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171 Affiliate Marketing Statistics October 2026

Updated 171 primary-source citations Refreshed monthly

On this page
  1. Key Takeaways
  2. How big is the affiliate channel, and is it still growing?
  3. What do affiliate programs pay in commissions, cookie windows and fees?
  4. How well do affiliate shoppers convert and spend?
  5. Who earns affiliate revenue: publishers, creators or platforms?
  6. How much affiliate revenue do tracking gaps, fraud and rules put at risk?
  7. How is AI changing affiliate traffic and commerce?
  8. Methodology and Sources

Affiliate marketing statistics for 2026 describe a channel that is growing in money while getting harder to convert per click. US affiliate spending rose from $9.1 billion in 2021 to $13.62 billion in 2024, an increase of 49.8% (Performance Marketing Association, Industry Study 2025, Jun 2025). Yet publishers received about $1.4 billion of the $19 billion that Awin's network generated for advertisers in its latest financial year (Awin, About us, Oct 2026).

The page covers market size, commission rates and payout terms, conversion, who earns the money (publishers, creators and platforms), tracking loss and fraud, disclosure law and the effect of AI. Each one links to the organisation that produced it: a trade body, a network reporting its own platform data, a regulator, a company filing or a platform help page. Network and vendor surveys are labelled as such, and where two sources disagree, both appear. The page is refreshed every month.

Key Takeaways

How big is the affiliate channel, and is it still growing?

Yes. In the US it is growing about twice as fast as the e-commerce it feeds, but the growth is uneven. Money is moving from retail toward finance, travel and creators, and the per-click economics are getting worse even where totals rise.

Affiliate marketing statistics: US affiliate marketing spending in billions of dollars in the 2019, 2022 and 2025 editions of the PMA industry study
Figure 1: US affiliate spending more than doubled between the 2019 and 2025 editions of the study; the bars are study editions, and the 2025 edition measures calendar year 2024. Source: Performance Marketing Association, Industry Study 2025, Jun 2025. Chart published by the source, captured 14 Oct 2026.

How much do brands spend on affiliate and partner programs?

Spend is rising in both large markets, but network data shows brands paying more per sale rather than buying many more sales.

How much revenue does the channel drive, and at what return?

A lot, with returns that look good in every national dataset, though each network counts differently and the totals do not add up to one global number.

Which sectors, networks and partner types are growing?

Retail still leads, but its share is falling, and networks now describe themselves as partnership platforms rather than affiliate lists.

Low single digits on physical goods, much more on software, and different terms at every program.

Amazon Associates fixed standard commission rates by product category, 0% to 10%
Figure 2: Amazon sets a fixed rate per category, from 10% on luxury beauty down to 0% on gift cards and wireless plans, with most physical goods between 1% and 4.5%. Source: Amazon Associates, Standard Commission Income Statement, Oct 2026. Screenshot of the source page, captured 14 Oct 2026.

Which commission rates do major programs pay?

Retail programs pay a few percent of the order, while software programs pay a share of the first sale or a flat bounty.

How long do affiliate tracking windows last?

From one day to half a year.

When do affiliates get paid, and what do networks charge?

Slowly, and with minimums. Money often arrives two to three months after the click, because networks wait out returns before they release it.

How well do affiliate shoppers convert and spend?

Order values are climbing and conversion rates are sliding, which means the channel is getting more valuable per sale and harder per click. The evidence comes from networks reporting their own platforms, so the numbers are a strong signal rather than an audit.

Average order value on impact.com affiliate orders by month, January to June 2026 against 2025
Figure 3: Affiliate order values on impact.com sat roughly 11% to 28% above the January 2025 baseline in every month of the first half of 2026, while 2025 stayed within about 8% of it. Source: impact.com, H1 2026 Consumer Shopping Trends, Aug 2026. Chart published by the source, captured 14 Oct 2026.

Do marketers think the channel works?

Yes, by a wide margin. Complaints concern fraud and brand control more than results.

How do affiliate orders and conversion rates compare year over year?

Fewer transactions at higher values, with a handful of partner types doing most of the closing.

What happens to affiliate sales at Black Friday and Prime Day?

Peak weeks bring more clicks and fewer conversions, and the networks disagree on the direction of order value because their cohorts differ.

Who earns affiliate revenue: publishers, creators or platforms?

