12 New Trends in Affiliate Marketing

by Rahimah Sultan

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Affiliate marketing is a revenue-sharing arrangement where businesses work with content creators and influencers (affiliates) to promote their products or services. Here are the trends.


1.  Traditional Advertising Issues

Digital ad spending slowed to single-digit figures for the first time in 2 decades, a trend that will continue. Marketers, using traditional forms of digital marketing, are struggling to succeed in this new environment defined by customers looking for more genuine, humanized content, and personalized support.

Studies show companies are wasting billions on programmatic media spending that doesn’t lead to results. As new user growth continues to plateau, ads on social media channels are not leading to results.

More and more, brands looking for ways to protect themselves from diminishing ROI, are turning to direct collaborations with creators, such as influencers and affiliates. Major brands have all launched large-scale affiliate marketing programs in the last year, tying brand awareness-building activities to tangible financial success.

This trend is expected to continue, which helps to counter platform-dependent risks and rising customer acquisition costs. This relationship also represents a positive shift for creators, who are looking for more reliable incomes, especially since TikTok canceled its creator fund.

Moving forward, companies might need to take a closer look at their marketing budgets and decide where they’re getting the biggest return on investment. If you’re not getting positive results from paid social media and search ads, you might consider switching to affiliate marketing as a great way to optimize your marketing budget.



What is Affiliate Marketing?



As already stated, affiliate marketing is a revenue-sharing arrangement where businesses work with content creators and influencers (affiliates) to promote their products or services.

Affiliates earn a commission for each visit, signup, or sale they make for a merchant.

This strategy allows businesses to outsource part of the sales process and gain a wider reach while affiliates earn income, and customers discover valuable products or services.



2.  Cookie Depreciation

Attribution models shift with cookie depreciation. Affiliate marketing has always been a form of performance-based marketing. However, the way companies track affiliate performance will need to change.

Many attribution models, including the multi-touch, last-click, and time-decay models rely on cookies. Google has finally begun denying these third-party cookies in the Chrome browser.

Now, business leaders can no longer depend on cookies to accurately measure affiliate performance. As an alternative, some companies are adopting server-to-server tracking, but many are struggling to get the right technology to enable end-to-end monitoring.

In the future, business leaders will need to leverage technology that not only enables them to track important metrics like conversion rate, click-through rate, lifetime value, and monthly recurring revenue but also maintains a complete view of the customer journey.

New and improved affiliate marketing platforms will deliver remarkable results for business leaders. Intuitive platforms that offer tracking, metric management, and automated payment processing should present businesses with more of the data and support they need.



3.  AI Will Influence Marketing Trends

Artificial Intelligence will influence affiliate marketing trends. AI has become deeply integrated into the marketing environment. Businesses are making use of artificial intelligence for everything. It’s essentially the next generation of content personalization, enhanced by artificial intelligence.

If you’re employing an affiliate marketing strategy, find out what concerns your audience has. Avoid using AI to completely eliminate the “human” aspect from the affiliate marketing method, because this will make it more difficult for you to connect with your audience.

As a content creator, you’ll be able to scale your production efforts, increase productivity and creativity, and also offer access to new tools that support the creation of unique resources like AI images. Keep in mind the fact that there will also be challenges to overcome.



4.  Partnerships Evolve

Affiliate, partner, and brand partnerships evolve. B2C and B2B partnerships have grown increasingly crucial. Companies rely more on partnerships for the collection of data, understanding their customers, and building better relationships. In the years to come, there will be a greater focus on affiliate marketing overlapping activities throughout entire organizations.

Affiliate strategies not only drive leads for sellers, but they can help to gain the attention of strategic partners and improve employee acquisition. Then companies will be forced to take a more holistic approach when implementing their affiliate strategies.

Companies will begin to organize joint webinars and events with their affiliates, co-creating content, and studying different revenue-sharing models.5.  The TikTok and Amazon Turf War

The evolution of the digital and technology landscapes is one of the major factors driving new affiliate marketing trends. As larger tech companies continue to grow, they’ve started scrutinizing each other for ideas to increase revenue.

So, we’re seeing more overlap between previously dissimilar brands. Amazon was once just the world’s leading shopping marketplace. However, it’s now promoting ad space and investing in new ways to help customers find inspiration for what to buy.

On the other hand, TikTok, used to be a place purely for entertainment, which also offered customers insights on what kind of products they might want to purchase. Now, people can buy products directly from the platform, thanks to TikTok’s shopping features.

These two companies are in direct competition with each other, and both appear to be reliant on affiliates. Affiliate marketing has always been a core part of Amazon’s growth strategy, and TikTok has always relied heavily on its creators.

This new landscape will force brands to rethink their approach to affiliate marketing. Do they want to drive customers to a marketplace like TikTok or Amazon, where they can purchase products? Or do companies want to be sure they’re driving customers back to their actual website to learn more about the brand and possibly make additional purchases?

If companies choose the latter, they’ll need to focus heavily on enhancing the customer experience by creating unique assets, like ‘live shopping,’ only available on their websites.



5.  The TikTok and Amazon Turf War

The evolution of the digital and technology landscapes is one of the major factors driving new affiliate marketing trends. As larger tech companies continue to grow, they’ve started scrutinizing each other for ideas to increase revenue.

So, we’re seeing more overlap between previously dissimilar brands. Amazon was once just the world’s leading shopping marketplace. However, it’s now promoting ad space and investing in new ways to help customers find inspiration for what to buy.

