2026 affiliate industry predictions: Part 1

ROB: [00:00:00] Hey, Rach.

RACHEL: Hey, Rob.

ROB: I haven't seen you what feels like for most of, uh, 2025. You must have made some resolutions last year that you are thinking about maintaining this year. How did, how did it go in 2025?

RACHEL: Not well. Um, I failed at my New Year's resolution. I was supposed to be better about keeping in touch with family and friends, and I realized-

ROB: This is why I haven't heard from you.

RACHEL: Yeah, I realized I'm just not good at it. Um, so we're gonna try again in the new year. I did get married, does that count?

ROB: Oh, there you go. So for all the friends that you didn't actually speak to -

RACHEL: Yes.

ROB: There was one that you, uh, brought a bit closer to your

RACHEL: life. I invited everyone to the wedding, so I guess I achieved my New Year's resolution.

ROB: Oh, there you go. Yeah.

Hello, and a Happy New Year. I'm Rob, host of Awin-Win Marketing Podcast where we go behind the scenes of some of the most interesting and innovative partnerships in the affiliate industry. And today I'm joined by my guest co-host and [00:01:00] esteemed colleague Rachel Tyrer.

Hi Rach.

RACHEL: Hi Rob. Thanks for the warm welcome.

ROB: You are very, very welcome on here. Um, and thanks for doing us a solid by helping us out this, uh, on this episode. When you are not recording affiliate marketing podcasts as you are today, what is it that you're spending your time doing?

RACHEL: Are we talking about my hobbies again?

ROB: Uh, no, your job.

RACHEL: Oh, great. Um, so I'm Awin's VP, um, of customer success in the US market.

ROB: And is that something that you've dreamed of doing since you were a small child?

RACHEL: Exactly. Um, tiny me loved affiliate partnerships, attribution models, and navigating client relationships.

ROB: Well, you've, you've realized your childhood dream then.

RACHEL: Yes.

ROB: Congratulations.

RACHEL: Couldn't ask for anything more. My next dream is taking over the podcasting space.

Today we're taking a look forward at what's likely to happen in 2026 for the affiliate industry. We've got a couple of very knowledgeable guests to help shed some light on how things might go down over the next 12 months in the UK and the US markets specifically.

ROB: Yeah, and if it was anything [00:02:00] like the last 12 months, it's gonna be another helter skelter of a year, isn't it? Um. Who's joining us today then?

RACHEL: So from a US perspective, we have one of the experts over at E-Marketer, the market research publication, which is always well placed to give a macro view on the state of digital marketing.

ROB: And what about the UK point of view?

RACHEL: We have the local trade body, the Affiliate and Partner Marketing Association, joining us to share their thoughts on the industry's prospects for the year.

ROB: I just wanna set the scene, look back on 2025 so far. We're kind of speaking in the immediate aftermath of the cyber week. If you had to describe the year so far, 2025, in one word for digital and affiliate marketers, what would it be and, and why?

KEVIN: So I suppose looking at it through the lens of, of the A PMA.

What we've tried to- this is not one word, obviously. What we've tried to do- I will come to the word -

ROB: with us, is Kevin Edwards, founder and director of the Affiliate and Partner Marketing Association in the UK.

KEVIN: Uh, what we've tried to [00:03:00] do is, kind of, rethink how we're, we're doing things and, and try and collate as much feedback and as many frustrations and challenges and opportunities as we can.

So I'd like to think that maybe the word "reset" in that we're trying to reset how we do certain things and some fundamentals and foundational stuff that, that, um, happens in the industry.

ROB: And Max, what would you say?

MAX: "Bracing."

ROB: Why would you-

MAX: Would you like me to?

ROB: Yeah, please elaborate.

MAX: Oh, you want me to elaborate? Oh, geez.

ROB: Also with us is Max Willens, the principal analyst of Social Media and Creator Economy at eMarketer.

MAX: So I think, I mean, affiliate is, you know, even by digital advertising standards a pretty dynamic space. But I think even with, uh, in an industry where people are used to being on the balls of their feet, there was just so much that came at everybody, whether it was due to macroeconomic swings or the rapid kind of adoption and evolution that happened on the Gen AI front. And, um, you roll all that up with, you know, persistent challenges with discovery and it just, it felt like an unusually whiplash inducing [00:04:00] year. And I think the, the notion of "reset," I think is really a, a powerful one that, that Kevin raised.

ROB: Yeah. Yeah. I had a similar question put forward recently for a a, a kind of q and a. I think the word was, um, "liminal." It feels like that we're in this kind of space where things are changing, but we're not quite there yet. Everyone's still figuring it out, and it's this weird kind of gray area. Everyone is kind of figuring out exactly what that next phase of the web looks like.

You've obviously been speaking to a lot and industry figures over the course of the last few months, Max, what do you think is the, the kind of overriding sentiment of, uh, affiliate marketers towards the industry? Are they, are they optimistic? Are they cynical? Are they confused?

MAX: There's a lot of optimism around the channel at the kind of channel level, right?

So, you know, our forecast- we do a forecast once a year on spending in the US market, and we now predict that affiliate marketing is gonna be responsible for one out of every $7 spent in retail e-commerce sales by 2029. I mean, it's definitely trending in the right direction because [00:05:00] it's gonna, essentially, the growth in the channel is gonna continue to outpace overall retail e-comm sales growth.

But that high level optimism is also mixed in with pretty intense anxiety about what's going to happen in the near term, right? Where we do have these immensely unanswered questions about tracking, about shifts in consumer behavior, about the rising, uh, spread of, of kind of couponing and, um, how LLMs will use affiliate content.

And also even just where people are gonna, you know, shop on the internet in the future. And so you roll all that up and, and there's a lot of questions in the near term, even though at a high industry level, I think people are, are optimistic about, um, the future.

ROB: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Would you say that kind of concurs with what you've been experiencing in the UK Kev, with talking to your members, talking to industry figures here?

KEVIN: Recently we ran a session with, with members and we asked for kind of challenges and opportunities 'cause we want to - we'll try - we're in the process of building out the roadmap for next year of projects that we want to [00:06:00] work on. A lot of them are sort of just continuing things, um, and I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing because it, it shows continuity, but inevitably AI comes through very, very strongly. And I think that we're still in that very nascent phase of AI where people are just sort of struggling to grasp, grasp the concepts, and obviously it's such a fast moving, uh, phenomenon.

