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BUILDING AN IGAMING BRAND WITHOUT BUYING ATTENTION - YANA MAKAROCHKINA Yana Makarochkina, CMO at Blask, on PR, content and growth without paid ads. 🎯1. How intentional was Blask’s PR strategy? Yana: From day one, Blask’s growth strategy was built around PR and content marketing. We made a clear decision not to rely on paid traffic. Instead, we focused on something much more valuable: our own data, original research and insights that the market could not get anywhere else. That became the foundation of our visibility. Today, Blask works with more than 50 partners, including international industry media, Telegram channels, business communities and companies with their own editorial platforms. We do not treat these partnerships as simple distribution deals. We build long-term relationships around content. For some partners, we create exclusive reports and datasets. For others, provide regular market analysis, expert comments and data-driven stories. This model works because both sides benefit. So yes, PR was not an additional marketing activity for us. It was the core of our go-to-market strategy from the beginning. 📇2. Which channels drove most business impact? Yana: I would not separate industry media, Telegram and LinkedIn too strongly, because together they form one content ecosystem. Each channel plays a different role, but the principle is the same: we take unique Blask data, turn it into a clear and useful story, and deliver it to the right audience. Industry media gives us authority and broad market visibility. Telegram gives us speed, direct access and strong engagement inside professional communities. LinkedIn works differently, but its impact can also be very strong. A well-structured post with a clear insight can achieve the same reach as a publication in a large industry outlet. And get viral. More importantly, it allows us to build a direct relationship with our audience over time. Podcasts and speaking opportunities serve another purpose. They create deeper trust. When Max Tesla or Dmitry Belianin speaks on a podcast or at an industry event, they can explain not only what Blask does, but how we think, how our data works and how companies can use it in practice. This gives Blask a human face and connects the product with recognised experts. It is especially important at the later stages of the customer journey, when people already know the brand and want to understand whether they can trust the company behind it. So I would not say that one channel wins. The real advantage comes from using all of them as one connected system. ⚖️3. How much of Blask’s growth comes from marketing vs product? Yana: The product is the foundation of everything. Blask created something that did not exist before: a new way to understand demand, competition and market performance across the global iGaming industry. That is why I would say that 99% of the reason customers choose Blask comes from the strength and uniqueness of the product itself. But even the strongest product does not automatically become a market leader. People still need to know that it exists, understand what problem it solves, what value it creates and how they can use it in their daily work. This is where marketing becomes critical. It translates product value into a language the market understands. It turns complex technology and large datasets into clear use cases, business outcomes and stories that people remember. Before Blask, I worked in fintech, where we competed with major banks and much larger marketing budgets. PR and content helped us stay visible and credible without trying to outspend the market. At Blask, the situation is even stronger because we have a truly differentiated product. Our job is not to invent reasons for people to care. Our job is to show them why the product matters. This is where marketing creates the biggest competitive advantage: it helps Blask define the category, educate the market and become the company people think of first when they need iGaming market intelligence. 📱 Yana Makarochkina 📱 Blask

SEO Traffic Types in Affiliate Marketing: Let's Talk Terminology One of the first questions you'll hear from a casino affiliate manager is: "What kind of traffic do you have?" It's a simple question, but people often use different terms to describe the same thing. Speaking the same language makes partnership discussions much easier. 🫂 Branded Traffic These are users searching for a specific casino they already know. Examples: - bet365 - 1win registration - PokerStars bonus This is usually the highest-converting type of traffic because the player already knows where they want to go. At the same time, many operators either prohibit branded traffic or require prior approval. Their reasoning is straightforward: they've already invested in building brand awareness and don't want to pay commissions for players who would likely have signed up anyway. 🔭 Cross-Brand Traffic This happens when a user searches for one well-known brand but ends up discovering another. For example, someone searches for bet365, clicks a search result, and lands on a page promoting a different casino. Why affiliates like it: - well-known brands generate higher CTR - acquiring this traffic is often cheaper than competing for direct branded searches - users are already looking for a gambling product The downside: - some visitors leave immediately because they didn't find what they expected - using controversial brands can create reputation issues - there may be trademark or legal risks if you're using another company's brand without permission - Many operators won't accept this type of traffic at all. Those that do often ask for a mix of non-branded traffic as well, since they've invested heavily in building their own brand. Commercially, CPA tends to make more sense than RevShare because these players may not become long-term customers. 🎯 Slot Traffic These users search for specific games or providers. Examples: - Book of Dead - Gates of Olympus demo - Pragmatic Play slots The search volume is huge, but it's a very specific audience. Many people simply want to try games for free, which is why some affiliates even separate demo traffic into its own category. Compared to branded traffic, deposit conversion is generally lower. 🛫 Bonus Traffic These users are actively searching for promotions. Examples: - no deposit casino bonus - free spins for registration - first deposit bonus Purchase intent is usually high because the player is already looking for a reason to sign up. The challenge is bonus hunters — users who register, claim the offer, and never return. Before launching a partnership, it's worth discussing how the operator treats these players when calculating NGR. 🗺 GEO + Category Traffic These are broad industry searches combined with a country. Examples: - online casino UK - legal bookmakers Germany If your website has authority, this tends to be one of the most stable and predictable traffic sources. For many operators, it's also the most attractive because it reaches a broad audience without many of the restrictions associated with branded traffic. 🏐 Sports Betting Traffic This is really its own category. It usually includes: - branded sportsbook searches - sports betting + GEO - event and match searches - predictions, tips, and odds I haven't worked deeply with sportsbook SEO myself, but from conversations with people who have, one of the biggest challenges is dealing with large amounts of informational traffic that's difficult to convert into depositing players. ❤️ Bonus There is one traffic type I can't resist mentioning: lottery traffic. Years ago I had a Brazilian website targeting searches like lottery winners, play this lottery, and even horoscope lotteries. It was honestly the worst-converting traffic I've ever worked with, paired with some of the weakest commercial deals I've ever seen. Despite working in gambling, I still can't stand lotteries. To me, they're a tax on hope. The only upside? I learned about jogo do bicho, which was fascinating from a cultural perspective—even if I'd never build another lottery site again. Why This Matters When an operator asks what kind of traffic you have, they're trying to understand three things: 1. what quality of players to expect 2. what restrictions should be included in the deal 3. which commercial model makes the most sense Branded and category traffic often work well on RevShare because those players tend to be more loyal. Cross-brand traffic is usually better suited for CPA since players may have arrived by accident and never return. Slot and bonus traffic depend heavily on the quality of the website and should be evaluated individually. Understanding your own traffic isn't just SEO terminology — it gives you a much stronger position when negotiating partnerships.

