Why Media Buying and AI Help Affiliate Programs Diversify and Thrive

Speaker A: It's really important if you're starting in media buying to start with controlled testing first, not be afraid to collect data and then from data, uh, identify winning channels and then you can think about scaling because if you're not going to collect enough data, you're always going to lose.

Speaker B: You're listening to the Affiliate Marketing Podcast, powered by a few ultimate destination for affiliate program news insights, growth opportunities, partnerships and affiliate program strategy. Welcome back to the Affiliate Marketing Podcast. This week with me your host, Leanne Johnston. And today I'm super excited because I've got not only one but two guests joining me today on the mic. Uh, we are welcoming today Camilla and Matin from Voluum. I'm sure you guys have heard of volume before if you've been working in the media and affiliate industry. But I'm going to hand over the mic now to Camilla to say a quick hello and then we'll um, invite Machin up to say hi to and then we'll get started with what we're talking about today, which is media in uh, today's modern world and modern age. So Camilla, welcome to the show.

Speaker A: Hi. I'm very happy to be here and very excited about our, our conversation. I uh, think it's the, the perfect timing to have it. Uh, my name is Camilla. I'm managing director at Voluum. I have been working in the adtech industry for almost nine years right now and I have been moving a lot within the ah, the volume company I started in moved through business development partnerships and right now to general management. Um, I try to combine my experience in everything that I do so marketing perspective, perspective, business developer perspective and also a leader which I hope helps uh, me to uh, balance different kind of needs. And there's Martin as well.

Speaker C: Hello everyone. I'm happy to be here and hopefully share some value and quality insights. My name is Marcin Kumienga. I um, am with Voluum for around eight years, around a decade in Martech. Uh, and my background is sales. I'm a hardcore salesperson, uh, and I love it. Uh, but now I'm more on business development side and on um, I'm also a part of Volume leadership team. Uh, and I'm responsible for uh, igaming project here and helping our team to grow in igaming, um, vertical.

Speaker B: Pleasure to have you both here and it's a very interesting time to have you on the podcast because everything is changing all at once. Uh, AI is coming to the scene. LLM, uh, channels have come in and they've disrupted Traditional SEO type partners, we see click traffic dropping. There's a whole conversation to be had around what's happening in the space right now. But I want to get into the heart of it because traditionally SEO affiliates have been very, very important in igaming over the past, I would say 20 years that I've been in the industry. Uh, review sites, comparison pages, bonus content. It's always been a reliable model for brands to kind of invest in and be a part of. So why are you seeing an increased interest in media buying as a diversification strategy for these brands right now? What fundamentally has changed? And I'm going to come to you first, Camilla.

Speaker A: Yeah, as you mentioned, uncertainty is everywhere. I mean, everything is changing. And uh, up until not that long ago, you could have a working strategy that has been there for years. Maybe you did a little tweaks, but it was working for you. And it was possible to just rely on a single channel like SEO or maybe, uh, SEO affiliates. Right? But right now, publishers, programs and operators who only, who built all their, uh, businesses, uh, only on SEO are losing visibility. Right? Because in the era of AI driven search, uh, there's not that much space for organic pages. There are also, uh, Google's AI overviews that are taking, uh, a lot of traffic, uh, from businesses. So they're looking for, um, other options. Right? Like how can I still keep my acquisition going? And I feel that with AI, it's not only the fall of the organic traffic. AI tools are changing how we work every day and they're changing the status quo. So I guess it's diversify or disappear, right? I mean, uh, if you're not going to have different channels for your acquisition one day, maybe tomorrow, maybe in a week, maybe in a year, um, it's going to happen that it's not working for you anymore and you're going to be in big trouble. This is why operators, companies, they're looking for, for diversified acquisition channels. And one of them, especially in igaming, is media buying

