 So, as it was mentioned in the previous panel, affiliate marketing is in the cornerstone of programs marketing at this, but recently this industry has experienced quite a few hardships. We all heard of the new regulations that are putting more and more constraints on the affiliate practices. And the price of acquisition, something that we'll discuss in a minute, is constantly wrong. On the other hand, we see new technology that is already implemented within the various systems, and quite a few future ones that are expected to boost affiliate marketing. So, we have with us the distinguished panel, I'll give you guys a chance to introduce yourselves, and then we'll just move on to the questions. So, Sarkina please. Hello everyone, I hope you're having a fantastic afternoon so far, or a day. I mean, this comes in one of my favorite ones, so hopefully there will be yours too. My name is Sarkina, I come from PayPage, Income Access, we're a digital marketing company that's specialized in affiliate marketing since 2002. So, hopefully you'll be able to share your feedback too. Great, so hello everyone. My name is Roma, working for Swiss Code Bank. So, Swiss Code Bank, we are the Switzerland online banking. We are specialized in multi-asset trading solutions for private investors and financial institutions. And we're going to launch pretty soon our affiliate marketing program. So, on June 1st, to boost our retail and giant acquisition. Happy to be here with you. Well, I would like to welcome everyone here. My name is Alexei and I work in TickMill. I would like to thank you all for dedicating your time and coming here instead of spending the time on Sunday beaches of Limassol. I've been dealing with partnership programs of all sorts for quite some time and hope I will be able to actually kind of share my experience with regards to the Easter side of the work that every forex broker would have to be involved in. Thank you. Hey guys, thank you for coming. I'm Sean, I'm from Tel Aviv as well. Hope you're enjoying the service. I'd like to thank everybody here. Anywhere you are on the affiliate network, my name is Tuan Picon. We're already 11 years in the industry. We have a self-accommodation system that knows how to split with an AI technology, knows how to split between all the brokers and get them the best high quality leads. Also, it's written everywhere, TPC scheme, that's our motto. That's the most important thing for affiliates. You know affiliates are asking all the time, what's the CDA, what's the CDA. Everybody needs to understand that TPC is the most important and that's our logo, TPC scheme. Thank you guys. So, we're going to start with a very basic question that might look a little funny to everyone, but it still needs to be asked. So, what is affiliate marketing today? We need like a 3D definition because there are a lot of new models coming in and I just want to hear from you what do you define as affiliate, as an affiliate and in general affiliate marketing practices. So, Tine. That's a very good question. I guess for us, a definition of affiliate could be a third party marketing partner that's referring customers to your business. Now, they could be an individual with a partner's website, it could be IDs, it could be brokers that have a network, somebody with a big social following, it could be an influencer. I mean, is anybody that's not yourself that's marketing your business to drive customers to? Yeah, completely agree with what Tine thinks on our website. We really see the affiliates as a next-tonal sales force that we remunerate upon performance. So, for Swisscote, actually, we really see the affiliates as a complementary program to our existing introducing broker networks. So, we work with a lot of IDs in Europe, in the Middle East, in Asia, and we have different commission models with those IDs. But for us, the affiliates should be CBA focused so really rewarding the affiliates based on the performance, on the client acquisition, and not necessarily on the impression or CBL, some days that we can marginally in the direct way with the external media. So, this is where we position the affiliates. Well, I basically agree with Roman and with everyone who has expressed their opinion. However, within this panel talk, I would like to say that I personally am going to refer to affiliate as their activity which brings your business regardless whether it's based on client acquisition or any other criteria. So, basically, in my opinion, as I said during today, I will basically be referring to whatever you do to maintain your business partners, to bring to generate the business partners who will be capable to bring traffic to you. Well, basically, whether you're in charge of your own, if you're in contact with the company, giving it the thing that you went to the family before, that's the way to make an expression of push and experience about the person alive in your own instances, weekends, nights, everything, because it's really important and we really want to give it the feeling of being to the family. So, because of that, we have a feeling it's going to cost over 10 years. Thank you guys. So, I want to add a very question to Alexi. It's one of the representatives here of LearnPro Garage. So, we're kind of still in the midst of the storm that is called the ESMA Regulations with Restrictions. How did ESMA Regulations, the recent one, I mean, how did they affect the marketing practices? And if you can go into detail in terms of numbers, in terms of how this affected your efforts and your partner's efforts? Well, I would say that I have an experience talking to people who work in various brokerage companies, and I can say that currently you