The Affiliate Marketing Podcast - Marc Wood (1account) talks about age verification and compliance tools.

In the latest episode of The Affiliate Marketing Podcast, Lee-Ann Johnstone speaks to Marc Wood - Sales and Marketing Director for 1account. 

The two discuss the following: 

• How 1account's age verification process works; 
• Why the product came about in the first place; 
• How 1account is helping affiliates to remain an important part of the iGaming ecosystem, despite tightening regulations in the UK and beyond... 

And much more. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Hi, and welcome to the Affiliate Insider podcast with me, Leanne Johnson. This is a podcast for digital and affiliate marketers in the iGaming industry. Listen up as I explore the latest digital and affiliate marketing trends and give you the insider's group on what's occurring in affiliate marketing. Join us as we explore affiliate strategies, host expert interviews with leading affiliates and top entrepreneurs, and discuss the latest affiliates and digital marketing trends. If you want to stay at the cutting edge of affiliate marketing, you're in the right place. Join me for this week's episode and let's get started. Today I have a very, very special guest on, which is Mark Wood, the Sales and Marketing Director from One Account. Hi Mark, thanks very much for joining us today.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

Good afternoon, Leanne. Very pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Thank you very much. We've got some really interesting things to talk about today, so I'm going to kick off for a few for listeners that haven't heard of One Account before. Can you tell us a little bit about the business and what your vision is right now?

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Yeah, absolutely. One account was was set up in 2018, so we're fairly new new business into the sector, and it was primarily set up to address the Digital Economy Act of 2017, which for those that don't know was put in place for by the UK, which was really to have a mechanism to be able to stop underage people being able to get access to content or online websites that really they shouldn't be looking at. And it was a huge piece of legislation that was supposed to be going through. For some reason or another, best known to uh whoever was in power at the time, they decided they didn't execute that. And there was two or three different companies that had basically built some technology to be able to provide the age verification capability for people that were uh in in let's call it uh age-restricted uh online uh environments to be able to help them to be able to do that. I mean, how the hell do you verify somebody who's over the age of 18 in an online environment? Um so there was multiple um uh companies that had done that, and then the government changed their mind. So, in relation to um one account, uh we then looked at, you know, okay, we've got this technology, we've got an ability to be able to validate people's age and identity, and then it became obvious that there was more than just one sector that needs to be able to verify who's on the other end of the bit of string effectively, and and are they you know, the the right this isn't four-year-old that's trying to access something that they should be looking at, and you know, there's various different sectors, and of course, I mean where we ended up with is is that obviously gambling, um, online gambling, vaping, alcohol products in the US who have sort of firearms, not that we need to worry about that over here, um, and sort of latterly the whole emergence of the CBD products that are out there. So, there's a number of different sectors where people that are selling either products or content or games online need to be able to prove that they actually know who they're dealing with.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

That also extends to free-to-play games here in the UK right now, so it's quite a broad segment.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

Yeah, so so particularly what happened was that um last year when the UK Gambling Commission decided to amend their uh operator rules, if you like, that meant that free-to-play games were then put into the same category. So the fact that someone's just playing an online slot on a free-to-play basis got included into the requirements for the operators to make sure that they weren't having uh you know four-year-olds playing Batman slots or something. So, as of last year, that very much brought the whole affiliate market into play here and really created a bit of a problem, which was that you know, uh, in order to be able to do this, that meant the affiliates who previously didn't have to worry about that, now had to worry about it. And you know, with the free-to-play games being a uh well on the casino side anyway, free-to-play games being a you know a major part of the affiliate offering in the UK, it became a real problem because it started, not started, if they wanted to stay in that market, they were going to have to spend a huge amount of money to be able to stay in that marketplace, which which just maybe untenable. So most affiliates that got caught by this and just said, you know, enough is enough. All right, no, this doesn't make sense, we'll go elsewhere.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

Okay, so the the vision of the business was actually just to allow that regulation to and and that um process of verifying people's age to um take place and also to help assist affiliates and I guess operators as well, who service both sides of the coin with age verification. So talk to me a little bit about how this tool actually physically works in terms of managing the customer verification on an affiliate site once it gets implemented. How does the process actually work for affiliates?

