You're listening to the affiliate marketing podcast brought to you by AffIVeltmedia.com. The chapter and both of everything you need to know about running a successful affiliate program for your business. This is a podcast for digital and affiliate marketers, publishers, networks, agencies, and monitech providers who operate, support, or manage affiliate marketing programs around the globe. If you want to launch, scale, and grow a successful affiliate marketing program, you're in the right place. In this podcast, you'll learn how affiliate and partner marketing is constantly changing. And tune in to industry experts who are getting behind our mic to share tactical insights and practical knowledge to help your affiliate program grow. Here you'll discover what's new and trending in affiliate and performance marketing, how to run your affiliate program successfully and gain industry insights from experts and practitioners from around the globe. The truth is, you simply won't find this information anywhere else. Now here's your award-winning affiliate and performance marketing host, an industry veteran, your affiliate marketing guide, and the founder of AtiVote. Leanne Johnston.
SPEAKER_02Welcome to this week's affiliate marketing podcast with me, your host, Leanne Johnston. And today I'm really, really excited because I've been trying to get this man on my podcast for months, and he's finally here. So joining joining me today is Esther Dorot, the founder of Cell Expert, which is one of the gaming affiliate technical tools in the industry that I think are probably one of the most redvisions. So really excited to have you here, Esther. Thanks so much for joining us today.
SPEAKER_03Thank you, Leanne. It's it's a pleasure to be here.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, finally. I'm about to hunt you down. But um, before we get started, for people that don't know about CellExpert and don't know about who you are in the iGaming industry, can you give us a little bit of a backstory of how you entered the affiliate industry and really what prompted you to actually develop and build Cell Expert?
SPEAKER_03Sure, with pleasure. So I I think the the foundations of Celexpert are rooted in my distant past as a CTO of uh an Israeli company that was very much a pioneer in in performance marketing. Uh and at those times, which was the early noughties, I was able to solve uh real-world issues on a global scale. So basically creating uh a very large analytics solutions. Um from that, uh this kind of led me towards uh uh developing the concepts around analytics that in the very in the very short story uh ended up being CellExpert. So over time I realized that a lot of my analytics clients were using what I what I built for analytics to use affiliates, and uh uh I repurposed the tool to be a dedicated affiliate tool. Uh this was about 13, 14 years ago, something like that. So CellExpert is about 14 years old now. Yeah, we we grew in the financial services space, yeah, which was always uh uh it had a bit more um how will I say the the commission models and uh the attribution aspects were a little bit uh complicated, but that groomed us for to solve complex uh problems. Uh, there was also a very large emphasis on uh uh regulatory compliance, which also applies very well to the iGaming side. Uh about seven or eight years ago, we started working with iGaming clients, and over time our solution now I think is best in class. So we very much are tailored for the needs of the industry uh from an operational perspective, from uh a regulatory perspective. Uh and we keep we keep uh developing the product uh with the aim of being the best.
SPEAKER_02I like I like asking that question because people often have like really weird and wonderful ways of how they've entered into the affiliate space. And coming in via the data side is probably you know what's kind of led you to where you are today. Just understanding all of the data that comes in and making sure that the data is accurate, which is something that I know that CellExpert is incredibly um focused on in terms of you know uh accurate tracking, you know, detailed reporting to give customers that that element of um uh information that they need in order to spend money in the right places, which is is kind of it's core to any iGaming affiliate program because it is such a competitive market space. So, what are some of the biggest challenges, like seguing into that, um, challenges that you see in the affiliate uh marketing space in iGaming right now? Because you do have a really broad view of what's happening in the market. You work across multiple different verticals and also across multiple different geos. What are some of the biggest challenges that are facing your clients right now?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's it's very much a geo-dependent problem. I would agree. So every geo presents uh different different uh technological and operational problems. What you mentioned earlier, so accuracy of data, that's that's kind of foundational. And that's uh something that's been plaguing a lot of the operations. And uh unfortunately, mistakes in data are very costly. Um those get represented very quickly into uh real cash that's spent or distributed or to loss of trust with partners, which is also uh detrimental to the performance of the of the affiliate program. Um I would say the challenge there is a fundamental technological challenge across all of the iGaming world. So we see that um uh many departments are used to operating in a let's say not in a very data-driven method. So um we believe there's room for improvement in that. So that's something that we advocate for. Um also in the sense that um many affiliate programs are used to operating with affiliates in the dark, and that's also something that is that is shifting. So we see operators now that are uh choosing uh to radically change change this paradigm and expose, uh treat their their affiliates as partners and uh invite them to share uh to they share the information with them in order for them to optimize better. Uh so I see this as a very successful strategy because it allows it enables uh an open discussion about the performance.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And uh it provides for um uh stable and more uh longer longer lasting relationships. So uh and and we see the success of the clients that choose to take this path. Um another another challenge, which is also essentially a data-driven aspect, is about um data frequency. So many gaming operators uh still report to their partners uh on a daily basis, which in other markets is not acceptable. Um especially media focused affiliates, they they rely on uh on accurate real-time data in order to run uh campaigns, sometimes very high-spent campaigns. And uh not being able to report back to them can be can be detrimental to the performance of these affiliates. So having having a real-time-based solution uh is essentially a competitive advantage of the operators that choose to do this. So I mean there there is more, I can see other other challenges, like you know, regulatory ones, but foundationally these kind, these, these aspects I think are they're the ones that are the cross cross uh section, they're all of the all of the um uh geo silos and operations.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And do you think that people are becoming more transparent or brands are becoming more transparent with their operators or with their publishers now because of the recession? Like they need to actually be spending their money in all of the right places and at the right times. Do you think that's kind of spearheading that forward? Because it has been a topic that we've spoken about in gaming for a very long time, where data's always been siloed or hidden, or you know, there's never been that kind of level of transparency between brands and and publishers. So do you think that that's changing because of the kind of economy of the state that we're in as well?