WHEN DOES AFFILIATE MARKETING BECOME DISTRIBUTION? Affiliate marketing is increasingly being measured by player acquisition and long-term value, not just brand awareness We spoke with Ksenia K., Affiliate Marketing Team Lead at Endorphina, about about direct partnerships and why data sharing matters. 🔗 1. Is affiliate marketing becoming a strategic distribution channel, or still mainly brand awareness? Ksenia: Many slot providers working with affiliates still treat this channel primarily as PR. We have a PR manager for this :) But honestly, PR alone isn't enough for my department. Because we can’t measure it financially. Not every reviewer or traffic source is valuable to us purely as a PR play. But we do care about every source that can bring a player to our slot and actually monetize that traffic. At Endorphina, we've moved away from thinking of affiliate work as "marketing support" and started treating it as co-investment. We adjust benefits structures based on real performance. Also I believe when a studio starts caring about which specific slot an affiliate is pushing and how it converts - that's distribution thinking. 🤝 2. Many affiliates want to work with providers directly, but often don’t know where to start. What is the first step? Ksenia: The best way to figure out where to start is simply to come talk to us. Our direction in the industry is still fairly new, so we approach every deal on a custom basis. I would like to highlight one important point: we are NOT asking affiliates to redirect their traffic away from their casino partners. You can continue working with your preferred casino partners while promoting our slots in parallel. Because nowadays Endorphina is becoming a kind of game essentials starter kit for casinos — we are integrated in most of the casino products. Looking at what traffic sources are available, what promo ideas make sense, and where the real opportunities are. For instance: - If it's FB or in-app traffic, we discuss the possibility of driving that traffic to our slots. - If it's streamers, we look at including our slots in streams, giveaways, and tournaments. - If it's content creators, we discuss how to motivate that audience toward action in a way that's profitable for both sides. - If it's SEO-driven traffic, there's a wide range of options (from highlighting slots and free spins promos to social or real-play tournaments). We assess each case and decide how to move forward together. Our goal is to find ways to bring players to our slots. And at our end, we'll do what we can to help increase your conversion and player-LTV through quality, engaging games. 📈 3. What can affiliates do to become valuable partners beyond just sending traffic? Ksenia: For us, the key aspects of a strong partnership are: - Bringing real, active players is what matters most. That’s why we value transparency around traffic volumes, GEO distribution, and previous casino partnership results. - We appreciate partners who are open to testing new ideas, sharing insights, and working together to discover new growth opportunities. - When we agree on terms, we expect both sides to follow through. Trust and reliability are essential for building long-term partnerships. 🧮 4. If you had extra budget for one initiative — data sharing, exclusive campaigns, game launches, content partnerships, or something else? Ksenia: Without a doubt — data sharing. From what we see, many affiliates genuinely need direct, first-hand information: performance by GEO, top-performing slots, early access to new releases before they go public, and solid promo materials. We already provide ready-made promo assets and can produce custom materials on request. Beyond that, we're big believers in exclusive promo campaigns that motivate players toward concrete engagement with our slots — whether on the affiliate's platform or directly on casino products. The product is where we prioritize. Because that's exactly where brand awareness ends and real business begins. 📱 Ksenia 📱 Endorphina 📱 @ksenia_endorphina

