Facts About Affiliate Marketing

95% of UK marketers rate the affiliate marketing channel as the most cost effective route to acquiring new customers.

Depending on the product offering and other marketing activities, affiliate programs can generate up to 65 per cent of players for online gaming operations.

The Revenue Share model means that for most of this percentage you pay no upfront marketing cost to acquire the player and pay only a proportion of the player's lifetime value significantly reducing your risk and upfront outlay.

Our Thoughts on iGaming Affiliate Marketing

Outsourced Program Management (OPM), alternatively known as Outsourced Affiliate Management (OAM) is a growing service offering, being led by GameOn Affiliates in the online gaming space.

Successful affiliate programs require significant work and maintenance. Having a successful affiliate program is more difficult than when programs were emerging in the late 1990s. With the exception of some less competitive vertical markets, it is rare for an affiliate program to generate considerable revenue with poor or no management. "Auto-Drive" is very much a thing of the past in online gaming - even market leaders have to fight for space, recognition and differentiation in the affiliate arena.

Uncontrolled affiliate programs did - and continue to do so today - aid rogue affiliates, who use spamming techniques, trademark infringement, blackhat SEO, false advertising and other unethical methods that have given affiliate marketing a poor reputation.

The increased number of online companies and the growing number of online users who trust the current technology enough to shop and do business online has allowed for the further maturity of affiliate marketing, and this trend will only continue in years to come. However, the opportunity to generate significant revenue in a crowded marketplace filled with competitors of equal quality and size makes it more difficult for merchants to be noticed. This is particularly true of online gaming, where operators share software and promotional leeway is currently very slight. However, in the gaming space, being noticed in the right places can yield greater rewards as affiliate marketing continues to grow at a huge rate of knots.

Over the past few years, the online marketing industry has developed immeasurably. In the most competitive domains online media has been rising to the sophistication of offline media, in which advertising has been largely professional and competitive. Gaming operators can know considerably more about their players, potential customers and their habits. Affiliates are equally wise to this and have adopted sophisticated social media techniques to spearheaded their understanding.

With this in mind, there are significantly more requirements that operators must meet to be successful, and those requirements are becoming too much of a burden for many online operators to manage effectively in-house, particularly start-up organisations or those looking to expand their global marketing efforts to new regions as markets open up. Today, it is essential to professionally set up and develop your affiliate program from the very start in online gaming.

As such, more and more online businesses are seeking out alternative options found in Outsourced (affiliate) Program Management (OPM) companies. GameOn Affiliates, like OPM companies in other niche sectors, performs affiliate program management for new and existing online gaming operators as a service, similar to advertising agencies promoting a brand or product as done in offline marketing.

For more thoughts like this, please visit Tom Galanis' blog.