Speaker C: Other. Little bit, maybe a historical context. Uh, I'm a historian from my education, love it.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: So like igaming itself is pretty young and it's changing affiliate marketing itself, uh, it's pretty young. Especially after Covid, there were changes in customer patterns and behaviors. So, uh, historical model. Yes, it was like operator outsourcing, user acquisition to affiliates who then focus on SEO. That was the old school, especially here in Europe, um, US as well. Uh, but uh, the difference in terms of technology in online advertisement is huge nowadays. And I would rather say Imagine I don't know, a box which is iGaming and there are two waves pushing it. So one is of course AI, which AI changed the customer behavior like AI search, how many people now m GPT things. Even Google. Yeah. Instead of googling it. Right. So that's one thing, the pattern uh, which affects SEO, but the other is that uh, the media buying space which is present in different industries like E commerce or even multi vertical affiliation. It also discovered igaming or is discovering and there's more inventory, more networks, they open up. META opens up for iGaming, Google opens up for iGaming slowly even the mainstream. Right. Not to mention smaller networks. So that's the uh, I think context and that's why there's the right now moment.

Speaker B: Yeah, there's like a race, almost a race to actually get into media. So let's talk about what do program or what do brand operators typically get wrong um before them and their team start with media buying? Let's uh, because what I want to do is make this really educational for the people that are listening and give them some tactical tips because I think everybody's coming to the realization okay, everything's changing and I need to change m my tactics and this is why. But how do I do that? So uh, maybe Camilla, if I come to you first, what, what are program managers or, or brand managers getting wrong when they start to look at divers into media?

Speaker A: Well I would say that there are two things. So first one, uh, they're afraid to spend money on media buying and on tests. I mean they do expect results very fast because the media buying setup is completely different uh than SEO setup. Uh, the second one, they're expecting quick results so they're going to launch a campaign and a few days later or a week later they're going to look, okay, do I have conversions? Is this um, budget coming back to me? And it's really important if you're starting in media buying to start with controlled testing first not be afraid to collect data and then away from data identify winning channels and then you can think about scaling because if you're not going to collect enough data, you're always going to lose. You cannot, it's not just going come to you and one day you're going to wake up and okay, this is uh, the winning uh, channel or this is the winning traffic uh source. You have to collect data.

Speaker C: Okay.

Speaker B: Macin, Anything to add there?

Speaker C: Yes. So I would even start from framing who is the decision maker in terms of operator as a company. So sometimes it's not even affiliate manager, it's user acquisition specialist or acquisition specialist. And the thing is that if an operator relies on affiliates, they sometimes think, and this is this what they might getting wrong, that media buying is, let's say, um, challenging the affiliates. Right. Or it's like an extra channel which might cannibalize it, which I believe it's wrong. I know it's wrong. Because if you do it right, it's a synergy. That's why you should even reframe or thinking in terms of affiliates, like affiliate channel, but user acquisition channel, because there's more.

Speaker B: Okay, so practical setup and first step mistakes. What goes wrong in the first 30 to 60 days that people can learn from or be aware of so that they don't make these mistakes. So talk, talk us through the first 30 to 60 days of setting up a media test campaign. What should people be doing?

Speaker A: M. Yeah. So I would say that the uh, one of the first mistake that they're making is that they don't have technical knowledge. Knowledge. They're not technical at all. I mean, if you want to start buying, you need to configure your uh, tracking. Right. You need to know what UTMs are, how do they work, what type of redirections you may have. Yes, you need to understand how postbacks are working, uh, how does the cookie behavior, uh, look like? So if you don't know how this is going to work, it will be very, very hard for you to set up the tracking and start running campaigns. And then secondly, uh, they very often lack data analysis skills. So I mean, let's assume that you will be able to set up your tracking, uh, you did it by yourself or someone helped you. But then you end up with lots of data and you need to have the skills to analyze the data. Right. Uh, working on cohorts, uh, filtering, cross checking data, all this, you have to be able to do it. Of course, right now it is getting easier. I know that we're going to get to it later, but with uh, AI, the uh, barrier is not that high. But you still have to at least be able to uh, review AIs uh, replies and be able to say, okay, this is a hallucination or yes, the AI got it right. I don't have to spend 30 minutes in this reports because I have the information right away. But you still have to have these skills.