CAN PERSONALITY BE A BIGGER ADVANTAGE THAN GAME MECHANICS? - ARNAU MARSINO As more studios compete with similar mechanics and increasingly familiar features, standing out has become one of the industry's toughest challenges. Arnau Marsino, Founder of Unwanted Games, believes the answer isn't bigger budgets—it's personality. We spoke about building an unconventional brand, competing through creativity, and why memorable games often leave a stronger impression than technically perfect ones. 🔭 1. Unwanted Games doesn’t look or sound like a traditional game studio at all. In a market where everyone talks about RTP, features and volatility, why did you decide to build a brand with personality and weird stories instead? Arnau: All people working in B2B iGaming are, first of all, humans. They like to have fun and see something exciting. When you are always pushing RTP, features and numbers, you start looking like everyone else - a boring corporate company. If players could see who the people are who are creating games for them and what kind of boring stuff they speak, I bet they would not play the games. Excitement and fun are what players need and people from companies too. Do you believe people remember brands more than games? It depends on the situation. Sometimes, a company brand is not that important and it's a good strategy to push their golden game, like Spribe is doing - they are pushing Aviator, but not their company brand. Players are coming to the casino for Aviator. Sometimes, the brand is more important and players are coming to casinos for brand, example can be Evolution. The game brand is not important at that time. 🛒 2. Everyone can buy traffic, run campaigns and publish hundreds of videos. As a new provider, what is your actual marketing strategy? How do you plan to stand out when larger studios can outspend you by 100x? Arnau: When you don't have a budget, all you have is creativity. And we have it. I cannot disclose what we are doing, but I can say that if someone doesn't see us in iGaming, it means they are not our targeted customers. 🧮 3. Be honest: what would make you happier: a game with average metrics that becomes a cult hit and gets people talking, or a technically perfect game that performs well but nobody remembers a month later? Arnau: If we are speaking in the long term, I would go with a cult hit, which makes people talk, because it will give brand awareness and will generate revenue for future games. Do you think personality and emotions can become a bigger competitive advantage than mechanics alone? Everyone can copy mechanics and one of the few advantages a game can have now is when it has a personality and drives emotions from players. 📱 Arnau Marsino 📱 Unwanted Games

2/2 ✍️ 2. Chicken Revenge and Rise of the Chickus prove that you’re not afraid of weird concepts. Where do these ideas actually come from? Is there a process behind them, or do you just follow internet culture and see what makes you laugh? Severin: Ideas are always all around us whether it's viral Reels, top-charting games on the App Store or Steam Early Access, or even just general content trends. There isn’t just a strict process behind it, there is our entire team. Everyone at the studio genuinely gets a kick out of what they do, and every single employee from a junior to a top manager can pitch an idea and see it realized. It could be a unique visual style, an unusual mechanic, a specific feature in the math model, or something else entirely. That is exactly how our games are born: through pure creativity, fresh concepts, and something that hooks one of us and resonates with the rest. Naturally, we keep a close watch on internet culture. For some of us, it’s a core part of our jobs, while others just stumble upon inspiration while scrolling through memes at night or coming across streams featuring things like the falling pickaxe. You could say our idea generation process is non-stop and continuous: it is literally in the studio’s DNA. The only downside is that not every idea makes it to production, simply because our development and art teams obviously have capacity limits. Chicken Revenge came to life as a classic "What if?" moment. We saw yet another clone of a standard Chicken game and decided to look at the whole situation literally from the other side. ⚖️ 3. Be honest: how do you know whether a crazy idea is worth building? At what point do you say, “This is genius,” and at what point do you say, “Okay, this is too weird even for us”? Severin: The main dividing line between "This is genius" and "We're not building this" comes down to the team's consensus: open discussions with our mathematicians, artists, game designers, and the rest of the crew. We've brainstormed a lot of insane ideas for new mechanics, but many of them simply didn't pass basic reality checks like, "How do we even balance the math for this?" or "Will this actually hook the player?" Any crazy idea is a good idea, but it has to be grounded in reality and practical experience. That’s exactly where we often run into the: "This is genius, BUT..." moment. Honestly, nothing is "too weird" for us. If you look at the studio’s portfolio, you’ll notice not just different types of games, but a massive variety in settings and visual styles. Our artists have a real knack for taking an unusual vision and transforming it into a cohesive aesthetic that flows beautifully through the entire game. 📱 Pixmove Games 📱 Severin Vervald 📱 @vervaldsm

