Welcome to the Affiliate Insider Affiliate Marketing Podcast. And today I'm super excited to have somebody who I've known for a very long time and who I've respected for a very long time, Ian Sims, the founder of Wrightlander and an industry expert in affiliate marketing. And I am actually going to use that word because you have been an ex-affiliate and now you are running an affiliate marketing tech business. And we're going to talk about all sorts of interesting things today. So welcome, Ian, onto the podcast. It's a pleasure for me to have you as my guest today. How are you doing?
SPEAKER_00Very good, thanks, Lee. Thank you very much for having me on.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I mean, I think this has been a long time coming because we've known each other for so long in this industry. And what I want to do before we get started, talking about some very important topics about affiliate marketing and managing affiliate programs today is I want you to tell us a little bit about Wright Lander, tell us a little bit about your history. My favorite question of all, which is how did you land up in affiliate marketing? And then we can go into some of the deeper, more interesting topics that we're going to talk about today. So give us the story from point A to today.
SPEAKER_00Okay, but as quickly as possible. Some of it's really boring because I worked for Barclays Bank of Fidelity Investments back in the day. But it's but essentially essentially I was um I was a programmer, a self-taught programmer sort of back in the sort of uh 90s. I taught myself out of programme and set up websites and set up a web development agency in 1995, which I subsequently sold my share in 2004, having discovered a little link on a lab brook site that said affiliates and clicking it, wondering what the hell it meant, basically. And uh realizing that this sounded quite good fun. So I set that up as a hobby site and it started to do quite well quite quickly. So that was my transition from sort of web development background into affiliate background, but obviously being a programmer, the fun bit for me was always developing new things. So I built an affiliate network. Cool, when was it? Uh 2004 through to 2016 is when I sold it.
SPEAKER_04Wow, is it that long ago?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. 12 years, 12 years of affiliate, and then a couple of years kind of out developing right and uh which was really designed to be a landing page monitor um for affiliates to to keep me interested in going to conferences and having some fun, basically. It wasn't supposed to be a big business. But while I was doing it, the uh UKGC launched an initiative um in the UK and and uh do you uh Jumba Sarafina at uh Income Access and Sarah Robertson? I remember having a conversation with them in Amsterdam. It must have been around about 2017 middle, and they said, Yeah, compliance is a big up-and-coming thing. So could your tool kind of do something with that? So I looked at it and thought, yeah, absolutely it could. So we kind of analyzed what was required. And we it was a bit it was a little bit kind of finger in the air because at that stage everyone's like, compliance, like, uh-oh. What is it? How does it work?
SPEAKER_04Are we going to get into the nuts and thoughts of that today?
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Yeah, but we, you know, a bit of ground had been carved out in that niche with the finance industry. So the UKGC were kind of following a bit of a path that the finance industry had sort of fought that sort of tracked down. And it's very interesting to see how affiliates in the finance industry have been once upon a time a little bit like gambling affiliates, but not Wild West necessarily, but you were quite open to abuse and quite easy to make money. And they kind of stamped down on the number of affiliates that could do that properly. So, of course, finance was leading the way. So, yeah, really I adapted the tool to kind of look at how this might impact the industry and how potentially compliance is going to be very important, but ultimately could end up taking a lot of time and resources away from marketing. So the the the idea right then was always to kind of try and provide a tool that would save people copious amounts of time of time in doing compliance but also improving the accuracy.
SPEAKER_04Okay. So on the back of a napkin, as they say, a random conversation leads into a tool that becomes a really needing product in our industry right now. I want to get into the kind of key issues of compliance because most affiliate managers that I speak to, they think compliance is doing a quick check on the website and making sure that it's okay and then approving them to their program. But actually it's it goes a lot deeper and it's actually different for every different industry that you work in. So I want to kind of talk a little bit about that and and and talk about what is compliance, first of all, and then how do partners ensure that they're working with their affiliates, partners, influencers, and all these different people that make up our ecosystem now within the right sort of brand guidelines. So maybe you can touch on the different sectors individually. So you started talking about finance, like let's talk about the finance industry and what does compliance mean for a finance affiliate program?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, of course. I mean, a lot of compliance is really just common sense. And I think I think one of the big things you do as an affiliate is you're so focused on marketing and selling that you don't often step back and look at what you're creating from a consumer's perspective. You know, as consumers ourselves, when we look at something, Glad Bert on telly or something on the website, it's really quick and really easy to see that you're being sold to. And that can be, you know, off-putting for a lot of people. And that's I think why the whole influencer sphere has started to sort of grow and get bigger, because people are a bit fed up with the direct sales route and they want to kind of listen to people that have been there, seen that, done that. I mean, influencing is a whole new sphere, which we'll talk about, I'm sure, in a little bit more.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But the fight the finance sector did blaze the way, and people learned very quickly in the finance sector what they could and couldn't do. And as a result of that, you ended up with this kind of bigger, more stable affiliates that applied that level of common sense being the ones that shone through. And now we're seeing it in gambling as well. You know, when you look around, there's a lot of MA and gambling, obviously, and a lot of people buying up networks in the gambling industry, and it's following a very, very similar path where you've got a lot less affiliates, but a lot more conscious affiliates.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. And so let's talk about the nitty-gritty of compliance. So it's it's terms and conditions, right? It's disclaimers, and you know, in in especially in the retail industry and in places like the states, where there are, you know, really clear rules of how affiliates need to promote brands, what messaging they need to be telling consumers about, you know, looking around what are the negative associations, even imagery in some instances, like it is in the gaming, in the gaming space. Obviously, this is a tool that right that you've built that actually helps to automate this process and and monitor this process. But how important is it that programs and brands need to be getting this stuff right? Like what are the repercussions if they're getting it wrong?
