It’s not easy to be an iGaming operator these days as the market is highly competitive and one has to keep in mind the constant pressure they face due to regulations put in place by different nations for gambling. But what’s worse is that operators have become a common target iGaming affiliate Marketing fraud. Operators face attacks like chargeback frauds, credential stuffing, bonus abuse, and many more. This requires their anti-fraud and risks teams to be constantly on their toes and remain prepared whilst delivering the results at all times and saving ROI.
iGaming Affiliate Marketing Frauds can bring a lot of damage and weaken revenue generation drastically.
In this blog, we’ll see why iGaming affiliate frauds happen, how much it affects an iGaming platform and how can we prevent it.
What is iGaming Marketing Affiliate Fraud?
Gambling and iGaming affiliate fraud is any action taken by a third party with the intention of exploiting an operator’s marketing efforts such as various affiliate partnerships, pay-per-lead or pay-per-click.
iGaming and Gambling companies are heavily regulated in terms of marketing, forcing them to rely on third-party affiliates to channel traffic to their platform.
As we know Affiliate Marketing yields the best results in terms of ROI as compared to other marketing strategies such as SEO, media advertising, and other offline activities.
But is regretful that there are many affiliates who take advantage of this situation and use fraudulent ways such as bot traffic, multi-accounting, generating fake reports, and many more.
How iGaming Affiliate Marketing Fraud Works
A fraud depends on the marketing technique used in place in the iGaming and gambling industry:
PPC (pay per click): In pay per click, fraudulent affiliate channel traffic to your platform without the consent of users. These malicious affiliates have a lot of options such as browser extensions or hidden fake links under text or image pop-ups in the browser. Some also go for more sophisticated bots that can perform complex tasks such as registering accounts, and depositing and spinning bonuses for free.
Cost-per-lead (CPL): Affiliates can generate fraudulent traffic with multiple bot networks which are capable of performing the right steps of an event in order to trigger rewards.
Revenue-share model: Player collusion is something that most operators are facing in recent times. It occurs when you offer a share of your revenue to your players. These are performed by high-value players who are willing to place high risk and bet against the casino. Individually, they’ll incur a limited loss, however, the profit potential is huge, which can affect iGaming Platform’s business.
What are the Risks of Working with Affiliates?
The key point to remember is that your affiliates will know exactly how to trigger the rewards. You’re essentially giving them a guidebook on how to perform affiliate fraud and marketing scams, which is why trust and vigilance are of the essence.
In the iGaming affiliate marketing industry, it is all about creating partnerships with third-party affiliates. One can only wish to have a great affiliate partnership in this fast-paced world and that increases the risks of working with an affiliate. One cannot check whether they are fraudulent and this situation turns out to be a huge benefit for such fraudsters.
What is even worse is that you are telling your affiliates how to trigger rewards by giving them a help book on affiliate marketing frauds and marketing scams. And this brings us to vigilance and trust, the two things that are most important for an iGaming Gambling platform, as we talk about how to prevent these iGaming affiliate marketing fraud.
Ways to Prevent iGaming Affiliate Marketing Fraud
Let us discuss some risk management features that an iGaming platform should use in order to prevent such frauds from occurring.
-
Device Fingerprinting
It is said that the more information you have on your users, the better your fraud prevention would be. This helps operators who want to focus more on their user data enrichment to find who their users really are.
Device fingerprinting is designed to scan the configuration of software and hardware from the user and identify their connection with hashes (Device IDs). This function works even in incognito mode, when a user switch browser, deletes the cache, and use emulators, which is typical bot behavior.
-
Analyze Your User Behaviour
Thanks to device fingerprinting and other data enrichment tools, you can get a good idea of who users are. But the other key element is to confirm suspicious users by looking at their behavior.
Data enrichment tools such as device fingerprinting have surely helped iGaming operators to find their real users. But it is also important to find out who their suspicious users are by analyzing their behavior.
In the process of fraud detection, is done by feeding tons of data through multiple risk rules which result in risk scores.
-
Control the Withdrawal Stage
It is a challenge for operators to deal with affiliates who bring both good and bad traffic. Fraud or not, it is in your best interest to be inclusive of as many players as possible, but how can an iGaming operator ensure that they don’t let the bad ones slip in?
Well, that is why we recommended taking control of your withdrawal stage. Add the same rules that restricted bots to function on your platform in order to block players who are cashing out.
-
Monitor the Traffic
We have great news for iGaming operators. Identifying fraudulent affiliates won’t be too hard for you. Partnering with Trackier’s iGaming Platform enables you our industry-leading anti-fraud tool. Our attribution system detects such frauds in real-time and provides accurate data about your conversions in each of your marketing campaigns, all in one place.
Trackier iGaming Anti-fraud tool
There has been a need for a holistic Anti-Fraud tool or mechanism to be in place for the iGaming industry. In order to counter marketing scams and affiliate frauds, Trackier has developed its Anti-Fraud tool across its Performance marketing, Mobile Marketing, and iGaming platforms.
Trackier’s in-house fraud prevention tool allows businesses to get an overview of their affiliates and the various affiliate marketing mechanisms in place for a Gambling platform or iGaming casino. It is a result of our in-depth knowledge of the industry and our constant efforts to make our clients excel in their businesses.
To learn more about our Attribution solutions, check out our website and book a free trial!
