Anastasiya Baravaya, Chief Executive Officer at Affilka, talks to SBC News regarding the major challenges currently facing the affiliate marketing ecosystem, the dangers associated with the rise of the black market, what lies ahead as the company plots further success and much more.
To begin, how would you assess the current landscape when it comes to affiliate marketing within the iGaming landscape?
The affiliate landscape in iGaming is becoming more performance-driven. Success is no longer measured by how much traffic you could drive. The focus is on acquiring players who deliver long-term value and remain engaged over time.
As a result, both operators and affiliates are placing greater emphasis on data, audience segmentation, and performance metrics that go beyond initial acquisition.
We’re also seeing stronger collaboration between operators and affiliates, with greater emphasis on transparency and trust. This is reflected in the growing popularity of hybrid deals, which help balance risk and create more sustainable partnerships for both sides.
At the same time, compliance is becoming a distinct competitive advantage for serious affiliates. Since they hold the keys to the audience, affiliates that can consistently meet high compliance standards are becoming preferred partners for leading operators.
Finally, technology continues to reshape space. AI is helping affiliates and operators improve efficiency, automate routine tasks, predict campaign performance and personalise content at scale.
At the same time, growing competition and changes in search ecosystems are driving diversification into new traffic sources beyond SEO-strategies – towards building player communities, interactive forums, creator-led streaming channels, and other owned media channels.
The rise of black market activities is a major talking point across many global jurisdictions, what role can industry stakeholders play to help stem this tide?
The rise of black-market activities is often a symptom of imbalance in the regulated markets. When legal operators face excessive taxation, high compliance costs, or operational restrictions, while players face limited choice, stricter limits, or less competitive offers, some activity inevitably migrates offshore.
The solution is not simply more enforcement. Regulators and industry stakeholders need ongoing dialogue to ensure that legal frameworks protect consumers while remaining commercially viable. Balanced taxation, practical compliance requirements, and competitive regulated offerings are all critical to reducing the appeal of unlicensed operators.
As a key acquisition channel, affiliates also play an important role. They can support regulated markets by adhering to local regulations, promoting responsible gambling, and focusing on long-term player value rather than short-term acquisition volumes.
After all, the most effective way to combat black-market activity is to ensure the regulated market remains the most attractive option for both players and operators.
How does Affilka differ from the numerous similar products that are on the market?
The core objective of any affiliate software is the same – effective affiliate management and non-stop traffic delivery. The actual effectiveness, though, boils down to the specific feature sets, architectural stability, and product flexibility.
For Affilka, this means providing an exceptionally robust, fault-tolerant infrastructure. Tracking regular clicks is the easy part, but tracking millions of redirects during peak live events without server latency? That’s where engineering limits are truly tested.
By running Affilka on a global, geo-distributed server network, our link redirection speeds are up to five times faster than centralised tracking models. Such setup prevents traffic drop-offs, which boosts conversion rates worldwide.
Another major factor is data freshness. While standard hourly or daily data updates are still common industry practices, our API-led approach allows operators to synchronise critical player activity data as frequently as every 5 to 15 minutes.
This level of processing speed and data accuracy gives brands control over their tracking operations, ensuring transparent and comprehensive reporting.
Ultimately, a lot of our edge comes down to customer-led engineering. We don’t sit in a room guessing what the market needs or chasing the next big, shiny feature. Our development roadmap is dictated by a continuous feedback loop with active operators.
By locking down nearly a third of every sprint strictly for user optimisation and maintenance, we ensure the platform stays smooth, intuitive, and perfectly aligned with daily operational needs
What key features do you possess that allows strong relationships to be built, and crucially sees clients increase revenue?
Beyond our advanced suite of affiliate management tools, the platform is equipped with highly sought-after features such as built-in payment processing, comprehensive reporting, media management, flexible commission plans, multiple affiliate tiers, S2S postbacks, custom dynamic tracking parameters, various access levels to the system, and interface customisation.
And that is just a fraction of what over 460 live brands utilise on our platform every single day, their testimonials continually reaffirm the strength of our solution.
However, our ultimate ‘killer feature’ is our dedicated service and the relationships we build with our clients. Affilka provides a dedicated Account Manager for every client with zero hour caps on monthly assistance and zero upfront fees for integration or setup.
After all, successful, revenue-driving partnerships are fundamentally rooted in confidence, reliability, and highly effective collaboration.
Could you talk us through the latest product updates that have been implemented, and what we could see moving forward with regards to this?
Affilka has officially achieved certified Google сlick tracker status. For operators running Google Ads campaigns, this certification decreases the risk of ad disapproval, accelerates campaign review, and guarantees traffic attribution accuracy.
To improve data security for expanding teams, we introduced hierarchy-based roles management. This feature lets general managers control data visibility based on their team’s organizational reporting structure.
In response to partner feedback, the new Formula Constructor has been released. This tool enables operators to design custom analytical metrics for their reports inside the platform.
Finally, our upgraded Sub-Affiliate Module introduces more flexibility for running complex multi-level affiliate programmes. The feature includes an advanced sub-affiliate report and customisable reward structures based on not only sub-affiliate earnings, but also sub-affiliate NGR with custom modifiers per brand.
These features, along with a multitude of other tools, empower our clients to seamlessly and efficiently manage their affiliate programs, generate highly customised reports, dive into deep analytics, and ultimately drive outstanding results.
Moving forward, we are fully committed to the continuous optimisation and evolution of our software, and we invite everyone to keep an eye on our official blog for upcoming releases.