Anyway, that, that's gonna be a very dynamic set of projects or task force or however we choose to frame whatever projects come out of that next year, that's gonna be a very, um, dynamic, fast emerging set of projects or set, you know, pieces of work that, that we do. Um, other, I mean other themes that came through are still around the reputation of the channel, which, you know, seems to be.

You could have come up with that theme 20 years ago. 10 years ago. Hopefully it won't be a, a theme that we want to focus too much on in five years time, um, if we do a good job. But yeah. Other areas, you know, just sort of, as I say, consistent themes around compliance, traffic quality, which obviously inevitably [00:07:00] over, over- they're things that we have to tackle because if they're damaging trust then and brands don't have that trust, then they're not gonna, you know, loosen the purse strings on their budgets.

ROB: Mm-hmm.

RACHEL: We've obviously just shared some insights looking back to 2025. But I think looking forward to 2026, what major shifts, um, do you expect to have kind of the biggest impact for US advertisers as far as influencer and affiliate investments are concerned?

MAX: When I think about, you know, influencer and, and creators. I mean, one of the things that emerged in 2025 was the sort of, uh, how, how hospitable a lot of the social platforms, uh, were toward affiliate. You know, TikTok and Pinterest both took steps to make their platforms more, uh, affiliate friendly, I suppose. Um, and creators continue really to sort of lean into affiliate as an opportunity for their businesses. And I think that we're gonna just sort of see a lot of continued growth there, right? So, um, about, I guess it was close to a month ago, the [00:08:00] IAB released, um, a creator economy survey and that found that about 3 in 10 advertisers in the US uh, say they work with creators via affiliate networks.

And I, I think that we could see that number continue to climb significantly in the new year, especially because there's been so much progress made on the matchmaking that that is kind of integral to these partnerships. AI has, I think, done a really good job of kind of facilitating those, um, you know, first connections being made.

And so I think that we could see a sort of increase in velocity, I guess you could say, on that side of the business, which is broadly good for the industry, I think.

ROB: Yeah, I'd say that like the, um, on the creator topic- I mean we'll get to this a little bit later, I think in the conversation in more depth- but those platforms themselves seem to be constantly in a state of toing and froing about what they want to do with their traffic and whether they want to let it get out of the platform over to advertiser sites to convert. Do they wanna build their own shopping spaces where they keep that customer there and then? And [00:09:00] even with a, from an affiliate perspective, you know, you talked about making it more friendly for affiliates, so they seem to have gone back and forth on that a little bit as well.

You know, whether they're removing the ability to put links into pose or whether than making that accessible, for instance. Do you think that the general trend now is towards a more kind of friendly space for affiliates?

MAX: I do. I mean, I think that at a very high level, the social networks are very aware of the fact that they play a really important role in the consumer journey and in shopping.

And I think that as you point out, they're, they're, they have waxed and waned in terms of trying to decide how much of the experience they want to control. But I think that they're more leaning into the idea of just sort of facilitating transactions in whatever way that they can at the moment. And that general kind of attitude, I think is, is going to, you know, re down to a affiliates benefits.

Uh, you know, whether that's platform native or something that, that moves offsite. That's, you know, they're, they're happy to pitch in, in, in either, in either, uh, context.

RACHEL: Kevin, just coming back to [00:10:00] you. Based on kind of the workshops that you've been involved in and the conversations that you've been having, do you think this is a theme that is replicated in the UK or, or what do you feel like the priorities are for 2026 for UK brands and affiliates?

KEVIN: Yeah, so we try and collate feedback from as many people as possible so that we can kind of get a, a, an umbrella view of all of the different challenges and opportunities and, and things that people want us to work on.

Broadly speaking, we have five categories that we kind of shortlisted from, um, a series of kind of, um, surveys that, that we did. The first one is, is around compliance. And again, that's- as I mentioned earlier, that that's like an ongoing, um, theme. We have initiated some compliance projects in 2025. Um, I think that we will pivot some of those things towards more best practice next year.

Kind of try and reinvigorate some of the work that was done sort of 10, 12 years ago around best practice, tackling kind of topics and themes that they're not necessarily new, they're familiar topics, but, but that we really kind of need to drill down [00:11:00] into and, and -as I say- build brand confidence.

AI came through very strongly. Again, probably inevitably, uh, I mentioned reputation. Reputation's a is is slightly amorphous one. It, it is kind of difficult to, to pinpoint exactly what we could do in a, in a practical way. There are some practical things we can do. One of the suggestions that came out of that conversation was that we kind of build a task force and draw on expertise from different companies and marketing teams within companies.

Um, in terms of how we position may, maybe having some sort of, um, standard definitions of our channel and some standard kind, like, almost like taglines that, that we use to try and repeat, uh, that focus in on, on the USPs of the channel.

Attribution, uh, came through very strongly. I think there's a lot of confusion at the moment around, um, MMM and GA4 and neither of them necessarily are particularly favorable in, in terms of how they interpret affiliate data, if at all.

Some work we've already initiated on that. But I think inevitably there will be some additional projects that we focus in on.

And the [00:12:00] last one, which is a, which is an ongoing project because we've already released, uh, the first phase of it is around the topic of payments and making sure that the kind of lifeblood of our channel, which obviously is money, um, is free flowing and is easily accessible and is, is, and payments are done in a, a, a timely and reliable and transparent way.

So, they were the core themes. And the next challenge we have is obviously identifying the projects that will feed into the roadmap for next year.

MAX: What do you see as the, um- I'd love to hear what kind of emerged from everybody around the measurement and MMM piece of it right. I mean, that, that was something that became a huge topic of conversation, not just that affiliate, but kind of broadly within the media space. And, you know, it does sound as though there are some MMMs that kind of, uh, you can tune them in a way that to sort of accurately reflect the, you know, impact or contribution that an affiliate program, uh, you know, adds to the bottom line.

But what did your members sort of see as a sort of plan of attack for, for that problem? Because it's, it's really amazing to me how kind of central MMMs [00:13:00] have, have become after a sort of slow build, you know, going back to, I dunno, let's call it 2021 or the launch of ATT?