SPEAKER_00Well, it does vary. Manual checks are really difficult. There's only so much you can achieve, and accuracy isn't always that great because a lot of stuff, you know, is revealed on clicks of buttons and movement between pages and stuff. So the advantage of a software tool is obviously, you know, Right Lender's case, it can do millions of pages of scanning a month in different sectors and be very accurate in what it finds. The downside to that is you can end up with quite a lot of data you weren't expecting, and it's a process that needs to be followed in order to decide how you prioritize what's important and what's not.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00But that process is something with a start point and a kind of end point where, you know, after a few months you get to a really succinct set of data that means something. I I think it's also fair to say that people have different interpretations of you know what makes something compliant or rather non-compliant in different verticals. So while you've got guidelines in finance, guidelines in gaming, guidelines in e-commerce and retail, and as I said before, a lot is common sense. A lot of the time it is down to kind of personal decision as to whether something is deliberately deceptive or whether it's misleading or whether it's accidental. And it's not always that straightforward.
SPEAKER_04And that's in the messaging, but it's also actually carried forward into the deal structures that you're negotiating with with affiliates. Now, you and I have been around a long time and we know where the industry has come from, where it was you can do a deal and say you're gonna be in this position with an affiliate, but then actually, you know, halfway through the month they swap you, they swap you out for another brand. I mean, we've heard it all, we've seen it all. You know, it's a kind of like a bigger piece. It's not just, as you said, about the terms and conditions and about making sure that the right offer is in the right place, but even down to like how many clicks it takes from an affiliate site to, you know, a purchase. Even the, you know, in the gaming industry, we've got regulations around that here in the UK. But does Rightlander really look at all of those like touch points and things and can it can the tool actually help affiliates or affiliate managers to automate this process and become more accurate, which would then help their legal teams to be happier about working with third-party referrals?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there are um different ways that you can approach that. So yeah, traffic and click stats, et cetera, can be a little bit more difficult and a bit more challenging to track in a compliance environment because you're not tracing the consumer. But there are sort of certain areas of fraud that can be traced backwards, if you like, to identify sources and give kind of risk-based scenarios with certain affiliates. But I it's an interesting point in terms of affiliates are having to adapt and quite often they're having to make quite tough decisions on whether they tow the line within regulations and you know effectively might limit their opportunity with the traffic. But on the other hand, they might get more quality traffic that way, or whether they actually sort of cross the boundaries a little bit and bend the rules a bit and try and get that balance. And an operator, when they're taking an affiliate on board, probably wants to know what sort of affiliate they're taking on before they start investing time and indeed taking on a risk that they don't want to take on. And that's something that you know a tool like Rightland would would you know really help when we have a product that specifically focuses on the point at which an affiliate signs up, either to a network or once they're in that network to a brand, or if they're with an agency to the agency that can quickly scan historic content to see whether those issues already exist, whether there's you know references to things you might not like, whether it's pornography, gambling, you know, profanities, hate speech, all that sort of stuff, which is fully customizable, obviously.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, you're right. You don't want to invest time in an affiliate that's going to bring you risk, but on the other hand, you know, some of those affiliates if treated right and the right relationships are in place can be very rewarding.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So it's a tool that prevents, but it's also a tool that enables, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it has to be in this day and age. Compliance is appeal, you know, there's two departments in within an organization that could handle marketing compliance. One is obviously the compliance department and the other one's obviously the marketing department. There's a little bit of a conflict of interest if your compliance responsibilities are within the affiliate management team. You know, bearing in mind what we've just talked about, gray areas and stuff, if you've got incentivized affiliate managers dealing with affiliates to delivering lots of traffic, and yet that traffic is, you know, the messaging around bringing that traffic in is sort of misleading or unethical in some way, shape, or form. The brand has to make a decision as to whether they want the affiliate staff accountable for that, and they have to work out how to do that. A lot of companies do do that, and it it does work well, but it does require some thought.
