For those of us who have been attending online gambling affiliate conferences since the beginning of time (or 2005), the ever increasing presence of Binary Options booths at our beloved reunions is obvious.
When Binary Options companies first started popping up we just thought it was another iGaming fad (think backgammon and scratch cards), but now the sector is picking up and those involved are starting to make some serious money.
As our online gambling affiliate industry moves and changes with new regulations, tax, license requirements, operator spend cutbacks, saturation and God knows what else, affiliates around the world are looking to new verticals such as Binary Options so they can maintain their revenue stream.
At this year’s iGaming SUPER Show I spoke with Ofri Noier of Tradologic, a popular Binary Options platform provider that was exhibiting at the event. Noier succinctly defined Binary Options as “simple binary betting on the financial market” and pointed out that Binary Options and Forex are not the same thing, despite popular belief.
Noier explained, “If you look at the Forex Product, you are looking at a very complicated financial product. When you look at the Binary product, you look at a very simple product that everybody can play and everybody can enjoy”.
An example of an online gambling operator that has added Binary Options or “Financial Betting” to their suite of offerings is 188bet.com. According to 188bet.com’s Financial Betting Introduction page, “You predict whether the level of a market will finish above or below a certain level at the market expiry time. If you are correct, you win!” Of course what they don’t say is if you’re wrong, you lose…but you get the idea.
While the simplicity of Binary Options is appealing to the consumer, what’s appealing to online businesses are the conversion rates which are proving to be quite high- around 30% according to Noier – plus the player profiles are similar to sports and casino gamblers, making Binary Options an attractive “add on” to existing online gambling operator sites.
Binary Options are also a good platform to offer the coveted Chinese gambler who may have trouble accessing online gambling sites due to the laws in China. Noier added that Binary Options are a fresh, new product for the Chinese to gamble on, the first new product in five years if you exclude scratch cards.
So what does this mean for online gambling affiliates?
Binary Options could be a lucrative niche for affiliates to focus on as the online gambling market matures and becomes more and more competitive. Noir shared that a number of sports and casino affiliates have already started to get involved with Binary Options because of the proven cross over between the verticals.
When asked what makes Binary Options a good niche for affiliates Noier said, “[Binary Options are] a new product, new key words, new content for SEO and there is very high demand for traffic in the market”.
The even better news for affiliates is that they can expect CPAs between $350 and $450 for financial traffic, a number that reminds us old timers of “what it used to be like” pre-UIEGA.
According to Noier, The most lucrative markets for Binary Options affiliates are Asia and the EU- Asia because Asians enjoy financial betting and they like new products, the EU because Europeans are familiar with gaming and Forex and they can easily understand the Binary Options product.
Noier concluded our conversation with leaving some words of wisdom for new and old affiliates who are looking to get involved with Binary Options, hopefully you will discover that you’ve learned something new:
“Start with cross sale from existing sources and use new keywords which you haven’t used before – financial betting, Facebook, Google, BMW, gold, and etc. – the ones that are using those key words now are not as good as [iGaming affiliates] are :)”
