What questions about iGaming do concern you? We bet we can cover most of them with the help of Marcin, our guest from Voluum, whom our PR manager Olya caught at a conference in Lisbon last month. Find out everything about entering iGaming in 2024, get ready for the upcoming changes in the industry, study key metrics and important features… in a word, we have collected everything that might be useful. Enjoy reading!
Olya Vrublevskaia, PR manager at Adsterra
Marcin Kumięga, Business Development Director at Voluum
In this interview, you will get an insider’s view from an active market participant. We have discussed all the top-notch issues: the situation on the iGaming market, development prospects, the main mistakes and advice for beginners, as well as the specifics of working with the iGaming industry. We are sure that information from Marcin will be useful for both freshmen and experienced specialists, including those who doubt whether it is worth switching to the iGaming niche if you are already successfully working with other verticals.
— Our interview will be focused on iGaming. It’s been a while since our last interview, so let’s start from covering the main changes that need to be mentioned. What’s new on your side, new directions of your business maybe?
— Yes, I believe it’s been a month since our last talk. So if you’re asking about the strategy perspectives of Voluum, the answer is iGaming. To those who don’t know it, Voluum is about to have our 10th Anniversary, so we’re kind of an old platform, just like Adsterra. So we both are for quite a long time in the market, but we’re not iGaming companies, we’re from the affiliate industry. So those of our viewers who visit affiliate conferences or summits, they know us pretty well. But iGaming was never an important direction, although one of the verticals. So we took a bet, a well-prepared bet, based on some data, to allocate our resources for iGaming as this industry is growing, and our resources, technology, and knowledge of media buying might be very helpful in that space.
— That’s great! iGaming is huge for us now as well. So when it comes to iGaming, how does Voluum perform? Any special tactics or metrics you pay attention to, for example?
— Thanks for the question! Let me maybe start answering from who and how we happen in iGaming, what the Voluum is. We are an advanced software service and optimization platform, we are a technological platform. A couple of years ago we discovered that iGaming affiliates are in need of such a technology. So the core of iGaming acquisition is based on SEO traffic and affiliate driven traffic. Which means there is an operator, who has an affiliate to outsource the marketing activities, and they have predominantly SEO traffic. That’s the standard. The thing is that many people in the industry discovered that they can do something on top of that, which is paid media. Programmatic, search, social traffic. There is a license – programmatic is a key especially for licensed operators. The main metrics are conversions, something superbasic for standard multivertical affiliates, but in the iGaming industry this is still an issue to have as accurate as much real time as possible signups and ftd (first time deposits) being tracked by an operator. These are the two main metrics, and on top of that we have the value of the deposits, the revenue of the player, costs, ROI, and further deposits sometimes for the LTV. But the core ones are signups and ftds.
— How do you help optimize the iGaming campaigns for top results?
— Here lies the main difference for SEO traffic vs paid media. Especially in programmatic, which is very competitive, you need to have proper funnel and proper data driven habits. First — data, and then habits to optimize it. It’s not just like you plugin Adsterra campaign and you just run on networks, because in that case you’re hardly profitable, but it’s rather about optimizing and checking. There is a test campaign which is quite often negative ROI, but then you check which zone ids (publishers) convert the best: which browsers, cities, OSs, and we have plenty of different metrics. Then we eliminate the placements\audience ones that do not convert and focus on converting, channeling the funnel. There is a famous saying that half of the money spent on marketing does not work, but you don’t know which half. With us you could narrow it down on the test campaign. That’s the main pattern, and the short way is to zone ids, but on the longer run you can go by browser ids, GEOs, cities, connection types, and so on.
— You’ve already covered it at some point, but if you can draw a baseline, what’s the main difference in your approach towards iGaming?
— That’s a challenge for us at Voluum as a product, not from the commercial side only. Voluum is a very advanced platform, and it might be complicated. The typical multivertical affiliates were tech savvy, they were able to develop their own software, and for them such a complicated platform was easy to cope with. But for iGaming people it’s different as they come with different backgrounds, they are football fans, sport fans, and so on. Not digital coders, I mean. So that’s why we start from the basics and we teach our team to be more educative in some aspects. Sometimes the main gamechanger for them is to set up just the postback, sign up an ftd, and this alone could increase their ROI significantly, because these guys don’t see conversions, they run blind. Whereas for our traditional clients like sweepstakes, ecom etc. postback is as easy as a pie. So we start slow and do behave educative and also simplify as a platform, so it will not be so overwhelming in terms of the abilities. Sometimes it’s better to do less than more.