KEVIN: Yeah. I, I guess it's, it's not a new pro- I mean, MMM is, is, you know, relatively new kind of phenomenon that that people are talking about, but attribution is obviously not new. And I think it's an, the age old issue around attribution, which is typically people want to kind of put affiliate in in a single bucket. And obviously we know the affiliate channel is, is very multifaceted, very diverse.

It's kind of like a all digital marketing in, in, in microcosm. So I think it's ensuring that there's a level of granularity to understand that the way that a coupon site works is different to cashback site is different to a blogger or a price comparison site. So I think it's making sure that that level of granularity is, um, surfaced because obviously, you know, if you try and aggregate all of that and give a single view on a, an affiliate program that you're effectively kind of not- uh, you, you're not giving a, an accurate view on anything because, you know, they, [00:14:00] they are also diverse that there isn't such a thing as kind of like an average affiliate.

At the moment, we literally don't have anything, I think I'm safe in saying in, in the UK that we can point to if somebody asks that question that, that you asked around, you know, how, how are MMMs measuring or, or mis- misaligning how affiliate marketing is, is measured. So it will probably be, as I say, we're kind of at the foothills of, of just do, do we just create some very basic guides to begin with? We created one almost two years ago now for, for GA4 that probably needs updating.

GA4 really, you know, for its default settings, really undervalues the affiliate channel. And I think that has created a lot of confusion amongst brands. I know anecdotally, having spoken to a whole series of, of companies, that a couple of years ago were getting a lot of pushback from brands saying, look, our GA4 data just simply has no correlation with the data that we're seeing, uh, that's coming out of our affiliate platform. So there was kind of a big education piece that we needed to do around that. So I suspect we will [00:15:00] probably try and initiate something similar.

ROB: I do think that the interest in MMMs is driven partly by that kind of fragmented understanding of what's going on.

You've got different platforms sending you different things, and the shift to GA4 made that even more pronounced than ever. And there's almost a desire to go, okay, if we can't see it at this level, then we need to go even higher, and we need to kind of take in even more data points to be able to triangulate exactly what's going on.

And then you've seen, obviously Google. Uh, God is it Meridian? Is the, um, the open source model that they made available at the start of the year, I think. And suddenly, you know, something that was historically only accessible, realistically from like an investment perspective and a resource perspective to bigger kind of brands, suddenly kind of like being made much more accessible to the wider market.

And I imagine, you know, that is part and parcel, I think, of why this has entered the conversation more and more.

MAX: For a related report that I wrote earlier in the year, I, I went and grabbed a bunch of, um, download figures [00:16:00] for the Meridian package in Python. Meta also has one called Robin, and you know the numbers you take with a pinch of salt.

I very politely asked Google and Meta to share, uh, download figures, and they very politely told me to go away. But if you look at the Python numbers, it, it's been trending very healthily and steadily upwards since they released it widely at the beginning of the year. So to your point, I think there's kind of a bottom up interest in that.

But I think too, um, also to your point, Rob, that's really the funny thing about measurement, right? Is that if you believe fundamentally in a channel, you'll take the results from a, a measurement, uh, readout, you know, as literally or directionally as as you like. And one of the things that's happened a lot in retail media was something that I covered a lot before I, I shifted into this new coverage area.

And retail media also has a lot of, uh, significant measurement problems where, you know, the, the results that one retail media network gives you are almost impossible to compare to the results that a separate network gives you. And there was for a time, a lot of, you know, hand wringing and efforts made across the industry [00:17:00] to come up with standardization frameworks and measurement standards.

And now a lot of agencies are just going, we're just dumping this all into an MMM. You know, like, because this is just, we know we have to keep spending here. We know this works. The sort of particulars of, of its effectiveness are gonna vary and we, we all kind of assess its value in our own individual ways, but we're just gonna dump all this into an MMM because we believe it and we wanna keep spending in it.

And I, I think that there are- even though affiliate does have reputational challenges at a, at a high level, it also has champions and defenders who I think are, you know, content to keep spending in it. Even when there are hiccups like GA4 or, you know, tracking challenges posed by LLMs or, or whatever.

Maybe that's Pollyannish, but I just, it, it seemed like an interesting, um, you know, point of comparison to look at these other channels that also... it's, you know, it's not like affiliate's, the only ad spending channel that has measurement shortcut.

ROB: Oh, not at all! Yeah.

And I think sometimes actually we are in an existential crisis of our own making by maybe talking so much about this stuff, that people assume that, [00:18:00] well, affiliate marketing has a problem because they're constantly talking about compliance issues and fraud, even though it's not maybe actually fraud. And I wonder, Kev, like we're talking about compliance still being a bit of a headline topic for the UK market, like what aspect of that do you think needs to be focused on or is being prioritized as far as your kind of work is concerned?

KEVIN: The biggest topic I think that has emerged, and I don't think this is necessarily a- well, it is a UK problem- I don't think it's necessarily originates or is because of the UK market, but, um, subnetworks in particular have grown significantly in the number of them that are available and that a lot of those traffic sources are actually coming from the far East.

And we've noticed kind of a huge upsurge in the volume of sales and traffic that is coming through them. And inevitably when you have something that is quite disruptive to what is, you know, the affiliate ecosystem is quite finely tuned. It's quite finely balanced. And when you get something that's disruptive that comes in, inevitably it causes like consternation, [00:19:00] confusion, um, not just amongst brands, but publishers also have a right to ensure that their traffic is fairly rewarded and that their contribution is isn't overwritten by this sort of, um, these new traffic sources.

To kind of give you an example about how much subnetworks have grown: so about 10 years ago, we, we created a, a matrix of existing subnetworks and there were about 7 or 8. We only asked a handful of questions. There were about 7 or 8 companies that we featured. When the project group for us subnetworks piece of work that, that we released this year, uh, came together and created a well not short list, a long list of subnetworks that we could go out and add to the matrix and ask a series of questions of, we had a list of about 50.

And within that, we know that there are very dubious traffic sources and I think that the growth of sunetworks caught the industry slightly unawares, and we're having to now remove traffic sources, and that was never the intention of any of the regulatory work that we did. It was always, you know, the self-regulatory work that we did was always designed to try and nip stuff in the bud. So before it became an issue.

And unfortunately with [00:20:00] some of the Subnetwork stuff, we're now having to remove those traffic sources. Um, I know that networks have, are fully aware of this, this issue and they have been at kind of pains to kind of demonstrate and, and talk to me about work that they're doing, initiatives kind of additional investment that they're, that they're making.

