How Data Analytics Increases Publisher Revenue
The most successful iGaming publishers today do not rely on instinct to inform their affiliate monetization strategy. Instead, they use data analytics to guide their decisions.
Every visitor to a publisher’s website generates valuable data regarding their visits and interactions with the publisher’s content. By accurately analyzing this data, publishers can find new ways to increase their revenue without necessarily increasing their website traffic.
For the growing number of iGaming publishers, analytics is one of the most valuable monetization tools available.
Why Analytics Matters
Every marketing decision a publisher makes should be backed by data analytics.
Without analytics, publishers make marketing decisions based on assumptions about:
Which casino operators perform best
Which pages of a publisher’s website generate the most revenue
Which countries produce the best conversion rates for publisher links
Which devices publish the most deposits from visitors
By relying on these assumptions instead of data, publishers often make marketing and website design decisions that hurt their revenue.
Analytics allows publishers to make marketing and website design decisions based on proven data instead of assumptions.
Focus on Revenue, Not Just Traffic
Publishers often focus too much on traffic and do not pay enough attention to the metrics that directly relate to revenue generation.
Publishers should pay attention to their revenue per visitor (RPV), earnings per click (EPC), click-through rate (CTR), registration rate, first-time deposit rate, and revenue by page metrics to accurately gauge their website and affiliate program performance.
Identify Your Highest-Earning Pages
Not all pages on a publisher’s website generate the same revenue.
By evaluating the organic traffic, affiliate clicks, registrations, deposits, and revenue of each page, publishers can focus their optimization efforts on the pages that earn them the most revenue.
Measure Operator Performance
The performance of each operator is not the same.
By measuring the performance of their operator partnerships based on revenue metrics such as conversion rate, earnings per click (EPC), average commission, and deposit frequency, publishers can better focus their efforts on the operators that work best for their traffic.
Understand User Behavior
Understanding how users interact with a publisher’s website is a valuable tool that can generate numerous benefits.
By using analytics to understand user behavior, publishers can answer important questions such as which pages generate the most traffic, where users leave the website the most, which buttons receive the most clicks, and how long users stay on the website.
Analyze Geographic Performance
Traffic from different parts of the world does not necessarily perform the same on a publisher’s website.
By analyzing website traffic according to the country of origin, the state of origin, the language of users, and the devices they use, publishers can find the best opportunities for growth and the most problematic areas.
Optimize Mobile Revenue
Publishers should pay special attention to the traffic from mobile devices since they typically account for the majority of a publisher’s traffic.
Metrics to monitor for mobile users include page speed, click-through rate, registration rate, and revenue per visitor.
Optimizing the mobile experience for users can lead to an improvement in revenue.
Track Every Affiliate Link
Publishers must pay careful attention to the revenue of every affiliate link.
Tracking each link’s total clicks, location of each click, conversion rate, revenue generated, and how each performs against other affiliate links can help publishers increase revenue by improving underperforming links.
Improve Internal Linking
Some pages of a publisher’s website may attract a lot of traffic but do not generate much revenue.
By placing internal links to pages that generate the most revenue, publishers can guide users to revenue-generating content and increase the revenue they make from their website.
Monitor Returning Visitors
Returning visitors to a publisher’s website may behave differently from new visitors.
By monitoring and measuring the behavior and revenue of returning visitors compared with new visitors, publishers can better develop a strategy to retain these high-value visitors.
A/B Test Key Pages
Publishers should continually test the performance of the most important pages on their websites.
Metrics to test include headlines, call-to-action buttons, bonus placement, comparison tables, and featured operators to determine if any changes can increase revenue.
Use Dashboards for Faster Decisions
Instead of spending time manually tracking and measuring the revenue of each affiliate partner, publishers can use analytics dashboards to quickly and easily gather this information.
These dashboards allow publishers to monitor their daily revenue, campaign performance, geographic performance, operator revenue, and conversion rates of their website traffic.
Turn Insights Into Action
The insight gathered from data analytics only becomes valuable when publishers act on the information.
Based on analytics, publishers should decide which pages to update, which operators to replace, which markets to expand to, and what changes to make to the page layouts on their website.
Build Better Relationships With Operators
By providing operators with data that demonstrates the success of their partnerships with publishers, they may be rewarded with improved commission structures or more exclusive partnership opportunities with publishers.
AI Is Changing Publisher Analytics
Artificial intelligence today makes data analytics easier for publishers.
Modern analytics software platforms offer artificial intelligence features such as predictive analytics for website conversions, revenue forecasting, automatic problem detection, operator recommendation algorithms, and the ability to provide personalized reports on website performance.
Common Analytics Mistakes
Many publishers that fail to properly use analytics to monitor and improve their revenue make a few common mistakes.
These mistakes include only tracking website traffic, ignoring conversion rates, focusing on the number of website clicks instead of revenue, ignoring the performance of the operators they work with, refusing to perform A/B tests on their websites, and failing to measure the traffic and revenue from mobile devices.
Each of these mistakes can be fixed to bring publishers additional revenue.
Future Trends in Publisher Monetization
The future of publisher analytics and affiliate marketing will become even more data-driven.
Some of the upcoming trends in publisher analytics include real-time performance analytics, AI optimization, dynamic placement of affiliate offers, predictive analytics to categorize website visitors, and the ability to provide personalized experiences to individual affiliate marketers.
Publishers that embrace data analytics will remain competitive in the industry as the cost of acquiring players on the online gambling sites increases.
Final Thoughts
For the iGaming publishing industry, analytics is one of the most valuable tools available. It allows publishers to more fully understand how their website visitors interact with their content and how their operator partners perform.
By focusing on improving the various elements of their websites according to analytics data, publishers can increase their revenue without increasing their traffic.
The best affiliate website publishers understand these aspects of their websites and make marketing and website design decisions based on analytics data instead of assumptions. In today’s highly competitive industry, having better data analytics provides publishers with a significant advantage in generating revenue from their websites.