have faced pretty much the same situation everywhere. There was a big impact once the ESMA rules were implemented, but it was kind of a funny impact where you could see there on one side there was a shift of people who were working as introducing brokers. In other words, they were immigrated for the volume generated by their clients. There was a big shift of those people to less regulated brokers just for the ease of using their trading terms and using their partnership terms. They simply wanted to apply their existing business model but to the new broker since their existing business partners, existing brokers, could not support them any longer. So, they would exchange their existing broker to another one hoping they can make as much as they were making before. On the other side, there are some people coming from, majority of them would be coming from European countries. They did not want to compromise their business activities. Therefore, they started seeking for those brokers which were capable to offer them these affiliate related terms which is like compensation based on traffic brought to this broker. That's why, as I said, the situation is a bit funny. On one side, you can see a big shift of the IBs, introducing brokers, all kinds of partners to less regulated brokers just because it's easier to work with them. On the other side, there are some people coming from very decent countries that care a lot about their reputation, about their business who do not want to jeopardize their current activities and they are looking for their good broker capable to partner up with them without breaking any local business requirements or any local laws. Can you give a specific example of the hardships that the IBs are experiencing? Give me one. All right, we have a situation. As you know, before one of the very common practices was when an IB was remunerated for certain volume traded by clients referred by these IBs. These people cannot be compensated based on this business model any longer due to the ESMR regulation. Therefore, they are forced to either change their compensation model and agree on working with a one-off payment which a lot of them don't want to do or they have to find a broker which is capable to offer them CPA, CPL or something similar which there are plenty and my colleagues here they are coming from the industry they can basically probably support me with it. So, I would say they're number-wise maybe during the first half year while ESMR was in place I would probably say that maybe 50-60% of the businesses they shifted away from the model where they were compensated for volume as their so-called IB programs and these people are seeking for different brokers. So, that's pretty much what happened. Romain, what is it done from your side with the ESMR regulation? From our side we have the ESMR program since the ESMR implementation but if we take all the acquisition channels that we work on actually we store in the ESMR region about 15% and if we talk about the revenue that we were generating before and after the ESMR implementation we store a sharp of what's present in the key markets that were in business with all of this in London. So, of course, the new regulation with those negative respondents that you must put on your website on the different trade teams the leverage now which is capped I think it's reshifting with our industry from a brokerage house perspective but also from a partnership perspective as you mentioned, I'd say it's clear that the people who used to work on a revenue sharing or volume compensation basis in the past in the ESMR region I don't see that much future for this at the moment so we must work on new formats and maybe the CPA is an alternative which might be more interesting. So, I'll take your follow-up on the CPA issue and Scorpina, I want to ask you CPAs have been skyrocketing over the last 10 years and more so over the last 5 years so is there an end to that? Do you see somewhere where the prices are going to stop and how do you see the differences in the future with such high prices? That's a very good question. I think the base for what you do with the CPA models or any compensation model for the first time you have to know what your lifetime values are so you have to know what margins you're prepared to work with and which partners are going to bring you the high-revenue generating customers and therefore you've got more room to give them a high CPA I think the one-size-fits-all rule doesn't work and in my experience the read does not work so you have to be very selective and yes you might be able to go high and high and high for better quality but you also have to be prepared to change the model if it's not working in your favor Sean, what do you think about the CPA prices? Is there any stop to that and end to that? I think of course not like we will say the process in economy there is demand, there is supply there is always high demand and the supply of goods is really low and so the higher the demand is and higher prices are going to be for CPA and also the savings and stuff so that's a way to pay a much more than the magazine and the supply of goods Can I have a word here? Alright, first of all just a quick definition CPA is a cost per acquisition it's how much a broker is willing to pay for Claren who decided to trade with this or that broker it's just for the people who might not know what it is Anyway, I would agree that in the recent few years the CPA, how much commission the broker would pay one of did really go far from if not mistaken they used 500-600 dollars for a client, it used to be kind of like considered to be quite high payout Now I'm seeing there are some brokers they would agree