But subnetworks is definitely, definitely the, the, the biggest topic. It's, it's kind of dwarfed everything else. Um, we, as I say, we released a best practice guide, guide this year, a huge matrix where we asked a whole series of questions of, um, subnetworks. We had about a 50% response rate. We obviously, you know, we're not a regulator, we don't tell people what they can and can't do, but we do try and point towards what good looks like. And we, we just allowed people to make their own conclusions. If we asked 50 companies and only 25 of them respond, then you don't have the information for the other 25. So you as a brand can make a decision about who you work with and and who you don't. So I'm hoping that that kind of, um, level of transparency helps to focus people's minds on working with the kind of best in [00:21:00] class subnetworks.

ROB: Mm-hmm.

KEVIN: With the view that ultimately some of those other ones aren't necessarily seen as best in class will try and improve their working practices. But yeah, I think it's, it's probably subnetworks and subnetworks isn't just kind of one thing, right? 'cause subnetworks by the very nature of them are, are kind of like a, an ecosystem of themselves.

So it isn't just one kind of area of, of non-compliance that we're, we're tackling with sunetworks. It's a whole series.

ROB: Yeah.

MAX: I will say, I mean, I think that it's, it's really commendable that you guys are doing that and sort of you know, trying to leverage sunlight and, and transparency to sort of, you know, bring the whole industry along, or at least kind of, you know, put pressure on the bad actors.

But I do feel like it's, and you know, the networks can't say this, but I can, like, you know, on some level, the advertisers have to take some responsibility for where they're spending their money, right? I mean, like, if someone comes up to you and, you know, declares that they're the wallet inspector, like you should probably like have a look at them before, you know, giving your wallet over to them.

Like, there's tons of examples of advertising or digital advertising channels where [00:22:00] advertisers, you know, that have been in this long enough, understand that they have to do a certain amount of vetting and assessing of who they're going to be giving their money to. I thought it was really surprising um, at the end of November, the IAB's Australian office put out a, um. I forget what the term of it was, but it was basically like a compliance guide. You know, the first thing in there is sort of like know who you're doing business with, which is sort of a bizarre thing for a, you know, an advertising trade body to have to write down in a document that it publishes. But I do think on some level, like, you know, it, it's advertisers are absolutely within their right to sort of, you know, advocate for, and, and demand that there be a lot of transparency and cleanliness in, in their ad spending channels. But they, they bear some responsibility for just doing a modicum of due diligence about who they're investing their money in. If, if a sub network can't give you a straightforward answer about who's inside their network or, you know, anything else, then you probably should just not spend money with them. It's not like there's a dearth of options out there. So that's [00:23:00] one other dimension of this.

ROB: I mean, it's, it's kind of analogous to, um, you know, the, the, the problems and the challenges that programmatic display have had over the years.

You know, and uh -

MAX: That's exactly what I was gonna compare it to.

ROB: Yeah. You know, the studies that have been done by ISBA, by the ANA in the US, like quantifying exactly how much money is going to spaces that are, you know, gray at the, at the very best on that spectrum. And I mean, I remember totting up the amount of money that had gone into, uh, kind of like non-compliant spaces that had been budgeted for by advertisers.

And we're talking like, it's like 10 times the size of spend for affiliates.

KEVIN: Mm-hmm.

ROB: As a whole. Collectively.

KEVIN: We, we, we don't have a number for the UK. I've seen kind of various numbers sort of thrown around, particularly on LinkedIn. I do challenge people to say, well, that number does not exist. I would like to think that it, it's, it's relatively small for the affiliate channel, but as I say, I couldn't say with any confidence.

We know that subnetworks account in the UK for around about 10% of the affiliate channel and spend. So a percentage of that. There's obviously lots of gray [00:24:00] areas within the affiliate channel as well, so there's obviously clear cut, um, unethical activity, but, but there are also some gray areas as well.

Um, I think that where it's a very fine balancing act is the point at which we do the gatekeeping for our industry, because I always say that the affiliate channels is a great source of innovation and it's a great way for new startups and businesses to try their business models because the, there, there is a fairly low barrier to entry. You know, you can get in front of very big brands as a publisher very quickly with kind of quite a nascent business model and then test it out, you know, parti- obviously if you, if you can make it work on a CPA in particular, then it's a great way to test that out. So you don't want to kind of put up too many barriers to stop those companies coming into the space. So it is, there is a fine balancing act that we need to consider to make sure that, that we're not kind of preventing new companies coming into the space and continuing to evolve the kind of ecosystem of the affiliate mix.

ROB: [00:25:00] One of the key hurdles, I guess, or one of those natural means of gatekeeping it to some degree is around tracking quality.

And if you have better quality tracking, then in theory, better quality traffic should emerge off the back of that as well. But do you think that the industry's done a good job in terms of advocating for higher tracking standards that can better illustrate that value to to brands? And if not, what can be done better?

Obviously, slightly leading question because AWIN's been pushing for higher tracking standards through the Conversion Protection Initiative. But I am kind of interested in your views at a more general perspective.

KEVIN: We asked some questions in our surveys this year around, particularly of publishers, the level of confidence they have in affiliate tracking and there is still work to be done.

It's not, you know, you couldn't say with any confidence that publishers think affiliate track, um, tracking is, is, is brilliant. I was having a conversation with, with a couple of publishers and, and brands yesterday around this topic is that when we talk about tracking, what do you actually mean? 'cause tracking could easily be 20 different topics, some of which are within our control.

ROB: Mm-hmm.

KEVIN: And some of [00:26:00] which we're having to respond to. So things like, um, you know, around regulation, around, um, cookie consent, for example. The law is the law in the UK and we have to make sure that, that we're compliant with it. But the fact is that CMPs, you know, cookie banners do block affiliate tracking and do, do block affiliate links, additional browser controls, um, ad blocking in, in general.

So there are things that that we have to try and respond to that aren't necessarily within our control. I think generally speaking, we, we do a pretty good job. You know, we've, we've been a first party, uh, cookie channel for a very, very long time. I remember, remember sitting with a series of, uh, companies that were doing programmatic a few years ago, pre GDPR, about how this was gonna be an existential threat to them and thinking at the time, well, you know, we are, our, our tracking is a lot further down the path than yours is. There's obviously always work to do. I was chatting again yesterday, one of the conversations came up about, in particular app tracking and how a lot of tracking fails because app tracking simply isn't there.