SPEAKER_04So you recently announced some PR that you had partnered with a leading affiliate network, which is affiliate window or AWIN as they're known now. And I want to say congratulations to that because I think it's a fantastic move to get you into the kind of e-commerce space by linking in with technical partners. What are the benefits for the programs in this network to actually use your tool and what are the key areas that they can use right landed to improve performance results? Like what was the thought process behind actually joining with AWIN and bringing the platform to the publishers and brands that are in the AWIN network?
SPEAKER_00I think the simple word is scaling. So with a level of compulsion, when you're a network and you've got brands on board and you're providing services, you want to be able to sort of say that the affiliates and publishers they're going to be working with are doing things the right way. And there are two ways that can be handled. You can either set software off to do its job and present those results for the for the brand to sift through, or that a lot of the larger networks will have teams working with, you know, or four specific brands and handling those responsibilities in-house. So the sort of key elements that need to be done, you know, are obviously discovering traffic sources and understanding where the offers are being promoted across affiliate sites and other channels, you know, like on email or in places like Telegram or social media video sites. That's obviously very important. And most compliance tools will you know have the ability to scan those as well. And then when you find that, quite often you need to monitor it. So you found it, great. But actually, you know, that needs to be then a regular eye needs to be kept on whether that offer is still on the page, whether the terms and conditions that you expect to be with it are correct, whether the messaging is still within the boundaries of compliance. That's pretty important. But there's also some good marketing benefits there as well, because you get to learn, you know, across a large comparison site, for example, you start to get to learn where your products and where your brands are being promoted and where maybe they could be promoted based on the presence of suitable content or or competitors. All those sorts of things can be gleaned from this type of data.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. And I think we forget to look at that as well, because it's not just about identifying the problem, it's about actually resolving the problem and then educating so the problem doesn't happen again. And all of those things take time and they take affiliate managers away from going out and doing relationship management and commercial management, which you yourself as an affiliate know is incredibly important. There needs to be that close connection between the brands that you're working with and the account managers that are helping you to actually deliver this revenue. So let's talk about some of the issues and misconceptions that you typically hear clients talking about in compliance and regulation and monitoring and managing this piece within the affiliate program. And what are some of the best ways that you can recommend brands or affiliate managers that might be listening to this podcast that they can actually start to tackle these misconceptions or issues, both internally within their companies and also externally with their partners?
SPEAKER_00I mean, I think the first thing that's really important is to have a role within the organization that has some sort of scheduled accountability for looking after components issues. It doesn't normally take a lot, but you need someone within a team that is responsible for making sure that affiliate components is being done at the very least, managed, even if they're not doing it themselves.
SPEAKER_04And it shouldn't be an afterthought, right? Because sometimes it is a bit of an afterthought, especially in re- areas that aren't as heavy regulated, like finance and gaming. It's sort of like, oh, we've launched an affiliate program, but hey, nobody's actually checking compliance. And you know, what have these partners done that have signed up six months ago? Is anybody actually looking at them again unless they're active and sending sales? So it should really be a dedicated position.
SPEAKER_00Agreed. It should, it should, absolutely, it should. And I think, again, going back to the whole angle of marketing and compliance, you glean a lot of information from analyzing this data that can be used in more than just one way. So whereas people think of it as, oh, we're just checking that they're being compliant, what you learn from that is a lot more valuable in terms of understanding which affiliates present you with the most risk and also which affiliates can present you with the most opportunity as well.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So it depends on your approach, really. Some companies probably don't necessarily have the right mindset to get the most out of it. But we found, for example, within the gaming industry, which is where we kind of carved out our niche, quite a few of our clients take the data and give them and they pass it on to marketing teams once they've been through the compliance issues, who then use it to say, Oh, actually, you know, we've got some opportunities we're missing out on here. So yeah, there's it's definitely a role that requires a certain degree of scrutiny and intelligence to get the most out of it. But you get two benefits from you get the marketing benefit, but you also get eventually to a place where you know you can trust your affiliate base to be doing the right thing, providing, of course, that you're helping them to understand what they're doing wrong when they're doing something wrong.
