An affiliate promotes the products or services of other companies on its website and receives a commission in return. To achieve this goal, affiliates use an individual advertising link provided to them by the respective affiliate marketing provider. Almost all major online gambling providers gain a considerable proportion of their new customers in this way.
More and more companies from a wide range of industries are turning to affiliate marketing to market their services or projects online. The idea behind this is that publishers, for example, publish an advertising link on their website that leads to a third-party provider. If a visitor to the website registers with the third-party Provider via this link and, if applicable, makes a purchase or deposits money into a Player account there, the affiliate receives a commission in a predefined amount. In some cases, a flat commission amount is paid per referred customer. In other cases, the third-party provider gives the affiliate a percentage of the revenue of the referred customer over a longer period of time. It is forecast that sales for affiliate marketing in the US market alone will be around EUR 8.2 billion in 2022. By comparison, the figure in 2017 was still EUR 5.4 billion.
Website operators primarily try to appear as high as possible in the search results through search engine optimization (SEO) and link building. This results in more visitors finding their way to their website. These are then informed about various products or services and then register with a third-party provider if necessary. This system works not only for "normal" online stores, but also for online gambling providers. In the further course, the website operator, i.e. the affiliate, is rewarded for recruiting the new customers. Various remuneration models are used for this purpose, which we would like to briefly discuss below:
The advantages of affiliate marketing are obvious. Payment is made here namely after the service has been rendered. This means that the gambling operators only pay a commission, i.e. have marketing expenses, if active new customers have actually been recruited. Basically, this is a win-win situation. The affiliate receives a commission for recruiting new players and the gambling operator benefits in return from more gamblers.
The danger with affiliate marketing is that website operators can be influenced by the prospect of commission payments and recommend third-party providers who do not work reputably. For this reason, it is important for potential new customers to ask themselves in advance what the affiliate's motivation is. However, there are undoubtedly a number of affiliates who make an effort to recommend only reliable and reputable third-party providers.