Interview with Roman Bespalov, Head of Affiliates at Alpha Affiliates at iGB Barcelona

Hi everyone.

How do you like iGB, how’s Barcelona?

Honestly, it’s amazing, I didn’t expect to see so many of my partners here, surprisingly. Even though I booked all my meetings in advance, there’s a new one every 20 minutes. I was very pleasantly surprised by both yesterday and today. Very productive, very cool. I like the location. The only downside is that the transport system in this city is a bit faulty, unfortunately.

Most sites are review-based, slot reviews and branded pages. Are there any new SEO approaches?

Honestly, at the moment, from what we see and what’s coming our way, it’s all the classic stuff you mentioned. Theoretically, of course, it all depends on specific keywords. For example, payment-related keywords that are popular in the geo you’re targeting with SEO work well. But overall, I think it’s pretty much as you described. For now, we’re working with those types of traffic and approaches.

Nowadays, one of the main indicators of product quality is good retention. What retention methods do you use, and maybe there are some new tools?

We’ve recently taken support for several of our brands in-house, and we’re forming a dedicated team for that. As for unconventional methods, we occasionally develop custom email flows for traffic from certain partners, manually push players, and so on.

It all depends case-by-case on the specific partner. If there’s a request or we see the need for it with a certain source or traffic, we handle it. We’ve got all the tools for it, and this approach has proven to be really effective. Especially with large-scale deals and volumes in geos we’re targeting.

In 2024, many affiliates switched from revshare to CPA, mainly due to distrust around payments for returning players. Tell us, what are the risks of this trend and will pure revshare disappear from the market?

I’m sure it won’t. Again, we’ve been in the market since 2012, we have a huge partner base and trust built over the years. I think this trend mostly stems from the fact that affiliates need to reinvest the money they earn from traffic right away. And CPA offers quicker returns. But if we’re talking long-term, you’ll earn more.

If you trust your traffic and the product you’re promoting, you’ll simply earn more. For us as advertisers, it’s also preferable to offer, for example, not pure revshare, but a hybrid — where the webmaster has CPA to cover the risk and revshare that plays out over the long run. We mitigate our risks in the short term this way.

So it may be easier for us to pay more in the long run, but we know our products work well. And we know that the revshare earnings our partner gets will motivate further collaboration, scaling, and so on. So again, it’s case-by-case. With Facebook or social traffic sources, partners need big investments right now — and I understand that approach.

But there are also exceptions, like with Arab geos, where many social traffic webmasters prefer hybrid deals because they understand the specifics of that geo and how things will play out. Again, we’re talking about trust built over years and confidence in the brand.

SEO people split into two types. Some sell monthly top positions for a listing fee, others reject listing fees and constantly rotate the site’s showcase. Which approach do you think is best and why?

Hard to say. It depends on your business model and the tools you use to forecast and calculate your financials. Both approaches have the right to exist.

We have partners who prefer listing fees, and others who prefer hybrid or even CPA deals. The most common model I see is an integration fee — an upfront fee for site placement or review — and then a hybrid or EPC-based deal with ranking by conversion. But sometimes you land a great SEO site that’s risen in rankings and they quote a very high price for a quarter or more.

It’s often a short-term story, because SEO can be unstable, especially in some geos. One day you’re on top, the next you’re forgotten. So it really depends on your business model, your skills, luck, and global trends. It’s a very complex story. I think both approaches are valid.

Which geos saw significant traffic growth due to stricter regulations?

Firstly, I can’t speak for us because we don’t operate in those geos. But I have insights that highly regulated markets like Belgium generate lots of no-license and no-limit queries and so on. There are a few such geos. Not all of them can be operated in white or even gray zones. But let’s just say, they’re Tier-1.

In September 2024, you launched a new brand, Ninley. Share some insights and early results.

Honestly, the results are amazing. This brand now gets the highest number of FTDs per month across all our projects. It operates across a wide range of Tier-1 Europe geos. We get lots of traffic from Greece, Germany, and Canada is doing well. The brand is very stable and performs really well.

It’s a project by Soft2Bet and launched on their new platform version, which we were among the first to get. And I have to say, without exaggeration, the results really impressed me. We scaled traffic in just 2–3 weeks after launch.

Now the brand shows great player retention, strong conversion, high average deposits. We’re really happy with it. But there’s always room for more, so next year we’ll be launching new brands.

Here’s a little insider info: expect new tiers from our company next year. New markets for us, ones we haven’t worked in before. So we have big plans.

And with the experience we already have, I’m confident we’ll succeed. We’ll repeat and exceed the results we’re getting now with Ninley and the other brands we’ve launched in the past year. Last year we launched 4 or 5 new brands.

All of them made it to the top, all are now being promoted to the max. So I’m really satisfied. The past few months have been very exciting and intense, and I’m extremely glad. I hope the trend continues.

You’re one of those teams running different brands on different platforms. What are the pros and cons of each platform?

Well, first of all, the biggest plus is business diversification. You don’t put all your eggs in one basket and always have a backup. If something stops working, you just move the brand to another platform. Plus, geo coverage.

Different platforms work in very different ways. Because of that, you gain valuable experience interacting with various people, business models, and mindsets. I think this approach is the only right one.

And I’m really glad we started building our business this way. So in the near future, we’ll have more platforms and more brands — which I also wish to all advertisers who are our colleagues and soulmates in this niche.

Rom, thank you so much for the interview.

Thank you. I wish you lots of Tier-1 traffic and success with your new brand.

Thank you so much.

Thanks.