WHEN GAME STUDIOS BECOME MEDIA COMPANIES - SEVERIN VERVALD 1/2 From livestream countdowns to chicken-themed releases inspired by internet culture, Pixmove Games isn't following the traditional playbook. Severin Vervald, CPO at Pixmove, explains why modern studios need to think like media companies, how unusual concepts make it from meme to market, and where the line between brilliant and bizarre is really drawn. ⏱ 1. Falling Pickaxe is borrowing ideas from streamers and idle games, and you’re even running a live countdown stream before launch. Do you think game studios need to become media companies and entertain players outside the casino itself, or is gameplay still enough? Severin: Yes, you hit the nail on the head. Falling Pickaxe is a compilation of current trends, recognizable aesthetics, and highly accessible gameplay: all factors designed to drive its popularity. The idea of doing a live countdown stream as an announcement was a direct nod to the game's core mechanic, which was originally popularized by streaming culture itself. Right now, simply making a good game is no longer enough, especially if you aren’t a giant like Pragmatic Play. For studios that want to see real results, strong performance, and, of course, beatiful GGR metrics, evolving into a media company isn’t just an option - it’s a necessity. And this applies to both the B2B and B2C fronts. You need to create marketing touchpoints with both the decision-makers who get your games into casino lobbies and the actual end-users who will play them. These are two massive areas that demand focus if you want to generate sustainable demand for your portfolio. The game provider market has become incredibly dynamic. Thanks to the power of AI, the barrier to entry has dropped significantly. Because of this, a studio has to fight for the attention of everyone involved in the ecosystem to ensure a new title doesn’t just launch into the void. Every provider approaches this differently whether through streamers, video formats, working with SEO affiliates, or media buying. There’s no single "correct" answer; all available communication channels are valuable. We are entering an era where a studio must constantly stay in motion, invent fresh concepts, and rethink how it interacts with players, operators, and the broader B2B community. That is, of course, if the studio actually wants to be successful. :)

BEYOND THE METRICS: WHAT OPERATORS STILL MISS ABOUT THEIR PLAYERS - BENJAMIN COHEN The numbers tell operators what players do. They rarely explain why. In this interview, Benjamin Cohen, Founder of Ordo Ignis, explores the hidden costs of departmental silos, and why understanding motivation could become the industry's next competitive advantage. 🔭 1. Operators spend millions on acquisition, CRM, VIP and product teams, yet many still treat players as numbers. What are the biggest misconceptions about player psychology today? Ben: The biggest misconception is that behaviour and psychology are the same thing. The industry has become very good at measuring actions, but far less effective at understanding intentions. Operators already track the entire player lifecycle: deposits, sessions, game preferences, response rates and wagering patterns. The challenge is understanding the difference between the choices a player makes and why they made them in the first place. Two players can have identical metrics while being driven by completely different motivations. One may be seeking entertainment, while another is motivated by status. Keeping them in the same segment simply because their behaviours look similar is increasingly outdated. Another misconception is that loyalty is created through rewards alone. While loyalty programs often focus on bonuses, cashback and incentives, true loyalty comes from players feeling understood and having an experience that consistently aligns with why they play in the first place. The industry has spent years collecting data. The missing piece is turning that data into context so internal teams understand why they are making the next decision, not just what decision to make. 📇 2. Where does the biggest disconnect happen: acquisition → CRM, CRM → product, or product → VIP? What gets lost when departments optimize for KPIs instead of the player journey? Ben: The disconnect isn't between any two departments themselves. It's between each department's understanding of the player. Acquisition sees a source. CRM sees a segment. Product sees engagement. VIP sees value. Departments have handoffs. Players don't. Each team optimizes for its own KPIs, while the player experiences only one thing: the brand. As players move through the business, context becomes fragmented. The motivations behind their behaviour, the reasons they joined, and the signals that could improve future interactions become disconnected across teams. When that happens, operators don't just lose revenue. They lose continuity. And continuity is often the difference between a player feeling understood and a player feeling processed. ⚖️ 3. Should operators classify affiliates the same way they classify players? Can player psychology help identify affiliates that attract higher-value audiences? Ben: I think the industry will eventually spend less time asking, "How many players did this affiliate send?" and more time asking, "What kind of players did this affiliate send?" Today, most affiliate evaluation focuses on traffic, registrations and FTDs. These metrics show volume, but they don't necessarily show value. Every affiliate attracts different audiences through its content, messaging and community. As a result, they often attract different player profiles. Two affiliates can deliver the same number of FTDs while generating entirely different long-term outcomes in retention, engagement and lifetime value. An affiliate that delivers 100 players isn't necessarily more valuable than one that delivers 20. It depends on which 20. The future opportunity is understanding which affiliates consistently attract the types of players that generate the strongest long-term value. That's where affiliate performance becomes a question of strategic intelligence rather than simply acquisition. 📱 Benjamin Cohen

