Trust between affiliates and operators is becoming harder to maintain, and John Wright believes better access to data could force both sides to become more accountable.

John, Co-founder of Nousviz, returns to iGaming Real Talk to speak with Surya about affiliate shaving, aggressive commercial deals, traffic quality and why the problem is not always one-sided. He argues that operators can lack transparency, but affiliates can also take advantage of operators through deals or placements that do not deliver what was promised.

A large part of the conversation looks at whether industry-wide benchmarking could help. John explains how anonymised affiliate data could be used to show conversion rates, player value and operator performance more clearly. His view is that once affiliates can compare where their traffic actually performs best, operators will have more pressure to fix weak CRM, VIP programmes, payments and other parts of the player experience.

They also discuss the technology behind affiliate management. John talks about fragmented APIs, the StatsDrone Affiliate Software Report, the number of affiliate platforms in the market and why standardised data is still missing. Nousviz is being built around bringing information from different systems into one place rather than trying to replace every individual tool.

The final part turns to AI agents. John sees 2026 as the year agents become more important, particularly for companies that want better data, customer support and analysis without building large BI or engineering teams. But AI also creates a new problem for SaaS companies: if software becomes easier to build, every product needs a clearer moat and stronger reason for customers to stay.