apps, email, social media and paid media are growing rapidly. We are measuring the growth in these non-search channels in terms of orders of magnitude, not incremental percentages”.
Still, Gillespie maintained that authority remains the foundation for both SEO and AI visibility: “The skills and processes we have perfected for SEO are exactly what is to optimise for inclusion in generative AI. Those are fundamentally premised on the same signals of high authority, trust, and expertise”.
Authority versus agility
If the official line is that authority will carry affiliates through the AI shift, insiders question whether listed firms are truly nimble enough to play that game.
A well-known figure in the affiliate world, who also asked for anonymity, argued that the industry’s real operators are those willing to use black-hat tactics and aggressively exploit loopholes: “Previously everyone talked about quality content, now it’s back to domain authority. That’s where black-hat can really work. The top 5% of SEOs – the ones who can make $50k a month – are edgy people, not HR-compliant. Listed firms can’t hire them, so they’re relying on Google to police the clown show of spam”.
That gap between corporate governance and raw SEO ability could define the coming years. As the well-known affiliate sector source noted, “Better Collective are insulated because they bought quality assets. Lower-quality assets can go to zero”.
Building moats: data and product
If SEO is becoming harder to win and regulation more unpredictable, affiliates are being forced to think about moats. For Gentoo, that means recurring services. “It is a strategy for us to create more of a moat around our sites,” said CEO Jonas Warrer. “So we have a recurring user base that we add high-value services to, like the casino complaint service on AskGamblers”.
The top 5% of SEOs are edgy people, not HR-compliant. Listed firms can’t hire them, so they’re relying on Google to police the clown show of spam
Independent operators echo the idea that proprietary data is the only long-term defence. “A user-friendly product is the only way for affiliates to exist in the future. If you have proprietary data to help a user on their journey, you can use that. If you don’t, you’re in trouble”.
He cited Oddschecker as a model: “We focus on football and horse racing, we take Opta data and turn it into visualisations that grab the punter. That’s what pulls people into the ecosystem.”
The veteran affiliate commentator agreed: “Listed companies need to start producing real products. Oddschecker is a real product. Flashscore is sophisticated. Dabble is modern, slick, easy. That’s what customers want – speed and simplicity”.
AI as a tool, not just a threat
While much of the debate centres on AI’s disruption of search, affiliates are also embracing AI internally. Gentoo’s Warrer pointed to efficiency gains: “There is a tremendous benefit from us in using AI to optimise our business within tech, admin, design. Some of the more repetitive tasks can be optimised”.
For content, AI is already widespread, though its limits are clear. “What can you actually do with AI? You can use it to write better content,” said the affiliate operator. “But a proprietary stack of data is better. If you own the data, you can create really good content. This is what Sportradar has done”.
Others warn that AI itself can be gamed. “AI optimisation—of course it can be gamed,” said the experienced affiliate executive. “Reddit is a good example. All the AI tools scrape Reddit, so if you can game Reddit, you can become an AI fact. If you can fish within the pools the AI tools are using, then you can game the system”.
If there is one clear strategy among the listed affiliates, it is diversification beyond SEO. Catena highlights CRM, sub-affiliation and paid media as growth channels. Gambling.com Group emphasises apps, email, and social media. Better Collective is segmenting customers and adapting ad formats.
Insiders, however, are sceptical. “No one is buying affiliate businesses right now. Catena and Raketech are struggling,” said the affiliate operator. “Gambling.com is pivoting elsewhere. If you don’t own the audience end to end, you’re exposed”.
The long view
If AI overviews are still nascent, the consensus is that affiliates can’t afford complacency. “What happens with tech is people overestimate the short term and underestimate the long term,” said the veteran executive. “In the long run, AI will fundamentally change the affiliate business. In the next couple of years affiliates will still sue Google, but Gen Z and Alpha won’t use Google – they’ll only use AI chat”.
To maintain rankings, every day affiliates have to wake up and try and beat the internet. This is the Thunderdome. The question is whether the listed companies can still play that game
In that world, the challenge for affiliates is not just surviving Google’s updates, but ensuring their brands, data and products are so authoritative they cannot be ignored by AI models that distil search into two or three recommendations. As Gillespie put it: “With an AI tool, you’re gonna get two to three results. You have to be one or two. The only way is to have industry-leading authority”.
The affiliate industry has always thrived in ambiguity, adapting to algorithm changes, exploiting arbitrage and operating in the shadows between operators and regulators. But AI and Google’s new search reality may force a sharper bifurcation: between large, trusted, product-driven brands that can secure authority in AI-filtered results, and a fragmented long tail reliant on increasingly risky tactics.
The official story from the listed giants is one of resilience, diversification, and confidence in authority. The unofficial story, told quietly by insiders, is of collapsing funnels, black-hat temptations and a growing fear that the public markets will not tolerate the kind of edgy, HR-incompatible SEO talent needed to truly compete.
As the experienced executive summed it up: “To maintain rankings, every day affiliates have to wake up and try and beat the internet. This is the Thunderdome. The long-timers know it. The question is whether the listed companies can still play that game or whether AI and Google have rewritten the rules.”