SPEAKER_04Because that is a it's a key thing. I mean, regulation is changing constantly all the time in different sectors, different markets. And that can actually sometimes be a problem for affiliates to keep up with. And it's not that they're not wanting to be compliant, it's actually that they're just, you know, they're busy running their business and they're not specifically looking at compliance. So I guess on the flip side, whilst there needs to be an affiliate manager, you know, responsible for program compliance and making sure that everything is working as it should, on the affiliate side, somebody within their organization needs to be, you know, keeping up to date with industry trends, with new regulation and making sure that they keep learning what is necessary to remain compliant. So I guess that uh this is where you can take the data that your tool is bringing in and actually show if there's an education piece that needs to happen, which I think is a good thing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and this drives innovation as well. Because you know, when you're forced to do something a different way, you know, historically people find a way of doing it. They don't just pack up and go, oh, well, I can't do that anymore. I mean, some do, but they're not going to last very long. The majority of people will find a way to work, and that's what drives innovation in industries when you when you're presented with some sort of barrier. So from that point of view, it's good. I think one of the issues historically with compliance is that a lot of the regulators issue guidelines rather than hard and fast rules. Maybe you get a little bit more of that in the finance sector than you do in other sectors, and that obviously, you know, from advertising standards authorities around the world, there are certain things that you have to do. You know, the hash ad stuff on social, the disclaimers, and the in America, you know, you can't have endorsements and testimonials on financial products. There are some very hard and fast rules. But ultimately, one of the things affiliates have probably struggled with in a lot of industries is understanding what they're supposed to do because they get different messages from different brands and operators. So, yes, I think there is an argument that says there should be a role within the affiliate organization to fully understand that. But again, you know, that that can be very useful to everyone because you want your traffic to be good quality traffic. At the end of the day, it benefits everyone right down the line, from the consumer right through to the brand. If someone is fully transparent all the way through and they know what's going on through the whole process, from the moment they see a marketing message right the way through to signing up and buying a product or a service from a brand, if they know what they're getting. In fact, I'd go that a step further and say what you really would want to be doing is managing expectations in a way where at each step of the journey, those expectations are not only met but exceeded. I always found as an affiliate in gambling that I I didn't used to put bonus information up on the site for two reasons. Firstly, it was a pain to keep updating, and secondly, I wasn't particularly uh agreeable with the ethics behind applying to someone's greed just to get them as a consumer. I didn't think that was particularly good for from any marketing angle in particular.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And what that ultimately led to was the fact that those people that did like bonuses would read my content, find other reasons they wanted to go there, and when they got there, fine, they also got a bonus and their expectations immediately went up. So that was their mindset. I think that's the art of marketing, is to get someone interested in your product with the minimum possible reason to do so and then drive that up as you go through the process.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, totally agree with that. So I want to talk a little bit about pre-screening because not many affiliate programs pre-screen partners and still are logged into some networks and see that you know the auto approval is just switched to on. And that is risky because, you know, in the beginning you want to, you know, catch all, enable all, but you know, when you get to like a thousand affiliates in your in your program, it becomes more difficult to do maintenance and management of compliance and ensuring that messaging is being done right. But what are some of the other reasons why it's important to pre-screen partners before they're onboarded into your program? And how does your tool actually help with this process? So, you know, things like negative connotations, you know, now we we've got the war in the Ukraine content that's going out that may impact your brand. How does the tool actually help with that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, the war in Ukraine thing's interesting because there are brands out there that have specifically said they don't want to be associated with any content that's talking about that because it could be misinformation or position their brand on one side of the fence or the other. So it extends well beyond the war in Ukraine. It can be obviously that can be divisive content in it of any nature. But the I think, yeah, the interesting thing, I'm amazed it hasn't been done much before if we want to. So I know that there are manual checks made on affiliate websites from my history. But those manual checks are relatively, you know, going to the homepage, check everything looks roughly all right, check a couple of pages down, yes, that looks fine. But you can have affiliates that, for example, have specific views they've posted in blog posts.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Or they can have user-generated content which isn't properly moderated. Or indeed they could have guest articles, or they could be using third-party content from ad platforms which they don't fully understand. I mean, we we found some some amazing stuff coming out on on big newspaper sites from platforms like Taboolah that you wouldn't want anywhere near your brand.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00You know, and and and yet it's happening, you know, it's all over the place.