N1 Partners says the “pure performance” era is ending as affiliates focus on retention, LTV and TTFV

N1 Partners is arguing that igaming affiliate marketing is no longer judged mainly by traffic volume and FTDs (first-time deposits). The practical shift is toward retention, LTV (lifetime value) and Time to First Value (TTFV), which changes how brands and traffic are priced.

1. For years, many teams measured campaign performance mainly by FTD volume and initial profitability. N1 Partners says that model is getting weaker because acquisition costs keep rising while player behaviour is changing.
2. One pressure point is auction competition: as more advertisers enter the market, competition in Facebook and Google ad auctions intensifies, which drives customer acquisition costs higher. The other is player loyalty, or rather the lack of it — with many similar offers available, standard bonuses and familiar promotional mechanics no longer do enough to keep users from switching platforms.
3. The result is a familiar one for operators: they are often buying the same type of traffic they bought a few years ago, but at a much higher cost. On paper that still looks like performance marketing; in practice, the economics can be very different once retention and repeat value are included.
4. N1 Partners says operators now look beyond FTD and also assess retention, LTV and TTFV. TTFV is the time it takes for a player to experience the first meaningful benefit of the product, and the faster that happens, the more likely the player is to stay engaged over the long term.
5. Polina Bogatko, affiliate manager at N1 Partners, said campaigns with strong FTD numbers can produce very different results just a few weeks later if players do not return after the first deposit. Her point is straightforward: scaling becomes less efficient when acquisition volume does not translate into repeat behaviour, so affiliates are increasingly judging traffic by what happens after registration and the first account top-up.

For PSPs, acquiring banks and operators in high-risk verticals, the message is not subtle: the commercial conversation is moving from “how many deposits can this channel bring?” to “how much of that traffic actually sticks, and how quickly does the product create value?” That tends to reward brands with better onboarding, stronger retention mechanics and cleaner post-deposit monetisation.