Promotion and traffic

In the early days, organic search engine optimisation (SEO) was the main way igaming affiliates promoted their websites, with the main goal ranking highly in Google search engine results pages (SERPs) so that their sites attracted more users. However, organic SEO has evolved significantly over the past 20 years, with Google’s frequent algorithm updates making the task of organic SEO more difficult for affiliate marketers, as mentioned in ‘US takeover: The SEO methodologies affiliates need in 2024’ by Martin Calvert.

(see How big of an impact are Google updates having on igaming affiliate marketing?)

Partly because of the increasing complexity of organic SEO, paid search using Google Ads (PPC) has grown in popularity among igaming affiliates in recent years. Native advertising is also becoming more popular as a promotional tool.

Nevertheless, organic SEO remains the largest focus for most igaming affiliates, and as Paul Ngoie outlines in his ‘Digital SEO: Making it stick long-term' article for iGB Affiliate, it continues to be the biggest driver of web traffic. In addition to SEO strategies, many affiliates increasingly utilise social media (see also this useful piece from Digital Footprints’ Sharon McFarlane on how your social media strategy can indirectly benefit your SEO), blogs, email marketing lists, media websites, PR and even banner advertising to promote their sites.

Some of the larger affiliates have begun to adopt marketing techniques more akin to those historically used by their operator partners, with some even entering into sports sponsorship deals to get their brands in front of sports fans. Marketing tactics such as influencer marketing (especially in some of the newer territories such as Brazil by our Best Streaming iGB Affiliate Award winner 3C Gaming) and YouTube and streaming services partnerships are also becoming more widely used.

Though it’s more common for an affiliate to be given unique tracking links as a way of monitoring traffic sent to partners, they are sometimes instead given unique promo codes for players to enter into operator sites to link them to an affiliate.

Most affiliates prefer tracking links as promo codes can be clunky to use and there’s a higher risk of the affiliate not being recognised of the source of a new player, typically because the player forgets to input the code.

However, promo codes are sometimes used with streaming, influencer campaigns or social media in cases where tracking links can’t be posted. Some social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram in particular, penalise posts containing links as they don’t want users taken away from its platform, and given how much activity is taking place on these platforms, promo codes may become increasingly used in future. In addition, with content increasingly moving away from text and towards video and audio formats, codes may also become more widely used in these formats in future as obviously these are easier for audiences to remember than a lengthy weblink.

For more traditional means of driving traffic, such as email newsletters and on their own websites, affiliates are likely to continue to favour tracking links.

As mentioned in What is the best affiliate tracking software for igaming?, there are a number of tools designed to help affiliates track their earnings and a number of these will also allow them to manage all their campaigns in the same software.

However, some smaller affiliates still use programs such as Excel to manage their campaigns, which offers less functionality but comes at a lower cost.

Whichever way you manage your campaigns, it’s important to have oversight of the performance of every campaign you are running so that you can shift your traffic strategy accordingly.

Some affiliates separate each campaign by geography so they can work out which region their campaigns are performing best in. A number of affiliate programmes now offer S2S tracking, which is an advanced form of link tracking that provides granular data on where every click originated, allowing for high-level analysis.

Platforms such as voluum.com, which offers ad tracking software to optimise campaigns, can also track data very effectively with advanced link tracking. This is especially useful for those running paid campaigns, where affiliates need to know their return on investment is greater than the amount they are spending.

Most affiliates work with a large number of affiliate programmes – it’s not unusual for even a small affiliate to work with more than 50 affiliate programmes and the large, listed affiliates are likely to be working with hundreds, potentially even thousands. With so many programmes to manage, the time available for each is limited and most affiliates will spend the most significant amount of time on a programme at the beginning, when they are looking into its T&Cs and negotiating terms. After that, most affiliates will expect the admin time to be low and any affiliate programme that takes up too much time without providing a correspondingly high level of income is likely to be culled.

As a rough guide to time commitments, the iGB Affiliate Survey found that affiliates spent about half of their working day on affiliate activities, on average. This time was split between the average of 41 programmes they were signed up to, though it’s worth noting that on average, each affiliate was actively promoting only 26 programmes.

The number of visitors per month that is considered good will vary widely depending on an affiliate’s size. A beginner affiliate could be making money with about 5,000 visitors per month, while a larger affiliate site may need in excess of 50,000 visitors per month to meet revenue targets.

The monthly PartnerMatrix Intelligence affiliate traffic update published on iGB Affiliate gives a good indication of the top performers in any given country.

The igaming affiliate industry has historically focused on SEO, with igaming affiliates using Google Ads (PPC) to a lesser extent. Paid search is higher risk for an affiliate, as it’s often competing with its own operator partners for the most popular gambling search terms and also paying for traffic that may not covert.

Despite this, the iGB Affiliate Survey published in 2018 found that 39% of affiliates used some PPC in their activities and the number of game-changing Google updates since then has likely led this to increase. In fact, Alexander Kostin in ‘Anatomy of a fall: Google updates decimate British Gambler’s search traffic’ suggested part of the motivation behind Google’s changes is to increase the use of paid channels such as Google Ads.

Among the bigger listed affiliates, Gentoo Media (recently renamed from GiG Media) has historically been one of the biggest users of paid search (as a portion of its activity). While its reliance on PPC has varied throughout the years, it remains a key part of its strategy, so there are certainly large affiliates that view Google Ads as worthwhile.

While some affiliate marketers have found success on Pinterest, it does not allow advertising for online gambling, so this is unlikely to be a viable channel for igaming affiliate marketers.

Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) were historically the most used and useful social media platforms for affiliates. However, in recent years platforms such as YouTube and Kick have also become more popular, thanks largely to streamers, predicted by industry investor and expert Julian Buhagiar in ‘Following the stream’ to become the dominant accessible medium into gambling.

Personalities on these channels are increasingly being leveraged by affiliate brands, as explored by Sharon McFarlane in ‘Brand ambassadors vs. influencers and how to use them’. Instagram is also becoming more popular, especially with the emergence of Threads, as this search marketing roundup from Corey Padveen in June 2024 shows.

However, due to its youth-heavy demographic, YouTube can be difficult to navigate for igaming affiliate marketers. TikTok is similarly problematic, as explained in ‘TikTok for affiliates: how to keep your content safe and effective’. It’s important to check both the social media platform’s rules for the countries you are targeting, as well as the gambling advertising rules that apply in that country. However, even where one or both of these prohibit actively targeting players using a particular platform, some affiliates are still using them to build communities. Examples of this include using free-to-play games, pick’em games or fantasy games to build indirect audiences for their sports betting sites.

LinkedIn is also widely used by affiliates, though primarily as a way of networking or connecting with operator partners rather than with players, with the same also being true for Skype.

Telegram has been growing in popularity among affiliates, both for networking with other affiliates and also for communicating with players and potential players. Telegram allows affiliates to host group chats with hundreds of thousands of users (as opposed to WhatsApp’s maximum of just over 1,000) and also provides the option to set up channels, which can send out promotions and offers to an unlimited number of users.