Speaker C: Yeah, you need to be data driven. That's the mindset, that's the approach. And if I cannot do this, the main problem they have or the main mistake they do even on day zero before starting is the conception. Because sometimes it's getting better. But a couple of years ago I was Hearing on major IGaming shows this, um, phrase like, oh, paid media, pop, push, whatever, native doesn't work because they compare it with SEO. They need to understand different. The funnel is different, the funnel is wider. I remember once I had a speech about it at Sigma conference, like with the organization. So that's the first thing. So you cannot just place a link, build a product page, place a link and that's all? No, it's just the beginning. And you need to optimize. So the principle is, especially for certain networks, like programmatic networks, there needs to be a test budget, test campaign, and then you optimize step by step. And you always optimize. There's never an endpoint because there are so many M changes.

Speaker B: So there's a couple of things that I'm pulling out of that. First, you need to have a very clear parameter of what it is that you're doing the paid media for. What is that objective that you are trying to meet? And it could be brand awareness. It could be, you know, further down the funnel, I want to reach those customers and actually get them to convert. It could be I'm launching a new product and I want people to know about it. So you need to come to me, media buying, with a very clear understanding of what it is that you want paid media to do for you. Then you need to be able to understand and track it accurately because it needs several iterations before it becomes successful. Just like any other campaign. Any, you know, even if you are working with a publisher or a content creator or whatever it is that you're doing it, it's iteration after iteration. And that's what actually builds the success. You also need to understand data and analytics because I guess you get an immense amount of data back within your platform when you're running a campaign. So you need to actually not get lost in the rabbit hole of looking at all of that data and trying to figure out is this campaign actually working? And tracking back to that first metric that you needed it to, um, deliver for your business. And when you talk to clients, like, do clients come to you with an understanding of what they want, or do they just come to you and say, I want more sales. And that's actually not deep enough. Right. Because if you're talking about how to actually build and maintain a campaign in media, uh, it's iteration after iter. So you almost like a B testing all the Time and it never really ends until you hit the metric that works for you and then you double down on that. Is that the kind of flow that you see clients doing, successful clients doing?

Speaker A: Yes, exactly. Because, I mean, when you look at these two funnels, when you look at the SEO and so the audience you get through SEO, it's more engaged, right? The funnel is, it's more narrow and then they're keener to sign up or do, um, FTD fast. Right? But there aren't that many of them because the funnel is narrow. With paycats, on the other hand, it's infinite, right? I mean it depends on the sources and GEOs you're going to choose, but it's much wider, it's much longer. So the potential player or, uh, any type of client that you want to acquire needs more time to convert. But there's so many of them. Uh, it's quite amazing. Uh, it's this, um, case of the pie, right? I mean, why try for a bigger piece of, uh, pie when you can get an entirely different piece of cake? And this is exactly what media media buying is offering.

Speaker B: Because the other thing is, is, um, that my next question to you guys was, do you see any particular type of traffic being more successful than other types? Because you mentioned pops push, you know, native, um, does a client need to actually know exactly what kind of traffic sources they're going to go after first in that initial test phase? Or should they be testing everything with the budget that they have available and then narrowing down from there? Because that can also be a mistake that people make at the start, is that they try and sp their available test budget far too thin across multiple sources. And some of those sources might not even be meeting the cake. The KPI metric that they need to start out to win so they almost like diversify their chance of success because they're spreading their budget too thin. Does that happen sometimes in the first, like 90 days of a campaign launching?