SPEAKER_00 5:53

Okay, so the process is really simple. I mean, we we provide a piece of code effectively that gets inserted into the affiliate's website, and this code creates a pop-up so that when somebody clicks on I'd like to play, let's say Batman SWAT, it effectively says you need to be age verified to be able to do this, to be able to comply with the regulations. And so please fill in, give us your name, your date of birth, your address, and your phone number. Okay, that's that's it from on the player side of the equation. Um, then in the background, we just we we then run off and we take that data and we check it against uh not currently nine different online databases to be able to validate that that information is true and correct. And if we if we get a um if we get a hit on those databases and say, yep, it's definitely Mark Wood, he's definitely over the age of 18. Not that he'd really, if you could see me, you wouldn't need to worry about that, but you know I am. Um so we would then go back to the affiliate's website and say, Yep, good to go.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

Okay. So and that takes a matter of like seconds in the back. I mean, I know it's a bit, you know, we're talking about it step by step, but actually to the player, it's you know, seconds.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

It's milliseconds, it's it's not even it's not even a second, it's just like once. I mean, it's true that you know that the player does have to provide some information, um, which is in the in the consumer journey, if you like, is is something that they never used to have to um be able to do. But you know, if you want to open them in the UK market, it's what they need to do. And if they want to play it, it's not a huge amount of data, sort of name, address, date birth, phone number, boot.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

So the user experience is pretty good because it's not um, you know, yes, it is an extra step, but it's an extra step that enables that that content to actually be shown to the user. And as you said, it takes milliseconds. So from an affiliate's perspective, it's not gonna like impede the user's um engagement on their website. It's really simple to implement.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

No, and it and it's it's not it's not like okay, well, you know, take a selfie, give me a copy of your passport, or you know, I mean, there's some really painful things that are out there that basically wreck the user experience and will cause massive drop-offs. But this is as the minimal amount of information that we need to be able to verify and go back to the affiliate and say, Yep, you're good to go.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

So, compliance obviously becoming much harder in regulated markets like the UK, and I also want to mention a little bit the US as well. Where do you think affiliates can optimize their businesses better in using your products? So, what is the you know, what's the key call to action for them to actually take action and engage with you?

SPEAKER_00 8:45

Well, there's there's there's a I think there's a number of things actually, it's not just just one thing. I mean, the first thing is that anybody, any affiliate that was driving traffic from the the UK and that was pulled out, it basically opens that market back up at no cost.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Um, so you know, in terms of revenue generation, if you like, now that's a you know, if the UK market is attractive for your sector, you're into the whole sort of casino space from an affiliate perspective, that market is now opened up and you haven't got this painful um liability of you know having to pay for I don't know, anywhere between 35 pence or cents, it doesn't really matter which fund currency you use, to a dollar or a pound to be able to make sure that you know Markwood's over the age of 18. Um so that's that's one thing that it basically reopens the UK market, and the uh because of the way that this works as well, there's an additional benefit back to the uh the affiliate, which is, I mean, some of this is is to do with you know how the affiliate decides they they would actually want to use this. Because if you're actually providing to the gaming operator a pre-qualified, pre-identified player that's been through the identification process, that's got some value to it. Because the first step that the gaming operator will do when once you click through and then try and set up an account to play for money as opposed to pay for it's free, is they will have to do an identity check to say, you know, is who is this? Is Mark Wood over the age of 18? You know, are they who they say they are? Are they you know in the right country, all this kind of stuff? So there's there's there's a real benefit for the quality of the traffic that the affiliate puts through to the operator, which uh I'm not an affiliate, I w I wish I was actually. Um, but if I was, I'd I'd be able to say to the operator, look, the quality of the traffic that we're giving you is verified. It's verified. So you don't have to go and spend the money to go and check that person. We've already done it, and we will provide the information to the affiliate, and the affiliate can then also provide that to the operator as well, which is interesting.

