Information = Value
Information brings value that leads some to seing an opportunity for profit. In a recent CardPlayer Lifestyle article, Robbie Strazynski stretched the importance of the independence of poker media and how gambling or casino content is regularly under algorithm attack with titans like Google, Meta or X limiting organic reach of videos a lot more than they used to. Probably depending on what topics are intended to be pushed (or not). The written space had already gotten a taste of the medicine since 2023 when Google’s (Very) Helpful Content Update hit us… with a fist… super hard… in the middle of the face… The search engine wanted to weed out content that tends to rank high in their searches but provides little value (for them or for their users?).
The poker content creation space is being shaken since a few years already. Budgets plunge on one side while technological evolutions render poker media enterprises less and less profitable although, at the same time, the quality of the output keeps rising. A bubble? Sort of! But a technological one mainly and with, all in all, relatively little money in it considering that many among the best of the best in the field cannot really make a comfortable living solely as professional poker media experts.
Winds of Change
This struggle is the struggle of any independent media project and is not a new problem as such. People and organizations in charge have always been tempted to control information channels. The forth branch of power are the media. There is no doubt about that, but maybe poker has evaded these constrains for a long time because it was not relevant enough as a small niche industry and it was able to evolve under the radar of conventional content monitoring and moderating. Algorithms are a whole new breed of digital surveillance in terms of content creation, distribution and monetization. Poker and casino content is not more dangerous or controversial than it used to be but monitoring and regulating its content and the web traffic generated is now possible thanks to digital progress, so why not. New technology allows to closely monitor most small corners on the Internet and, with computing power rising supported by artificial intelligence-backed management systems, the level of monitoring is not about to decrease. In this article, we are not even beginning to consider what economical, legal and social implications the rise of Web3 and metaverse solutions will bring to the content creator industry table. Of course, strong winds of change are to be expected from that direction too. Some of our members were involved in the music production and publishing business when Napster and Myspace popped up followed by the likes of Spotify and Deezer who nuked all of our independent music creation industry in less than five years. Nothing lasts and Darwin’s law is about the survival of the fittest. It is not about the survival of the most rigid ones who resists the longest without adapting.
Artificial intelligence is also gradually taking over in the field of editing or at least, it is surprising how quickly it has become totally ok, culturally and ethically speaking, to admit that one uses AI to assist or replace people at work. Very few content creation actors are rejecting AI these days, many organizations encourage this trend hoping for increased efficiency and profits while other players are pushing this game to a methodically engineered take over of significant market shares in some niches combining the use of industry professionals’ expertise with large language model solutions in order to boost their digital output flood and affiliate revenues.
The ClickOut Media Shopping Spree
A big media actor called ClickOut Media has for instance been making significant moves in the poker media landscape over all of 2024 and until now. By acquiring established leading platforms all over the world and investing in specialized content creation, they are positioning themselves as a leading authority in the poker media space. Their involvement in major industry events, such as the iGB Affiliate conference, further underscores their commitment to expanding their influence within the iGaming and affiliate marketing sectors. One of our former partner, the German poker media leader called PokerFirma.com, was bought by the group in late 2024 and triggered the creation of PokerExklusiv.com as a reaction of some of the PokerFirma contributors who wanted to go on with their idea of what poker media should be, lead by the vision of Rosi Gruenstaeudl. Although The-Rounder.net had been providing content for a decade to PokerFirma, the new owners did not even bother reaching out to say hello, ask about continuing to use our extensive databases or to see if we had any interest in continuing to create organic feature content and documentation. Nothing. They stopped all use of available databases full of photos and PokerFirma’s content model almost instantly switched to publishing artificially created content promoting affiliation links for gambling platforms on top of rudimental poker news coverage. Whether this is a temporary solution until a new team is completed or whether this is the new business model, remains uncertain. Even more recently, ClickOut Media presumably bought PokerFirma’s historic competitor named Hochgepokert.com and they acquired CardPlayer.com too, a prominent international poker media outlet known for its in-depth player profiles, tournament coverage, and strategy content in early 2025. The list goes on and on with leading sites like PokerStrategy, CodigoPoker in Brazil or Poker.se in Sweden also presumably in the basket of ClickOut Media. They are buying everything it seems. These websites have a global presence through licensing and affiliation agreements with partners in big markets all over the world, making them valuable assets for ClickOut Media’s international expansion.
