The Affiliate Marketing Podcast

From Casino Dealer to iGaming Exit: What Hustle Actually Looks Like
You've heard people credit their success to luck. Karolina Pelc doesn't buy it. The founder of BeyondPlay, who built and sold her gaming software startup to FanDuel in 2024, traces every "fortunate" moment back to a decision, a risk, or a leap taken before she felt ready. In this episode, she joins Lee-Ann to talk about building a business in a male-dominated industry, the lessons that only come from failing, and her new book Her Play, which challenges the narrative that success is something that happens to you.

About Karolina Pelc
Karolina Pelc has spent over 20 years in gaming, starting as a casino dealer in Poland before working at London's most prestigious clubs and spending three years on cruise ships. She moved into online gaming as it was emerging, held roles across marketing, product, and business management, and was part of the LeoVegas team during its most exciting growth phase. She went on to found BeyondPlay, a software-as-a-service company specialising in multiplayer and jackpot products, which was acquired by FanDuel in February 2024. She now mentors early-stage founders and has channelled her journey into her debut book, Her Play, which publishes on 9 June in the UK & Europe and on 8th September in the USA & Canada.

Talking Points Include:
Why luck is a byproduct of motion, not a personality trait — the phrase at the heart of Her Play, and why Karolina developed it in response to a question she kept getting asked after the sale
What a cruise ship taught her about multiplayer gaming — and why the product idea she eventually built and sold wasn't random at all
The three moments she knew she had outgrown the room — from leaving a cruise ship job without a plan, to founding a startup in a 43-square-metre apartment during COVID lockdown
How failure compounds into advantage — why the jackpot product that got BeyondPlay acquired only existed because the original product wasn't getting traction fast enough
Building confidence in a male-dominated industry — Karolina's honest take on gender dynamics in gaming and the startup investment world, and why she sees her experience as a superpower rather than a disadvantage

Listen to Find Out More About:
What Karolina actually took away from her two visits to Necker Island, and how the experience shaped the book and her decision to mentor founders
How she navigated the identity crisis that came after selling BeyondPlay, and what helped her work out what she wanted to do next
The specific moment during COVID that convinced her to found the company rather than take a permanent job, despite every rational signal pointing the other way
Why she believes your past experience is never a liability, and how that thinking connects directly to what affiliate managers do every day
The five key takeaways Lee-Ann pulls from the conversation — including a fifth one Karolina adds herself, live on mic
Key Segments of This Podcast and Where You Can Tune In to Go Direct:
[01:38] Karolina's introduction and the story behind HerPlay — from land-based casino dealer to iGaming exec to founder
[05:37] "Luck is a byproduct of motion" — where the phrase came from and what it actually means in practice
[18:15] The three defining leaps in Karolina's career, and what finally made her take each one
[25:00] Necker Island, Richard Branson, and the full-circle moment that launched the book
[32:00] Lee-Ann's four-point summary — and Karolina's fifth, which might be the best of all
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Every major insight, turning point, and uncomfortable truth from the season that changed how the industry thinks about performance
If you missed any episode this season, or if you listened to all of them and want to make sense of where they connect, this is the one to come back to. Lee-Ann revisits every guest from Season 24 and draws out the thread that ran through every conversation: affiliate marketing is not evolving slowly anymore. It's shifting in real time, and the programs that are built on old assumptions are already falling behind.
Talking Points Include:
What our guests collectively confirmed -- the season's guests came from different corners of the industry, but they all arrived at the same conclusion
Why last-click attribution was already broken before AI made it worse -- the season built a steady, cumulative case against over-reliance on a single measurement model, and this episode pulls that argument together
The themes that surfaced again and again across eleven episodes -- zero-click search, compliance as a growth lever, open attribution, human relationships in an automated world, and what it really means to diversify a program in 2026
Listen to Find Out More About:
Why Lee-Ann opens the wrap-up by referencing what the season opener promised, and whether the season actually delivered on it
What Jon Ostler called "the great affiliate bypass" and why the structural shift he described is only going to accelerate from here
Stuart Miles's central lesson about low-friction partnerships and why it applies far beyond the tech and gadget publishing world he comes from
The moment in Lauryn Day's episode where the conversation about creator content and AI changes in search made clear that this is no longer a future concern
What Lee-Ann says she's taking into the next season, and the note of genuine optimism underneath a very clear-eyed summary of how much pressure the industry is under
Key Segments of This Podcast and Where You Can Tune In to Go Direct:
[02:27] Ishtvan Torpoi revisited: the mega lag controversy and why disciplined monitoring beats partner volume every time
[06:20] Jon Ostler's great affiliate bypass: AI citations, publisher investment, and the attribution gap that last click can't explain
[18:47] Adam Ross on invisible revenue: how AWIN's Conversion Protection Initiative recovered $250 million in previously untracked value
[28:56] Alex Springer on open attribution: why collaboration across networks, publishers, and brands is now happening for the first time
[33:49] Lee-Ann's season close: what the industry learned, what still needs to change, and what Season 25 is already being built around

