“ We ’ re not frightened of the impact of AI , but we are monitoring the potential move away from Google and SEO affiliates ”
LEWIS CIVIN , PARTNERMATRIX INTELLIGENCE
taking market share from the biggest suppliers .
On the former : “ In-house affiliate software can be a solution in some cases , usually when you have limited needs ,” Khalatyan says . “ But when we are talking about potentially gamechanging affiliate programmes , then definitely you must use a professional affiliate software .
“ We work with hundreds of clients . We know and follow the trends . We have dedicated technical , market research and product teams which analyse the market , see all pressing challenges and needs , and we are always improving our software . In-house software can in some cases be even more expensive than using professional software . What we offer is [ beyond compare ].”
They frequently hear complaints from affiliates that in-house affiliate software “ often lacks a lot of necessary features ”, not something that can be laid at PartnerMatrix ’ s door . “ The user interface is unfamiliar and they don ’ t know how to use it ,” he says . “ That ’ s why , if you want to work with big affiliates , you need to use professional , thirdparty affiliate software .”
There are of course some big and fast-growing brands – like Bet365 or Pin-Up – among those using their own software . In most cases this is to keep the data on their side to utilise it later on their CRMs or other tools . Khalatyan insists this isn ’ t a problem : “ Thirdparty software like ours offers operators the excellent feature of being able to get data from our site via an API . We provide very flexible APIs , even custom APIs to our operators , so they can take the data from our site and use for their own purposes .”
PartnerMatrix ’ s experience of migrating data from in-house software to their own third-party software leads Khalatyan to observe : “… programmes reach a point when they can ’ t grow any more because they can ’ t attract affiliates due to not having proper software for that , and that ’ s why they moved to our software .”
AI and future proofing
As for the impact of emerging technologies on the PartnerMatrix business , Khalatyan had adopted a watching brief on artificial intelligence when we spoke last year . Twelve months on there is a greater realisation of the technology ’ s impact and potential impact .
Civin explains : “ While AI is going to help everyone , a lot of data companies might be worried about the impact an AI tool might have on their business . But in our case , the bulk of the value that we have is the volume of pages that we index from all of these affiliates .”
He acknowledges the assistance that AI provides but happily assuages any customer that there will always be a human interface . “ An AI-based tool can only analyse the data that it has ,” he explains . “ An AI tool on its own without our data is not of any concern because it does not have these hundreds of millions of pages scraped regularly .”
Civin goes further and clarifies what other technologies are coming . “ We ’ re not frightened of the impact of AI , but we are monitoring the potential move away from Google and SEO affiliates , whether towards streaming or these networks like Telegram or some other channel we aren ’ t yet aware of ,” he says . “ What we ’ re spending the vast majority of our R & D budget on is on keeping up with non-Google SEO traffic , which accounted for 90 % of the pie in the past and is becoming less and less .”
Embedding the dream
So , narratively , we move from less and less to more and more . PartnerMatrix is certainly becoming more and more . During our chat with Khalatyan 12 months ago , he outlined his vision for the future of PartnerMatrix as being the best affiliate software company in the world with no close competitors . It was a dream then , but dreams can be attained and PartnerMatrix has taken a decisive first step towards this by repositioning itself with a starkly differentiated product and USP .
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