SPEAKER_01 11:09

Now, so there's a data capture because I was going to ask about that um a little bit and just to explain on from how it gets implemented. Affiliates aren't necessarily capturing this customer data on their website, and there's a whole GDPR piece that goes along with data capture, but this is actually sitting in your back end and it's verified by your company, which is regulated and you know approved and all of that to manage this GDPR data. So I know affiliates are going to ask about that because it's a massive headache for them.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

So yeah, no, so the affiliates will be GDPR, GDPR isolated. We take that that liability with our ISO accreditation and GDPR compliance and everything else. So the affiliate doesn't have to worry about that stuff. Um and the other the other thing that goes along with this is that you know when an affiliate provides traffic to uh a gaming operator, there's there's always going to be some element of that where they say, Oh, well, I know you sent us a million, you sent us a million uh players, but you know what, we're only gonna pay you for 800,000 of them because 20% of them, we couldn't identify them or whatever, and they never went through and they never passed the process. But in this context, the affiliate will know that that's there's no excuse there to say we know these people are gonna get through the identity verification check, we know how many of them there are. So if we send you 800,000, it might be a bit of a large number to use. But if we send you 800,000, we won't pay me for 800,000, right? Because there's no argument to say there's dropout on that because the job's already been done.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

Yeah, it's like an extra level of verification in terms of what's coming into your website, what's going on to another website across all of your kind of merchant programs that you promote as an affiliate, and it's also giving you that peace of mind to know that you know your stats are working correctly because often there's a disconnect between what's trapped in the affiliate platform and what's actually tracked on the affiliate's own sort of site analytics. So I think that's a really key point that you're bringing up here now, not just the fact that the GDPR is taken care of, but the fact that there's another layer of transparency almost that gets added into their reporting, which is great. Now I know you signed a deal with Slots calendar, um, I think it was a week or two ago, so that's a pretty big uh website. And one of the things that I wanted to just mention on the podcast is that the CEO of uh Voiral Stan he said um you know that they've reached an astonishing 100% success rate of players being verified in the first few weeks of operation with you. So talk to us about how that collaboration came into being and and how that um you know campaign has actually gone on both ends on your side and and on theirs. Clearly, from his side it's it's been pretty good. But you know, is the integration process smooth? How you know how has it impacted? You know, talk me through that.

SPEAKER_00 14:05

Yeah, sure. So um, I mean slots calendar were were proactively looking for a way of being able to uh age verify their players anyway. So they were proactively out there in the market, and there's there's not that many um solutions, if you like, that are that are in the market. And they can they came across it. So our initial conversation was really around you know, well, what do we do? Uh what do we do that's different? Um, what what's our commercial model? How does it work? And very quickly, because I mean obviously with uh how our commercial mode, which I'm sure you're gonna grill me on in the bit, yeah, which is we we provide this, we provide this service to affiliates at no cost. Um so we very quickly um got to a point to say, well, let's test it then. And uh in a matter of weeks, um went from having an initial conversation to effectively the the solution being live and being tested. I mean, I was slightly worried about the 100% number, you know. I mean it's cool to be able to say it's physically a setf that's out there in the news and the press. So yeah, yeah, no, yeah, I know, but I mean the reality is that there were there will be underage people that are trying to do this. So um setting the bar at 100% is is is wicked, and that's actually what's happened over the course of the last month or so. Yeah, um, but I I wouldn't want to try and uh fool anybody to say there will be people that you'd have to say, no, this person isn't over the age of 18, and that that's what you're trying to do. But no, very, very high success rates in that, which means we're not turning away, we're not turning away people unnecessarily, and yeah, it's gone very, very well.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

Awesome. Um and the big question for me is that I mean, you just mentioned the word free, and usually when I hear the word free, I'm thinking, why what's the catch? And I'm sure everybody else on this podcast is going to be asking the same question. So let's explore that a little bit and explain the business vision and and you know where you actually want to take this product and why you are giving it to the affiliate community for free.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