The concept is slick. ClickOut Media is a remote-first, multi-channel marketing Malta company specializing in SEO and content solutions for numerous clients to which they cater with a reported team of nearly 1000 professionals and hundreds of web assets under their management. As a result, they have a strong foothold in competitive search verticals across various languages and platforms. According to their recent job searches, postings indicate an effort to bolster their poker content capabilities with poker news writers focusing on daily news for the German-speaking area and content editors as well as video creators seem to be wanted for web communities communicating in Spanish and English. These open roles suggest a strategic push to enhance their presence in the poker media sector, leveraging both written and video content to engage diverse audiences. The fact that many of the sales happen under the public radar makes it tricky to track who did what and when and the Clickout Media / Finixio’s reputation is not at its finest with stories of unethical SEO tactics in the air and accusations of parasite SEO and domain authority exploitation – for a few hundred websites. Content and insights can be found with some people raising eyebrows like in the links above and in the following posts on:
ClickOut Media operates as a strong affiliate marketing network in the crypto and iGaming industries, offering customized offers on various commission models, including cost per lead, cost per acquisition, revenue share, or any other sort of hybrid deals. The name that comes to mind when one thinks ‘ClickOut Media’ and ‘poker’, is ‘CoinPoker’, a leading blockchain-based online poker platform, that runs its own affiliate program, offering a revenue share to its partners like ClickOut Media among many others. While a direct partnership or relationship between ClickOut Media and CoinPoker is not obvious, it’s common in the industry for affiliate networks like ClickOut Media to promote platforms such as CoinPoker through their channels, creating a good old win-win situation and, although there is no definitive public documentation detailing the specifics of a partnership, the available information indicates that ClickOut Media and CoinPoker engage in mutually beneficial promotional activities, leveraging each other’s platforms to reach a broader audience in the crypto and online poker communities, and making a significant contribution to chocking the independent poker media by marginalizing passionate community bloggers or vloggers towards digital extinction.
Engage to Survive Judgement Day
There is no or very little fighting back against the algorithms and affiliate whales. Who is to blame if media content gets duller and duller? Certainly not those who put them in place. They are actually doing a pretty good job at numbing users’ and readers’ brains with distracting but often irrelevant content for the sake of engagement, retention and profiteering. We believe that one way to resist the machine-driven media output, is to keep creating organic content for real people. Relentlessly. No matter where the algorithms place us. At the same time, trying to change the way audiences consume our content, is crucial. Ideally, nobody should consume what we do. We create memories and companionship. These are not items to be marketed and consumed but they should be lived just like the people who create them live them. Like in the Terminator movies, the most important thing resistance members can do, is to stay alive in the first place. Our work matters. To us and to the communities we support. That’s a start. This is already a valid reason for all independent poker promoter and media outlet to keep going. We will continue to travel for poker and to create game and travel content along the way. On top of that, The-Rounder.net collective engages in solidarity projects that need every last little bit of exposure they can get to keep moving forward.
These days, most online users are scrolling zombies. This passive attitude has transformed and reduced the meaning we collectively associate with the word ‘engagement’. How much a piece of digital content gets scrolled over by braindead users or by bots from Pakistan and Nigeria, is irrelevant in our view. ‘Engagement’ has a much more noble meaning that we constantly and passionately explore in discussions with our digital research partner, NMA labs.
Meanings & Definitions of ‘engagement’ found on the Internet
1 a formal agreement to get married
2 an arrangement to do something or go somewhere at a fixed time
3 the action of engaging or being engaged, being committed
4 a fight or battle between armed forces
5 the measure of how much a target audience interacts with content
We see engagement like a belief, it is the readiness to stand for something, it is the force of sharing values, and it is the will to build something with the intent to leave something behind for others to use later. We don’t need nor want millions of superficial followers. We would rather have a dozen people in the audience who find real value in what we publish.
Ultimately, it is easy to save ourselves as a whole community. If you like what we do, if you think what we do is relevant, if you would like to keep enjoying content like this in the future, and if you feel more people could enjoy this, you can send us one million Euro. That will help. As an alternative, you can also send some feedback by interacting with us online and by sharing our stuff with your peers. Most of our readers have no clue about how much this helps – technically and morally. Also, we are sure that our partners will be thrilled about your visit too.
Thanks for being here and see you everywhere!
German version on PokerExklusiv.com
Human Story-Telling at Stake
The echos of American activist and Berkeley Free Speech Movement member, Mario Savio’s, address given in 1964 don’t seem to resonate a lot anymore in our age of digitalization. It is unlikely that the digital machinery in place today can be prevented from crushing existing media models, but organic content creation can/should/will/must (you choose) go on one way or another. Maybe it will not be an industry anymore. Maybe writing and photography will be a hobby. But let’s hope humans are not about to give up on their skills of story-telling and on the processes of exchanging thoughts that started with paintings in some caves about 40.000 years ago and that ended up cementing human interactions and knowledge transmission throughout hundreds of civilizations.
‘ There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all! ‘