WHEN DOES A GAME BECOME A FRANCHISE - ZHANNA TARAKANOVA Many games benefit from major sporting events, but only a few manage to remain relevant long after the tournament ends. Evoplay's Penalty Shoot-Out series has grown from a single instant game into a five-title franchise spanning multiple formats and releases. We spoke with Zhanna Tarakanova, PR Team Lead at Evoplay, about building games around global football culture, recognizing franchise potential, and what keeps players returning year after year. ⚽️ 1. Every major football tournament creates a wave of “football fever” across the industry. From a PR perspective, how do you decide whether a global event like the World Cup is just a short-term marketing opportunity or something worth building a long-term product strategy around? Zhanna: For us, the difference is in whether the event connects only to a campaign or to real player behaviour. If the interest disappears right after the final whistle, it’s a short-term PR moment. But football is different because it has year-round emotional value, strong cultural relevance, and a massive global audience. That’s why we don’t treat the World Cup only as a seasonal hook. It gives us a reason to activate communication, but the product strategy has to live longer than the tournament itself. With the Penalty Shoot-Out franchise, we built around a format players already understand: pressure, quick decisions, and one clear emotional moment. That makes the franchise useful not only during major football events, but also between them. ⏱ 2. Evoplay has been developing the Penalty Shoot-Out franchise for six years now, from the original 2020 release to multiple follow-ups. At what point did you realize this wasn’t just a successful game, but an actual franchise that deserved long-term investment and expansion? Zhanna: I think that became clear when the game kept proving its relevance beyond the first release. The original Penalty Shoot-Out had a very simple idea, and that simplicity gave us room to grow. It was one of the first instant games with this type of penalty shootout mechanic, and the format quickly found its audience. The game also started appearing outside the usual casino context. For example, it inspired one of our partners to promote it during a major football match. It was also featured in a music video by a Brazilian artist. When we saw that the format could work across different markets, visual styles, and tournament moments, it stopped being just one successful title. Penalty Shoot-Out: Street showed its local potential, Super Cup proved the event-driven angle, and ahead of the World Cup we released two new games – Penalty Shoot-Out: Cup Mania and Penalty Shoot-Out: Super Spin, which is the first slot of the series. They showed strong results before the championship, and now, during the tournament the performance continues to grow. That was the key signal for us: the franchise had enough flexibility to stay familiar to players while still offering something new with each release. ❤️ 3. Today, Penalty Shoot-Out includes five different titles, which is quite rare in iGaming. What do you think makes players keep coming back to this franchise specifically? Is it football itself, the mechanics, the competitive element, or something else that other studios often underestimate? Zhanna: I think it is the combination of all three. Football gives players instant recognition, the penalty format creates pressure from the first second, and the mechanics keep the experience simple enough to understand immediately. A player does not need a long onboarding journey to understand the game. They know the situation, they understand the stakes, and every round gives them a quick emotional moment. At the same time, each new title in the franchise adds something different: a new setting, a new event context, a new mechanic, or a new format. So players get something familiar, but not identical. That balance is what keeps the franchise alive. 📱 Zhanna Tarakanova 📱 Evoplay

CAN MULTIPLAYER CHANGE THE WAY PEOPLE PLAY SLOTS - HELEN WALTON For years, the industry has talked about making casino games more social, but few products have attempted to build competition directly into the gameplay itself. With 99 Royale, G.Games is betting on a future where players don't just spin alone — they compete, interact, and return for shared experiences. We spoke with Helen Walton, Chief Commercial Officer at G.Games, about the challenges of building multiplayer casino content and where this new category could be heading. 🔗 1. 99 Royale looks like one of the most ambitious attempts to blend casino gaming with competitive multiplayer mechanics. What made you believe this concept could become a category of its own rather than just another game launch? Helen: Lots of people - not just us - have commented on some key truths. Players love community! We see that in casinos, in bingo halls, in sports bars as well as in all the rest of our life and entertainment... But slots..? Noone has ever really succeeded in bringing full-on community and connection to slots. Leaderboards and tournaments are enjoyed by some, but they are more about the prize than the experience. We asked ourselves how we could bring true competition to slots - in the same way that it existed in video games - 99 Royale is the result. 🤝 2. Most new game concepts struggle not because of the product, but because players don’t understand them quickly enough. What’s the bigger challenge for 99 Royale today: building the product itself, convincing operators to support it, or educating players on why it’s different? Helen: The execution of building the product has been the biggest struggle. Partly because we agree with you! The game had to feel intuitive and FUN. That means we threw away an almost completed product becaus eit just wasn't quite working from a player experience point of view. If you are IN demographic (ie a video gamer), then the product should feel intuitive. By contrast, if you are not in demographic, you may find it overwhelming. It's aimed at competittive players who play video games - they tend to skew young an dmale and often enjoy sports betting more than traditional casino. 📇 3. If 99 Royale succeeds, what changes in the industry? Do you see a future where players spend less time choosing between thousands of slots and more time competing inside persistent gaming ecosystems and communities? Helen: We are building a new way to play. When you come on site we think you'll ask yourself 'what mode do I feel like playing today?' Some days that ill be single player. Some days battle - and somedays one of the new crazy ultiplayer games that are still to come. 99 Royale and battle mode is just one type of multiplayer - there are many more seasons and chapters to come! 📱 G.Games 📱 Helen Walton