You know, go onto cashback site, go [00:27:00] through their app, and you will typically get a popup that says, please don't transact through this retailer's, um, app, because it won't track. So there are things to be done, um, and there are always improvements to be made. Affiliate programs are always on, so when you want to make an upgrade, you have to somehow get that, uh, business case in with the brand and get it elevated and prioritized through their development roadmap and that's obviously not always easy. You know, I remember from my network days being told, well, we might be able to do this at some point next year.

ROB: Mm-hmm.

KEVIN: So you are always kind of fighting that kind of ongoing challenge to make sure that, that the channel gets its, you know, is, is prioritized and the tracking excellence is, is prioritized.

ROB: And you need to have the desire on the brand side as well to make that change. Because I mean, we've had, like there was I, I can tell you there's at least one incident of a brand effectively moving platforms away from Awin because they didn't want to pay for app sales. They knew that they were getting them from affiliates.

They were pushed to [00:28:00] make the upgrades because of CPI. They decided that that was something they didn't want to do, and so they, they moved to a platform that was, you know, a network that was more amenable to them not doing that, which totally goes against the grain of where I think the general sentiment on this topic is.

But if that desire doesn't exist on the brand side, then there's not an awful lot you can do really.

KEVIN: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the app tracking one is a difficult one because you are effectively saying to brands who are currently getting sales for free, now you've got to start paying for them. And I remember, you know, conversations in the past about how we position that as being a benefit to them.

And you have to try and kind of build the story about, you know, the, these are all the things that you would, that, that you potentially can get as a result of tracking more and you will have a much greater level of transparency and visibility around different brand campaigns that you might run, um, or different activity that you're running with with specific affiliates, and it's just, why wouldn't you want that level of transparency as a brand?

Yes, you are potentially paying more for your sales, but why [00:29:00] wouldn't you want full transparency on where all of your sales are coming from? And how the different levers that you can exercise through the affiliate channel, through different brand campaigns or different, you know, individual publisher campaigns.

You, you want full transparency about what works and what doesn't as part of, you know, your ongoing optimization.

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RACHEL: I was just gonna say, I'm about to bring up everyone's favorite topic. Um, I know you both mentioned this as, as something that you [00:30:00] saw as a trend coming up in 2026, if not already. But given that AI is reshaping everything from like overall consumer journey, where do you see it having the clearest impact on affiliate and partner marketing today?

KEVIN: I mean. Inevitably, people are talking about zero click in quite an existential way for the affiliate channel. Um, I mean, I'm, I'm not close to the data anymore, so I'm not fully versed in particular trends that have been seen by networks to date. But I think that we are starting to see some kind of initial new ways of, of tracking, um, in, in the AI age.

Uh, based probably more on probabilistic tracking rather than, you know, our bread and butter, which is, you know, actual tracking. Um, but I think that that is going to be our key challenge for next year, how we ensure that affiliates are fairly rewarded if we do move more towards kind of like zero click, um, a a zero click world.

That for me is, is gonna be the thing that probably people [00:31:00] will want to coalesce around trying to understand better next year.

MAX: Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, the, the thing that's really, I guess, shocking about the way that this is trending is that, you know, if you look at data around what people use. An LLM chat bot for. It's really all of the things that, you know, affiliates have, you know, built businesses around helping with, right. It's, you know, whether it's research, whether it's coupons, whether it's, um, you know, even discovery to a degree, which a lot of content and, and creator sites, um, you know, have made a lot of progress in. And so that's something to be, to be watching for over this sort of medium to long term.

But I think the, the zero click thing, it, it's, it's hard to overstate how, you know, profound it is that the, the entire business might have to shift to some sort of probabilistic, multi touch share, uh, you know, of conversion model versus the, um, you know, a, a click based one. I will say though, just to return to an earlier point though, that like while we watch [00:32:00] to see how that nets out. We are still talking about a minority of of US consumers anyway, using the technology in this way. And in the meantime, AI as a technology is, is quite valuable as a matchmaker and facilitator. And I think that people that are interested in kind of improving their businesses today would, would do well to lean into it for, you know, just kind of accelerating the velocity of what they do day to day without losing sight of the, the bigger stuff that we've been discussing.

ROB: Yeah. I wonder if like it's, um, I can't tell yet if it's analogous of the year of mobile and if- it was the year of mobile for a decade. And we, you know, it gradually got there in increments and it finally, you know, just nobody was asking the question anymore. It just was accepted that mobile is where people are. But, it feels like since the launch of the original Chat GPT to where we are now, things have moved already so rapidly in terms of both adoption and what that technology can do that, is this a completely different paradigm for want of a better phrase than, than that?

KEVIN: I've been [00:33:00] thinking about this a a little bit recently about whether it affects certain affiliate activity more than others and what some of the positive outcomes could be. Because obviously everybody's being encouraged to optimize for LLMs right? So, um, from an SEO point of view in particular, and I was wondering whether, you know, just it, it potentially is quite a, quite a minor thing. But something like product feeds, which have always been problematic um, the quality of them because it's quite a technical thing they've always been ignored, and yet we know that a well optimized product feed is really incredibly useful to a lot of affiliates. If we're looking around at things that we can do that we are in control of, i'm wondering if, if some of those things like- whether it could lead to a kind of a renewed effort to like optimize for product feeds, because obviously LLMs are being used as a kind of like price comparison, but also product comparison tools, right? Um, and there are pulling lots of affiliate content into those. Um, so for, from a price product comparison point of view there's potentially kind of a more of a there, there could be an upside. [00:34:00] What I'm increasingly hearing and seeing is, you know, people are searching, I wanna buy a, oh, I wanna buy this particular product from this retailer. Are there any existing voucher codes? And if it's literally just listing then a code, it's scraping content and listing a code, is that really existential for coupon sites, for example?

So I'm interested to see how it will impact different affiliates in different ways.

RACHEL: That's an interesting point on the types of affiliates this could influence. I was reading up a little bit on, on this, um, and one thing that came out was that this could actually really benefit influencers and content creators because they're such a loyal following.

