Elena, Royal Partners: “AI strengthens and accelerates our fight against bonus abuse”

Focus Gaming News spoke with Elena, Head of EU-department at Royal Partners, about using AI models to combat bonus abuse and fraud in affiliate traffic.

Exclusive interview.- As affiliate marketing becomes increasingly complex and regulated, networks are under mounting pressure to protect operators from fraud while maintaining traffic quality and performance. In this interview with Focus Gaming News, Elena, head of the EU Department at Royal Partners, explains how the company is using advanced AI and machine-learning models to combat sophisticated bonus abuse schemes and detect fraudulent traffic.

Elena shares insight into the evolving regulatory landscape, the impact of Google updates on acquisition strategies, and the growing importance of analytics, retention, and diversified traffic sources. She also outlines the most common fraud patterns affecting affiliate networks today and how AI is reshaping the way abuse and fake users are identified and prevented across the funnel.

How does Royal Partners fight complex bonus abuse schemes? 

To combat bonus hunters, our team has deployed a multi-level monitoring system. At its core are modern, trainable AI models that help us identify suspicious users and prevent any instances of illegitimate bonus use.

What machine-learning tools help detect fraudulent traffic? 

To detect suspicious traffic to online casinos, we use specialised in-house software. These programmes analyse gaming behaviour, patterns, and anomalies based on known fraudulent schemes, which are constantly updated and enable the systems to self-learn and improve. For example, decision trees and ensembles, logistic regression, support vector methods, sequence models (LSTM, GRU), etc.

How are you adapting to stricter affiliate marketing regulations? 

Google updates affect the work of both advertisers and affiliates, particularly those who run SEO websites. The cost of traffic is increasing, while quality, at best, remains at the same level and, at worst, continues to decline. Fortunately, we have a strong retention department that supports traffic processing, and we also acquire other high-quality sources, such as streaming traffic, which increases the total number of visitors to our brands’ websites.

What trends discussed here are most concerning for affiliate networks today? 

Traffic quality is our main challenge, especially considering that every advertiser has different approaches to quality assessment and different acquisition goals. That is why we have our own analytics department, which works closely with affiliate managers and supports deal launches.

What are the most common fraud and abuse patterns you see today in affiliate traffic? 

It is impossible not to mention schemes where a chat is created, allegedly with the partner’s finance department, and fraudsters contact the advertiser claiming there is an error in the invoice. They send a file for the advertiser to verify the data, and in this way, gain access to the entire computer. 

How is AI changing the way affiliate networks detect bonus abuse and fake users? 

AI helps us significantly strengthen and accelerate processes related to combating bonus abuse at every stage of the monitoring system’s development.