WHY THE BEST COMMUNITIES ARE BUILT ON RELATIONSHIPS, NOT REACH - ALINA MOSKALOVA Building a community is easy. Building one that people actively participate in — and remain part of for years — is much harder. We spoke with Alina Moskalova from NEXTPredict about the differences between open and curated communities, what makes members stay engaged over the long term, and why the most valuable outcomes of community building often go far beyond business metrics. 1. Which community is more active — Telegram or WhatsApp? Where do the most meaningful discussions happen? Alina: They're different by design, and I approach them that way. Telegram is open and anyone can join. People can freely drop their offers. It's higher volume, more casual. WhatsApp is the opposite: invite-only, real names, personal phone numbers. People self-select into accountability just by being there. The meaningful conversations happen in WhatsApp, without question. The barrier to entry creates the quality. When someone joins knowing it's curated, they show up differently. And because it's not anonymous you're people actually think before they post. But even there, I coach members away from the spray-and-pray approach: the copy-paste intro blasted across twenty communities. I'd rather they write two sentences that say something real. "Hi, I'm Alina, I do X and Y" — that's enough. People will connect the dots. Relationships don't start with pitches. 2. What makes people stay in a community for years? Alina: It's being heard. That's the thing most community builders overlook because it's not scalable on a spreadsheet. When I joined, one of the first things I did was get on calls with members. Not to pitch anything, just to ask: what do you like here? What would add value for you? That question alone signals something. It tells people they're not just a number in someone's growth metric. Content matters, networking matters, but the glue is the sense that someone is actually paying attention. That there's a human on the other side who, when you say "this isn't working for me," genuinely tries to fix it. I think of the community manager as a middleman — not between the brand and the audience, but between the business and every single department in it. I probably collaborate with more teams internally than almost anyone else in the company, because the community reflects all of it. People stay because they feel like they belong to something good. And "good" isn't a vague feeling. It comes from small, consistent moments of being valued. 3. What's the most valuable business outcome you've seen come from community — and what's the most unexpected? Alina: The expected outcomes are real: partnerships form, product feedback comes in, retention improves. Loyal people are the foundation of everything else — new hires, new clients, new directions. Community is often called a soft function, but loyal people are anything but soft as a business outcome. The unexpected ones are the ones that stay with me. People who met in a community and became business partners. People who met and became friends in the way that goes well beyond what their companies do — asking about each other's kids, showing up for each other in ways that have nothing to do with a conference or a newsletter. I even know of people who met through a community and got married. That sounds extraordinary, but what it really tells you is that when you build something human-oriented, you can't fully predict what it becomes. And you shouldn't try to. Every company should have a community — not because of the ROI deck, but because you are one message away from your people. No algorithm change, no platform shift, no budget cut takes that away from you. That direct line is yours. Use it. 📱 NEXTPredict Community 📱 About NEXTPredict 📱 Join NextPredict

WHY SPEED IS BECOMING THE ULTIMATE ADVANTAGE IN AFFILIATE MARKETING — JEREMY CASTILLO What does a four-hour delay really cost an operator? In a conversation with Jeremy Castillo, Head of Sales EU Region at Affnook, we discussed how slow reporting, delayed campaign execution, and lengthy migrations can quietly erode revenue in iGaming. Jeremy argues that in today’s market, the biggest competitive edge is no longer just features — it’s speed: faster onboarding, faster optimization, and faster adaptation to what players are doing right now. 📤 1. Affnook is built around speed and automation. In affiliate marketing, how much revenue can actually be lost because of slow processes — whether it’s delayed reporting, slow campaign setup, or even waiting 4+ hours for a response from a partner? Jeremy: Delayed reporting can limit the optimization of underperforming campaigns, and affect the overall balance of marketing spending. The problem with slow campaigns is that time-sensitive campaigns and those with small windows (such as secondary betting or live sports betting) are unable to perform as well as they could have if they ran for a little longer. Additionally, affiliates get limited time to perform and give their best, which reduces conversions down from what they could have been. In a crowded, competitive market with rising acquisition costs, it is vital to utilize every hour in making your brand or operation as visible as possible, so that players choose it again and again. By offering faster execution cycles, real-time reporting and rapid affiliate onboarding, Affnook increases effective time spent on getting the best results possible. 🎯 2. By many accounts, the affiliate software market is crowded. What is the one thing Affnook does significantly better than other platforms that makes operators choose you over more established solutions? Jeremy: A lot of operators focus on feature-richness or just tracking. While such aspects are expected when you use an affiliate software, there is one area that matters within iGaming: operational speed. We can migrate operators from legacy systems in under seven days and rapidly execute product improvements based on customer requirements, often within the next sprint. This means operators don't have to wait months to solve business-critical problems or adapt their affiliate programs to the platform. As a tool purpose-built to serve the online gambling and casino industry, Affnook combines this delivery speed with core competencies like real-time reporting, server-side tracking, flexible payout logic and hands-on support. 📇 3. Many companies talk about features, dashboards, and integrations. If you had to convince an operator in one sentence, why does having a fast, reliable affiliate platform matter more today than ever before? Jeremy: A fast, reliable platform can do what a standard platform may not be able to: onboard affiliates quickly, enable exceptional time-to-value, produce new features by the next sprint or migrate all your data in less than a week. With Affnook, you get a competitive advantage which most platforms cannot really replicate. 📱 Jeremy Castillo 📱 @castillojer 📱 Affnook

