Eli Desatnik: 'I can't imagine how a company in iGaming can survive or grow, without being present at events like iGB Affiliate.'

Eli Desatnik, has been active in online advertising since 2012 starting his career as a media buyer and progressing to become an advertising company owner. His current enterprise, Pushub.net was launched in 2020 with a sharp focus on push notification traffic. Drawing on his insight and experience gained over 14-years Eli will be presenting at iGB Affiliate diving into specific traffic formats, covering push notifications and Telegram mini apps, 'showing how results are being driven outside of Google and Facebook, using solid alternatives including contextual ad formats that reach users with real intent.

Can you start by providing some background to your career, how you started, career highlights to date?

I've been active in online advertising since 2012. My background has always been in performance advertising and traffic monetization, starting as a Media buyer, and becoming an advertising company owner. Over the years, I've kept working hands-on across multiple monetization and acquisition models, always close to traffic, funnels, and user acquisition. My previously owned company focused primarily on Video and CTV branding advertising with a relatively small performance division. I'sold it to a US-based publicly traded group in 2019, and about a year and a half later, during the early COVID period, my co-founder and I started looking for our next challenge. We wanted to build something performance-first, technologically strong, and close to the actual buying logic of user acquisition managers and media buyers - not just branding budgets. That mindset is what led directly to us founding Pushub.net


When did you launch Pushub and what services do you provide?

Pushub was launched in 2020, starting deliberately with push notification traffic. We were looking for a market that was large enough to scale in, but still inefficient enough for a new player to stand out. Push fit that perfectly at the time. From day one, our focus was on building a strong advertiser base by offering unique traffic, hands-on support, robust and flexible tech and most importantly - Results, Results, Results. Many of our early and current clients were solo or small-team media buyers and master affiliates - people who are deeply hands-on, operate across multiple verticals, and understand multiple traffic formats at a high level, with the ability to shift extremely fast towards new trends. Over the following years, we expanded the formats we offer to include Popunder, parked-domain redirects, in-page, SMS, video, banners, and native. The focus, however, was never on adding formats for the sake of 'more, more more', but on building a set of contextual, intent-driven ad formats that are suitable for experienced media buyers and affiliates, and that complement push ads rather than replace them.

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Without giving too much away, what are the core themes or messaging of your presentation at iGB Affiliate Barcelona?

At its core, effective user acquisition is about understanding how a real ad marketplace works. That marketplace has three essential components: inventory (the actual ad placements), the market-maker (the ad platform), and ad buyers (brands, advertisers, affiliates, media buyers) In my session, I'm putting the spotlight on a specific type of buyer and how they operate: Master affiliates and experienced media buyers. These individuals and micro-teams run highly focused strategies that large enterprise companies find hard to replicate internally. In many cases, big brands end up relying on buying traffic from these affiliates rather than competing with them.' I'll also dive into specific traffic formats, especially push notifications and Telegram mini apps, 'and show how results are being driven outside of Google and Facebook, using solid Alternatives - contextual ad formats that reach users with real intent.

What will be the key highlights of your presentation - what do you want attendees to take away with them?

My main goal is to share insights that are practical and actionable, ideally from 'behind the scenes' - and not the kind you can find by searching Google or asking ChatGPT. I'll break down the mindset and traffic acquisition strategies of successful affiliates and media buyers, alongside the ad formats that fit those strategies best. The focus will be on answering the 'how' and the 'why': Why is this working? How is it done? A user acquisition team should leave with one of two conclusions: either start buying formats push and Telegram mini-app traffic themselves using a suitable strategy, or realize that they should be partnering with Master Affiliates & media Buyers who are doing this - ASAP.

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In your opinion, what are the most salient trends currently impacting the industry?

There are a few interesting trends I see growing from niche to mainstream adoption.

Working on Paid media CPC / CPM buying models - Master affiliates, solo media Buyers and Media buying teams had been working on CPC / CPM models from day one, and not just on google and facebook. Understanding the perceived risk it carried, they embraced the opportunity: bigger potential margins, and low competition from corporations and networks sticking to CPA/CPL & Rev share deals . Recently more operators, networks and brands are opening dedicated teams and divisions to work directly with sources that require CPC / CPM payment models.
This is likely to continue and spread to more medium and big companies

Lunching programmatic retargeting buying-'server to server integrations like OpenRTB, XML and API, between the igaming buyer and traffic sources have turned retargeting into a practical, scalable way for operators to re-engage users based on where they actually sit in the funnel. Retargeting is complicated since it's hard to find your users in the vast internet traffic, and you need to connect to as many traffic flows as possible to get decent reach retargeting using xml/open rtb integration enabled any brand to have a single ad serving system managed internally, integrated to a limitless number of partners and countless types of ad formats, with a single connection point. Many brands are doing this in scale, and more will follow.

Sharing performance data and increasing transparency - sharing registrations and deposits info with your seller was always an issue for providers. It was deemed too sensitive and valuable to share outside your organization, especially with your traffic seller who can decide to straight up compete with you, using your own hard-earned data. The cost - sellers having no data, or partial data (just leads - no deposits, or deposits without their value etc) let do endless media spend with no results, or optimization in the wrong direction (lots of leads with no sales, will make a seller increase budget on the worst sources), after much budgets going down the pipe, and with new trust methods (e.g user hashed ip address, and server-2-server secure buying integrations), brands are finally giving their seller the data they need to bring them results, and this will be adopted even more in 2026.''''

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In terms of jurisdictions and emerging markets, where are the big wins?

Some of the most interesting opportunities I see are in CIS, Asia, LATAM, and EMEA. These are all emerging tier 2 and tier 3 markets, in and out of igaming, and are new grounds for growth. It's better to compete where you can punch bigger than your weight, and it seems that the type of media buyers and ad formats we are talking about and those regions are a perfect fit.

How does iGB Affiliate contribute to the health and well-being of the sector - is it just about business or does it serve a broader role?

iGB Affiliate is one of the biggest well-known live conferences in iGaming and Ad-tech overall. Its importance to the industry can't be overstated. It's not just a place to close deals. It's where people meet new partners, strengthen and expand existing relationships, and get exposed to new ideas, trends, and opportunities. Seeing what others are building, testing, and prioritizing has an impact on how companies evolve. 'You just can't replace that kind of impact with a video call or texting on Telegram/Teams/Slack (they complete, but don't compete) I can't imagine how a company in iGaming can survive or grow, without being present at events like iGB Affiliate.

As a January show, do you think iGB Affiliate sets the tone for the remainder of 2026?

One of the most effective aspects of iGB Affiliate is its timing at the beginning of the year. It allows attendees to start early, set up priorities, and develop and execute new ideas, partnerships, and deals. Beyond execution, it also gives teams the opportunity to QA their work, test different strategies, identify what isn't working, make adjustments, and restart. Having that level of 'runway' makes it easier to refine business processes, while leaving enough time to deliver meaningful results.

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The 2026 edition of iGB Affiliate will be 20% bigger than in 2025 - how important is it to have a healthy and growing exhibition to participate in?

The growth of iGB Affiliate highlights important realities about the industry. First, it's clear that the iGaming industry is still growing. Second, it shows that the demand for live and in-person events remains strong and actually increasing, despite how digital and automated our businesses have become. People still need to meet, exchange ideas, and build trust face to face. Of course, no discussion about business in 2026 would be complete without mentioning AI. It is becoming a powerful tool, but it hasn't replaced people, at least not yet. What events like iGB Affiliate show is that technology may change how we work, but it hasn't removed the need for human relationships, face-to-face discussion and collaboration: not even in a digital market, and not even in a Zoom and AI adopted environment.