Stay Ahead with Affiverse
If Season 24 raised questions about how your program is structured for what's coming, the Affiverse newsletter is where Lee-Ann continues the conversation between seasons. You'll get the insights, industry commentary, and practical frameworks that don't wait for a new episode to drop.
Subscribe to the Affiverse newsletter and stay connected to the thinking that's shaping the next season of affiliate marketing strategy.
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The E-Commerce Brand's Guide to Unified Performance Marketing in 2026
If your affiliate and influencer teams are still working in separate silos with separate budgets and separate tools, this episode will challenge everything about how you've structured your program. Lauryn Day, Director of Agency Partnerships at Levanta, joins Lee-Ann to explain why the lines between affiliate and creator marketing have blurred beyond the point of separate strategies, what a unified approach actually looks like in practice, and why the brands thriving right now are the ones that have stopped treating these two channels as competitors for budget.
This is a practical, no-nonsense conversation about how modern e-commerce brands are scaling creator and affiliate programs across Amazon, Shopify, and Walmart, and what the data tells us about where discovery and conversion are actually happening in 2026.

About Lauryn Day
Lauryn Day is Director of Agency Partnerships at Levanta, the leading affiliate marketing software for marketplace sellers. Having started her career on the brand side before moving into tech, she brings a practical, dual-perspective view to creator and affiliate strategy that is rare in this space.

Talking Points Include:
Why most affiliate infrastructure was built more than 20 years ago and no longer reflects how brands actually operate, and what a modern platform built for today's e-commerce reality looks like
How Levanta's one-click integration with Amazon, Shopify, and Walmart collapses what used to be a multi-tool, multi-spreadsheet operation into a single five-minute setup
What AI is actually doing to the shopper journey, and why the data shows less than 10% of consumers who use AI for product research convert through it
The product sampling tool that replaced a spreadsheet-and-email nightmare and why brands are calling it one of the most immediately impactful features they've adopted
How creator content is now serving two parts of the buying funnel at once: driving direct discovery and feeding the LLM recommendations that consumers use to shortlist products
The real cost of over-indexing on bottom-funnel partners like coupon and loyalty sites, and how to build a program that serves the full funnel
Key Segments of This Podcast and Where You Can Tune In to Go Direct:
[01:46] What Levanta is, how it was built, and why most affiliate infrastructure was already out of date before the creator economy arrived
[10:24] How consolidating creator and affiliate data into one platform changes the quality of decisions brands can make, with real client context
[22:12] Why treating creator and affiliate as separate strategies is the most common and most costly mistake Lauryn sees, and how to fix it
[26:30] Lauryn's three actionable tips for brands getting their programs ready for 2026:
Consolidate your tech stack. Unify your creator, affiliate, and marketplace channels under one program so your team can focus on strategy rather than administration.
Invest in top-of-funnel creator content. UGC builds brand trust, drives direct discovery, and increasingly feeds the AI recommendations consumers use to shortlist products.
Stay nimble and test often. Whether it's trialling higher commissions for specific creators, experimenting with a hybrid compensation model, or testing a new content format, run short tests, look at the data, and be willing to pivot quickly.
A huge thank you to Lauryn Day for joining us and sharing her insights on where creator and affiliate marketing is heading. If you want to explore what Levanta can do for your program, you can connect with Lauryn directly on LinkedIn or reach out
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Why Every Affiliate Manager Needs to Understand What's Happening to Search Right Now
Search is changing faster than most programs can adapt. AI-powered platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini are absorbing customer journeys that used to generate trackable clicks, and the content that influences purchasing decisions is increasingly going unrecognised and unpaid.
In this episode, Lee-Ann sits down with Alex Springer, Director at openattribution.org, and Leanna Klyne, Head of Agency at KonverJ, to unpack what open attribution actually means, why last-click attribution was already broken before AI arrived, and what the industry is doing about it together, many of them for the very first time.
If you work with publishers, run an affiliate program, or depend on content-driven traffic to generate sales, this conversation will reshape how you think about measurement, value, and what comes next.
Talking Points Include:
Why content creators are producing value they will never be paid for and what needs to change before the affiliate industry loses its commercial foundation entirely
The difference between how people shop and how AI thinks people buy and why that gap is exactly where affiliate marketing's future opportunity lives
Why last click was always a fiction and why the shift to AI-assisted search is finally forcing the industry to confront it
What Open Attribution actually is and why it starts with something as simple as a list of URLs that changed everything

