Nune Grigoryan: "Operators are interested in affiliates who bring high-value players"

Casino Guru caught up with AffPapa Nune Grigoryan during ICE Barcelona 2026, exploring the evolving relationship between operators, affiliate managers, and affiliates, and how a better balance between automation and having a healthy relationship can help build future-proof businesses. Grigoryan touched on the shift in the industry towards attracting higher-value players and building more strategic content strategies, as well as a Casino Guru Academy course, developed in partnership with AffPapa, covering what it means to be an affiliate manager today.

Q: Can we start with a short introduction of yourself and AffPapa?

AffPapa is a platform that connects affiliates and operators and helps them by providing built-in features and services. Essentially, we help affiliates find the right partners for them. We also help increase brand awareness through good and strong partnerships.

Q: For people who haven’t heard about AffPapa, how can you sum up your company’s mission and goals in one sentence?

Yes, basically, AffPapa is a dashboard where affiliates can contact operators and specifically find operators that they are interested in. This happens through AffPapa’s built-in features that make the journey to discovering the right partners for affiliates that much easier, leading to what we hope to be long-term partnerships.

Q: You have extensive experience working with affiliates and programs - what do you think has changed the most in the past 12 months in this space?

I think in the past 12 months, affiliates in the iGaming industry have made a shift from being purely traffic-focused to prioritizing player value and building smarter content plans as well as strategic partnerships.

Basically, operators are interested in affiliates who bring players who stay around longer and are generally better value. This is why affiliates are adapting their strategy, including player personalization, because this is how players respond today.

Operators and affiliates are also working hard to ensure local compliance, as compliance in general has become stricter. I dare say that all of this has led to more interactive and stronger relationships between operators and affiliates.

Q: We have a course together where Affpapa has contributed with their expertise, so when someone becomes an affiliate manager, what’s the part nobody prepares them for?

These days, many training programs are far more focused on the technical part of the role of an affiliate manager. Tracking campaigns, setting up campaigns, and following up with results are all important parts of that. What AffPapa really prepares you for, though, is the people side of the job.

Even if you are good at negotiations and analytics, the people side of the job is one of the most important factors to succeed.

Q: When we were building the course, what did you really want it to feel like for the learners?

So, when we were putting this course together, the most important thing we wanted for our learners was to understand the course fully and understand what affiliate management really looks like. We wanted learners to be ready for the job on day one. We wanted people to be prepared and to know what their day-to-day responsibilities would be, including how to build structures and track results.

Q: What do you want a person who has finished the course say afterwards?

We want people who successfully finish the course to say: "I feel ready to start my job. I feel confident, I feel professional, and confident that I will drive good results for my company and team."

Q: What do you hope affiliate managers would do better this year?

I want affiliate managers to find a balance between performance automation and maintaining stronger and long-term partnerships with their affiliates. I think we can’t afford to lose this precious balance between automating our performance and establishing good relationships with partners.

It makes business sense, too, as if you see that something is missing in a partnership, a good relationship would mean that you can have a conversation with your partners and fix those issues quickly.

Hopefully, this year, we will see affiliate managers really show a better balance between performance automation and relationship management.

Image credit: Casino Guru News