2/2 🛫 2. You're projecting a huge opportunity, since there are almost no competitors in this niche yet. What scares you more: competitors copying the idea, or players getting bored with the meme itself before the market has time to mature? Mike: Competitors copying the idea doesn’t scare me that much. In fact, if competitors start copying it, that probably means we were right about the direction. The harder part is not putting a meme on top of a slot. Anyone can do that. The hard part is understanding why something feels viral, why it feels stupid in the right way, why people share it, and how to turn that into a game that still performs commercially. What scares me more is lazy execution – not from us specifically, but from the market overall. If everyone treats Brainrot as just a skin, players will get bored very quickly. They’ll see through it. Internet culture has a very low tolerance for brands that arrive late and try too hard. So the real risk is not that the meme dies. Memes always die. The risk is failing to build a production mindset that can move with culture instead of chasing yesterday’s joke. At NGM Game, we’re not betting on one character, one meme, or one viral format. We’re betting on speed, creative instinct, and the ability to package familiar online emotions into casino mechanics. That is much harder to copy than a visual style. 🎯 3. Looking at the industry today, many studios are trying to become “TikTok-native.” In 3 years, what do you think we'll call this trend? A new category of iGaming products, or just another marketing buzzword we all got excited about for a while? Mike: I think “TikTok-native” will disappear as a term, but the behavior behind it will stay. In three years, we probably won’t call it TikTok-native anymore because the platform itself won’t be the point. The point will be that casino games will need to compete inside a much broader entertainment environment. For a long time, iGaming studios mostly compared themselves with other iGaming studios. But players don’t live in that bubble. They compare our games with everything else on their screen: reels, streams, mobile games, influencers, memes, live content, and whatever new format appears next. That changes what a slot has to do in the first three seconds. It changes how we think about characters, sound, pacing, bonus reveals, and even thumbnails. So yes, some companies will use “TikTok-native” as a buzzword. That always happens. But underneath the buzzword, I believe a real category is forming: internet-native casino content. Not just games marketed on social platforms, but games designed with the logic of modern digital culture from day one. The winners won’t be the studios that say “we understand TikTok.” The winners will be the studios that understand attention, humor, speed, remixability, and community behavior, and can still build a strong gambling product underneath it. That’s where I think the market is going. 🌟NGM Game 🌟Mike Waizman

WHY BRAINROT IS BIGGER THAN A MEME TREND - MIKE WAIZMAN 1/2 What happens when internet memes, TikTok culture, and casino gaming collide? In a conversation with Mike Waizman, NGM Game CMO, we explored why “Brainrot” is more than just a viral trend, how changing online behaviors are reshaping player expectations, and why the future of iGaming may belong to studios that understand internet culture as well as they understand game mechanics. From the risks of chasing short-lived memes to the emergence of internet-native casino content, Mike shares his perspective on where the industry is heading next. ⏱ 1. Mike, you've built a whole thesis around Brainrot and viral culture. Do you think this is a sustainable long-term shift in player behavior, or are we simply riding a 12–24 month trend that could collapse as quickly as it appeared? Mike: I don’t think Brainrot itself is the long-term shift. Brainrot is just the current language. The deeper shift is that players now expect casino content to feel native to the internet culture they already consume every day. Five or ten years ago, a slot could win attention through theme, math model, and visual polish alone. Today, that’s not enough. Players are surrounded by TikTok edits, meme formats, short-form storytelling, absurd humor, and instant visual hooks. Their attention has been trained differently. So if we only look at Brainrot as a meme aesthetic, yes, it may peak and fade. But if we look at it as a signal of where entertainment is going, then it’s much bigger than a 12–24 month trend. For NGM Game, the thesis is not “let’s make meme slots forever.” The thesis is that iGaming content needs to become more culturally responsive, faster, and more emotionally recognizable. Brainrot is one expression of that. Tomorrow it may be another format, another language, another absurd subculture. The providers who learn how to translate internet-native behavior into playable casino products will have an advantage beyond one trend cycle.