to pay 700 bucks for a client 800 dollars for a client and what I'm seeing right now some interesting things are happening first of all, a gap between payouts for clients coming from let's say not so wealthy countries such as, let's say maybe Egypt or Eastern Europe and payout to, yeah and some others, and payout for clients to come from well established countries which is let's say Australia, Singapore Germany, Italy, Norway I would say Germany, Italy, Norway I believe it correlates very much to their the drivers of the economy in Europe the gap is growing so these people who come from these countries they are being rewarded for the most and when I did my must I would say that even though currently some brokers pay 700 dollars, 800 dollars for a client like that they will be willing to pay even more and I will not be surprised that this number will double because it's a very lucrative market, I mean these countries and even though the broker will pay more they will still be profiting on the other side, what's going to happen is that these high payouts will basically cut off those brokerage companies who are not capable to pay that much therefore they will be brokers capable to offer this model and they will be brokers who are not going to play in this game at all that's my opinion so following up on what you said that I said I want to ask Sean you mentioned quite a few countries so I want to know in your point of view what are the most lucrative geographical locations in terms of ROI in affiliate marketing which countries? well it's like I'm still a young woman I know which ones and I like something different but it's seriously a negative question I think there are a lot of geos because for each brand has different publishers that brings in different ROI for each geo I have geos you know they really are making me the best ROI do you want to make me the best ROI really? from my personal experience I've been in this business for just a few years though there are the brokers and these brokers would have the core business based in just a few countries and to my surprise I experienced that sometimes the companies would be generating lots of revenues from some countries you would never expect them to for example I had cases where there were the companies getting a lot from some countries in Eastern Europe despite that you would never think of it so you may not only say there is this geo which is more lucrative or less lucrative however of course there is potential which is much higher let's say in Singapore other than Pakistan there is little to work in Germany or UK other than Bangladesh that's obvious however sometimes for a company to survive it's good enough to actually focus on a specific market where you have pretty decent setup which allows you to do the business that's number one that's from my personal experience you don't have to agree with me on the other side I would say that it's not only the geo that matters a lot it's also your ability to offer enough IT solutions to support your stuff and it is also you as a broker who is capable to motivate the stuff working for you and if your people are motivated enough and supported enough about some fancy things the basic things so if your people are supported enough and motivated enough to do the business for you almost any geo can be profitable and quite lucrative for you that's my opinion thank you so Roman I wanted to ask you following up on the issue of new models and new approaches towards affiliate marketing what do you think about free payment is it a model that you are familiar with the whole idea of affiliate marketing yeah so no it's not a model we are used to as I said today on the global scale we work with a lot of IBS so we have different models with IBS we have two major actually commission plan one is about offering rebates on spreads and this model is mostly used in Europe in the Middle East in Switzerland our market which is more market oriented so it's really specific to the Chinese markets we are pretty well established and here actually most of the IBS there are similar models there is more education to their clients and they just apply a model on top of the spread that we charge to the clients for trading on our platforms so this kind of commission scheme is completely at the opposite of the upfront payment and for the affiliate program that we can launch instant either in our philosophy from the moment to pay it from the affiliates as I said we clearly see it as an external space force that we are going to reward on a performance basis so once the client is onboarding with a deposit and with a normal price that must be executed on the platform so at the moment on our side it's not really the philosophy so we are not going to buy it Serfina what do you think as a follow-up question what do you also think about some profit and loss models some kind of rupture and loss share models that we have so just to add to a romance that I think I totally agree prepayments used to be quite common in the past with bigger affiliates who really know the traffic very well prepayments usually come with some sort of a performance criteria it's just that the notion prepayment means you are giving them the money upfront before you actually get the customers and the traffic but it really boils down to if you work it back to the same CTA values that you are comfortable to pay then you could do that profit and loss is a good one I mean in our experience a good affiliate program should always have an element of a revenue share with it and the reason I say that is because when you have a revenue share your affiliate is actually like a business partner they are not just looking for who is going to