Building for the Long Game: Martins Lasmanis on the Future of Affiliate Strategy

In 2025, the company won four major industry awards.

Building for the Long Game: Martins Lasmanis on the Future of Affiliate Strategy

Over the years, Media 24 has grown into a full-scale affiliate operation, blending SEO, content, and product innovation. In 2025, the company won four major industry awards. But, as CEO Martins Lasmanis explains in his interview, the real focus is long-term strategy, building media products, and delivering real value to users and operators.

Media 24 won four industry awards last year. Which of these do you consider the most meaningful, and why?

Look, I’ll be totally honest with you. At Media 24, we don’t wake up in the morning thinking about awards. That’s not what drives us. Our real win is seeing an operator reach a new peak or scale their traffic because of something we built. That’s the engine.

But, you know how it is in this industry — so much of what we do happens behind the curtain. People think affiliate marketing is just a few guys running ads or writing content, but it’s evolved into a massive, full-scale operation. You’ve got tech, data analytics, SEO, product development. It’s a complex machine. So, when the awards do come, it’s a moment for the team to step out from behind the scenes and get a bit of sunlight.

We were shortlisted for a bunch of stuff last year and walked away with four, but two really stick with me for different reasons. First, 'Best Affiliate' at SiGMA South Asia. That one felt special because it’s physical proof of our geographical reach. The second one is 'Best Media' at the Affpapa Awards. I love this one because it’s about more than just traffic numbers. It’s about our voice. We’ve put a lot of effort into being open, showing the industry exactly how we work, who we are, and what we actually stand for. It’s about our meaning in this space.

Last year there was a lot of talk about Parasite SEO in the industry. What is your stance on using these short-cuts versus the long-term play of building owned and operated media brands?

Parasite SEO is the definition of short-term thinking. I get why people do it. The temptation of fast rankings is always there, but it’s a dangerous game.

If we put the moral side of it aside for a second and just look at the business logic, it rarely pays off in the end. We’ve all seen it happen. Legendary websites with decades of reputation and millions in traffic getting greedy, opening up for parasite content, and then Google just pushes the button.

For the affiliate, sure, maybe you make some quick money. But you can’t build a real company on that. You can’t build a strategy, you can’t hire a long-term team, and you certainly can’t sleep well at night knowing your entire business could be gone by the time you wake up.

What needs to be done in your opinion to be able to build long-term success as an affiliate marketing company in the iGaming industry?

It sounds simple, but you really have to have a long-term strategy and stay totally focused on your goals. A few years ago, you could get away with building these very basic review sites that were basically just designed to squeeze out a conversion and move on. That model is dead. It just doesn't work anymore.

The way I see it, there are really only two currencies in the digital world: value and attention.

When you give a user real value — whether that's a tool they need, a piece of expert advice, or just a great experience — they give you their attention in return. And if you keep doing that, you eventually reach a point where you’ve given them so much value that they actually trust you. They trust your opinion and they trust your offers.

That’s the big shift we’ve made at Media 24. For us, user experience is now the priority. If the product is great, the rankings will follow, but if you only focus on the rankings, you’ll never keep the user.

Do you see any changes in how the iGaming operators perceive and evaluate affiliate traffic now?

Definitely. You have to realize that there are all kinds of affiliates out there using all sorts of traffic sources, but the way operators look at that traffic has changed.

At Media 24, we’ve always been obsessed with organic traffic. In my eyes, it’s still the most valuable stuff out there because the user is actually looking for you. The operators are finally on the same page, as quality has become the number one factor for them. They don't want volume for the sake of volume anymore. 1,000 low-quality clicks don't equal 10 loyal players, that’s why most are looking at things like engagement and Lifetime Value (LTV). Operators want predictable, high-value traffic with consistent user behavior more than ever.

Organic traffic has always been king. But as Google changes, are you finding that quality is now surfacing in unexpected places, like closed communities or niche social funnels?

That is a really good point, and it's something we talk about a lot. At Media 24, we are building for the long run, so we’re always testing new channels. We have to, because the way people look for information is changing right in front of us.

I mean, just look at Gen Z. They aren't going to Google for everything like we used to. But they’re scrolling through social media every single day, that’s where they live. If you aren't there, you basically don't exist to them.

That’s why we’ve started building a serious social media presence for our main products. Organic SEO is still the backbone, but if you want to stay relevant, you have to be able to capture attention wherever it’s happening.

If we sit down again in two years, what will be the biggest difference in how Media 24 operates compared to today?

If we meet up in two years, I think you’ll see Media 24 that has doubled down on being a product-first company. We are super focused on growth right now, but that growth has to be built on the platforms themselves.And I’m obsessed with making sure we don’t lose our main strength, which is speed. In this industry, if you take six months to make a decision, you’ve already lost. So, in two years, I want us to be even faster and even more aggressive in how we test things.