— I totally agree with you as we in Adsterra also try to bring a lot of educational content covering some basics for those who are just starting out in the iGaming industry. Now, why should an iGaming company do paid media?
— Very good question, and I could answer in a couple of layers but the main one is the principle of business and entrepreneurship, which is to diversify. So if we rely only on one channel, like affiliate driven traffic, it’s harder to get affiliates these days. Affiliates are also changing. Of course, there are many new affiliates coming to the market, but they’re mostly operators, and if you’re an emerging brand, you may not get a good one. But you pay them a lot of money: imagine paying CPA of $50-200 and 50% revshare. An example I’ve just heard with one operator who is quite experienced in paid media in Brazil, which is a great market: there’s high revshare and even a flap branding deal. With brand media you put a control on it. The risk of burning money is high, of course, you can spend thousands, but if you do it right, it’s worth it. That’s the key: the shifting from SEO driven traffic to paid media. As in iGaming the product is very difficult to convert, so dating or ecom is super easy in comparison. It’s all about diversifying.
— Are there any possible mistakes to avoid or tips to consider when starting?
— The first one is not having signups and ftd tracked. imagine there’s still some affiliates or operators who try to do paid media with no tracking. There are operators who do not share any data, and people still do paid media with them. It’s much more risky, but it still happens. The main and more controllable mistake to avoid is to think about a [real] campaign instead of having a test campaign and then optimization-driven real campaign. So we always need to think of it as of an investment, where the first money is rnd — research and development — and when we spend on the test campaign, we pay for the data to optimize. And if you have a media buyer from Facebook or Google environment, PPC or social, then you don’t need to have test campaigns, it’s easier, and in programmatic you need to be more skillful.
— I believe such mistakes are the things most people are afraid of when starting, especially in such a well-developing industry. Could you share some best strategies to try for our partners in terms of tracking iGaming campaigns? As you mentioned: not setting up tracking sometimes, etc.?
— Not setting up tracking, not setting up postback to a traffic platform. It’s important for you, you have to have ftd or signup tracked. But it’s very important to send postbacks to Adsterra in that case because you have good technology within your platform, and you can have them to optimize it in your own algorithms. So sometimes when we onboard a new customer or operator from the iGaming industry, the only thing we do for them to start with is having them set up the postback for the traffic platform like Adsterra, and they see a boost. So these are two important things, and of course the mindset for the test campaign, for having this optimization setup and so on. It is like a progressive step to do this successfully. It’s also important to have a good team, to hire a good mediabuyer. There are great people in the market from outside of the iGaming industry, and it’s possible to have a good experienced media buyer. So instead of having your own SEO guy, giving them a budget and letting them do the ads, as it’s risky, at least have some good consultants or ask your Adsterra managers to help.
— Great tip! Our managers are always ready to help 🙂 Now for trends in iGaming campaigns: if you can highlight any iGaming trends it would be great for those who begin their journey in the industry.
— The main one is emerging markets. So there was a hype for Brazil last year (2023-24), now it’s about to be regulated, but even now we’re literally in Lisbon, and there’s still a lot of iGaming money in Brazil and Latin America in general. The next Brazil may be Thailand or South Asia. There’s a tricky thing with the regulations, but these markets are strong. India and Bangladesh — these markets are as well very lucrative, or Africa. These are 4 GEO-related trends, and in iGaming GEO is much more related than in the other types of mediabuying. Another trend is the US with the social projects, which is an interesting thing. We as well have a thing for digital currency ones, which has been in a doubtful time through the last couple of years, but now it might be recovering, and still it’s sometimes not taken properly into consideration. So there’re a couple of options.
SEO is very GEO-specific, as you have to work with language and so on. In iGaming you can access in a couple of clicks to a certain different GEOs. Adsterra supports 248 GEOs, basically worldwide, and even when some GEOs have less traffic, if there is a demand for it, you’ll get a publisher for it. So mediabuying is much more flexible in GEO-terms.