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So to have that kind of quick check of, you know, 100, 200, 300, whatever it is, pages of content from a tool at the point at which an affiliate signs up gives you an immediate risk profile and can save you a lot of that grow down the line. And it doesn't happen a lot. You know, you could throw from looking at stats previously, you know, we've got one company that throws in every time a domain signs up, an affiliate signs up to their network, the domain or domains they put in are sent directly into Write Bender automatically. We scan from the home page down for, in that particular instance, 100 pages, but that's customizable. And that information's back in the network within normally around about four to five minutes, and it gives a profile of whether there's any extremism, hate speech, or any gambling, pornographic content, swearing, that type of thing. But actually, in their instance, they've also asked us to look for topic modeling and competitor brands as well to give the merchant a little bit more of a view as to whether that site is working in the niche that they want them to. So the affiliate network then either chooses to accept or not accept that affiliate based on their own conditions. And then when that affiliate goes to sign up brands, the same information is presented to the brand. So they can see very, very quickly, you know, there's five pages with swearing on it, two pages that talk about this particular area vertical. So it can be very, very quick and very valuable.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, absolutely. And it's is the after-effect of of what this data gives you as well. Because whilst and most e-commerce retail programs that are working with networks, they trust in the fact that the publisher team on the network side is doing this due diligence for them and that any affiliate that is available to them in the network is a legitimate affiliate. But it also, you know, that's a catch-all. Like those publisher teams aren't approving affiliates based on your particular program. So that's why I thought it was quite innovative that A Wynn has partnered with you because they're obviously dedicated to making sure that their publisher teams are, you know, aware of the partners that they're bringing on board and and the traffic sources that they're allowing into the network for their clients to use.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean there's another thing there as well, which is you know, you find this with PPC, because we do a lot of PPC monitoring for brand bidding and black cat stuff. And you quite often find a similar problem here where affiliates will sign up with one thing, and then once it's all approved and in, other stuff starts to appear. And that's something that that doesn't happen very often in the affiliate site space, but quite can happen. Once an affiliate site comes into Wright Landed through our screen product, we monitor it every single month for that data. We don't just say we've done it once, there you go, it's fine. It's revisited every month and that data is refreshed. So you've kind of got this ongoing check going on.
SPEAKER_04Which is great. Okay, so I want to talk a little bit about guidelines. So compliance. Like if you're new to compliance, you don't maybe have a dedicated compliance team. What are some of the basic things that you need to get in place within your program that will help you to manage this space until you can get a you know a qualified compliance person on board that can look at it a little bit more deeply? One thing is find the right tools, obviously. But are there any other sort of like you know guidelines that you can recommend? So, you know, best practices, for example. Obviously, you'll program terms and conditions, but they don't necessarily lend itself only to compliance. That's just the rules of actually engaging. What are some of the other things that brands can do to ensure that they're stepping off on the right foot?
SPEAKER_00I think the first thing is to understand, so for example, clients working with us, we'd have a conversation with them up front about what they consider to be important. And then obviously we can use our knowledge of how many clients work to sort of make suggestions as to what they should be looking for. But the the main point of that is that the person who is responsible for this is totally clear on what they consider to be compliant and non-compliant, and that those guidelines are written down and passed on to affiliates. I think affiliates need to know that being non-compliant doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be cut off, but there needs to be a significant penalty if they continue to be non-compliant, having beam warning. That's really important. We have clients, for example, that automate campaign suspension when specific issues come in. So if we're setting up half a dozen reports looking for six different things, I mean there's one great example in the gambling space, and there's probably one in the finance space as well. So the gambling one is a certain element of people promoting offers to self-excluded players, those who signed up to GamStop or Spellpaus in Sweden, and they're deliberately targeting those players, saying, Okay, you've signed up to self-exclude, but we know a place where you can get round this. That's a massive, massive no-no, as you can imagine. So when they're communicating with affiliates, that program is very, very clear to say if you do this, there is no second chance. You know, you cannot be seen to be doing that. And the same probably applies a little bit, maybe not quite as strictly, but certainly along those lines in finance when it comes to loans and credit, paying off debts and that type of thing, which they're very strict on. And obviously, there's the no social media thing in the UK as well. So those things, again, could be seen as very high priority issues where the message needs to be really clear to the affiliate. If we find it, we'll ask you to remove it. You have this time to remove it, and if you don't, then you know that campaign stays suspended until such a time as you do, or we cut you off from the program. So the message needs to be very clear, but on the other hand, it doesn't need to be over-aggressive. You know, I as an affiliate myself, I was approached by a number of programs that have very, very aggressive balanced policies.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_00To the point where you thought, I can't actually always necessarily control that. And if you're gonna stop my revenue and cut me off from the program overnight without giving me a chance to rectify something, I'm not sure I want to be working with you. So there needs to be that sort of team mentality.