Speaker C: Yes. Uh, a lot of topics here to cover, but maybe to for. Yes, there is a problem to going too deep and spreading out the budget. That's why we recommend some testing budgets, solid testing budgets, depending on the channel, not too small, because if you're small, you won't get the volume to optimize

Speaker B: what's a good budget, like what's small,

Speaker C: what's big depends on. And here we come to a second part. It depends because there are different channels. Let's say program is different. Like there's native ads, pop push, banner display, m the uh, adult traffic as well, but there's also paid, uh, search, paid social and even more coming in. Right. So it all depends. There's like quality or quantity ladder let's say. Right. But uh, all of them are good and it's all about breakeven because sometimes many people prefer especially they're not so deep into this topic. Oh, I want traffic from Google Ads. Right. Uh, or, or Google is better. Like Google Ads is the best overall. Yes. But sometimes, especially in tier 1 CPC is crazy. 200 USD. So sorry, CPA. Sorry CPA. Right. So on the other hand, you can have super cheap traffic, optimize it deeper and it all goes down to roi. That's the case. Right. So it all depends, also depends on your product, on your exposure on gray market versus regulated market, et cetera.

Speaker B: But also I guess it would be, you know, really wise to understand where the paid media testing that you're going to apportion budget to supports the rest of the marketing that you're doing. Because you might not need to be in native if you've got a really strong paid media team internally that's doing brand awareness. Like you might want to go into other channels, um, outside of paid paid Google for example, because maybe your affiliate program is already kind of heavily invested in partners that are working there. So I guess the thing here is, you know, you need to niche down and figure out where does, where does the paid media testing budget that you're going to invest in in the first 90 days, where is that going to support all of the other marketing channels that you're doing? And then also niche down into the traffic sources that you really want to go after that your other channels aren't already touching. So plug the gap instead of trying to cannibalize it by looking at new traffic sources in the same spaces, which then drives price up, I would imagine, especially in programmatic. Um, so one thing I hear, um, affiliate programs worry about a lot is that they're interested in bringing media buying affiliates into their program, but they're also nervous about how it impacts their own initiatives. So can you talk us through how you handle those conversations with the clients that you know, raise this concern with you? What, what's some of the advice that you can give about that?

Speaker C: Yes, so I would say it's more a managerial problem.

Speaker B: Okay, so it's a people problem.

Speaker C: We all are people. Business is done by people. Everything. Customers are people, everything. We're our people. But what if we are a legacy brand? We always the business in the old way. Right. We do it this is how we do this is problem everywhere like in every type of companies. So the change always hurts and change is a problematic thing. And that's why there might be many reasons why to stay in your comfort zone. But we have proven cases when there's a synergy of channels. So. And it's not very hard even if you add pop for pop ads or some, let's say pop or display traffic for user acquisition perspective, not for branding but for purely user acquisition. But you still rely on affiliates. This user acquisition even is the conversion rates are not great, but you still make breakeven the brand result because it's a massive traffic, massive exposure. The brand result unintentionally is huge. So your affiliates have easier to convert and it's easier for you to get good affiliates because affiliates these days want to prefer brands who are well known. So there's a huge synergy on that and you can partially measure it. We hope we here we go to come to quant qualitative and quantitative research topic. But this is the, this is the topic. This is one of the let's say arguments, right?

Speaker B: Well, there was some research and the only reason why I remember this is because literally I spoke about it this week in a meeting with another client. But there is some research that proves especially here in the uk, uh, through the apma, um, you know, they record data through networks, multiple networks that there is a massive halo effect of how uh, paid media and affiliate works together in order to increase brand. And I think it was something and correct me if I'm wrong but and I'll try and find the research but it was um, something like 18 to 23% uplift when you are leveraging paid and affiliate together, um, which isn't actually trackable anywhere because it doesn't belong in any one channel. So exactly what you've said, that synergy actually exists without us actually tracking it back to the revenue money that's being spent. But it has been proven not only in gaming, but in other industries too is a natural halo effect that happens. And like you said, I mean affiliates do want to know that there's a brand out there spending money and not only relying on one channel to receive all of their players so that that uh, brand exposure exponentially invites more partners in which then exponentially increases your acquisition through the performance channel. So you need to think about your budget more holistically now because the channels are not segmented like they used to be in the last 15 years. They are amalgamating and getting more and more um, and if you watching the video, you can see me putting my hands together. But like it's all intertwining and there is no separation anymore. So it's really about getting very clear about what your test media budget needs to do for you. And at the point, you know, which point in the funnel, it needs to be kind of filtered in. Now, um, why would they need, why do these affiliate programs that are running, um, you know, in networks, um, have their own uh, tracking solutions for affiliates? Why would they need their media buying partners to use something like Voluum, like explain exactly where you guys plug into that mix now to help, you know, track, provide this data so they can optimize their campaigns?