Yeah, sure. So I mean, obviously, it's like uh it does sound a bit too good to be true, then why would why would anyone be giving something away for free? Um, I I think if you understand what we're trying to do as one account, which is we are on a mission to create um a forgive the term, but it's it's within high-risk sectors where you know that either regulated or you have to be able to validate that somebody is at the right age to be able to buy your product because it's not exclusively for gambling, yeah. Um to create a high-risk sector payment solution that that enables people that if they want to buy vaping products or alcohol products or they want to gamble, they can use this payment mechanism to be able to do that. And you know, consumer behavior is kind of weird that um you know some people want to keep what they're doing in their their hobbies or their interest in a particular bucket. Um, most payment solutions have been designed and built for you know just generic use, and you know, you're in the gaming sector, we're in the gaming sector, right? We have some like weird attributes, then payments is a perennial problem in that it doesn't quite work properly for uh you know the get the gaming sector, for example, in the payment space where you have people that uh issue credit cards, for example, like Citigank, who just blanket ban the use of a credit one of their cards for online gaming. I mean, anywhere in the world, you know. So payments is a massive issue in the in these higher sectors. So our goal is to create a one-account payment product that enables people that want to use uh or want to pay or buy or use or gamble within those specific sectors, and it's tailored for them. Now, part of that, in order for us to be able to do that, we have to build up a material uh consumer database of uh people, of consumers, and in order to be able to make our payment product work, we have to invest in making sure that we can identify and go through the whole KYC identity verification process ourselves to do that. So if you like, um this uh identity verification uh no cost model is is is really exhaust fumes of what we're trying to build and what we're trying to achieve. And fortunately, we've got some some fantastic investors behind us that understand this, and it's a bit like Facebook, you know, for four or five years. What they were trying to do was to build up a consumer base and everything else, and then and then eventually, after four or five years, they were able to monetize it. So, our our goal here is to be able to create a high-risk payment solution, which we monetize and we will charge for, obviously. It will, I won't say too much more about that because this it's an interesting space. Um, but also enable the consumers then that once they have been validated by one account, they don't have to go through this painful process again of saying what's your name, address, yeah, bank details, or or whatever it is, and to be able to give the consumer so the benefits of the consumer is to be able to have a single one-click sign-on. So, and of course, the the main reason is that we have an ability to be able to help the affiliates within the online gaming ecosystem to be able to take advantage of what we're doing in building our payment solution, and you know, it's it it benefits everybody, it benefits us, it benefits the affiliates, it benefits the operators, and it benefits the consumers. So, um, in in the round, you know, we've we've got a a long-term vision in terms of our our business model, which is good. Um, we don't need to worry about next week or next month, and you know, it's it's almost became a bit of a no-brainer once it became obvious that you know the affiliate marketplace was and you know, we'll probably we may get onto it more in terms of sort of the legislation and where where what's likely to happen down the road, but this will probably just get worse. I mean, worse in terms of the regulation and what what onus is put on to affiliates and what they have to do to be able to do what they do.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

And that is going to, you know, that regulation, whilst it's incredibly important because we do we do want to act responsibly as an industry, it does make it very difficult for affiliate entrepreneurs to build a business, to build a successful business when their margins are being cut, when they are unable to you know advertise in certain ways, when they have to age verify. So for me, I think the the key takeaway from this conversation is that whilst you are giving this product away for free, it's actually for the benefit of all and because you want to help affiliates to remain a part of this ecosystem, because they are a very integral part of you know how customers find operators at this point. You know, affiliate marketing makes up you know anything between 30 and 60 percent of operator revenues, depending on how reliant they are on this channel. So you providing this service actually helps affiliate entrepreneurs to still keep grabbing the kind of breadcrumbs on the table, I would imagine, um, in markets where they would normally have turned away and had to like refocus their efforts. So to me, I think. That's a good news story. I mean, I'm really, really keen to see you know other affiliates sign up and share their experiences. I'd love to get you back on the podcast again with a couple of your clients. Um, Scott Catalog, uh, sorry, Scott's calendar being one of them. And um get so confused, there's so many affiliates in our ecosystem. Um, but you know, I mean, it sounds like this is a really great product, and it sounds like you know, people are are picking it up and using it to their advantage to go and and build their revenues in markets that they would normally have walked away from um because it's difficult. Um I know you said the technical integration is quite easy. Um, it works with WordPress, right? I just want to verify that it's pretty easy to implement, it's just a piece of code that goes on the website.

SPEAKER_00 22:41

Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. I mean, you know, within other sectors we have uh various different plugins for shopping carts and things, but they're not they're not they're not relevant in the in the gaming space. But yeah, it's it's a simple piece of code, it just gets popped in. Um it's I was gonna say I'm I'm not a technical person, I would say it's a five-minute job, but then some programmer would already tell me it's like a 10-minute job or something. But no, it's really serious, it's just an extra piece of code that goes into the website, pops up the iframe, pop-up window, whatever you want to call it, and uh it's you know, like the slots kind of it it was very, very fast. I mean, no massive rebuilding of anything, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:22

Um, you know, just kind of music to people's ears because you know, web development's expensive.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

So yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 23:29

One of the things that I want to end off on our podcast today is just how do you see the future of affiliate marketing changing and what innovations can you see taking place in the i gaming industry as a result of COVID over the longer term?