SPEAKER_04Absolutely. And the thing is, is that I think compliance is also very much something that is unique to every brand. Like you can have guidelines, you can have best practice, you can have, you know, what you think is logical for you, but there is no one size fits all situation, which is why it's a consultative process.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it is. And it's one that gets easier once you get into it because you you start to understand what you're seeing, you start to deal with the issues. You know, systems like Wright Land can remember what decisions you take so when they come across them again, they don't have to keep showing them to you over and over again. So it is a process that initially always requires a little bit more upfront to understand and get to grips with it. But you know, not like I said earlier, after a few months, you're generally in a much stronger position where you don't need to invest that much time. And the beauty of obviously tools and systems is that it's keeping an audit trail all the time of what it's finding and how you're dealing with it. So when you do get a regulator come to you or a standards authority come to you with an issue, at least you can demonstrate that you've actually been taking affiliate components into mind for the last you know year, two years, where it happens to be. And that does quite often buy you quite a lot of kudos, even if it doesn't always get you out of a fine. It, you know, in some instances it will all we've seen audits, for example, with the UKGC where they've gone into our client and said, What do you do about affiliate components? They've wheeled out some of our data and actions in the and the UKGC have gone, that's great, fantastic. And they moved on to the next. So yeah, there are benefits.
SPEAKER_04It's kind of like GDPR. You need to have it in place, you need to have your policies in place, you need to have your spokesperson that's managing it in place. And and and it's about due diligence and it's about doing good business.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely, 100%. It needn't be a block to things, it can be used to advantage and it can be managed. It just sometimes is a bit daunting.
SPEAKER_04Well, and also it's a specialist field, so it's actually it's something that maybe brands need to think it's not an afterthought. It's not something that we just lump into the affiliate account manager's box because it's one extra thing that they need to be looking at, but actually we create a specialist team that actually looks at this stuff across the board. Okay, so I want to talk a little bit about where you see the future of affiliate marketing because I know you've seen where it's come from, and I want to understand, you know, what do you think is gonna happen as we move towards the metaverse? Are there gonna be massive changes in regulation around, you know, age gating, visual representations, success, endorsements, opinionated promotions, content curators, as as we said, we were going to talk about influencers. Where do you think things are headed with digital and and you know, helping brands to remain compliant as all of these different partnerships come into the ecosystem that we work in?
SPEAKER_00I think what's really, really interesting going back to 2004 when I started and now looking at the present day is how things are quite cyclical and platforms and mechanisms of delivery are what drives innovation. But if you look, when we first started, you know, you could put up pretty much a banner file and make money from it, and you could say pretty much anything you wanted. This brand's amazing, I always buy my stuff in here, it's incredible, you know, and and you'd say whatever you wanted to say, and no one cared as long as you were delivering traffic. Then we kind of got into the spiral of compliance and pushing it out. And now what's happened is the whole social media, the metaverse, and social media platforms have given rise to influencers and a new kind of voice and a new way of connecting with people. You know, when when you and I, or certainly when I was growing up, most of my friends I met in the pub, and I got to pick and choose my friends face to face based on similarities, sense of humour, all the sort of things that go with meeting people face to face. So if if one of my friends had recommended something, chances are I'd listen to it. If someone had walked into that pub I'd never met before and said some recommended something, I probably wouldn't have given to who it's probably forgotten about it, had a beer and carried on. The influence of the universe and the metaverse is a lot there's a lot more connections with people you don't necessarily know, properly know. And I think what this is going to lead to is a lot more scrutiny from regulators about how people are interacting with people and what messaging they're putting across. I mean, we already see it, obviously that's already started, but I think it will get stricter and stricter, particularly when it comes to age gating and content that you know shouldn't necessarily influence people under a certain age. Because a lot of the, you know, that there are obviously rules and conditions you can set when you're setting up profiles um and working in the metaverse. That doesn't necessarily always mean that you're not going to pick up a section of underage or or minors, if you want, as fans, or even by passing your page. And I think my personal opinion is regulation is going to become really strict around what you can say and what you can promote if you have any kind of opening to a minor audience.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I mean it it is kind of scary how much you can publish for free with very little effort and nobody's really monitoring. I mean, we're we're relying on Twitter and Facebook and you know, TikTok to actually monitor what is and isn't compliant. And how do they do that for millions and millions of people? So for me, I think I want to see some sort of best practice and regulation coming to the fore where, you know, there needs to be GDPR behind a social profile that's created. And if it's a business, the business has to be registered and there needs to be a you know an owner of that platform and not just creating multiple accounts or you know, using bots or whatever the case may be. I mean, there's a lot of stuff out there that's that's really a little bit concerning.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there is. For me personally, what's more concerning is that you're you're being offered a lot of opinion.
SPEAKER_04Yes.
