The average deposit dropped from $46 to $21, and active players fell by 60%. After the January holidays, the Retention team sent over a traffic report on the Sinners team with a single recommendation. Stop everything. Godlike Partners, the Olymp Casino affiliate program, spent 10 minutes breaking down the SubIDs instead. As a result, the team kept its rate bump and reached a cap of 100 FTD a day.
GEO Kyrgyzstan, Olymp Casino offer on CPA. Below we look at the tagging that made it possible to separate good funnels from bad ones, why some games bring better redeposits than others, and what Sinners recommend passing in SubIDs. We hear from both sides. Alexandra, Team Lead of Affiliate at Godlike Partners, manages this team on the advertiser side. Alexey, Head of Media Buying at Sinners, is in charge of traffic buying.
What the Retention report showed
By then Sinners had been working with us on KG for about six months. Volumes were growing, and there were no quality issues. In January the picture changed on several metrics at once, and payback started to slide.
| Metric | What happened after the holidays |
| Active players | share dropped by 60% |
| Churn rate | went up, players disappeared almost right after the first deposit |
| Redeposits (RD) | rate went down |
| Average deposit | $46 → $21 |
In a situation like this, an affiliate program usually shuts off the traffic and sorts things out later. Here the link tagging Sinners had set up long before the drop decided everything.
How SubID works and what an untagged link puts at risk
SubID (sub-identifier) is an extra tag in an affiliate link. With every click it tells the advertiser where the player came from. For example:
- sub1 stores the approach name, say Crash_Video.
- sub2 stores the ID of a specific creative, say creo_15.
Now picture two approaches in one untagged link. The first brings players who play long sessions and deposit $100 each. The second promises winning schemes, and its audience makes a minimum $5 deposit and vanishes. The advertiser sees one combined stream where the average deposit gets diluted to roughly $20. By its analytics that is bad traffic, and the whole campaign gets stopped. The working funnel gets cut along with the mislead.
With tags, the manager opens stats broken down by SubID. Approach_A brings $100 per player, so it gets scaled. Approach_B gives $5, so it gets switched off. The rest of the traffic keeps flowing.
Why Sinners chose the Olymp affiliate program in Kyrgyzstan
The team was already running Kyrgyzstan, but on a spend model. Alexey decided to test what would happen if they moved that traffic to CPA in the CIS and sent it to strong products.
Alexey, Sinners: We test GEOs all the time. For the experiment we put the Godlike offer and several competitors into a split. Olymp Casino showed the highest EPC, meaning earnings per click, and the best registration-to-deposit conversion. After a result like that, the choice was obvious.
Four approaches in one campaign
Every funnel at Sinners is marked with its own code. That way the team sees what the audience responds to. The number after the code (15, 16 and so on) shows how many creatives have gone through the approach. In total, around 100 creatives were tested for this offer and GEO, in video, static, influencer and UGC formats.
| Tag | What’s inside | How the player behaves, according to Sinners |
| KGF | Ice Fishing, a crash game approach | no separate assessment in the case |
| KGTR | funnel for the game Tower Rush | players redeposit less willingly than on Chicken Road |
| KGCH | creatives for Chicken Road | quality noticeably higher than on Tower Rush |
| KG | classic slots | the most engaging, but pricier in the auction, where it’s harder to compete with crash games |
Alexey, Sinners: It all comes down to the game mechanics. Some products hook players on the thrill and repeat deposits harder than others. In some of the slot creatives we offered aggressive bonuses. Installs came out cheap and the short-term ROI was high. At the same time, we understood that a player who comes for a bonus leaves fast.
10 minutes to a decision: the Godlike Partners view
The SubIDs split the report into approaches, and the picture became clear almost immediately.
How long did the breakdown take?
Alexandra, Godlike Partners: Ten minutes. Sinners were passing approach tags in sub1 and sub2, so we simply put the payback of different SubIDs side by side. Some funnels were still bringing strong players. Others were dragging down the stats of the entire stream.
Did you consider a full stop?
