The latest episode of iGaming Daily looked back on a scaled-down version of a panel on affiliate marketing from this year’s CasinoBeats Summit, titled ‘Is tech changing the way affiliates work?’.

John Wright, CTO and Co-Founder of StatsDrone, started by sharing his belief that the igaming industry is lacking behind others in terms of how it uses technology for affiliate marketing.

He said: “I like going to conferences on SEO, AI and the affiliate marketing space outside of igaming, and the conversations happening there are very different from what’s happening here. My take is that the industry has been so wealthy that everyone has the opinion that everything they do is amazing.

“I think it’s only a matter of time before other people come into the space and they’re going to come in with a hungrier attitude. If people here don’t look at the tech to advance and get to that next level, it’s going to be these other people that come in with this hungry attitude and maybe they’re going to be more tech-savvy.”

Head of Casino & Affiliates for White Label Casino, Sasha Boerma, agreed with the sentiment and added that from an operator perspective, she is surprised how much “we are having to teach the affiliate software provider of what they need to be developing to keep up”.

Given that this is the case, the panel then explored ways in which the igaming industry can catch up with other sectors.

Boerma emphasised the need for operators and affiliates to have “deeper conversations” and for affiliates to be included in talks before the launch of a new app or product.

Clinton Cutajar, CTO of Media Troopers, added: “We’re not having a lot of these conversations. It’s really about talking about it and going, what are the problems on both sides?

“There’s so many affiliate managers that don’t even understand what it’s like to be an affiliate. When you have affiliate managers like that it’s one of the bottlenecks of the industry where they’re the ones deciding what software to use and they’re trained with a sales-first mindset.”

Cutajar also spoke about how he believes the accessibility of affiliate marketing technology will evolve.

He said: “The more I get exposed to some of these larger companies and what they’ve built in their backends, if I was a small affiliate I’d be a little intimidated because I know what they have in their platforms.

“I think what might happen in the next year is that this tech is going to be available and affordable to affiliates. It’s going to be something that you can be intimidated about today, but, we’re all making this accessible so people don’t have to be saying ‘I give up, Better Collective owns everything’.”