GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 46 - February 2020

marketing campaigns will succeed in the long run, building more of a brand and following and being less of a direct traffic source. Affiliates will finally have to become part of operator marketing and branding strategy versus just being an acquisition partner. They’ll need to be considered in marketing campaigns, used effectively to squeeze value from sponsorships and stop being ignored as a necessary appendage to your brand strategy. Affiliates will become influencers as social gets more complex Influencer marketing will continue to grow and I think you’ll find some of the bigger affiliates changing tact and building influencer campaigns into their own acquisition strategies, es- pecially in sports betting as tipsters will become influencers in their own right, building better audience engagement through social media channels. I think people will diversify and start to pick a channel and run with it. It’s becoming harder to be on all social channels at once. I think people are going to niche down and pick a channel and become an expert in it. I know I’ve started to consider this as I’d rather choose my channel and engage with my audience directly than try and spread my messaging too thin across the internet to build message reach. Technology will lead to new innovations Technology will lead advancement in 2020. Bitcoin and block- chain have been hanging on the outskirts for some time, but have not been fully integrated into live platforms and existing data metric systems. Slowly, it will start to spread and be readily adopted in the year to come for smart contracts, at the very least, and then also for payment processing in real time. The indus- try will be on the cusp of another evolution as we went from simplistic link sharing to complex data tracking with multiple variables being recorded in a single piece of code. The future will continue to be bright! Affiliate marketing will remain user driven. It will move and change as fast as we can physically and compliantly accommodate it. It may not look exactly the same as it once did, but we will continue to use affiliates as a complementary acquisition source inmarketing and we will see the channel change as technology, media and resourcing drive it forward. We are bound to see new tools being developed in affiliate platforms to help automate affiliate account management process, make better AI-informed decisions on campaigns and providing intelligent reporting that allows the same level of customer person- alization, segmentation and VIP affiliate management techniques being implemented on affiliate programs as we see on the player side. 2020 is going to be an exciting year for development, growth and change and I am looking forward to seeing how operators will finally embrace the important role that affiliates will play in their marketing and branding strategy. 1XBET AFFILIATE TEAM In any industry, looking to the future involves a strategic focus on primary areas of growth. The gambling industry, in particular, needs to be looking ahead, seeing where resources need to be used to ensure a bright horizon. Third World nations should already play a massive part in the long-term planning of betting companies. That’s because the surface has just been scratched of a market that could equal that of more developed nations. Technology that can improve daily lives is reachingmost of the Third World, meaning citizens will be connected to the global village of online users more and more. This exponential growth of mobile usage specifically is a driving force behind the growth potential for the gambling industry in these countries. In First World countries, smartphone usage has reached close to saturation point, however, in the Third World, the boom is still very much on an upswing. While average income may be lower than that of First World nations, the overall population growth of Third World nations 2020 PREDICTIONS With the samepayment options , games and bonuses , there’s a snowball’s chance inhell that all of the casinos out there todaywill be able to survive a shrinking , less profitable and more educated player base. G P W A t i m e s . o r g 46