SPEAKER_00And it's not necessarily by people that have any authority, it's just opinion. And that can sway someone's idea of what they should and shouldn't buy just because you know they're famous or because they were on television or something like that. So that sort of area I think if it if it follows what I've seen over the last 15 years, that will become harder and harder to do. And the influencer scene and the metaverse will morph a little bit. Term influencer will, in my opinion, probably won't last that long because just the fact that you know you're influencing someone won't necessarily be seen in a good light by by regulators. So I think it's a good idea.
SPEAKER_04Independent content curator or something like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, content, yeah, exactly. That that's the most lot more logical term. And I think as that happens, my gut feel is that you'll start to see more data-driven and factual ways of affiliate and marketing activity. Like we have in you know in the gambling sphere over the years. A lot of opinion has been removed because it's just too dangerous and too risky, and it's been replaced by some really fantastic, innovative, data-driven products and apps that kind of make that much more fun, actually, and much less misleading.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so what's the one thing that you'd like to see us change to do better in years to come as we move affiliate marketing more towards partnerships and outcomes-based delivery? Because I think we all agree that the term even affiliate is outdated now. Influencer doesn't really fit the bill anymore. But what what what what do you think is the one thing that you'd like to see the industry change for the better going forward?
SPEAKER_00I mean, the the way I look at it top down is that we're all salespeople. At the end of the day, we're all here to try and sell something, whether you're an affiliate, influencer, publisher, brand, you know, you've got a remit, that's your job. And I think what what would benefit the industry a whole is everyone sees themselves as part of the same team. So if you're working with a brand and you've got publishers, you know, you're all one team basically. And you shouldn't necessarily be fighting against each other for you know better commissions and better this and worse that. You should all be working off the same hymn sheet and driving to the same goal. I don't think there's as much of that historically as I would like to see. I think the industry could benefit from that. One thing I love about the influencer seat is that people are putting their faces out there and they're associating themselves. So they're taking it, they're being accountable for their actions, which as affiliates in the past we never had to do. You could launch a website or a social page or whatever, and you know, no one really had to know who you were. And I think that really lends itself to proper relationships between individuals and companies and brands. And I think that forms the foundation for this kind of team ethic. Um, so I think there's there's a quite a bright future in that if it can be if it can be managed properly, and influencers and social media partners and publishers understand that what they say to a consumer isn't misleading or isn't sensationalist or appealing to someone who could you know easily afford an addiction. That level of sort of ethical marking needs to be in play right way through the whole chain. I think when you get there, then you end up with okay, it's a bit of a utopia, but you end up with a very happy customer, a very happy publisher, and a very happy brand. And that ultimately has to be the goal of what regulator is trying to get to, which is a customer that doesn't feel they've been misled. They bought a product they wanted to buy and they understand what they bought and they've got a good product and a good service.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's what it says on the tin. I mean, I think that the key thing that I'm really attracted to with, you know, influencers and independent content curators, whatever it is that you want to call them, is the fact that they have to be authentic authentic authentic because their name is on that post. So, you know, it needs to be I think, I think, and and you actually mentioned this when we spoke about getting on the podcast, is you want to see affiliates adopt a consumer mindset rather than a brand-led mindset because affiliates need to plug that gap between when a client is looking for something or when a customer is searching for something or is ready to buy something, they're in that buyer awareness journey funnel and they need to be adding value in that funnel. Otherwise, what's the point of working with them?
SPEAKER_00And you mentioned a really, really important word in there, which is authentic, which gives me a real problem because particularly in the influencer sphere, you you look at a number of people that are promoting on these metaverse on platforms, social platforms, and you just have to look at them to know they're not 100% authentic. They've had you know stuff done, or they've had they're le they appear to be leading lives that perhaps they're not leading. I think all that sort of stuff is going to be intensely scrutinized. You know, you don't want youngsters changing their appearance because their favourite person has changed their appearance or feeling that they don't fit in because they don't look a certain way.
SPEAKER_04They don't earn enough money or they can't travel to the places that other people are traveling to.
SPEAKER_00Exactly, exactly. This is the really dangerous part, in my opinion, about what we're facing with the new breed of authentic social media operatives. I I think there's people's opinions are getting skewed, they're being directed to change their looks and appearance and the way they live to suit what other people think they should be doing. And I think that has to change. It has to change. You can't see any regulator being comfortable with that.
