New joint venture Studio Leaders launches to turn affiliate intelligence into studio growth

First Look Games, TAG Media and GameOn combine their data, publisher network and affiliate marketing execution

First Look Games, TAG Media and GameOn have launched Studio Leaders, a joint venture that offers game studios a single route from finding affiliate opportunities to acting on them. It brings First Look Games’ affiliate data together with TAG Media’s affiliate management and GameOn’s campaigns and content in one fully managed service, covering the ground most studios don’t resource in-house. 

The commercial weight of affiliates in today’s market is hard to overstate – according to First Look Games’ data, they account for anywhere from 19 per cent to 95 per cent of an operator’s new depositing customers. Despite that, game studios have historically struggled to track their affiliate data, with little sense of where they were losing ground. 

First Look Games has largely solved the visibility problem. Its platform now tracks more than 55,000 games across a network of over 1,000 affiliate publishers in 79 markets. Studios can see how their titles are represented and track performance across markets, but acting on that picture is where most get stuck. 

Studio Leaders is designed to close that gap. First Look Games provides the intelligence layer, showing studios how their titles perform across the affiliate ecosystem and where the biggest opportunities sit. TAG Media runs the affiliate and publisher side, using its relationships across that 79-market network to reach the right partners for each title and to work more strategically with affiliates market-by-market. GameOn delivers the campaigns and content that support it, such as affiliate Q&As, merchandise and the creative assets that keep a title visible over time. 

In practice, the new service covers publisher targeting by market, affiliate and streamer recruitment, sponsored placement management, and the content kits, compliance reviews and reporting that all sit around a live campaign. Because Studio Leaders works directly from First Look Games’ data, the intelligence and delivery come from the same source, giving game studios a much more thorough level of support than they have had before. 

Alex Wilson, Head of Marketing Division at GameOn, said: “Studios can now see where their games are winning or losing across the affiliate ecosystem, but most have lacked the resources to act on it. Studio Leaders is built to change that. 

“First Look Games shows where the opportunities are, TAG Media works the affiliate outreach and placements, and GameOn produces the content that turns it all into visibility a studio can measure. We’re extremely proud to be launching this first-of-its-kind service.” 

Tom Galanis, Chief Executive Officer at TAG Media & First Look Games, added: “For years, studios have poured their hard work into excellent games and then released them into a market they had no visibility over.   

That never sat right with me, which is why we built First Look Games. Studio Leaders is what comes next, offering both the intelligence a studio needs and the team to act on it, all in one place. For studios who are serious about ensuring their games are truly represented to the player audience – something only the affiliate channel offers, that combination simply hasn’t existed until now.” 

Studio Leaders forms part of GameOn’s wider work with studios, suppliers and operators, which runs from PR and thought leadership through to brand and product marketing and forms a new stream for TAG Media’s affiliate management products for the iGaming industry.