They create really organic new content and it's consistent. So I wonder if that lens also to the trend that we were talking about with creators becoming their own type of affiliate, like they have their own channel almost. I don't know if that's something Max that, that you've potentially seen as well with, with influencers and AI?

MAX: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this applies to a lesser extent to content sites too, but I, I really do think that, you know, as more and more people adopt it and, and LLMs sort of continue [00:35:00] to lean into creator content as a, um, you know, trusted source of information, it, it really puts creators in a pivotal position here, right? It sort of moves them from this, you know, tactical partner to a strategic one potentially, where all of a sudden this investment helps folks, not just with discoverability, but, um, you think about how pivotal, um, YouTube and, and Pinterest and TikTok are to Gen Z and, and how they do searching. It's not just Google solely for them.

But I will also say that, you know, shifting the, the creator focus uh, or the sort of priority of creators in that way also is gonna require a much more scaled approach too, right? I mean, one of the things that we've all come to understand about LLMs is that they really thrive on specificity, right? It's not just, you know, what are the best hiking shoes I can get for under $200? It's which is the best pair of hiking shoes I can get for under $200 that I can use to walk around in the Andes? All of a sudden needing that kind of scale of specific recommendations or specific context around what you're searching for [00:36:00] means that you can't get by with a program that features, you know, a dozen influencers, you probably need two dozen or three dozen or four dozen. And approaching things from that vantage point requires a fundamental shift in how you approach that kind of publisher and that kind of creator. So we're really, really early here, but I, I think that those are things that are, are worth thinking about on both the, the buy and the sell side here.

ROB: I think that's really interesting and it kind of lends itself to us talking about the influencer and create a topic more broadly. And I wonder, Max, like given your proximity to that particular space, and particularly the fact that you are bridging between influencer and affiliate in your day-to-day role as well.

We've seen influencer become a much bigger part of the, the pie in affiliate marketing over the last few years. And because of that, it's kind of lending itself more to a performance marketing channel then it maybe historically was associated with. Is that the attraction for brands? Um, is it something else do you think that's growing that uh, kind of slice of the pie and do you see that trend continuing?

MAX: I [00:37:00] think there's a lot of things that have fed into the elevation of creators within affiliate. You know, even before you get into sort of the, the, the compensation model, there's just this simple kind of distribution piece, right?

I mean, they're, they're a publisher type that is currently favored by the most important distribution pipes and media, right? Like YouTube, um, you know, likes surfacing creator led media that in turn goes to Google, TikTok, Meta, you know, uh, Reddit. They all love surfacing and, and driving engagement through, um, this kind of media.

Young people spend lots of time consuming their content. I will say before delving into sort of the performance piece of it, there is a a lot of kind of complicated stuff at play when you think about how consumers think about influencers or creators. Um, there are a lot, there's a lot of research out there that suggests people don't necessarily like influencers as a concept, but they do seem to spend an awful lot of time, you know, consuming their content. Um, but what I think is also really interesting [00:38:00] is that if you look at, uh, we did some research recently where we asked US internet users, uh, US adults, I guess I should say, um, whether they had seen, um, any content produced by an influencer in the previous 30 days, and only about 20% said yes.

And this again is, you know, people reporting it. And to me the takeaway from that is that. People have a kind of underdeveloped sense of, of who creators are and what they, what they do. You know, they, they might hear the word creator and they imagine some, you know, photogenic person who spends a lot of time posting pictures of themselves standing on beaches or something when in fact they are kind of missing this big and growing population of people that are, you know, that have really developed expertise, that have really genuine passions, that have really, uh profound connections to their audiences. And to me that kind of underdeveloped sense of who these people are is actually like a gigantic opportunity for both brands and influencers. Not in the sense of [00:39:00] we can pull a fast one on these people 'cause they don't even know they're being marketed to, but because there's a relationship that hasn't really been codified yet.

And so in that kind of, um, unsettled nature. There's this huge opportunity for, uh, brands and creators, both to find a new, genuine and and appealing way to sort of, to market really. And I think that there's as good a chance as any that they'll be able to, to get this right. There's gonna be misses, there's gonna be, um, hits.

But I, to me, that that kind of untapped sense of potential along with the distribution advantages I alluded to are, are kind of key to why influencers keep gaining, uh, market share among publishers.

KEVIN: If I think back to maybe sort of 10 years ago when influencers and content creators were sort of fairly nascent becoming a thing, a lot of those payment models were, were not remotely close to kind of being cost per acquisition based.

And at the time I remember we- this is when I worked at Awin- we were kind of trying to make a bit of a land grab for some of that money, and it just didn't, on that kind of [00:40:00] like Venn diagram of influences, creators over here and, and affiliates over here, that just was kind of almost next to no crossover between the two.

And I think those two things have converged. It, that felt like it was at the right conversations, but at the wrong time. The, the industry just wasn't ready to have those conversations. And now obviously that type of influencer activity is becoming a lot more, CPA focused, a lot more performance focused.

And at the same time, the affiliate channel has done a better job, not the best, but a better job at talking around the halo effect of affiliate activity, you know, the, the branding effect. And so there has been more of a convergence because the affiliate channel isn't all about last click, CPA payments anymore.

You know, in our most recent survey around about one in eight pounds that is spent through the affiliate channel is on activity that is not last click CPA. So it does feel as though there has been more of a convergence of those two business models and that that feels like the industry is now in a position where it can take advantage of that.

RACHEL: Do you also think that it's partially these creators and an influencers themselves being better educated and kind of having [00:41:00] insights into how valuable they can be? I feel like we always look at it as us educating to brands or us educating on value, but I, I also think we sometimes forget how much these creators themselves actually put into educating themself on, on where they can work, who they can work with.

KEVIN: There, there's an element of semantics, I think, in that you, you maybe might see them as smaller influencers or content creators, but those- that cohort has always been a part of the affiliate channel. I mean, you, as I say, it's, it's a semantic thing. You could argue that affiliates were the original influencers and creators anyway.

Um, so, but I do think the industry needs to do a better job at making the affiliate channel more accessible and easier to understand and do. You know, it should be really straightforward to be able to create account and pull a link and add it to, to content. So I still think that there is, there is more work that the industry needs to do.

I think we, we, we make it overly complicated for people that just don't know what the affiliate channel is [00:42:00] to actually become an affiliate.