— Now let’s turn to the legal side of things. How does the legal, licensing aspect of the iGaming market affect the paid media acquisition?
— It’s a big topic as iGaming is still a young industry in a modern approach, it’s only 15-20 years old in the way we take it nowadays, and these years were very significant in terms of growth. So many countries do regulate it, sometimes they go slower or stop, but we have the main division for this industry and the definition for a gray market, where the regulations are not in place . There are global licenses like Kuracao, Isle of Man, and others, so there is a global license and you can advertise legally for the global market. I’m explaining it too simply, but the main thing is that in the gray market you’re unable in many cases to do social and search, so programming is an opportunity for you, and a pretty great one. Some people think that the paid media is only Facebook and Google, and is only for a superregulated market and so on. But that’s not true. There are dozens of other platforms and huge inventory for paid media. Even on regulated markets a CPA or cost of acquisition on PPC is crazy these days. On social, for example, on Facebook, people say 50% of traffic accounts are bots. That’s why programmatic and DSPs are a great alternative. But still if you have an inventory in Adsterra it doesn’t matter, so for a media buyer there is no difference. And you’re cheaper than Facebook and Google traffic.
— That’s so true. How can you describe the dynamics of the iGaming market in the next couple of years? Speaking about legal aspects, more upcoming trends, let’s say, just general dynamics?
— More regulations. Not all of them will be good and wise, because sometimes it causes some fractions on the market, and the market has to find its way. More emerging markets. Years ago it was mostly Europe, but now we see Africa, South Asia, India, Latin America, Central Asia, and we’re expecting new regions like Kazakhstan, where the big conference will take place soon. The third trend will be the US. It’s not very regulated yet, so there will be much more opportunities for the business. And the fourth and the most important trend for me is technology. In the iGaming industry, they are still falling behind in terms of the technology – IT development, software platforms – so there is a space for tech companies like Voluum, like Adsterra, we have good technologies, and many other platforms to enter and to help. Even now you can see on LinkedIn how many small boutique software houses are only iGaming related, even in Poland.
— The next question is rather similar, it’s about the future prospects, but you can talk both about global scale and precisely consuming Voluum. Any plans to tailor to the iGaming vertical within your company?
— Our main goal now, besides getting happy customers and helping them, is to educate. So we need to educate affiliates, but also operators, affiliate managers on the operator side, about the technology, about the services and postbacks, about mediabuying. For example, I just have heard from my good colleague from the industry that he doesn’t believe in paid media in iGaming. So yesterday I introduced him to some of our clients at the conference. I told him they make crazy numbers with PPC and programmatic, so I hope they exchanged business cards and there might be a business. That’s the case showing how we do need to educate, even within the industry. I’ve also heard that Push doesn’t work in iGaming, or Pop doesn’t work in iGaming, and then I talk with my clients, they show me their activities, and I know it does work, if it’s done right. It personally irritates me, because it’s simply not true, it’s the matter of doing how. The same about SEO: it’s also very difficult, and here we probably have the best specialists globally, because of the difficulties we face.
— I also sometimes hear people saying they don’t understand exactly what iGaming itself is, so educational stuff should probably start from defining.
— That’s true: many people do not get it that iGaming entails online sports etc., so we have to explain the terms first.
— Let’s wrap it up with the last but not least, probably of interest for those who are thinking to diversify, as you mentioned. So, for non-iGaming affiliates, is it worth considering a pivot to iGaming, and why?
— Yes. It’s important and worth it, as in iGaming there’s a good amount of revenue to share, it’s an open and very profitable industry. They are in need of technology, they’re in need of mediabuying know-how, and they can pay for it. So if you’re a paid media affiliate from the dating, sweepstakes, ecom spaces, you should try a project for iGaming. You should do it right, of course, like everything else, but I do have many clients, as Voluum is also presented in the dating industry, and we noticed some of our clients from the dating industry making projects for iGaming, and they’re more than happy here. So I see many people doing this pivot, we consider this pivot, you consider this pivot, and so do many other companies we know. My answer here is yes.
Watch the full interview on our YouTube channel.
Into the idea of joining Adsterra & Voluum and start earning on iGaming traffic? You are more then welcome!