SPEAKER_03I I think yeah, I'll I'll separate my answer to two. So there is uh a wave of attention towards uh uh performance marketing, and that's I think that's uh directly uh a result of the of the crisis. So whereas uh companies used to have uh let's say open bill marketing uh uh budgets were fueled by uh VC money, um they they don't anymore. And now every every marketing department in the world has now uh very strict targets, conversion performance targets. And um uh focusing their efforts now on performance marketing and uh is uh is the natural, how would I say it, is the the most reasonable uh choice for them to put their focus focus on. And we we we noticed this type of attention from SaaS companies and from other providers that were used to running only running their own internal campaigns, typically at the expense of low uh return on investment. Um so that's that as a as a foundation, I think that's true. Um I think the the the um the graduation of operators, of our gaming operators to be more transparent is basically going to be derived from the from the competition. So the more the more uh big operators join the transparency party and basically engage with the partners like that meaningfully, uh it will put the spotlight on the ones that don't and will eventually uh be the most uh dominant factor in convincing them to switch or to or to to open up. So there will be a point in time where a critical mass of operators will shift the default uh behavior, that sort of thing. But I think the trend is towards transparency.
SPEAKER_02Good. I hope that I see that in my lifetime because for the last 20 years it hasn't been there. But I mean, the other thing to talk about is you know, you've spoken about the data transparency, you've spoken about the cadence in terms of how quickly we need to report. But what are as a technology provider, where do you believe that tech should also support relationship management? Because our industry is still very much based around building relationships with partners.
SPEAKER_04Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02So, what are some of the things that you know you're you're building into the platform that can help um affiliate managers build those partnerships and actually segment out their partners properly so that they know how to handle them and give them the right tools and tactics to actually promote?
SPEAKER_03I mean, that's like I said, relationship. The foundation for for this business is trust. So trust is uh about reliability, reliability in technology, and about transparency in the sense that things so if uh if tracking fails, that's uh uh that's a crisis in in in in trust. Right? I would I would risk my I would risk my resources in order to promote your brand, and now something is failing at my expense, then we need to have a talk about it, or I have other other options. Um so reliability is key, and we put a lot of effort in Selexport in in uh operating uh a world-class infrastructure product that can sustain any scale. And uh we power we power hundreds hundreds of companies, not just in iGaming, uh publicly listed companies, uh uh vast amounts of traffic and information. And so this is uh this is that's that's uh a very important aspect of that. And it it will it goes back towards the transparency as well. So the more uh consistent you are in results, and the more I mean and the serious affiliates will always test your transparency. They will they will they will verify that what you're saying is true and they will check up on every metric to make sure that they're the right place before risking substantial resources, which is legitimate, it makes sense. So um the way for us to uh to allow you to nourish these uh these relationships is we allow you to control the level of transparency you have with the partner on an individual basis. And in CellExpert, you can be as transparent as you like to be uh with every individual partner, uh, down to disclosing very highly granulariza about the client's performance in order to support certain uh certain partners' uh operations, allowing them to optimize, um uh opening discussions about the deals. If something is not profitable, then it might it might make sense to expose expose the data and have uh uh have a discussion about what's the what's the right uh balance between uh between the affiliate affiliate cut and uh the operator cut. So these are things that I think are are driving the the trust.