Interview with Christine Keshishyan Christine Keshishyan, Head of Business Development at ABXplay, talks about what really happens after a game is launched, why visibility is harder than it looks, and what studios need to understand about operator partnerships today. 📊 1. Everyone says studios want distribution — but be honest: what’s actually harder today, building a good game or getting operators to give it real visibility after launch? Christine: The hard truth is that a good game does not automatically get noticed anymore. The lobby is too crowded for that, so if I had to choose, I’d say visibility after launch is the tougher part now. Building a good game still takes a lot of work. Markets behave differently, players react to different themes and mechanics, and a title that performs well in one GEO can easily fall flat in another. So research, localisation and operator feedback are not optional anymore. But even when the game is good, operators see new releases constantly. Without proper support, a strong title can lose attention very quickly. For us, launch is not “the game is live, good luck.” If the title lands in the lobby and there is no support to help the operator position it, promote it, or adapt it to the market, the launch is already half-lost. 📈 2. If you had access to affiliate demand data before building a game, what would genuinely change in your roadmap? Or do studios still mostly build based on instinct and internal assumptions? Christine: There is already a lot of data in the industry. The problem is not getting another dashboard, but understanding which signal is actually useful before everyone else sees it too. So yes, affiliate demand data would affect what we build next. Not in a dramatic way, but in a practical one — because most established studios are already working with several inputs at once. There is market research, operator feedback, performance data, and a lot of watching how different markets behave. But things move fast. A theme can look strong now and feel tired by the time the game is ready. For ABXplay, affiliate data would mostly help us make sharper calls: which themes are easier to promote, which mechanics have real interest, which features make sense for a certain GEO, and when a release has a better chance to land. Still, data shows what has already happened. You need judgement for what comes next. 📉 3. What’s a broken part of the current studio–operator ecosystem that nobody wants to admit publicly? Too many releases? Weak distribution? Fake launch hype? Christine: Partnership has become one of those words everyone uses but not everyone actually practices, and that is one of the biggest issues in the studio–operator ecosystem. The industry talks about partnership, but many operators still receive the same pitch, the same promo ideas, the same launch materials, just with a different logo. At that point, you have to ask: are we really building a partnership, or just sending another package and hoping it lands? Every operator is dealing with a different audience, market, budget and pressure. What works for one partner can be useless for another. And yes, content saturation is real. Operators are flooded with releases, so another “big launch” does not mean much unless it is actually supported. More games will not fix the crowded lobby problem. The studios with an edge will be the ones that understand the partner properly: the market, the audience, the pressure, and the kind of launch support that actually keeps a game visible. 📱 Christine Keshishyan 📱 ABXplay

WHAT AFFILIATE MANAGERS WORKING ON THE SIDE OF AFFILIATE WEB-SITES NEED TO KNOW Spoiler: EVERYTHING! Let's be honest: affilliate managers working at SEO-driven affiliate sites often don't fully understand where their traffic comes from. The problem is simple: you can't fully optimize a funnel if you don't know where it starts. 📈 1. Learn to Read Traffic Data You don't need to become an SEO specialist, but you should be comfortable with Google Search Console and Google Analytics. A few things I check regularly: - New pages that started attracting traffic - Changes in clicks and impressions compared to the previous period - Pages that receive traffic but aren't monetized New traffic creates opportunities — but only if there's an offer behind it. 💸 2. Find Revenue Leaks My default assumption is that there is always money left on the table. A common scenario: a page receives traffic, users land on it, but there is no relevant offer. The traffic is there. The monetization is nowhere to be found. That's an affiliate problem. When we discover new traffic or enter a new GEO, we either build a proper GTM strategy or implement a temporary solution until a better one is ready. When rankings recover, we look at what historically converted and bring back what already proved to work. 🔗 3. Work Closely With SEO For the last few months, we've been running weekly "Money Making" calls with the SEO team. The goal is straightforward: identify pages with traffic potential that aren't generating enough revenue. We review: - Traffic growth - Existing offers - Monetization gaps - New opportunities The result? March became our best month ever for FTDs in the non-slots cluster. That's the impact of consistent cross-team communication. 🎯 4. Speak SEO's Language You don't need to know technical SEO in depth. But you should understand enough to discuss traffic, rankings, search intent, and opportunities with the people responsible for acquiring that traffic. Ask questions. Understand: - Where the traffic comes from - Why users land on specific pages - What they searched for before finding your site If you don't understand the product you're selling to partners, it shows during negotiations. The Bottom Line Managing deals and partner relationships is just a part of an affiliate manager's job. It's also about understanding where traffic comes from, where it goes, and whether it's being monetized effectively. If you don't understand your traffic, you're not managing monetization. You're simply reacting to it.

HOW GAMBLING HIDES BEHIND FAMILIAR GAME MECHANICS — AND WHY IT WORKS There’s a category of games that has been particularly interesting to me lately. They look like simple mobile games: No symbols, no spinning reels, no casino aesthetics. But, at the same time, underneath, they contain a full-fledged gambling mechanic with multipliers and cash-out options. One of the latest examples is Tower Rush. You build a tower floor by floor, much like the old Tower Blocks game on Nokia phones. Each new floor increases the multiplier. You decide for yourself when to stop and cash out. But the thing that makes these games interesting is that it's much easier to advertise them. Tower rush type games get a special treatment from Google, Facebook and other ad networks, who notoriously and passionately hate the gambling aesthetic. These games perfectly align with what advertising algorithms classify as safer content And that's why it works.

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