On the other hand, TikTok, used to be a place purely for entertainment, which also offered customers insights on what kind of products they might want to purchase. Now, people can buy products directly from the platform, thanks to TikTok’s shopping features.

These two companies are in direct competition with each other, and both appear to be reliant on affiliates. Affiliate marketing has always been a core part of Amazon’s growth strategy, and TikTok has always relied heavily on its creators.

This new landscape will force brands to rethink their approach to affiliate marketing. Do they want to drive customers to a marketplace like TikTok or Amazon, where they can purchase products? Or do companies want to be sure they’re driving customers back to their actual website to learn more about the brand and possibly make additional purchases?

If companies choose the latter, they’ll need to focus heavily on enhancing the customer experience by creating unique assets, like ‘live shopping,’ only available on their websites.



6.  New Landscapes

Interest in affiliate marketing grows in new landscapes.

Previously, affiliate marketing was widely respected as a popular choice for B2C companies, focusing on advertising products to a broad audience. That’s starting to change. B2B companies and enterprise-level brands, particularly those in the software space, are also seeing the value of affiliate marketing. In the B2B enterprise world, the growth of affiliate marketing is being driven by the increasing intricacy of the buyer journey.

This trend will continue to gather speed, making it more important for B2B affiliate marketers to help guide customers toward buying decisions. Establishing strong relationships with content creators will allow B2B companies to boost the visibility of their solutions early on and start building trust. These efforts will support good SEO, helping companies draw more traffic to their websites from relevant backlinks.



7.  Influencer Relationships

There’s an increasing focus on influencer relationships. In recent years influencer marketing has become a leading strategy for both B2C and B2B companies. Purchasers want to see more real, authentic, content from online creators they already love. There will probably be an increase in companies leveraging influencers and affiliate marketers in tandem to capitalize on this push.

Influencer marketing strategies are already common among 93% of brands, and trends like working with nano-influencers, micro-influencers, and video influencers to boost awareness will continue to grow with the main shift being the type of influencer content created.

Influencers and affiliates will need to take a more understated, relatable approach, and create content for a variety of platforms, including TikTok, LinkedIn, and YouTube to push the correct results.

There may be more teams co-creating content with other organizations to help increase reach and improve growth and allow affiliates and influencers to create in-depth, educational content connected to the products they’re promoting, thus delivering more value to customers.



8.  Content Diversification

Content diversification will be one of the most significant affiliate marketing trends to watch in the future. First, affiliate marketers will need to start creating content for all segments of the customer journey. This means focusing not just on driving sales but on increasing engagement and customer lifetime value with educational content, onboarding videos, and related solutions.

And secondly, these creators will need to test different content formats.

A short time ago, most affiliates relied on blog posts and the occasional social media strategy to promote brands. While these forms of content still have value, the flood of content on the web and changing search engine algorithms connected to written content will require many to take a more all-inclusive approach. For instance:

Video content
Podcasts
Long-tail search content



9.  The Community in Affiliate Marketing Trends

Online communities are everywhere, and they represent an incredible opportunity in affiliate marketing trends. They are more niche-focused, and provide access to more engaged users. Using affiliates to drive attention toward communities could help companies collect more valuable, first-party data about their customers, their preferences, and their needs. Developing a community will give companies an excellent way to find more highly qualified affiliates for their team.



10. The Metaverse in Affiliate Marketing Programs

Already, many companies building their own metaverse experiences with a focus on enhancing customer experience and increasing brand loyalty. Soon, many more companies will see the opportunity to leverage affiliate strategies for promoting both physical and virtual products.

It’s hard to know what affiliate marketing in the metaverse will look like. Still, the rise of metaverse experiences is likely to have a major impact on affiliate marketing trends and business growth in the future. The largest challenge for businesses is likely to be in finding affiliates who are familiar with the metaverse, and digital landscapes.



11. More Affiliate Content

Many companies investing in affiliate marketing have been cautious, In the past, about promoting how frequently they invest in ‘paid sponsorship.’ Many companies want the recommendations made by affiliates on their social media channels and blogs to seem like genuine, user-generated content.

Most consumers won’t buy the idea that someone would post a 20-minute video about a new email marketing platform or set of wireless earbuds without any reward. Also, many areas have imposed new regulations that require affiliate marketers and influencers to label their content as ‘sponsored.’

That represents an opportunity for brands to earn the trust of their customers through honest, transparent disclaimers, and it also means companies don’t have to back away from promoting affiliate content on their platforms.



12. Publishers Demands

Publishers will demand greater support from advertisers.

One of the most significant affiliate marketing trends, going forward, is the demand for greater support from advertisers. Brands that want to drive excellent results from their affiliate programs, will need to give creators a greater level of assistance.

They’ll need to support these creators with everything from figuring out how to navigate the new SEO landscape to ensuring they understand which types of media to use for different promotions.

The challenges facing affiliates are growing just as the demand for affiliate marketing might be increasing in a complex promotional environment. Business leaders can’t expect to provide their affiliates with a custom link and leave them on their own anymore.

Comprehensive affiliate marketing strategies will require that business leaders build ‘enablement resources’ to give affiliates more of the tools they need to succeed. This could include providing them with digital marketing training tools, branded photography, pitch decks, and more.

They’ll also need to rethink the commission structure. Building a tailor-made arrangement that prioritizes retaining and rewarding your best affiliates will ensure you can constantly scale and optimize your program.


Adjusting to the 12 new trends in affiliate marketing discussed here will require taking a comprehensive approach to changing strategy. However, investing enough time and effort into a holistic plan for modern affiliate marketing success will pay off.



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