Alexandra, Godlike Partners: That option wasn’t even on the table. Sinners have been with us for a long time, and all along they ran quality traffic with a long-term partnership in mind. They listened to feedback and sometimes asked for analytics on their approaches themselves. For us they are a valuable partner. When a team is ready for a win-win, we look for a solution together. After we flagged the drop, they were the first to suggest looking for optimization points.
How did the optimization end?
Alexandra, Godlike Partners: We tested the approaches with the best payback separately. We kept the most stable funnels and gave them a cap of 100 FTD a day, and the rate bump stayed in place. Meanwhile the team is trying new approaches on similar mechanics to expand the result.
What Sinners saw on their side
The team spotted the drop before the manager’s message arrived. Sinners’ spend is pulled straight into the Keitaro tracker, and every cent is visible per creative. The team tries to give this kind of monitoring to every media buyer.
Alexey, Sinners: From day one we tracked quality for every SubID. We keep creatives that bring profit to us and quality to the advertiser. Some approaches were highly profitable for us right away, while for the advertiser that traffic didn’t pay off. You can’t build volume on that, and we play the long game. So the rotation kept the most profitable funnels that met the quality bar. When precise feedback came in for each SubID, we adjusted the traffic on the spot.
A narrow GEO. Kyrgyzstan has a population of about 7 million. One approach or a couple of creatives is not enough for a big team here, and repeat users quickly show up in the tracker. If you just raise the budget, ad frequency grows and the lead gets sharply more expensive.
Scaling through quantity. That’s why Sinners run crash games and slots at the same time. Growth here comes from the number of designs and approaches plus constant creative rotation.
What data to pass in SubIDs
Many affiliates don’t bother with detailed tagging. For Sinners it’s a mandatory part of the process, and it rests on an old management rule. You can only manage what you measure.
The minimum set from Sinners. Creative ID, approach identifier and the media buyer’s nickname. With these, the advertiser can give quality feedback on every single ad.
The extended set. Ideally, the team recommends also passing ad set or audience settings. Then you can see which technical launch makes money and which one burns the budget.
Alexey, Sinners: Strong analytics is one of our key advantages. The tracker integration shows every dollar spent on every creative. The media buyer matches ad-level spend with the quality reported by the advertiser, and their average profit goes up. Transparent data brings big volumes and stable earnings, so we don’t cut corners on the technical side.
Conclusion
Sinners didn’t hide weak approaches inside the overall traffic and tagged each one in advance. Thanks to that, the funnel was saved, quality leveled out, and the partner stayed on high volumes.
Godlike Partners builds long-term relationships with its partners. When quality dips temporarily, we go through the approaches together and look for a solution. Sinners are growing right now and are looking for new media buyers. Reach out on Telegram at @sinnersHR.
Want to break down your SubID stats with a manager the same way? Sign up with Godlike Partners, the Olymp affiliate program, also known as the Olymp Casino affiliate program. We give detailed feedback by SubID, private terms and product analytics, and help you keep and scale working funnels. Case breakdowns are published in the Godlike Partners Telegram channel.
SubID FAQ
What is a SubID in an affiliate link?
It’s an extra tag that passes data about the player’s source to the advertiser along with the click. It lets the manager see traffic quality separately for each approach and creative.
What should you pass in sub1 and sub2?
In the example from the case, sub1 stores the approach name (Crash_Video), and sub2 stores the creative ID (creo_15). Sinners passed approach tags to Godlike Partners.
What minimum set of SubIDs do Sinners recommend?
Creative ID, approach identifier and the media buyer’s nickname. Ideally, add ad set or audience settings to them.
How long does a SubID traffic breakdown take?
In this case the analysis took 10 minutes. The manager only needed to compare the payback of different SubIDs.
What does an affiliate risk by running traffic without SubID?
The whole campaign. A weak approach drags down the overall average deposit, and the advertiser stops all of the traffic, profitable funnels included.
Can you scale in Kyrgyzstan with budget?
According to Sinners’ experience, no. The market is narrow, about 7 million people, so as the budget grows, ad frequency and lead cost rise quickly. You scale through the number of approaches, designs and creative rotation.