ROB: I think going back to that semantic difference, there was a kind of cottage industry of bloggers effectively. You know, bloggers were the original influencers and creators.

They just didn't, they had to kind of, um, largely own their own means of distribution.

KEVIN: Mm-hmm.

ROB: And what the social platforms did really effectively was do all of that, take all of that effort away and say, all you need to do is create your content. Now go have at it.

KEVIN: Yeah.

ROB: And I don't think affiliate marketing, or at least you know, our platforms and other platforms in the space have maybe done as good a job at helping alleviate that burden of effort.

But, you know, we're getting there. You know, things like the Creator App that's been launched at Awin, like has been hugely popular. We've seen a, a massive kind of, um, tranche of new influencers join the platform largely off the back of that. And it goes to show that if you kind of create the conditions perfectly for them, or not perfectly, in the right direction for them, you know, the, the, the performance will follow.

KEVIN: And affiliate platforms have al- always looked very, very different to an influencer platform, right? They look like very different things [00:43:00] historically. So it's sort of a question of habit, of needing to learn from each other about how to, um, sort of crosspollinate those two things.

ROB: Yeah, I was gonna segue from influencer quite neatly into the space of couponing and the use of voucher codes because I think there is actually some crossover here because of the use of coupon codes as a kind of measurement and attribution mechanism, um, for influencers increasingly. This use of single use codes has definitely grown in popularity, I would say, in that space.

Max, I wondered like from your vantage point, is this something that you are also seeing as a kind of longer term attribution solution for influencer marketing? Or is it just a step in a direction of something that's a lot more sophisticated that we need there?

MAX: I think it's a step in, in the right direction. Um, as we've been discussing for the last little while, there's so much kind of up in the air about, you know, where people will shop and what this creator media will be fed through. Whether people will continue consuming it directly or whether it will all just become, you know, grist in an LLM [00:44:00] mill. Um, that's all sort of yet to be determined. But I do think that as we see sort of URL tools get more sophisticated and, and how that feeds into sort of, uh, single use coupon codes, um, I could see that potentially becoming quite useful. But I'd, I'd be curious to hear what, um, what you guys think about this as well.

KEVIN: Uh, I mean obviously it's um, it's a side effect, you know, single use codes, it's, um. It seems to be becoming the industry standard now, and it should be something, you know, if we're, we're talking about the mechanism of controlling codes, it's a, it's a very obvious way of being able to control them, but it's also a great way of obviously being able to track them as well. And, and in the event of tracking failing, then a code always being redeemed and being able to be tracked back to the affiliate means that it's sort of, um, that kind of additional level of security around sort of tracking failure.

ROB: I did wanna ask you about, um, across both the US and the UK actually, like this notion of coupon and discount usage being popularized beyond just coupon and discount partners. I think there's been a assumption in the past that that mechanism is [00:45:00] just for those particular partners. Clearly that is not the case anymore.

They have, um, kind of broken out of just one partner type to, you know, practically every partner in the entire kind of purchase funnel is using codes in some capacity or another. Um, what are the implications of that for the channel? Because I think that there are some pros and cons. We talked about the pros to some degree.

It's suddenly kind of adding a layer of, uh, measurement to partners that are maybe appearing earlier in the purchase journey to be able to kind of track their sales in environments whether that isn't always kind of feasible talking about the reputational, uh, challenges that the industry has. One of them has always been, well, that's just coupon codes.

You know, that's, that's my assumption is all it is, is, you know, I'm gonna lose margin on sales that occur through affiliates, and that is expensive for me, and I'm not interested. What do we think on, on that kind of, that balance there?

MAX: Yeah. I think you've laid out the, the pros and cons pretty effectively.

I mean, I think that at a high level, in addition to the, the measurement stuff you alluded to, it's, it's broadly a, a good thing because it's a, it's a signal of [00:46:00] improving consumer sophistication, right? So, you know, more people doing more research and also, you know, looking for more value. All of that stuff redowns to affiliates benefit because a lot of the content and the um, publisher sort of strategies are hinged on people looking for the right product for them. You know, whether that's because of price or, or you know, product specs or whatever it happens to be, but it, there is the chance that it leads to margin pressure.

I think especially too, maybe this is sort of leapfrogging too far ahead, but this is especially true if we get into a space where agentic commerce begins to take off in any capacity, right? Where you know, you can just tell a shopping bot: wait until the price on this drops by 30% and then buy it. And you know, then all of a sudden the affiliate makes some money, uh, but the brand just gets squeezed in a way that they absolutely do not like. Um, but that's maybe that, that's maybe too far ahead in the future. But tho- those are the sort of pros and cons that I, I see.

KEVIN: I mean, some of the, the issues [00:47:00] around couponing and and codes are resolved as the affiliate channel really, and without kind of wanting to rehash all of the old arguments and, and discussions and debate, I think that you ultimately can kind of crystallize it down into to one thing which is: brands will have confidence in that activity if they feel they have control over that activity. And I think that most of the issues, or a lot of the issues that we've seen in the past, is because they, they feel they don't have control.

And so making sure that, that technically the systems are in place to be able to control their distribution is one of the key ways of of tackling that. But they, they've always been ubiquitous and also outside of our kind of classic definition of, of a, of a voucher code site.

One of the interesting trends actually that we recorded in our data that we capture for the size and and scale of, of the UK affiliate industry, which we released back in May. Uh, we ask for kind of affiliate breakdown, where the spend is going, where the sales are going, where the revenue is going by what I was kind of call a fairly crude, but you know, our, our basic affiliate classification, so cashback, [00:48:00] bloggers, social, PPC, et cetera. And, um, we actually noted that the share of brand spend that is going through voucher code sites is actually declining.

Actually is, is kind of hovering around just over 10%. But we also asked the question of what, uh, percent of your sales are as a result of a voucher being redeemed, and that is more than double that amount. So clearly there is, um, a classification issue around it. You know, making sure that people are aware that a lot of affiliates that aren't voucher code affiliates are still making use of voucher codes.

And the lateral level of revenue that is going through coding is significantly higher than just looking at, um, voucher code sites. Um, so yeah, I mean it's um-

ROB: It's an ongoing thing.

KEVIN: It's an ongoing thing.

RACHEL: Just to, to wrap up, Max, I'll start with you. Looking ahead, where do you see the biggest sources of growth, um, emerging in 2026, whether that's advertiser categories, um, new regions or, or new partner types?