Speaker A: Yeah, I can take this one. So if you have uh, an affair tracking, it does tell you, uh, what happened, right? That uh, someone converted. Right. But it doesn't really give you an answer why it happens. Right. So where the drop off happens, uh, which creative drove, drove the click or which uh, source was that the best one? And you should really focus on it when, how did it happen? And if you work with volumes, if you work with a lot of uh, traffic, uh, media buying or affiliate traffic, you need to know why things are happening to find the winning models. So this is where Voluum comes in. Voluum helps you with this multi channel approach and it allows you to really find the winning combinations of creatives, uh, headlines, landing pages and offers. And then it allows you to optimize them like crazy and just push as much traffic as you can, uh, to the winning ones and just make sure that your budget is not wasted to those that are not, uh, performing.

Speaker B: So do you find a lot of clients actually use their media budget to optimize the campaigns that they push out to affiliates when they know that they work? Because that's what I would be doing with Voluum. I'd be using the data in there to actually then replicate what's working and push it out into other channels to get better ROI and better conversion. What is that just me because I got 25 years experience?

Speaker C: Depends. Because sometimes, especially with big operators, there are silos, um, there are different departments that don't really integrate with each other. So that's the idea of scenario. But you know, from ideal scenario,

Speaker A: we

Speaker C: are not there yet. It's a great idea and it should be promoted. But the. Well then sometime is even for, for all channels, for affiliate channel and for media buying channel for user acquisition. Channel is a gaming. They focus on acquisition, not on ltv. So there is a Gap between retention and acquisition. Now I saw a couple of our big clients, they realized this gap and they try to link this data but usually the silo, right? Retention team, acquisition team, so even that and then synchronize the channels, it's another thing. So the industry requires much more tech integration.

Speaker A: I remember my first IGB in London a few years ago and when I spoke to operators uh, they were telling me that media buying doesn't work for iGaming or that it's not possible because of the regulations or that it's super expensive because they spent 10k once and it didn't work. So it means it's not working. So I also feel that the reason why igaming is so huge right now, why it's gaining traction in the affiliate marketing space as well. So you can see igaming talks at Affiliate World for example, which didn't happen in the past is because igaming is slowly catching up and this media uh, buying opportunity uh, has emerged not that long ago. And there's so much space here for agencies, for affiliates, for service providers like us that can really use the gap that was there and offer great ah, value to operators.

Speaker C: Yes. And that's like we were shocked because our background, volume background is multi vertical affiliation. So affiliate works, affiliate summit, this event. So we were huge there and we still, we still are. Uh, and when I was at ah, this first igaming conference, my first igaming conference, IGB pre Covid 2020 it was, I think I was shocked because the bigger biggest players, even in terms of technology, affiliate platforms, they missed a pixels with postbugs and there was no idea what's that and we couldn't believe it. Clients which I have from outside of iGaming, it's hard for me to convince them that postbacks are new to iGaming.

Speaker B: It is um, it's always been last click and nobody's ever spoken about anything else. But now the Internet has actually forced them to catch up because consumers are changing the way that they discover, search, find information.

Speaker C: Many reasons for that. But that also makes sense for me because if you are an SEO based affiliate operation, you don't need such a real time accurate data because you build a product and then the link is there. Right. You optimize only the product experience. If you are on media buying you need to decide what's working uh, well and what's working not real time. So that's thing. But let me, maybe I'll uh, link to this question. So why do you need a specific Media bank platform. If you have affiliate affiliate tool like Income Access Net, refer my affiliates or whichever. So we have features that they don't and they have features we don't. We are different tools. So these features are uh, ADP optimization integrations, API integrations with network automatic roles. I could name the features, but it's not about that. Maybe let's take uh, a metaphor of having, I don't know, a car and a motorcycle. I own both and you purpose for having them.

