iGB Affiliate 65 Oct/Nov | Page 39

FEATURE DON’T DO IT! WHY SKY BET’S AFFILIATE PROGRAMME CLOSURE IS A BIG MISTAKE By closing its affiliate programme ostensibly due to the compliance risks posed by a small minority of its affiliates, Sky Bet is losing out on an enormous opportunity, according to Oshi’s Nick Garner I WANT TO FOLLOW UP a post I wrote just after the Sky Bet affiliate closure announcement was made. In it, I talked about how affiliate marketing is essentially organic search by proxy, ie an operator can have only so much reach on organic search and beyond that point they need representatives who can rank where operators can’t. I also touched on the whole subject of social proof and how web users are far more influenced by affiliates than operators might think. Today, I’m going to dig into: ● ● more of the background of Sky Bet’s affiliate programme closure ● ● the research and arguments for why Google is more influential than any other information source ● ● some of the data showing the consequences of all their actions ● ● some conclusions, which I hope you agree with The Sky Bet affiliate programme closure If you were a Sky Bet affiliate, you’ve probably done your research and you’ll know the following, but for the others… While researching this article, I came across a piece from 12 September by legal regulatory specialist Gemma Boore in which she talks about the growing regulatory pressures now beginning to affect affiliates (see tinyurl.com/g-boore). She talks about the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and how it introduces new obligations that allow individuals to have their data erased from any website they choose. In other words, somebody could go on to your affiliate website and if there’s any personally identifiable information retained by it, such as their email address, that person has the right to ask you to erase that information. Penalties for non-compliance can be as much as €20 million or 4% of turnover. The catch with the affiliate ecosystem is that there is very little corporate accountability. In other words, many affiliates are individuals working away quietly and it would be very hard to make them accountable to GDPR. And then you have the UK Gambling Commission’s £300,000 fine issued against BGO because of nine misleading advertisements on its website and on 14 different affiliate websites between February and October 2016. If you want to get into the details visit tinyurl.com/bgo-fine, where you will find a very good post describing the specific social responsibility codes that the GC referenced when fining BGO. Upshot: if you have mailing lists or other personally identifiable data where a theoretical third party can specifically identify an individual, in theory and in practice you have to be able to delete that information on request. Moreover, operators are effectively liable for affiliate compliance. If you’re using misleading content, for example a fake news page about ‘Mary, who won a fortune playing slots on [name of gambling site]’, it would fall under the social responsibility guidelines that the GC issued and both you and the operator could get into trouble. Reality check: it’s the operator, not you, who will end up facing the wrath of the GC. Misinformation taken further Taking this idea a little further, as an affiliate if you review an operator and you give them a 9.9 out of 10 rating, because they have given you money to be on top of your list, isn’t that as misleading as a fake news page? After all, the review is fake and misleading, because you’re only saying [operator X] is good because they’ve paid you a placement fee… Now you see why Sky Bet and many other operators are very nervous about affiliates. Reality check If an affiliate writes up a review of an operator and it’s plausible, how would a regulator know whether you’re telling the truth or not? The only way you’re going to get caught out is if the affiliate programme gets audited and there are records of placement fees with affiliates and a very high correlation with extremely positive reviews… iGB Affiliate Issue 65 OCT/NOV 2017 35