Livestream Affiliate Spotlight: Building a New Level of Trust, with Tobias Svensen, CEO, CasinoGrounds

The changing style of how content is consumed should be continually reflected in our marketing and customer engagement strategies. The rise of livestreaming platforms such as Twitch and Youtube offers up a whole new landscape for the industry to connect with its customers. An opportunity not to be missed.

We caught up with Tobias Svensen, CEO of market-leading live streaming affiliate network, CasinoGrounds. In our conversation, we get some useful insights into the dynamics of using live streaming platforms and what impact it can have on player trust.

The online casino sector has seen a significant rise in activity as a direct result of the Covid – 19 pandemic. Has this impact been equally reflected in the affiliate industry in terms of content engagement? How can this spike in traffic be leveraged to ensure sustained growth in the future?

It’s hard to speak for the entire affiliate industry as we are quite niche.

Everyone that focuses on video content, within the affiliate space, saw quite a significant spike very early on.

This correlates with the media and statistics as businesses like Netflix and YouTube, and all of the streaming services saw a huge increase.

This increase was so sudden that Netflix and YouTube actually had to remove the HD option because they were afraid they were going to crash the internet.

What I saw, is that it normalised fairly soon but at a slightly higher level.

There was an initial spike lasting a couple of months, and then it slowly went down to the normal level of consumption.

When you have a spike of new users and casual users turning into more frequent users, there’s obviously an opportunity to get out to a new audience

By having high-quality content and likeability and trust, hopefully, you can retain them as more frequent viewers in the future.

The use of social media platforms such as Twitch or Youtube for player acquisition is still a relatively new concept. How do the player conversion rates compare to more traditional affiliate channels? Do you expect this trend to be adopted by the majority of iGaming operators in the future?

Regarding conversion rates, when a person is watching a live stream and they decide they want to use one of the offers that are being promoted, I think the conversion rate is quite a bit higher than the normal kind of traditional SEO conversion rates.

This is because companies, like CasinoGrounds, create a completely new level of trust.

This element is something that traditional SEO sites don’t really have, apart from a few well-established ones.

Most players google “the best casino bonus”, and then end up on one of the tens of thousands of very generic casino reviews and offers; there’s not really any trust there. This is particularly pronounced for inexperienced users.

For me, as a Norwegian, I would be used to seeing Unibet, Betsson and LeoVegas on TV. As a player, I had good experiences with those businesses, but when I go to the casino review site and see their top 10 doesn’t have any of the big well-respected brands, then I lose some of the trust.

Streaming based businesses don’t necessarily have that challenge as they are watching a particular person because they like them. It’s a mix of educational and entertaining content.

When you have that level of trust, most people that click on the offer have already made the decision to deposit. That’s driving up the conversion rates.

Do I expect this trend to be adopted by the majority of iGaming operators in the future?

I think everyone at some point everybody will be forced to do so. I haven’t had a linear TV at home since 2010. Even my parents’ generations are slowly moving towards the streaming services.

Everyone in this age wants things on demand rather than having a set program to follow. Everything needs to go faster.

It’s the same kind of revolution we saw with desktop versus mobile, except this time its text content versus video content.

The only difference is that the video content revolution actually went faster than desktop versus mobile.

I definitely think this is the future.

At CasinoGrounds, we’re simply adding another layer to the trust by having an actual person representing the industry. This is going to be very important moving forward, for everyone.

Editor’s Note: From speaking with Tobias it’s clear that Video is fast becoming the dominant form of content. Live streaming allows the industry to connect with its customers in a way never seen before and builds new levels of trust. We are now witnessing a transition in customer behaviour and the ‘video content revolution’ is picking up a pace quicker than ever before.

CasinoGrounds have been pioneers is harnessing the power of ‘on-demand’ services. They’ve leveraged these platforms to create more meaningful player engagement than their traditional SEO competitors ever could. A great sign for the future progression of our affiliate industry.

Look out for part 2 of our conversation with Tobias when we discuss the product and regulatory side of this sector and what we can do as an industry to ensure both of these aspects are continually improved.