Affiliate revenue is concentrating in a handful of large publishers and one retailer, and the filings show a split: it grew at some publishers in 2025 and fell at others, with most reporting weaker traffic in 2026.

Future plc B2C revenue by line, FY2025 against FY2024, with eCommerce affiliates highlighted
Figure 4: Future plc's eCommerce affiliate revenue fell from £83.9 million to £76.7 million in the year to September 2025, about 10% of group revenue, as its advertising and subscription lines also shrank. Source: Future plc, 2025 Full Year Results, Dec 2025. Screenshot of the source page, captured 14 Oct 2026.

How much affiliate revenue do listed publishers report?

Only a few break it out. Where they do, the lines are large and moving in opposite directions.

  • IAC says People Inc.'s performance marketing revenue rose 21% in 2025, mainly because affiliate commerce commissions grew on higher transaction volumes and retailer volume incentives (IAC, Form 10-K for 2025, Feb 2026).
  • That revenue equals about 26% of People Inc.'s digital revenue and about 12% of IAC's consolidated 2025 revenue (IAC, Form 10-K for 2025, Feb 2026).
  • In the first half of 2026 People Inc.'s digital performance marketing revenue rose 14%, to $134.9 million from $118.3 million (People Inc., Form 10-Q for June 2026, Aug 2026).
  • BuzzFeed earned $55.5 million of affiliate commerce revenue in 2025, down from $59.6 million, because partners paid fewer supplemental bonuses (BuzzFeed, Form 10-K for 2025, Mar 2026).
  • BuzzFeed's affiliate commerce revenue fell to $15.6 million in the first half of 2026 from $22.7 million, which it blames on a deliberate cut in marketing spend and traffic headwinds (BuzzFeed, Form 10-Q for June 2026, Aug 2026).
  • The New York Times reported $308.1 million of affiliate, licensing and other revenue in 2025, about 11% of its total, a line that includes Wirecutter referrals (New York Times Company, Form 10-K for 2025, Feb 2026).
  • Wirecutter affiliate referral revenue grew by $5.1 million in 2025 (New York Times Company, Form 10-K for 2025, Feb 2026).
  • The Arena Group grew performance marketing revenue 79.7% to $19.6 million in 2025, about 15% of its revenue, by expanding its affiliate partner network (Arena Group, Form 10-K for 2025, Mar 2026).
  • Future plc says its affiliate revenue fell 6% organically in the year to September 2025, "mainly driven by the audience decline," as sessions fell 10% to 317 million (Future plc, 2025 Full Year Results, Dec 2025).
  • Future also reports that only 16% of its total revenue is now directly correlated to website sessions (Future plc, Half Year Results, Mar 2026).
  • One customer, a financial services provider, accounted for 26% of NerdWallet's 2025 revenue, which the company earns mainly through referral fees, lead generation and partner-based monetization (NerdWallet, Form 10-K for 2025, Feb 2026).
  • On the advertiser side, Beachbody replaced its multi-level network with a single-level affiliate model in November 2024, and partner compensation fell from $119.3 million in 2024 to $26.3 million in 2025 (Beachbody Company, Form 10-K for 2025, Mar 2026).

Billions in sales, and brands are spreading their budgets across many more creators.

What do independent affiliate publishers earn, and what worries them?

Income is skewed toward experience, traffic comes from search, and the biggest worry is Google. The one large independent survey is from 2023, so treat its earnings as a snapshot of site owners.

How much affiliate revenue do tracking gaps, fraud and rules put at risk?

Most lost revenue is a tracking problem rather than fraud, and the largest compliance gap is on the creator side. The sums that networks report recovering are large, and the rules are tightening on both sides of the Atlantic.

Table of disclosure clarity in 2 million YouTube videos, with clearly, possibly and non-compliant affiliate videos
Figure 5: Table 2 of the study splits affiliate videos into clearly, possibly and non-compliant disclosures, and the bulk of the non-compliant group posted no disclosure at all. Source: Sun et al., Turning Trust to Transactions, ICWSM 2026, May 2026. Screenshot of the source table, captured 14 Oct 2026.

How much revenue does broken tracking cost?

Enough that the largest European network made fixing it mandatory. Browsers cap cookies that affiliate links depend on.

How do browser extensions and search spam distort attribution?