SPEAKER_00 23:41

Uh okay, I think that's that's that's two questions. Um I I think the the direction of travel for the affiliate world is increased regulatory involvement.

SPEAKER_01 23:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

Um, I and I think it's inevitable. Um, as normal, the UK GC tend to lead the way for them in the UK. Um, but I'm pretty sure that uh most of the other sort of white label regulators will start heading down that road.

SPEAKER_01 24:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:15

Um, I think I I really don't know whether it gets to the point of affiliates having to be licensed per se. Um it's probably 50-50 as to whether that happens, but you know, more increased regulatory scrutiny for affiliates is kind of inevitable, I think. And if if you look at um if you look at the US market, you mentioned the US market earlier on, that you know that that is you know each each state's got their own different view and everything else, but generally speaking, everybody in the food chain in the US that is into the licensing of online gambling wants everybody in the food chain to have some kind of either registration or license or credibility. Um, and you know, so I I think that that's inevitable that the the affiliate marketplace not having had to worry too much about you know the regulatory side of stuff up into the last sort of year or so, it's it's it's gonna it's gonna it's gonna be an ever-present and more uh time-consuming uh component of running an affiliate business. So I think I think that's inevitable from my perspective.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

Um I think the accountability stakes have increased. You know, it's not just about setting up a website and sending a few thousand customers here, there, and everywhere not being responsible and just being the middleman. I think affiliate businesses have to now take accountability for the management, the running of their you know systems, their data. It's becoming you know a really serious industry, um, which is why they are still such a very important part of our ecosystem in terms of you know customer acquisition.

SPEAKER_00 26:04

Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 26:05

What about the result of COVID longer term? How have you seen the industry around you change from your um well?

SPEAKER_00 26:12

I mean, uh aside from I mean, I I I've not seen anything startlingly new from an innovation perspective come out of the COVID situation so far.

SPEAKER_01 26:25

Um I think because a lot of people have just been pausing, they haven't actually been pivoting, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 26:32

Well, yeah, I mean I you know, obviously the the one thing that's affected the affiliate space is that you know, if you're a sports book affiliate driving sportsbook traffic, then you have definitely got to get and expand the horizons into um you know virtual sports or or whatever, and and that's a more of a strategic what does an affiliate do to in terms of business planning and strategy. Um but then on the other hand, I mean it it's it's kind of weird, I suppose, that generally speaking, that our our industry um has has by and large probably benefited from it. It sounds terrible, but you know, lots of people are now trying to say, hey, what are we gonna do? Let's go and play some poker, let's go and play some games, let's go and do this, that, and the other. So I suppose that our industry is probably one of the few industries that if if there is you know uh a silver lining to a cloud, that you know, we're we're pretty lucky, really.

SPEAKER_01 27:33

And I would imagine that I mean this product would work really well for the esports industry as well.

SPEAKER_00 27:38

Totally.

SPEAKER_01 27:39

If you need to verify players for you know CSGO and you know the more adult uh content, I'm I'm pretty sure this is going to be an amazing tool for that industry too. So thank you for sharing the story of one account with me today and for explaining how the product works in great detail. Um, how do affiliates that are interested in this product get hold of you guys?

SPEAKER_00 28:00

Well, they they can they can uh they could they could go straight to our website, which is one oneaccount number one account.net. Yeah, or they could just they could drop me a line which is marked marc.wood at oneaccount.net. Drop me an email and we'll have a conversation. I was gonna say, I was gonna say we'll buy you a beer, but we can't even do that these days. I'll buy your virtual beer and have a chat. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 28:27

The other thing I want to tell our listeners is that one account is currently working with affiliate insider to provide a year-long series on everything you need to know about age verification, compliance, and regulation in the markets that this tool will be valuable in. So do come along to our website and follow this journey, follow the story, make sure that you know what you need to do and how to implement um you know the changes as we go through the next year. So thank you very much for joining me on this podcast today and for sharing One Account's vision for our industry and the services and support that you're providing.

SPEAKER_00 28:59

Thanks, Lianne. Pleasure.