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Affiliate Monitor Fake news
legacy media organisation entirely on their own or with the help of a specialist partner .”
ALWAYS LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE OF LIFE
To counter the pessimism over the fate of what had previously been a major plank of the listed affiliates ’ armoury , both Gillespie and Søgaard were keen to pressure those on their respective calls that while their various partnership agreements were sure to be negatively affected , the upside was that their owned-and-operated sites would be comparative winners in terms of both traffic and search results positioning .
“ These changes are a bigger headwind for our partners than they are for us ,” said Gillespie . “ We do expect to receive more traffic directly to our own specialist brands like Gambling . com , RotoWire . com and Bookies . com , and we can already see signs of this shift . With a higher proportion of traffic flowing directly to our owned and operated assets and lower feeds to pay out to our media partners , net effect on EBITDA of these changes will be limited . Revenue , however , will be directly affected .”
Søgaard at Better Collective had similar sentiments : “ An additional consequence of the update has been improved rankings towards some of the proprietary sports media owned by us resulting in increased traffic ,” he said .
“ The amount of content that has fallen within the parameters of Google ’ s new policy is greater than anyone would have expected ”
CHARLES GILLESPIE , GAMBLING . COM GROUP
“ Better Collective mainly works on revenue share with our media partners , hence the short-term revenue and earnings impact from this change is estimated to be limited and thereby to be contained within current guidance .
“ It is still very early days to comment on the mid-to-longterm impact hence what the NDC mix will be between owned and operated and media partnerships .”
Yes , this positive spin on what is undoubtedly a strategic blow for some of the biggest listed affiliates does raise some questions . Foremost , perhaps , is why plough ahead with a form of partnership which , seemingly by definition ,
would appear to have driven traffic away from owned-andoperated sites , where the affiliate yields all the revenue generated by a new depositing customer , to a partnership site where it only derives a share of the pot ?
GROWING THE SIZE OF THE PIE
According to one affiliate insider , the original reasoning behind the media partnerships was sound . Simply put , they brought in more numbers than could be achieved by a company ’ s own sites .
Better Collective at the time “ needed a strategy to grow its numbers and this was a way to do iGB Affiliate Monitor