- Media
Data transparency: Show me yours and I’ll Show you mine
And yet, we’re still a little squeamish about it. Everyone talks about sharing data, but when push comes to shove, we often clutch our dashboards like a Victorian dowager clutching her pearls. The irony is that the businesses who lean into transparency, those who dare to show what they know, are almost always the ones who benefit most.
From Silos to Shared Intelligence
For years, data in our industry has been treated like a proprietary asset. Something to be hoarded, hidden and monetised behind closed doors. But the reality is that data on its own is dumb. Its real value is only unlocked when it’s shared, combined and contextualised.
At Game Lounge, we’ve built our business on the power of that principle. Across our owned-and-operated (O&O) websites and our sub-affiliate platform Kiickr, we don’t just gather vast streams of information, but we can weave them together into something bigger than the sum of its parts.
We scrape thousands of signals from the wider market: macro-level shifts in player demand, search trends, emerging product categories, payment preferences and regulatory changes. Layered over this, we track the micro-level dynamics of individual campaigns; from click to conversion, registration to FTD to retention, and ultimately, lifetime value.
Then we anonymise and pseudonymise user interactions, allowing us to map out behavioural archetypes without compromising privacy. Probabilistic and deterministic models let us understand who users are in terms of behaviour (not “identity”) and predict what they’re likely to do next.
The result? A panoramic view of the iGaming landscape, from 30,000 feet right down to street level. And when you start to share that view, incredible things happen.
Power of the persona
Transparency isn’t about oversharing. It’s about sharing the right things. For example, we might not know an individual player’s name, but we do know that a certain cluster of users logs in on weekday lunchtimes, prefers crash games, deposits under €20, and responds best to personalised bonus prompts. That’s a behavioural “fingerprint” and it’s far more valuable than a raw email address.
Once you understand personas at that level, you can do more than just react to behaviour. You can anticipate it – triggering real-time remarketing and retargeting strategies tailored to micro-cells of players, rather than broad demographic buckets. This is data-driven marketing as it was always meant to be: precise, predictive and powerful.
And when these insights are shared the effect multiplies. Partners can optimise campaigns faster. Operators can allocate spend more intelligently. And players receive experiences that feel relevant, not random.
Winning in the age of AI
The next wave of disruption is already here and it’s being driven by artificial intelligence. As search experiences shift from simple keyword queries to conversational, intent-driven interactions powered by large language models (LLMs), the old ways of optimising acquisition are rapidly losing ground.
In this new landscape, static reporting and delayed data will simply not cut it. LLM-powered search and recommendation engines reward freshness, relevance, and contextual intelligence. That means the companies who can feed real-time signals into their decision-making and into the algorithms themselves will be the ones who win.
Real-time behavioural insights, dynamic persona updates, and constantly refreshed benchmarks aren’t just nice-to-have, they’re the backbone of discoverability and performance in an AI-first world. And this is exactly why we’re doubling down on data transparency now: not just to give partners visibility, but to prepare the entire ecosystem for the AI-shaped future that’s coming at breakneck speed.
It’s also why we launched our quarterly Trust & Data Index (TDI) Report, the first comprehensive analysis of data practices across the largest iGaming affiliation platforms. The report doesn’t just benchmark who’s doing what. It shows how real-time data flow, transparency, and interoperability are becoming the defining success factors of the next era of affiliate marketing.
Benchmarks, best practice and the bigger picture
One of the most exciting parts of data transparency is its ability to raise the bar across the entire industry. We’re now in a position to offer aggregated benchmarks (anonymised, of course) that show how individual campaigns or partners stack up against the market as a whole.
Imagine being able to see that your conversion rate is in the 65th percentile across a particular market segment, or that your retention curve is outperforming 80% of similar campaigns. That kind of context turns raw performance data into strategic intelligence. It helps identify best practice. And, perhaps more importantly, it highlights where improvement is needed.
But transparency isn’t just about commercial performance. It’s also a crucial tool for promoting safer gambling. By surfacing signals that indicate risky or unhealthy patterns, we can work with partners to intervene early – long before behaviour becomes problematic.
From data sharing to shared responsibility
Of course, none of this happens without trust. And trust is a two-way street. That’s why the future of iGaming data isn’t just about one party showing their cards – it’s about everyone putting something on the table.
We’re committed to doing our part: exposing aggregated insights, sharing benchmarks, highlighting trends and making intelligence actionable. But the real breakthroughs happen when operators, affiliates and platforms all lean in, pooling their knowledge to build a richer, more accurate, more dynamic picture of the player journey.
In that world, the conversation stops being about “my data” and “your data.” It becomes about our intelligence and how we use it together to build a stronger, more sustainable, more responsible industry.
Bottom line
Transparency isn’t about exposure. It’s about empowerment. And it’s about recognising that the most valuable data isn’t the kind that sits locked away on a server somewhere. It’s the kind that moves, connects, informs and improves.
So yes, we’re ready to show you ours. Because when we all share a little more of what we know, we unlock a lot more of what’s possible.
And that’s exactly what our latest Trust & Data Index explores in detail.
Watch this episode where Richard Dennys and Dr Joe Borg discuss Blockchain and the future of gaming in the UAE