Speaker B: So AI is obviously now everywhere in our industry and in our conversations at the moment and we said we were going to get into it and I think we're at the point in this episode where we do. When you're talking to media buyers who are actually sitting at the keyboard and managing campaigns every day, what AI tools are making a real difference for them right now? And what should people understand about how their media buying partners are working?

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: I mean I would say that there's a few things. So firstly because of AI, uh, there's less organic traffic and uh, there's less traffic in general. Right? So the ads, the conversions, uh, uh, the visits, they cost more and you have to compete with more players to get these people to click on your ads. And because of that it means that it will be even harder or more time consuming to optimize your find and uh, optimize your ads and find winning combos. And then AI comes in, right? So you can either have an AI built inside your platform or you can have MCP connection. And this is something that we are working on right now and we will be launching beta next week and we're extremely excited about it because this is what people want and this is what people need. Uh, they want to use AI tools, they want to be more efficient, they want to spend less time on manual optimization. And this is exactly what AI is offering to media buyers. So instead of opening your laptop at 6am, opening the dashboard, filtering campaigns, then changing date Range uh to 7 days and then compare it to the last 7 days and then sort by the percentage of change and then export it to CS file and so on and so on, you could just tell your agent, hey, please prepare me the uh, report for the last week and then compare them to the last eight weeks. Tell me the best 50 campaigns by spend. La la la la la. It's really amazing what you can do with AI right now. Instead of spending uh, hours on manual job every day or instead of hiring a junior media buyer that will give you the basic info you can get it within seconds or minutes with AI. So from our perspective, it's mostly an opportunity for media buyers. But at the same time we do expect that because the barrier is going to be much lower to enter the media buying. There's going to be more media buyers, uh, more ads, and then again it's going to be harder to compete for this traffic. And paid advertising may get more expensive. I was, I was going to say

Speaker B: it's obviously going to drive up costs. So, uh, if you're listening to this podcast, you might want to get in and start testing your test paid, uh, media budget before the CPCs or CPAs or whatever you're paying on gets too expensive because it can make you more efficient as well. So if you're saving four, four, five, six hours a week, that's almost an extra day's worth of work that you get to go find new traffic sources to test and implement and, or create more creatives to test and implement, um, and get more efficient.

Speaker C: Like many things could change with AI because it's like in terms of technology adoption, there might be many roads yet, but I believe it will be there sooner or later. And I feel that it might change the role of media buyer. So he won't be a buyer, he will be media planner, media strategist, maybe even the role. The job description will change soon. So as you said, it would be more time for discovering new options for connecting with people. So maybe people skills, human skills. Right. Managerial integrational skills. So I believe AI will do the, let's say robotic work or mathematical data work. But the humans are about to make decisions and connections and erections. Right.

Speaker B: What about using AI in the, especially you know, in iGaming, obviously it's a highly regulated industry, but for regulation and compliance, because that's always another thing that, you know, um, cmos speak to me about in terms of, you know, how do we protect the brand, how do we protect the um, you know, content that's being put out there by creators? Is there a, is there a way to actually do that? Kind of like fraud and compliance monitoring using AI tools now as well. So you can manage what is put out there?