SPEAKER_02And and on trust also comes security as well, because you know you're processing hundreds of you know different data points, you are you know probably managing multiple different geos, you've got teams that are coming in to manage different parts of your affiliate program, and that works both sides. It works on the operator side in terms of you know how do they segment their program and give different levels of um access to all of this data that's being housed in your platform, but also on the affiliate side, it's how safe is my data with you as a as a brand? You know, are you doing the due diligence to make sure that the tracking solution that you're using is keeping my data safe because they're running their businesses too? So I think it's it's it's the trust and the transparency, but it's also the the kind of robustness of the platform and the and the security features that the platform offers, which helps to start that partnership and and build that trust. So, what are some of the security features that sell experts you know got in place at the moment to actually because I'm sure that must be top of your priority list in your development queue? Um, you know, how how do you prioritize those things and and what do you prioritize in mind?
SPEAKER_03Every aspect of the iGaming software solution gets their security tested continuously uh by uh by players from all over the world. We're no exception to that. Um I mean we are we're generally uh so actually goes to my uh army career. I was a network security uh uh guy over there. So our system is designed uh around security, uh where a lot of all of our all of our uh resources are essentially isolated between clients, uh which already delivers a very high level of security. But on top of that, we implement enterprise grade uh solutions to be again state-of-the-art in terms of uh attack mitigation, DDoS protection. Um also in terms of account-based security, we uh continuously uh follow uh best practices uh to implement um uh account-based notification, the multi-factor authentication. Every aspect that we think is uh going to improve uh improve security, we will work on implementing it. Uh another very important component of what we do is that every every request in our network is documented. And that means that we have a very elaborate audit. It's hard to sneak in something in a way that's not going to be uh monitored on our side. So again, we've been doing this for for over 10 years. Uh it's been fire-proven by now.
SPEAKER_02And I and the reason why I wanted to point that out is because when clients are shopping for tools, sometimes they don't even ask about security. They don't even ask about you know, you know, service level agreements and the more operational side of the. They always just want to see how you know what the reports look like. But there's a lot more to think about when you're implementing a technology into your business. And also, one of the other things that I love about Cell Expert is that it doesn't only track affiliate, you can track your media, you can track your PPC, you can track everything in the one platform, and actually look at customer values across all of those channels and the touch points across all of those channels. The attribution metrics that you can pull out of that is is quite robust.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. Um, so in terms of security, uh, there is a shift though, I think the large companies these days. So when we work, and especially that uh on the on the financial side where there is a big data compliance aspect, yeah. Um all of the all of the large clients do inquire and run uh vendor assessment uh protocols to ensure that uh there is there are no um, let's say at least no obvious holes.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um uh serious companies, they they employ CISOs that uh you know we we sometimes we get handed over um hundreds of questions before we before we're we're on board it as a part of the process. And that's legitimate, you know, over time that's becoming uh there is there is uh higher exposure. Anyone you integrate with uh and integrate intimately with uh with this level of of data sharing uh needs to be vetted. I think that's that's uh that's uh uh uh advisable approach.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um what's what what you're talking about uh regarding the elasticity in terms of channels with Selexpert, that actually goes back to the roots of Selexpert as a uh a very strong analytics uh engine. That's uh that that's that's the foundation of the platform and the affiliate system was built on top of that. Uh and that's true, and a lot of our clients now are using Selexpert to track their PPC campaigns. And um the fact that we invest so much in integrating the software to build this uh analytics image from impression down to the granular uh player activities is not a trivial thing to achieve for an organization. So we we we work with companies that uh will employ hundreds of people but still have very uh fundamental reports running for the media campaigns. So this gives the um by utilizing select, but which we would integrate for for an affiliate platform, uh for your media campaigns, you can answer interesting questions like uh how many or how much NGR was generated by a keyword, or um how many uh chargebacks were done from an ad group, things like that. And um it's something that would, I mean, that CellExpert clients now get uh you know basically out of the box. It also, I mean, there is another aspect to it where because we allow you to run custom conversion events in CellExpert, this can be harnessed towards um uh PPC and display campaigns. So you can build optimization schemes that uh are targeting not just the basic conversion events like your uh FTD, uh, but uh further down the funnel, so targeting specific types of players, uh very, very cool uh features that you get uh to get uh value from uh very quickly. So if you already have a marketing campaign uh which delivers variable results in terms of the quality of clients that you're getting, you can calibrate it towards your targets uh and basically uh harness the optimization throughout all the ecosystem to work to work for your goals. So that's that's not trivial, and I think this is another main main advantage of using CellExpert.