SPEAKER_04And I think a lot of the consumer mindset is changing too, because people are kind of savvy now. You know, maybe five years ago what you saw on the social media, you believed. But it's kind of like, you know, the sun here in the UK. You can't believe the sensational headlines that are often put out on the newspapers, and you kind of dig a little bit deeper and you start getting a little bit savvy to it. And I think we're we're kind of already heading there. So, you know, picking the partners that you work with, maybe maybe it's not the huge brand ambassador that you want to be working with, but actually the nano influencer that has an engaged audience, a community that follows them, that trusts them. You know, a little bit like how the internet was 15 years ago. You know, those SEO affiliates that built trust, they were consistent with the content that they put out. They were consistent with how they dealt with their customers. The guys that are the really big brands now, you know, they've spent decades, you know, providing really good customer support. And that's what makes them valuable as an affiliate in your program.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, totally agree. And I think the nanoinfluence, uh there's a lot of actually a lot of companies that look for the affiliates that are up and coming and publishers that haven't yet reached the top for more than one reason. And one of those is obviously finance, because if you go to a top influencer or a top affiliate, they're going to charge big bucks. Whereas if you've got someone that's on the up and you can strike a deal with them early. We we've got a tool actually in our armory called Engage, which was initially designed to help people find new affiliates and find opportunities with existing affiliates on the website. And we we're a compliance company, so we've built it into Write Lender. And at the moment it's only operating in certain verticals. But what's really interesting is we've got clients on there that aren't really interested in finding the affiliates that are top of the search results. They're looking for the affiliates that are kind of in the range of sort of 50 to 100, but actually a year ago were more in the sort of 100 to 200 range. So they're they're up and coming. And that's probably similar in the metaverse where you kind of you would like someone that maybe has a few thousand likes, but hopefully they're going to be a few hundred thousand likes in a couple of years. And by that stage, you'll have struck up a really good relationship and have a contract in place with them. And as you said, with the with the big influences, I think even today, Molly Mae Haig got done again, didn't she, by the ASA for a pretty sort of thing post. And you know, that becomes huge news because of who she is. Whereas a nano influencer, you'd never see that on BBC website like you would have to be. Exactly. Whereas you know, a pretty little thing of now being dragged out on the front page of the BBC again today, which is the last thing they need right now. So yeah, yeah, I agree. There's there's definitely mileage in the nano influencers if you've got the ability and the knowledge to be able to really tap into that market.
SPEAKER_04Well, the other thing as well is that most nano influencers have a much better reach. I mean, I know on my own profiles, if I post something, I can get you know viral within an hour or two if it's if it's the right kind of content, obviously, that people are engaging with. But you know, I've spent years trying to build that and and figure out what do people want to hear from me about. And generally it's affiliate marketing, anything that I'm doing, anything that I'm teaching, anything that I'm learning. And that's the authenticity behind it. I'm certainly no beauty. I mean, we're we're on a podcast right now, but my face wasn't made for video people, you know. But authentic content is what sells. So it's about understanding who your partners are and about making the right choices at the start of your journey and making sure that the partners that you are, you know, bringing into your program understand how to act compliantly and want to build a long-term relationship with you rather than just to make a quick buck.
SPEAKER_00And some some of them are will turn out to be kind of ambassadors to your brand without you even realizing it. And I know there are certain areas of sort of certain verticals where you've got to be really careful who your brand ambassadors are, not just because of the vertical, but because of regulations. You know, in gambling, for example, you can't use celebrity to endorse products in a number of situations, and that will no doubt become more popular. Now, when we talked earlier about how people change their looks and appearance, I can see a time when you know you won't be able to necessarily use someone under a certain age who've done that type of thing. That that there's some common sense and logic in that. Um may not happen, but you know, I wouldn't if I was betting on it. I'd be saying that some somewhere along the line of regulators and say you can't do that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, absolutely. Well, Ian, it has been my pleasure to have you on this podcast today to talk about compliance, which is an uber important subject in my mind for affiliate managers to focus on in their program. Thank you for sharing your story. Thank you for sharing the years of experience. Thank you for explaining exactly what Rightlander is and does. It's just been my pleasure to have you on here today.
SPEAKER_00Thank you very much. I don't get invited to many dinner parties anymore since I did compliance. It's lovely to be able to talk about it on podcasts like this.
SPEAKER_04I'll make sure you come to our next party. We've got an open invite. Look forward to seeing you soon. And thank you so much for being here with me today.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Lee.
SPEAKER_03And that's a wrap for this week's Affiliate Insider Affiliate Marketing Podcast. If you're loving what we're putting down in this series, head on over to Apple iTunes and give us a five-star rating and subscribe to our podcast channel so you never miss another insightful episode. Tune in next week for more digital marketing insights and traffic driving tips, tricks, and strategies to keep your digital marketing fresh and your affiliate program driving infinite failed.
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