Speaker A: Yeah, that's mcp. Precisely. Because if you have a built in, uh, AI inside your platform, uh, let's say you're using, um, I don't know, some kind of service provider and they have uh, um, built AI. You have to see what kind of regulations they have, do they have terms and conditions, what kind of data they're sending. Uh, it's risky, but Then if you connect yourself uh, through mcp, you can choose which AI agent you want to work with. Is it cloud? Is it chatgpt? Maybe it's perplexity. You may have a uh, company account on the cloud that has uh, higher regulations, the teammates know how to use it. It really allows you to uh, minimize the risks connected to AI. And this is also something that we have found when we spoke to our clients and their needs in terms of AI. So like Martin said, that's the first one. They still want to be decision makers because uh, they're the ones that are responsible for the budgets. Their boss is going to come to them and ask them, hey, why did you waste uh, 50,000 K? They're not going to ask AI, right? What's one thing. But the second one is they still want to do it uh, without a high risk. They want to do it in a safe and a secure environment. And this is why the MCP connection really allows them to uh, do it in a safer way.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: And regarding this compliance aspect, for sure, AI will help to filter what's happening in terms of brand protection. But there's one thing that needs to happen first. We need to have attribution or at least click ID tracking. So we need to able to link uh, a click with the results. And that's why the post bugs are so powerful. And that's why I convince every operator to have it for brand protection. Let me give you an example. We really had this case a couple of months ago with one of our clients, great client, one of the biggest affiliate companies, public company, not to mention them. They had this case that an operator they work with ask them for some compliance issues. They were able in, I don't know, in a moment to find out a particular campaign ad ID traffic source and then to check and then to contact it and then to protect their reputation and relationship because it's trackable and traceable.

Speaker B: That's amazing. All right, I want to move into some real world examples because we've been talking about how wonderful media buying is and how you should be kind of approaching it in your business. If you're starting out and you want it, you know, explore how this can help you. Can you walk us through a specific situation where a brand, a program, a manager, um, really, um, benefited from adding media buying within their kind of like acquisition mix. Have you got any case, like real success story that you can share with us right now?

Speaker A: Uh, yes, we do. Um, we have worked with, and we are working with many operators. Maybe uh, start from this side of the market. So in most cases it's not that one day they wake up and they say, okay, I want to have media buying and they hire people and then they just start and it's working. Right? It does take time, uh, before you're really going to scale it. But there are some exceptions from this rule and there are operators. I mean we did have one, we still have them. Uh, they, they were just running their um, their traffic through affiliate and through IPO. So like for many iGaming operators, uh, that was the core part of their business. But they decided that they would like to have another pie, maybe try something else. It was a few years back, so this is why I decided to bring up this example because this happened at the times when media uh, buying wasn't a thing in igaming. They started to work with us. They hired a media buyer who was an experienced, um, uh, was, she was actually an experienced media buyer. We did connect them to our traffic partners from popular ads, from adstera, ah, uh, from different push and pop sources. And one by one, month by month, slowly they started to send traffic to their campaigns. They set up everything on the volume side and after a few months the results were really amazing because their conversion rate grew by 30%.

Speaker B: Wow, 30%. Significant.

Speaker A: Yeah. We were even uh, even surprised that you can get to such ah, results. And what they told us is that they saved around nine hours uh, of the work every week that they had to put into um, ah, into getting traffic and getting their conversions. So uh, that was quite amazing.

Speaker B: And that's one whole working day a week. I mean that's like, that's like hiring an extra person.

Speaker A: Yeah, I, I know, I know. And then, uh, um, we're still working with them. Uh, it's been a few years ago, right Martin? It's been a while. But there's still a client that they have grown significantly since then, uh, but they're still running paid advertising and they are diversifying, not only relying on SEO.

Speaker B: So has that, I mean you don't have to say the brand, but have they changed the way that they think about their acquisition budget now? Because coming from the traditional kind of paid and oh well, SEO and affiliate, so really heavy content and kind of review and um, you know, CPA revenue share, whatever they were paying and diversifying into multiple other channels on a paid basis. Because I'm sure they must be doing lots of different types of uh, commercial metrics now after so many years of testing have, has that business fundamentally changed the way that they Think about their acquisition budget as a whole, or are they still kind of siloing into the three channels? Because I would imagine that all of that learning, they've probably, like, reviewed how they view acquisition as a whole.

