Marketing in the age of innovation: RichAds CMO shares how continuous learning provides a competitive advantage

Being a marketer with 12 years of experience, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of RichAds, Vasilii Gamov had an opportunity to work in various fields of business. Starting from an affiliate network startup owner, Mr Gamov managed to engage in several spheres of the same industry — his expertise includes working for adtech holdings, direct advertisers, casino operators, advertising and affiliate networks as well as fintech on C-level positions.

How does all the experience you gained help you in the current position? Was there any skill that didn’t work out for you?

“All of the experience I gained cooperating with different companies is more than valuable, there hasn’t been a single skill that I couldn’t apply later. This gave me an opportunity to look at the industry from various angles and have a full picture of its functionality.

In terms of knowledge and skills acquired there’s nothing that can be referred to as useless. For instance, I started learning English at an early age which was really challenging and I didn’t understand how it can be used back then, but later was thankful to my parents for the ability.

Getting back to the skills I got quite early in my career is quite a common practice for me. I got started with YouTube back in 2012 and didn’t understand for some time if I’d need this experience in the future, but later I actively applied all my knowledge promoting different companies, including my current workplace — RichAds ad tech holding. It turned out to be more than fruitful in attracting customers and boosting our recognition in the market.

Seeing the path and overall vector in the profession is the most essential thing. I believe in Miyamoto Musashi’s idea of multiple paths to the goal you wish to achieve — there can be many different roads and skill sets, so you never actually know which ones would come in handy, it’s all on the will of chance. The main point is to make the most of the knowledge you acquire.”

Tell us more about your work at RichAds — what’s changed since you got the position? Please, feel free to share your future plans.

“Let’s now focus on my path at RichAds — as of now I’m not only a CMO, I also work on the launch of several projects under one holding, including media buying, affiliate network, as well as engaging in media and marketing agency creation in the future.

What I did as the basis when I came to RichAds was adding transparency to the processes. The main issue was that employees had a set of tasks to do without understanding the outcome they bring to business, which is the cornerstone of motivation, actually.

Once a person understands how much money and results they bring to a business, they finally comprehend the goals they have and how the workflow can be improved which boosts their growth as a professional and provides an opportunity to get to the higher position.

This method always shows tangible results, in terms of RichAds I saw it as well — the metrics did grow a lot. Another thing that I started to develop in my current position is a YouTube channel, and as I mentioned before, my experience did come in handy there. One more approach that we used (and it doubled our CR) was the segmentation of our website on various topics that appear in the search by creating various flows and landing pages.

Last but certainly not the least achievement was launching Yellana affiliate network under RichAds holding, we started it in private in 2022 and this year in February it got to the public. Although the project hasn’t existed for a long time, we can already call it a success. Providing quality offers in Gambling, Betting, Finance, Soft and Apps, it allows even marketers with minor experience get highest results. We accept all the traffic sources while offering geo+vertical bundles and expert advice of managers to affiliates of any level, so it’s highly recommended for a test.

In terms of our future plans, we do have a lot of them. As of now, RichAds is an ad network providing several main formats — push, pops, in-page push, direct click, as well as a newly launched but rapidly growing type of traffic — native ads. What’s more, the format is perfect for iGaming!

We also plan to implement one more format on our platform till the end of the year, but no spoilers for now. What’s more, as our YouTube and blog grows, we’re slowly developing into an influential industry media with regular useful content.”

One of the hottest verticals in 2023 is Betting. Can you share several trends of the niche that will prevail in the future?

“First and foremost, it’s crucial to have a clear understanding that the vertical is about long-term profits. It might be hard and expensive to attract a client, but in terms of retention Betting is the best, as users prefer to stick to one brand, opposite to casino. That’s why my advice is to choose the RevShare payment model and get more income in the long run, rather than test CPA.

Obviously, here I wish to mention the strengthening legalisation. A lot has changed in the last 10 years, everyone starts applying regulations, as well as anti-fraud solutions to avoid scam and crooked schemes. More and more brands are into honest business practices, which is connected with the Internet regulations that have been imposed over the last years. It actually opens the door to legal gambling and betting operators, so clients would have more trust in them.

Another trend that has existed for more than a year is LATAM, especially taking into account that the first regulations of betting and gambling activities have recently been announced in Brazil. Though the market may be quite fresh and interesting to test, there’s no need to wait for enormous profits from the very beginning due to the mediocre incomes of LATAM citizens. If you wish to test the market, RichAds offers great volumes, starting from 20 million impressions in Brazil to 3 million impressions in less popular GEOs, like Peru.

In terms of GEOs, do not focus only on hyped regions, as this market is all about grabbing new opportunities. For instance, you can test Canada as well as Germany that already have fixed betting regulations and high average deposits due to the higher average income and living standard. For newbies it’s worth paying attention to Asian countries, as the initial cost of traffic is lower and focus is on more trending GEOs right now, while Vietnam, Indonesia, and India can bring a good load of money.”

Can you share a few tendencies that you see in the affiliate industry recently?

“Speaking about trends, I’d like to mention that using modern technologies is also a must that not all the businesses apply, though it does save a lot of time and effort. We apply AI tools on a daily basis for multiple tasks, like image, landing pages and text generation and then assess them manually, without creating such things from scratch. This way we optimised processes and started spending less money and got more income.

One more thing that I see is that brands do become bigger and are into scaling their business. Most affiliate companies turn into holdings creating many platforms under one umbrella, creating whole ecosystems. That’s a great way to increase profits while developing your own brand and growing expertise while satisfying all the needs of a customer in one place. No need to argue that it can be convenient both for marketers and business owners, while the only drawback is it leading to monopoly.”