The competition in the iGaming industry is rapidly increasing as its growth continues at a fast pace. The cost of acquiring new players is increasing and verifying the quality of traffic to your site is becoming difficult. Brands are continually being pressured to be able to show tangible results from their affiliate marketing spending.
These problems are not new but are becoming increasingly difficult to overlook.
On June 25, 2026, Affnook hosted a live webinar called “Scaling the Growth Of iGaming Through Partnerships, Data & Technology.” The moderator of the session was Jeremy Castilio (Head of Sales for Affnook), who brought two experienced professionals, Clint Griscti (CEO of Apidae Digital) and Miles Myron Saacks (Senior Affiliate Account Manager at eGamingOnline), both of whom have years of experience in iGaming affiliate marketing.
The main themes discussed during the webinar were: high-impact partnership building, unlocking growth via data, scaling using more intelligent types of technology, and driving long-term sustainable success in iGaming.
This article takes those key themes from the webinar and offers some real-world guidance to both iGaming operators and affiliate marketers as well as performance marketing teams.
Why Sustainable iGaming Growth Needs More Than Volume
The main message communicated through this webinar is a simple one: It is not enough to just get more players for iGaming. You need to find the right type of player and put together a program that will be effective consistently, not just at certain times.
The three components of an iGaming affiliate program (affiliate partnerships, data, and technology) should not be viewed as independent strategies but rather as interlocking pieces of a system that work together as a whole.
With affiliate partners offering reach, the data they provide allows you to determine if that reach is delivering true value. In addition, technology allows you to act on the information provided by the data, and do it in an efficient manner. When affiliate partnerships, data, and technology are not all working in unison together, most iGaming affiliate programs will be limited in terms of the number of partners they can bring on, and more importantly, the amount of business they will do through them. While you may be able to bring on more partners, without the measurement and technology to back them up, growth becomes inconsistent and costly.
Creating High-Impact Affiliation Partnerships
Not all affiliates produce the same results. In this webinar, we analyzed the elements that distinguish partners that consistently deliver high-quality players vs. affiliates who only provide registration volume.
These elements generally boil down to a couple of main considerations:
1. Quality of players and not just number of players. Quality affiliates will provide players who deposit, return and continue to play over time, whereas volume-focused affiliates will usually inflate their sign-ups with players who contribute little more than a one time deposit.
2. Good transparency into traffic sources. Brands need to know where their traffic is coming from; therefore companies that are transparent and honest about their methods will create stronger long-term business-to-business relationships.
3. Consistently producing results over the long term. Good affiliate relationships deliver predictable and consistent results instead of spikes followed by large drops.
4. Two-way communication. By granting access to both parties to the performance of both parties, any issues can be resolved in an expeditious manner, and the campaigns will improve more quickly.
5. Visibility to payout calculation. Affiliates will produce at a higher level if they have access to the criteria that determine their commission and have real-time tracking of their statistics.
Building an iGaming affiliate program on the basis of quality instead of quantity takes more effort up front, but will provide long-term business-to-business relationships that will result in higher and more predictable revenue streams.
Data Signals iGaming Marketers Should Look At
If you’re in charge of iGaming marketing, you’ve likely seen an infinite amount of data at your disposal; however, are you tracking the right metrics? Many teams are focusing on tracking the standard key performance indicators (KPIs) that pertain to registrations and deposits made by players, but this does not clearly indicate the totality of your iGaming site’s success. There are numerous data signals that are often overlooked due to existing nuances but should be easily visible to iGaming affiliates:
1. Retention rates of players based on repeat play – after the first session, are they returning?
2. Player deposit history (repeat deposits) – how many of your players deposited more than one time?
3. Player lifetime value (LTV) per affiliate – what is the total amount of revenue that has been generated by each player?
4. Anomalies in fraud prevention and/or welcome bonus abuse – are specific affiliates constantly sending customers who take advantage of welcome bonuses and not sticking around to play regularly?
5. Traffic source performance – out of all the traffic sources in your affiliate’s portfolio, how are they performing independently?
6. Conversion quality over 30, 60 and 90 days – not only is the original registration to your gaming site an important metric, but it is also just as important to evaluate how these players behave after they register.
When focusing on just lead quantity, it is easy to get lost in the metrics that look good on dashboards, but ultimately produce higher-than-average churn rates. For example, if an affiliate has 600 registrations but converts very few to repeat players, they are probably not a quality affiliate, regardless of how good their metrics look initially.
Using Technology to Help Your Affiliate Program Succeed
The most valuable part of the webinar was examining how technology can benefit iGaming affiliate marketing teams immediately and on an ongoing basis.