Speaker C: Uh, so in their case, they changed, uh, the approach, but not completely because of the nature of their business. And they are well known. Even at ijp. They are quite well known. They are very strong relationships. So they still have. And the nature of their business is that affidavits are still very important for them. Yeah, they should build a stable extra channel. It's complementary, which is just in case, like, if there's a problem with affiliates, we can scale it so we are flexible. But that's their only model. Right. They didn't shift in that particular case. They just added another, let's say pie, which they can taste whenever they.

Speaker B: Two pies is better than one.

Speaker C: Exactly. One sour, another sweet.

Speaker B: Yeah. But the other thing that's interesting is that, is that there was no cannibalization. They've actually grown their business by 30%. Not by cannibalizing what they were doing in any of the other channels that they already had established. So I think that's quite interesting.

Speaker C: It's easier for them to convince new affiliates. Like, they've got a lot of established partners, but it's easier for them to convince new affiliates because of the awareness.

Speaker B: Um, all right, so let's do a quick rapid fun fire, which is where I throw you five questions and you guys give me your shit from the hip answer. So let's go. The one metric every program manager should be looking at before they're signing a media buying affiliate conversion rates.

Speaker A: That's. That's my answer. Um, that's my answer. Should I go quick? Is that the idea?

Speaker B: Very quick. Okay, next one for you, Martin. Your honest take is, is AI going to replace media buyers or make them significantly better at their jobs?

Speaker C: It won't replace. It will change their role. Media strategist, Media planner. More happy human beings. Not.

Speaker B: Yeah, okay. The biggest mistake you see affiliate programs or brands make when they go to scale media partnerships too fast.

Speaker C: Not looking up ltv, but focusing on vanity metrics.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I would say scaling relationships before they scale and build infrastructure.

Speaker B: Love it. Last one. If you could change anything or one thing about how affiliate programs think about media buying right now, what would that be?

Speaker A: We're not competitors. We can work together and achieve more together.

Speaker C: User acquisition instead of affiliate channel.

Speaker B: Love it. So stop. Stop putting a label on it and just think about acquisition As a whole,

Speaker A: no silosing, let's be together.

Speaker C: One beautiful word and a great conversation I had with one of the leading conference provide like conference themes. Why do they have affiliate in the name like Affiliate Leader Summit? And I told them no, you should rephrase them because for us, our affiliates is the wrong term. We are User Acquisition Leader Summit or traffic, because affiliates are not the only, or even maybe not the major traffic channel. And I was, I just came back from Asia from Sigma Asia and there's affiliates are very unknown networks and paid media are the key for them. So they're also, let's say, global differences, like regional differences around the world.

Speaker B: Well, there you go. I mean even that's changing, you know. So we know the Internet's changing here in Europe, but from around the world you're seeing lots of change as well. So I think that's, you know, kind of like a good news story to close this episode on is that yes, there is a lot of changes. Yes, you are going to need to test and you're going to have to reiterate and think about how you think about user acquisition position. And no, you don't need to worry about media buying cannibalizing anything else because as you've already explained in the case study that we shared, A 30% increase is nothing to be sniffed at. So, um, thank you so much for both being on this podcast with me today. It's been lovely having you on and really delving deep into how media buying is changing, um, the face of acquisition. Let's just leave it at that. So it's been a pleasure to have in here on this podcast with me.

Speaker A: Thank you, Leon. The, ah, pleasure was ours.

Speaker C: And uh, if anyone has a question or would like to discuss it, feel free to approach us on LinkedIn. We are pretty active. Let's have a chat. Maybe we are wrong in some perspectives, so feel free to challenge us.

Speaker B: Fabulous. Great to have you guys here. Thanks.

Speaker A: Thank you. Bye.

Speaker D: Uh, I'm spending so many hours at my desk and I'm not seeing results. What am I doing wrong? That's one of the smartest questions you can ask. Listen to the affiliate marketing podcast for a start and go to a few for all the support, optimizations and inspiration you'll ever need to scale your affiliate program to the stars. What's that website again? A fewverse media dot com.