According to the statistical center Statista, the volume of the online gambling market in 2023 will hit the 100 billion US dollars milestone, which indicates stable growth of 12% annually, something analysts have been predicting for the past few years. And also considering the past World Cup, the number of players who can potentially switch from betting to gambling will increase. Many countries this year also adopted new laws regulating the casino industry or made easing amendments to existing ones. These factors point to not all traffic monetization methods staying relevant in 2023.
In this article, we’ll attempt to assess and showcase what exact changes await gambling affiliate marketing next year: which GEOs and sources you should focus on, which traffic-driving methods will remain relevant and which will suffer a drastic change.
What happened in affiliate marketing in 2022
The outgoing year saw lots of different events take place in the world of affiliate marketing, let’s do a quick recap.
Relevant GEOs
Most teams and lone-wolf affiliates focused on new markets, namely Latin America and Asian countries like Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines and Bangladesh. The number of cases in which the listed countries appear was also impressive. We should also mention the legislative restrictions in Tier 1 countries like Germany or the Netherlands, which forced multiple operators to leave these countries, focusing their attention instead on the US and Canada.
Traffic sources
Just like the previous years, the top spot goes to Facebook and Google, they are the prime choice of the majority of webmasters and affiliates. Second place is shared by SEO and ASO sources. However, this year saw a genuinely crucial shift – by the end of the year TikTok became practically useless for promoting gambling offers due to the platform adjusting its ban policy, with the moderation becoming so hardcore that it made launching campaigns nearly impossible, forcing many to abandon the platform and move on to Likee and Bigo, which are just as popular.
Other events
Other events took place that led to changes in affiliate marketing, like the World Cup, which saw a major surge of betting traffic. There’s also the Aviator game that became a hit in the second half of the outgoing year, encouraging many to ramp up their gambling traffic volumes.
What’s to come in 2023
Taking into account the events of the outgoing year, it’s safe to say that when it comes to gambling affiliate marketing, established approaches and creatives with traditional traffic sources (Facebook, Google, SEO and ASO) will remain relevant. Still, it’s worth looking at the bigger picture and predicting what else can happen.
Market volume growth
Year after year, the gambling industry, including its online segment, has been growing by an average of 7-10%, according to Statista.
The next year is no exception, the casino and bookmaker market is growing steadily. The World Cup may be over, but people are as thrill-seeking as ever. All these numbers are needed to remind you that the industry is expanding, and at a decent pace at that, providing the end customer with quality products, meaning that the affiliate marketing industry is also bound to grow.
New non-obvious GEOs
Given the new legislative measures some countries introduced, webmasters and affiliates will venture out into new markets and GEOs in search of a nice profit, like they did with Latin America. Every single year up to this point where some country that was the talk of the town didn’t perform exceptionally well. We expect something similar in 2023, and therefore we conclude that there will be one or more countries that will trend well in the gambling affiliate marketing sector.
Growth of ASO and SEO
Overall, SEO promotion has always been relevant, however now we’re faced with the traffic source becoming more trendy, letting us claim that some teams will focus on it, while those that are already operating on the market will expand their website networks and venture out into new GEOs.
ASO is also becoming very popular as of late, resulting in the increase in the number of teams involved in the organic promotion of apps, since it provides a decent result and trust in the eyes of the audience, while bringing down the production and optimization costs. Many affiliates have already taken their lumps and got plenty of experience, leading to an increase in the number of people that work with ASO.
These factors influence the emergence of a tangible trend in the promotion of applications in the next year.
Non-trivial approaches
Following TikTok’s moderation becoming more strict and some affiliates making the shift to its counterparts, many have started to create original approaches to obtaining traffic. Perhaps, some will go back to relying on conventionally-free Youtube or Instagram Reels traffic. One way or another, there have always been restrictions in advertising casinos and that forced the entire affiliate industry to come up with unusual approaches. These restrictions are bound to spur to life all sorts of new and creative approaches. It’s tough issuing specific forecasts on the matter, time will tell, as will the results of solo affiliates and teams.
Exchange-rate boosted surge of some GEOs
Due to the growth of the dollar, driving traffic to Latin America became a more profitable endeavour in 2022 than ever before. Exchange rate fluctuations have always been a thing, and during turbulent times, like the ones we’re currently living through, storms in the economies of different countries are to be expected.
This means that some GEO may become relevant due to the exchange rate, spurring the entire affiliate industry to flood into it.
Country specific market changes
Recently, the Armenian government announced that starting 2023, bookmakers and sweepstakes will be subject to additional taxes, which might affect the affiliate marketing sector. In addition to Armenia, a number of European and Asian countries may adopt tougher laws on bookmaker activities.
This may affect the cost of leads, forcing it to go up. In this case, best to focus on more stable Tier 1 and 2 markets, which previously let you secure decent profits or focus on looking for new ones.
Summing up
The bulk of your profits will still come from Tier 1 and 2 countries, with you utilizing basic and standard traffic sources and testing various bundles. However, the coming year is the year of unconventional GEOs and ways of obtaining traffic. As always, it’s worth trying to find a good bundle with a decent conversion rate, positive ROI and scalability.
One thing’s for sure – there will be many external factors influencing the affiliate market. The key here is to stay on top of things, experiment and use relevant sources, tools and select the right offer. LGaming has always been at the forefront, without our team ready to pick out the proper offer and provide tips on relevant tools and traffic sources. Let us end this article with this little pointer – make use of this affiliate program of the future available here and now in the present.