Listen to Find Out More About:
What the agentic commerce protocols from OpenAI and Google actually do, and why the contributions Open Attribution is making to them matter for every publisher and brand in performance marketing
Why some of the highest-quality publisher content has been deliberately removed from AI training sets, and what that means for the accuracy of AI recommendations right now
The early warning signs that brands and affiliate managers should be watching for as AI-generated content starts to game LLM visibility the same way SEO was gamed in the early days of Google
How the SPUR initiative and the APMA AI task force connect to what Open Attribution is building, and where compliance and governance conversations are actually happening
Why Alex believes websites are not going away in five years, and what types of purchases will continue to require the kind of considered, content-led journeys that affiliate publishers are built to support

Key Segments of This Podcast and Where You Can Tune In to Go Direct:
[02:47] Alex introduces Open Attribution, his decade in performance marketing, and why he shifted focus from AI as a technology to AI as an industry actor
[05:45] Why last click was already broken before AI, and what transparency and usage auditability actually mean for content owners and brands
[27:05] The CPA debate: whether cost-per-acquisition still makes sense, what influence really means now, and why the shopping journey has always been more complex than the model we used to measure it

Ready to Build a Smarter Affiliate Program?
If this episode raised questions about how your program is measuring influence, attributing value, or preparing for an AI-first customer journey, the KonverJ team can help. We work with brands and publishers to build affiliate strategies that are built for where performance marketing is heading, not just where it has been.
Get in touch with the KonverJ team to find out how we can help you build a program that performs in the new landscape.
Send me a text with your questions

How treating compliance as a marketing function rather than a legal checkbox can protect your program, your brand, and your bottom line.
If compliance makes your eyes glaze over, this episode is worth pushing through. Sarafina Wolde Gabriel, CEO of Rightlander and a 20-year veteran of affiliate marketing, joins Lee-Ann to make the case that compliance is not a legal formality but a direct driver of revenue. They get into why the biggest programs are still leaving massive blind spots unchecked, what AI-generated content is doing to risk exposure, why a large affiliate is not automatically a compliant one, and the practical steps any affiliate manager can take today to audit their program before a regulator does it for them.

Listen to Find Out More About:
Why even a compliant, long-standing affiliate in your program can still be exposing your brand through content they published years ago and have forgotten about
How the Honey browser extension scandal is a preview of the tracking integrity challenges that are coming for affiliate programs this year
What Sarafina would prioritise in the first week of managing a new affiliate program to put the right compliance foundations in place from day one
Why proving to a regulator that you had systems and monitoring in place before a problem occurred can be the difference between a warning and a fine
How to split compliance responsibilities across your team so it does not all sit on one person and quietly fall off the priority list during busy periods
The one piece of advice Sarafina would give any affiliate manager building a program from scratch, and why knowing your affiliates is still the most important thing in this industry after 20 years
Key Segments of This Podcast and Where You Can Tune In to Go Direct:
[03:05] Why the foundations of affiliate marketing have not fundamentally changed in 20 years, and what that means for how you should still be operating today
[05:09] What actually happens to revenue when compliance fails, and the moment a customer walks away because your affiliate's promotional content did not match reality
[06:38] Rightlander's core function explained: scanning, risk scoring, and giving affiliate managers an action step rather than just a data dump
[21:58] The two compliance trends coming in the next two to three years that most programs are not yet preparing for
[23:26] The five-point compliance checklist Sarafina recommends for any affiliate manager who has never formally audited their program before

Call to Action
A big thank you to Sarafina Wolde Gabriel for joining us this week and for making compliance feel like something worth paying attention to rather than something to hand off to legal. You can connect with Sarafina on LinkedIn and find out more about what Rightlander does at rightlander.com.
If you want more practical insight like this delivered directly to you, sign up for the Affiverse newsletter at affiversemedia.com. We cover the latest in affiliate marketing strategy, industry news, and program growth every week, and it is one of the simplest ways to stay ahead without having to go looking for it yourself.

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