Operators have had to adapt to these changing times, but so too have their affiliates. Some verticals are growing rapidly, while others have temporarily shrunken into a fraction of what they once were. Jonathan Edelshaim, General Manager at Natural Intelligence, joined our Becky Liggero Fontana to discuss how affiliates are managing in these COVID times.

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Even with the return of the Bundesliga and South Korean baseball, sports is not the money maker it once was for affiliates. “What we see is certain verticals that are basically dying because there’s zero interest, whether it’s in gaming, like sports betting, lack of events means pretty much, well I’m not going to say zero interest, but much lower interest,” Edelshaim said. “And then there’s some other vertical, some of the FinTech verticals are declining. And then on the other hand he have some stuff that is exploding, that is spiking. We know of the growing interesting for example in the world of poker, online poker that we’ve all experienced lately, and then of course the bingo and casino, but then some other things that people consume more when they’re at home work, like we’ve seen it with the VPN vertical or mail deliveries in specifically that we operate in the U.S.

The way affiliates decide to spend their money has also had to change, as regulators are taking a harder look at some spaces, while others see much better opportunities for the moment. “So I would say it’s obviously becoming a bit more in focus for the companies, for the operators, for the bookies, affiliate marketing as a channel, for various reasons,” he said. “First of some of them need to generate more revenues online because they have to shut down their offline, the land-based facilities. So they have to focus more and more budgets, and generate more revenues online. And then they need to make sure, even more nowadays, that those affiliate marketing, affiliate marketers, are compliant, are working according to all regulations and are not missing out on anything, because the regulators are even more, you know focused and forcing them to do things by the book.”