MAX: I'm intrigued [00:49:00] by what might come from, you know, growing advertiser interests coming out of China. If you look at the sort of defining storylines of, of digital advertising over the last, let's call it, decade, whether it's, you know, social ad spending or retail media. A really significant share of that spending has come from Chinese manufacturers, right?

Whether it was D2C, uh, really taking off in the US and that initially starting out as you know, American startups, you know, manufacturing stuff in China, and then the the manufacturers essentially like learning that playbook and running it themselves. And that driving this, you know, huge extra wave of spending on social networks on Amazon.

And I could absolutely see a repeat of that happening in affiliate. Um, you know, you saw a lot of partnerships sort of crystallized last year that sort of set the table for, for growth in spending there. I will say that the, the end of the de minimis exemption in the US absolutely complicates this. I mean, you know, there's a, there are ways in which the Chinese government is sort of attempting to sort of, um, you know, soften the impact of [00:50:00] that.

But I, it is going to complicate things a little bit. That's, that I still think the sheer size of potential advertisers, um, out there is hard to, to overlook. And I'm also just interested, um, this is maybe a, a little small, but it's still specific. I'm interested to see if there's more potential for an affiliate model when it comes to CTV.

So, you know, I just think the idea of, you know, there's so much more, um, migration if you like, um, both in terms of time and money from traditional linear television into CTV and, um, you know, there are proof points that, that, that affiliate can kind of muscle its way in there, um. Especially as more creator content moves into a CTV setting as well.

And so I'm excited to see, uh, how that unfolds personally.

RACHEL: Kevin, same question for you, I guess, where do you see the biggest sources of growth in 2026?

KEVIN: If I look back to, as I say, the, our state of the nation report, where we scale and, and scope and size the, the UK affiliate industry where we saw particular growth in last year, uh, [00:51:00] was, uh, we saw a growth in subnetwork, subnetwork activity. Uh, we saw a growth in the kind of tech partners that the channel has kind of been championing over the last sort to five or six years. So, um, you know, the, the, those partners that are kind of embedded within retail sites.

I'm working around how we try and surface some additional trends that may be, are quite small at the moment, but we want to kind of focus in on, because they're potentially quite high growth areas. So, you know, non-traditional partnerships, brands becoming affiliates, um, themselves, card linked offers.

Which we're obviously seeing, you know, recently Zilch in the UK getting a huge amount of VC money to, to kind of continue their, their rapid growth. So I think that the affiliate mix will continue to evolve and we'll continue to see certain affiliate categories that maybe only account for a single digit percent of, of spend at the moment, but we'll continue to maybe see some of the biggest growth, um, in those areas.

ROB: I just wanna finish off them with, uh, some closing predictions from you both so [00:52:00] you can keep these fairly succinct and as bold as you, as you feel comfortable with. But, um, Max, just for you, what's one bold prediction you are confident will come true in affiliate marketing by the end of 2026? And we are gonna hold you accountable to this.

MAX: You'll never catch me. Um, I, I feel like I'm just talking my book here, but I just, I, I feel pretty certain that, um, creators will continue to vacuum up market share, um, on the, on the publisher side. We've been talking now for, you know, quite some time about why, but I, that, that, to me it feels like an easy bet.

ROB: Yeah, there's some good momentum in that space right now. Um, Kevin?

KEVIN: I'm gonna sort of bring it back to, from a purely selfish point of view, back to kind of some of the things that I think that the APMA will focus on next year. And what I'd love to do, whether it's a bold prediction or whether it's just a question of us actually doing the work is, um, I would love, what I, what I would love to do is get to a stage where we have a full set of best practice guides and standardization around, um, what good looks like. [00:53:00] Therefore that becomes the defacto thing to point people to. So it kind of can't be really particularly skewed by any one particular company. And I'd love us to get to the stage, I mean, there's a lot of work to be done around that, but I'd love to kind of reinvigorate standards and get to a stage where we're professionalizing, maybe is is the wrong word, 'cause we're a professional industry, but maybe just getting to a stage where that becomes a lot more kind of codified.

ROB: And with your more cynical hat on, which I guess is the hat that you wear normally anyway, but, um, what's one thing you hope doesn't come true for the industry in 2026?

KEVIN: Do you want me to go first?

ROB: Yeah. Yeah, I was talking to you. Yeah.

RACHEL: No one else is calling Max cynical.

KEVIN: I guess, I mean it's, it's probably the most obvious one, but that we don't want AI to basically kill the affiliate channel

ROB: Yeah, fair. Max?

MAX: I also would like affiliate to not be killed by AI.

ROB: We've got consensus then. Nobody on the call wants the [00:54:00] industry killed by AI.

Thanks so much to Kevin and Max there for joining us and sharing their thoughts on how 2026 is likely to pan out. Now, what's your prediction for the year ahead, Rach?

RACHEL: I predict that I'll be making a return to the podcast and maybe you'll ask me to be your co-host.

ROB: Yeah. Um, let's see how that one pans out.

RACHEL: The 2026 trends episodes don't stop here though, as we have another episode following in just a couple of days where we'll be sharing the view from Europe.

ROB: Yeah, that's right. I'll be joined by my colleague from France, Kelli Parkja, and two more guests from Europe where we'll get their view on how the market is shaping up there and what the affiliate industry can expect to see in the coming months.

RACHEL: And for those listeners desperately waiting for new episodes of Awin-Win Marketing Podcast, when can they expect to hear more?

ROB: Are you asking for a friend, Rach?

RACHEL: I'm asking both for myself as a co-host and my followers.

ROB: Well, that's good to know. That is all very much in the podcast pipeline. Um, we've recorded a whole bunch of new episodes and expect 'em to go live from early [00:55:00] March.

We've got some really great conversations from a wide array of different brands, affiliates and tech solutions and other partners that we've been speaking to, so stay tuned for those. In the meantime, thank you so much for listening today, and Rach, thank you so much for co-hosting.

RACHEL: Thanks for having me. I look forward to doing it in the future.

ROB: Yeah, we'll see.

Thanks so much to Kevin and Max there for joining us and sharing their thoughts on how 2026 is likely to pan out in 2026.

You can tell I was writing this at like 10 o'clock last night.

RACHEL: It was past your bedtime.

ROB: Yeah.