SPEAKER_02Well, we're talking about outcomes-based marketing now in performance. So for those of you that are students of affiliate marketing, this is exactly what ASAP is talking about. It's actually tracking your outcomes based on whatever it is that you're pushing out into the Ethernet, but looking at it over time and then um incentivizing the affiliates accordingly as those outcomes are met. So it is important, I think you've just naturally raised the next point, which is to make sure that your tracking solution is actually moving with the times and getting ahead of the things that you're going to be needing in six months' time. So the development cycle needs to be quite robust as well to make sure that all of these new things are being brought into the actual software. So why do you think affiliate marketing has played such an important role in the iGaming industry? Because you've been around a long time, you've seen a lot of iterations, you've seen, you know, the close of the US, you've seen the increase in compliance and regulatory changes, and you did touch on that a little bit earlier. Why do you think affiliate and performance marketing is still such a huge part of this industry?
SPEAKER_03I think the fact that for many operators, um A lot of the channels were restricted by default. That kind of shifted the balance of power towards people that either can know how to operate uh marketing channels uh and towards uh content uh based affiliates that that basically control the SEO, the SEO uh value, the SEO traffic that comes. So this is this is one thing that this is one layer where I think iGaming specifically um uh has like such a focal point and why this is a fundamental uh department in every operation, maybe one of the first departments. Uh on top of it, I think there is another shift in why affiliate marketing in general will um is it's basically an externalization of the marketing profession. What I'm thinking about is like 20 years ago, uh any interaction with a publisher used to be a very personal type of relationship. You would approach a news website, you would have you would contact their marketing team, they would place your uh ad on their site, some something like that. It would be it would be a sales cycle, a very individual sales cycle. Over the years, we're basically now running in a commodified media world where it's dominated uh by people, and there is no real um uh or not necessarily uh an advantage to someone, any anyone who can approach the platform, anyone who can buy from Google, anyone who can buy from Meta has the same uh same tools. And for many, for many companies, even if they do have access to these media channels, when they are investing in um growing media buyers uh or building a marketing team in-house, they're basically paying these people's tuition for how to operate in their market. And there is nothing that prevents the same people from um at the moment where they realize the value that they generate for their for the organization, to basically uh switch over and become affiliates for the same industry and basically uh keep the margins for themselves. So over time um uh it makes more sense for organizations to actually buy the performance based on the uh on the player value, on the player value uh that uh that they expect uh instead of uh going through the cycle, which can be very, very costly. And I personally have seen uh marketing marketing personnel from from the just junior media buyer up to the CMO level make this move. So over time become uh become affiliates. Also, and also from a strategic perspective, if you uh are building a business plan, uh the volatility of a marketing campaign in terms of uh of return is so uh unpredictable that in many cases if you if you're building a business plan and you have a spend in mind, uh a performance-based spend is much more predictable. So for a starting company also to rely on it makes makes much more sense. Um and this is and this is even just uh from a credit perspective, if you run a revenue share campaign, you have basically running a risk-free marketing, okay? If you can if you can find the right partners. So for all of these reasons, I see uh uh the the trend towards affiliate marketing uh accelerate. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So I'm gonna put you on the spot a little bit now because if you had a guess from all the data that you see across all the industry, what percentage do you think affiliate marketing makes up of advertiser spend? Or brand spend? Like 40% space. Ooh, that's um because they average it out at about forty between 40 and 60 percent in some cases, depending on the lifecycle of the brand, like how mature the brand is. Do you think that's an accurate estimation?
SPEAKER_03Uh depending on the um yeah, on the geo and licensing. And I mean, I think there there is uh there's high variation. So the larger the brand will be and the more established probably it's gonna be towards the 40-50% mark. But the uh so I think the main uh for for so for younger brands or for dot-com operators, uh it will probably be the 80-90% mark.
SPEAKER_04Wow.
SPEAKER_03Um so yeah, yeah, I think so. We see we see operations that rely solely on on affiliate marketing but and still generate uh massive volumes. So this is not uh people can scale to to um to to exotic exotic uh let's say performance just with just with affiliates.
SPEAKER_02Well there you have it, guys. I mean you heard it from the horse's mouth. Affiliate marketing isn't slowing down in the eye gaming industry. What do you think the future of affiliate marketing looks like? I know you you spoke a little bit about regulation and that's what I think.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I I mean in in certain markets it is it is uh an issue. Um we see we see uh jurisdictions uh that impose liability on operators for the affiliate's actions. Uh to a certain extent it was kind of uh in the stars already because um operators could uh externalize all of the, let's say, all of the behaviors that they could not afford to do in-house, uh spam campaigns as a good example of that. Um but maybe other uh forbidden marketing uh activities. Uh so we see some jurisdictions that make it uh uh the operator's problem. And that means again, so now the trust also works the uh the other way around. When we agree on uh when we agree on an operation, will you will you um uh respect my uh my brand guidelines, my uh regulatory uh framework, etc. So that that is like that, and and now in the in the emerging uh US market, it's it's becoming a very heavy issue. So I think that's over there. I think it's kind of gone overboard to an extent where it's uh uh slowing the market uh down dramatically. It's a very hard uh uh barrier to entry there. Affiliates need to be licensed everywhere, so uh uh a level of control that uh makes it difficult for people to approach the market.
