From Junior AM to CCO: RichAds Commercial Director shares her path in the affiliate industry

Anastasiya Kazakova, Chief Commercial Officer of RichAds advertising network, shares how she got to such a high position within four years of work in the sphere, her overall experience and what motivated her most of all. She also provides the latest trends of Gambling vertical in the end of the article, stay tuned!

“I came to the platform in 2019 as a Junior Account Manager (AM), without any prior experience and understanding of affiliate marketing. For sure, before I got to real work with clients there was a month of learning all the industry and platform peculiarities,” Anastasiya recalls.

She explained that for her, taking responsibility for clients’ results was more of a captivating task than some kind of a tiresome responsibility. Understanding the depths of optimisation practices was of great interest for her, so in just half a year she got to the middle level of accounting. 

Anastasiya points out that her path wasn’t always easy, and she did a great deal of work to learn how to delegate responsibility and multitask. “I quickly crafted my own workflow and realised that communication with clients and finding an approach to each of them weren’t challenging for me, so I indulged in such activities with pleasure. The biggest issue for me was to find the balance in terms of management and delegate the tasks.”

In terms of timing, she got to the Head of Customer Service and Accounting position in two years, then in just a year she became a Commercial Director. “This wasn’t a great surprise for me, I always knew that I’d get to this post, the question was timing. Though it was pretty fast, I would never reject such an opportunity, so I accepted it and started to learn from scratch.”

Anastasiya elaborated that each position has different peculiarities, so it took quite a time for her to comprehend them. She mentioned that she was so eager to excel in the position that she broadened her expertise in management via external courses as well, which got her to a brand new level. 

“By now my expertise includes working with all the verticals, from iGaming to Dating, Soft and Sweepstakes. At the time I used to work with clients, I could have about 100 adverts simultaneously and managed to assist them in optimising their campaigns and improving the CR”, Anastasiya sums up.

What’s more she shared a couple of insights on the hottest niche of RichAds — Gambling. It’s no surprise that the vertical is one of the most demanding in the platform. In 2022 RichAds was recognised as the best iGaming traffic source of the year by the SiGMA award.

“The main trend in terms of GEOs for Gambling is certainly LATAM, it grows by leaps and bounds in 2023. When it comes to sources, I see that pop and direct click ads work best of all, the CR is actually the highest. Native and push ads are also more than compatible with the vertical, they’re perfect for scaling,” Anastasiya shares.

She highlighted that it’s vital to check if popular payment methods are available when driving traffic to LATAM, that’s a must for an effective campaign. One more hint from Anastasiya was that you can adjust the first deposit depending on GEO — increase it for Tier 1 and decrease for Tier 2 and 3. 

Last but not least, she recommended implementing retargeting, as casino users might be harder to retain than bettors due to the variety of Gambling brands in the market. You can do it for clicks and registrations, and increase the contact of clients up to seven or 10 per person.

Finally, Anastasiya said that she attributes the success she achieved on her inner motivation and the inspiring team she works with. Her in-depth belief is that rolling stone gathers no moss, and she uses this principle to achieve anything she desires, and believes that any can if motivated enough.