give you the highest CTA because yes, I made a knowledge reflection affiliate can be fiddled but the people who pay the highest they are always the ones who are the best so you have to be sensible about it and you have to come up with a confidence model again, a confidence model you can have a CTA element because obviously you have to come across as money and they say they can't pay and they don't understand you can see cost of money anyway so it's good to have that but the longer elements of it is what makes it a sustainable profitable model for both the program and the business all these types of new products new technologies that are now emerging so what do you guys have what kind of new product that you have that you implemented lately and you can tell us about it basically we have the AI technology and I suppose that the people out from the Europe we use it for our smart trading so all the brands that we are working with we get the lead from the chart basically the lead enters and the same second based on the whole center of our business and which conversion rate the lead is immediately directed to the program and it's going to be most highly profitable so we use AI for that and yeah I'm sure it will be useful so can I have the new technologies new products that you want in that direction I think what people are going to see now is obviously most people are on their on their mobile phones so being able to do your trading very easily and seamlessly on a mobile platform is really going to be interesting and from the affiliate perspective obviously if the affiliate is going to drive traffic to your app then they will be able to track it so being able to track the in-app activity ongoing on just a model is something that's quite sold out so we talked about technology and we mentioned passwords at AI another password that we like to mention is blockchain so my question is how can blockchain if any can improve the trust between brokers and affiliates and all the agencies in the middle obviously we know that there's some sort of tension sometimes and can blockchain technology with its verification and its assurances can reach to shortfall brokers and affiliates so let's see first of all I wanted to say that the majority of the people sitting here they are much smarter than myself therefore you probably understand the word and the concept of blockchain much better than myself my opinion again and the rest of the users alright I'll try so in my opinion blockchain despite that like it's some fancy and very complex word at the current moment and maybe within the next few years would not really have much impact on the industry because it's being based on same technologies as I mean their affiliate part of the business is being based on the same technologies as we've been having for the past 3, 4, 5 years nothing changed really you need to have to be backed up the people do the work for you having all these technologies to help you somehow segment your clients kind of identify something that's good to have but it's not their driver for your business however in my humble opinion in case this blockchain and technologies based on blockchains can be profitable to somehow help your needs solve your problems do the KYC better identify the clients but they might be playing some great role sometime in the future what do you think? yeah I think the technology which can improve the shortage between partners if you do business with partners first in the first stage the second stage then I see use potential for the technological aspect of the blockchain to improve the different processes so I'm really thinking for instance about the payment part I read an article recently I told the guy who was actually saying that maybe the smart contract which is based on the network and it could be an X application of the blockchain to settle the different contracts between the counterparties and brokers for instance and to settle the maintenance of the transactions are very nice I see a strong potential from that side so really gaining of efficiency and remotely paying me on this panel another work part which is sometimes very interesting to do and which doesn't really have value and still in the payment in the payment side there is also this initiative so this network which is now adopted by more than 200 financial institutions worldwide and this also could provide additional efficiency could save money, could go quicker when it comes to manage global payments so if you have huge networks of affiliates in different continents when you have to manage different currencies again here this blockchain technology can really improve the way you process all those payments you can save your costs but it's really a technological matter I see the trust it's completely human based it's all about the relationship that you have with the partner but blockchain can be a great asset in my opinion what happens is the majority of their companies that work in this business they are being managed by some conservative people who are trying to build their business kind of like slowly but surely therefore I don't really think that these people will be rushing to start a new technology straight away they will probably take time try this product, try that product see how the competitors did it then if things went well they will apply this product it will take time so yes there is big potential in this but at the same time it will take time before these new products will be actually widely used thank you guys we have very little time but I do want to open the floor for one question only anyone going once to the city anyone thank you guys so much for this great discussion it was our pleasure thank you