SPEAKER_02Well, the other thing as well is that it also reduces fraud. Like we still see fraud in affiliate programs, it's still creeping in. Um but when it is heavily regulated, like it is in the US, you know, you you definitely need to know who your affiliate is. There's no hidden entities or anything like that. So I think on the one hand it it slows the market down, but it also improves the quality perhaps that's going to be coming through.
SPEAKER_03I agree. I agree to a certain extent. It's just um it kind of excludes the um like the bedroom affiliate guys. So and we see very we see I think success in an affiliate program is uh is very much the so the most stable affiliate programs are the ones that have the uh high, I would say it's like the the big affiliate pool base but of small affiliates. So this means this means stability for the operation. If you're able to um uh sustainably work with a lot of small affiliates, it means less fluctuate fluctuation for you. But if you if your affiliate program relies on several massive sources, then they own you. Okay, and uh it's gonna be. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So if someone uh dominates 30-40% of your revenue, it's uh it's a problem, not necessarily an asset. So they can they can very easily uh squeeze you or have a massive impact on your business. So uh the fact that the small affiliates are now being excluded from this US market uh will mean that it's more consolidated, but I think maybe they like it like that in the States. They like big players on all on all on all avenues.
SPEAKER_02Time's gonna tell because eventually that will be saturated, and then what? Like it's it you're actually killing it before it even begins, and you're not allowing innovation to spurn, which is what's happened here in in Europe. You know, affiliates have become brands, they've become service providers, they've plugged gaps that operators couldn't themselves see to. And um, you know, I think that's good for the player, it's good for the for the customer to have a variety of choice of places where they can go and get support and help and information. Um because it's also um agnostic, you know, like if I tell you to do something because I'm telling you to do it, and somebody else tells you to do the same thing that I've told you to do, it kind of validates the purpose, and that's just human nature, you know. So okay, let's talk a little bit about emerging markets because I know you just got back from um the States, but you're also going to be going to Latin, and you've got a little bit of a uh you know, understanding of what's happening over there as well. And that's a big emerging market for a lot of iGaming clients and you know e-commerce clients too, for that matter. But what are you seeing as some of the emerging trends that are happening out there and and you know what advice can you give?
SPEAKER_03Fundamentally now, uh the Latin American market, the reason it's uh it's uh it looks like the blue ocean to to the rest of the world is that uh it's only uh only recently they've basically solved the processing issue. So the payments, the payments issue, the online payments was always uh um one of the biggest uh deterrence of working in these markets because it was very difficult to process any any payments. And now once that has been resolved, it's basically now uh it's opened a massive new landscape, Brazil, 300 million people right now with access to services that they did not have access to before. So um it's allowing a lot of people to uh run their playbook on uh on a new on a new territory and a massive one. So uh there is a bit of a gold rush there, uh local and international, a lot of eyes on the prize. Um and we see people that kind of that already are succeeding in in setting up things that are looking that they're looking very promising. Um I mean from our perspective, it's uh uh the the volumes there are. I mean, there was a there was a time where Africa was a very uh promising market. It still is, but uh it's in a different format.
SPEAKER_02Well, Africa needs to get itself organized. Um, you know, it's a bit of a I think Latin's gonna spearhead much further simply because there's just so much red tape to go through in all the different African regions. So I do think Latin is the new blue ocean. I think you coined a phrase there. Um so but you're heading out to um Sigma America shortly as well. So I'm probably gonna want to ask you to come back on this podcast and tell us a little bit more about what you learn out there and and what you see and give us an insight on what's happening in Latin.
SPEAKER_03Looking forward to to Sao Paulo next week.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_03Uh very intrigued, very intrigued by by the scene there. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Awesome. Well, listen, Asif, it's been great to have you on this podcast. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing some of these nuggets of wisdom. I think a lot of people will learn a lot of things from listening to this. And yeah, it's just been great to finally get you behind my mic.
SPEAKER_03Thank you very much. Thank you, Lianne, for having me. And uh yeah, we'll come back after Brazil and we'll update you.
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