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A well-optimized affiliate campaign can be a valuable addition to your other marketing channels. Think of a well-written advertorial on a relevant affiliate blog, or a successful, targeted email campaign via a cashback affiliate. The possibilities are endless.
However, the affiliate landscape has changed considerably in recent years. For example, many affiliates saw their website traffic collapse overnight as a result of Google's “Helpful Content Updates”. The affiliate strategies that previously worked well are no longer profitable, so some publishers are “forced” to fall back on questionable affiliate practices.
It is therefore an understatement to say that the affiliate channel has undergone a transformation. As an advertiser, how can you still benefit from the potential added value that affiliate marketing can offer in 2025?
To give a thorough answer to this question, we need to look at all players in the field. In addition to affiliates and advertisers, there are also networks. None of these parties can live without each other, but each of these parties has its own interests. However, concessions will have to be made to maintain both the future of the affiliate channel and its potential added value. This mainly concerns the question of what each of the parties considers “added value” and how this should ideally be acted upon from each perspective.
Like affiliates, affiliate networks also earn a commission on each measured transaction. This is in addition to one-off setup fees and monthly subscription fees. On the one hand, this can be seen as a good thing. For example, affiliates and the network itself have a common interest in working for the campaign. But there is also a pitfall, especially when network margin comes into question.
Networks often set a standard cookie time of 100 days themselves. This means that clicks from an affiliate have 100 days to convert. But what is the added value of a click that was measured 90 days ago and converts almost by chance? Would that transaction also have come about without that old click? The chances are great. Despite the small added value, the advertiser will have to pay a commission on the transaction in question - as well as a bit of network margin. This fact underlines the (co) importance of the network in using a long (er) cookie time.
In addition to cookie time, it is also interesting to take a critical look at the click-to-sale time. After all, what is the added value of the affiliate channel for transactions with a click-to-sale time of 1 minute? These are often situations where the consumer has already decided to place an order, but looks for a discount code at the last minute in the checkout, hoping to save some costs. The consumer then visits a discount code site, clicks a button with the text “show code”, goes back to the webshop and voila. For a transaction that was already “received” before the advertiser, an affiliate commission must then be paid.
In this case, there was no question of any qualitative contribution from the affiliate. Although this scenario mainly occurs with discount code sites, we also see this happening with cashback affiliates. Just before placing an order, consumers quickly click through their cashback account to earn points when purchasing.
A concrete example is that of an advertiser selling photo items. When a consumer visits the web shop, he or she must go through a configurator where the type of product, material and photos must be chosen. A process that is almost impossible to complete within a minute. If affiliate transactions are then measured with a click-to-sale time of 1 minute, it is clear what is going on. Consumers would never go through the entire process first and then drop out just before completing the purchase. What was the added value of this affiliate transaction and why should an advertiser pay a commission for such a transaction?
Having strict and clear campaign conditions and a critical admission policy are essential to make affiliate marketing a value-added channel. However, the networks do not always provide the right feedback. This is partly because the networks themselves also have an interest in measuring as many transactions as possible.
If an advertiser chooses to exclude voucher sites from the campaign, fewer “affiliate transactions” are expected to be measured, which means that the network also earns less. The same applies to the cookie time. With a cookie time of 100 days, there is much more time for clicks to convert than with a cookie time of 30, 14 or 7 days.
It is precisely at these points where the proverbial problem lies. Because when is the affiliate campaign a success? The networks will point to an increase in the number of transactions and the associated affiliate turnover. From the advertiser's perspective, this is different. Because which of these transactions would not have taken place without interference from the affiliate channel? Hundreds of affiliate transactions on a monthly basis sound very interesting, until it appears that the advertiser actually pays double costs for a large part of these transactions in view of the affiliate commission and, for example, CPC costs to Google.
Especially with a view to increasing the advertiser's incremental turnover (while increasing the added value of the affiliate channel), it should be in the affiliate network's interest to identify and join quality affiliates that are a good fit for the advertiser's affiliate program. Unfortunately, it often happens that advertisers are left to their own devices when it comes to expanding the quality publisher base. Publishers that can offer incremental added value are often at the top of the funnel. It is often publishers that are lower in the funnel who realize the highest numbers of orders, but whose added value is lower at the same time. And let the latter group of publishers be exactly the publishers that the network can also earn the most from.
The conflicting importance, qualitative turnover for the advertiser versus the highest possible turnover (and therefore network margin) for the networks is clear.
As if these conflicting interests weren't putting enough pressure on the affiliate channel, developments at Google are adding to that. For example, many affiliates are experiencing the consequences of the “Helpful Content Updates” and developments in AI integration into the search engine. Many affiliates were largely dependent on website traffic from Google and saw this source decline drastically or even dry up completely.
It is precisely the upper-funnel affiliates - the ones you can expect to provide added value - that are hit hardest. This fact forces affiliates to look for ways to maintain income. Here, they fall back on charging additional fees, for example in the form of fixed fees. It also happens that affiliates choose to settle for less and stop working altogether or, in some cases, push the limits of the applicable campaign conditions.
At this point, too, the interests of the advertiser and the interests of the network do not come together. An advertiser is definitely not helped with an unkempt publisher file that at first glance is not clear which site is still working at all and whether each of the affiliated publishers is still operating in accordance with the campaign guidelines.
It is not in the interest of the networks to clean up the database of affiliated publishers or monitor it for advertisers. After all, this is a time-consuming job and time is money. It is therefore not without reason that each of the affiliate agreements states that it is the advertiser's responsibility to process registrations from affiliates.
The lack of transparency from the networks can have unpleasant consequences for advertisers in these kinds of situations, for example when it appears that publishers are cunningly circumventing the campaign terms and thus causing unjustified affiliate transactions. Unfair commission costs for the advertiser if no action is taken, which at the same time means extra margin for the networks.
The only solution seems to be a continuous critical approach to this channel. Assessing added value based solely on the number of transactions or measured turnover is outdated. It often happens that the turnover measured in the network is anything but additional, but simply double.
Some advertisers therefore choose to use deduplication, where transactions that are assigned by GA4 to another channel are rejected in the network. This is understandable from a cost perspective, but can also be unfair to affiliates who have indeed provided added value.
From this point of view, Billy Grace's approach is interesting. They make it possible to distribute budgets across all connected channels using AI-driven models. Each channel would receive a “fair share” based on the chosen attribution model.
However, the question remains what the exact commission will be for affiliates. The “certainty” - that affiliates know exactly what the commission will be in advance - would disappear.
The fact that affiliate marketing in its traditional form faces many challenges makes it clear that the future of affiliate marketing requires concessions from all parties. This is to restore trust between each of these parties, which is essentially the basis of affiliate marketing. Networks will need to become more transparent by actively preventing fraudulent publishers and actively contributing to compliance with campaign terms, even at the expense of their own margin.
For advertisers, a critical look at both cookie time and click-to-sale time is necessary to offer a good alternative to the more rigid deduplication methods hated by affiliates.
Affiliates would do well to proactively dialogue with advertisers and the network in order to build valuable collaborations.
Ultimately, it's about trust, cooperation and making honest choices. In a channel that is in full transition, that remains the only way forward.