The different ways are as follows:
Reduced manual effort in tracking conversions to affiliates and decreasing manual errors by automating tracking allows for more time to do other things.
Affiliate managers must have real-time reporting to make quick decisions about changing campaigns based on which ones are performing well or poorly.
Commission logic that ties compensation to player quality metrics (e.g., retention, net income) rather than just first deposits can positively impact affiliate behavior.
Fraud detection capabilities will provide early warnings of potential fraudulent activity prior to allowing many low-quality leads to enter a campaign and severely distort the credibility of campaign results or inflate acquisition costs.
The creation of self-service dashboards for partners will allow them to have immediate access to their performances and assist in reducing the need for communication regarding performance.
By shortening the optimization process to a few hours instead of multiple weeks, teams can leverage performance data much earlier.
Ultimately what we discussed was this: the most important value technology provides to teams is the ability to make better decisions in less time. Using technology allows affiliate managers to spend less time gathering data and more time developing partnerships and optimizing campaigns.
Future-Proofing iGaming Affiliate Programs
The last part of the webinar included a look ahead: what the next evolution of a successful iGaming affiliate program would be.
Some key themes emerged from this discussion were:
• Increased data discipline — measuring player contributions to total player value from the start of the relationship, as well through the life of that player
• Relationship transparency between partners — building trust and long-term partnerships will be the result of transparently sharing performance data between partners
• Automation of workflow processes — removing manual steps so teams can focus their attention on strategy and planning instead of administration
• Building in fraud detection measures into affiliation programs from the beginning instead of as a response after problems occur
• Flexible and value-based commission structures that reward affiliates in line with what a brand realizes from that affiliate relationship
• Retention measurement as part of an affiliate program rather than a separate department
• Scalable technology which allows a program to grow without added people and capacity and allowing a program’s team to manage more partners without being overworked, overwhelmed or burned out
Key Findings From The Webinar
This presentation identified five important principles:
1. Quality of players is key to long-term sustainable growth in iGaming; simply acquiring many new players does not mean these players will retain interest in the iGaming brand.
2. For partnerships to be thriving, both parties must have access to transparent information regarding mutual performance. Consequently, when issues arise, solutions can be achieved more rapidly and partnerships are empowered to optimize their campaigns more quickly than if both parties worked in isolation from one another.
3. Players’ value should be evaluated based on retention rate, repeat deposit good retention rate, repeat deposit behavior and lifetime player value rather than by counting the number of players who registered to play.
4. Technology allows organizations to optimize their teams’ abilities more efficiently and create workflows that reduce the number of manual tasks performed. iGaming organizations today require automated tracking, up-to-date reporting on players and automated means of detecting fraud, as these resources will enhance operational efficiencies rather than be considered additional expenses.
5. Future-focused iGaming affiliate programs will feature integrated partnerships, automation tools, and data-driven performance measurement. These three tools must all work collaboratively to achieve optimal scalability for iGaming brands; organizations that leverage all three may experience efficiencies from growing fivefold to tenfold in size.
FAQs
What is iGaming affiliate marketing ?
“iGaming” is a term that encompasses online casino games, sportsbook betting, and other online gaming. iGaming affiliate marketing refers to the performance-based model of online gambling whereby online casinos, sportsbooks, or gaming brands pay third-party companies (affiliates) commissions on a player’s first deposit. Affiliates use websites, content, comparison tools, paid advertisements, and other methods to drive traffic to their affiliate brand’s site or application. There are three main types of commission structures used in iGaming Affiliate Marketing; revenue share, Cost Per Action (CPA), and a hybrid model using both revenue share and CPA as forms of payment.
Is data necessary for iGaming affiliate programs?
Data gives brands insights into more than just the total number of players who registered, but also lets them determine which affiliates to continue to work with due to the long-term value generated by the players sent through each affiliate. Brands can also identify which sources of traffic contribute to revenue-generating traffic, as well as where there may be fraudulent or abusive activity occurring. If a site has no data available to support affiliate spending decisions, the budget will likely become misallocated; therefore, spending will be wasted by undetected underperforming affiliates for long periods.
How does technology improve the performance of affiliates in iGaming?
Technology can improve affiliates’ performance in iGaming by automating the capture of tracking and conversion attribution, creating real-time reporting on campaign performance, enabling affiliates to optimize their campaigns more quickly, and allowing for the early identification of any suspicious activity. Additionally, technology provides affiliates with insights into their own results, and generally speaking, this leads to improved communication between affiliates and their affiliate managers, resulting in fewer disputes and improved overall performance of the iGaming affiliate program.