Coupon and cashback extensions are the most contested part of the channel. Networks now police them, and Google has taken action on affiliate pages that exist to rank.

What do disclosure rules require, and how many creators follow them?

The rules are clear and the compliance rate is low. Regulators in the US, UK and EU all treat the affiliate as responsible for the disclosure, and the penalty powers are now direct.

How is AI changing affiliate traffic and commerce?

AI touches a small share of affiliate sales so far, but publishers report falling traffic, and the money model for AI shopping is still being written.

AI traffic share of affiliate sales, basket value, time to conversion and steps in the UK, US, Germany and France, March to May 2026
Figure 6: AI traffic touches well under 1% of affiliate sales in all four markets, yet journeys that include it have bigger baskets, take longer and need more steps. Source: Awin, Two Years On: Has the Affiliate Landscape Changed?, Jul 2026. Chart published by the source, captured 14 Oct 2026.

Are AI answers cutting traffic to affiliate publishers?

Fewer searches end in a click, and publishers' own filings name dependence on Google and other platforms as a risk to a model built on referral clicks.

Are AI assistants becoming a shopping and affiliate channel?

They are becoming a shopping channel first. The money model so far is a merchant fee and advertising, with no publisher commission.

  • OpenAI says ChatGPT product results are organic and unsponsored, and that merchants pay a small fee on completed Instant Checkout purchases without affecting ranking (OpenAI, Buy it in ChatGPT, Sep 2025).
  • ChatGPT shopping research sends buyers to the retailer's site to purchase, and OpenAI says its results are organic and drawn from public retail sites (OpenAI, Introducing shopping research in ChatGPT, Nov 2025).
  • OpenAI began testing ads in ChatGPT in the US on 9 February 2026, saying ads do not influence answers, and by August 2026 had launched them in the UK, Mexico, Brazil, Japan and South Korea (OpenAI, Testing ads in ChatGPT, Feb 2026).
  • OpenAI says ChatGPT reaches 1.2 billion people each week (OpenAI, Building advertising for the way people use AI, Oct 2026).
  • Google says AI Mode shopping draws on a Shopping Graph of more than 50 billion product listings, and began rolling out agentic checkout to US merchants in November 2025 (Google, Agentic checkout and AI shopping tools, Nov 2025).
  • Google co-developed the Universal Commerce Protocol as an open standard for AI shopping agents, and added cart, catalog and identity-linking capabilities in March 2026 (Google, Universal Commerce Protocol updates, Mar 2026).
  • Perplexity says its shopping product cards are not sponsored and its Merchant Program is free for merchants (Perplexity, Shop like a Pro, Nov 2024).

How widely do brands and affiliates use AI?

Almost universally, but narrowly. Shoppers use it widely and trust it to recommend only brands they already know.

Methodology and Sources

Every statistic on this page was traced to the organisation that ran the survey, reported the platform data, filed the accounts, published the program terms or wrote the rule, and each URL was fetched and checked for the figure and its date in October 2026. Pages that republish other people's numbers, including other affiliate roundups, were not used. Network and vendor figures from Awin, impact.com, Partnerize, CJ and PartnerStack describe their own platforms or commissioned surveys, which are named as such, and they use different cohorts and definitions, so they are shown side by side and never averaged. Program terms such as commission rates, cookie windows and payout rules were read from each program's own page in October 2026 and change without notice. The Authority Hacker survey was run in 2023 and is cited from the archived copy of its own page, because the live page no longer exists. Percentages marked "about" were calculated from two figures in the same filing. The page is refreshed every month.

Sources

Glossary

  • AOV: average order value, the average amount spent per order.
  • APMA: Affiliate and Partner Marketing Association, the UK trade body for affiliate and partner marketing.
  • CAP Code: the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising, enforced by the ASA.
  • CMA: Competition and Markets Authority, the UK's competition and consumer protection regulator.
  • CPA: cost per acquisition, a model in which the advertiser pays a fixed amount or percentage per sale or sign-up.
  • Cookie window: the period after a click during which a sale is credited to the affiliate.
  • EPC: earnings per hundred clicks (or per click), a measure of how much a link earns.
  • FTC: Federal Trade Commission, the US consumer protection agency that enforces the Endorsement Guides.
  • GMV: gross merchandise value, the total value of sales tracked through partner referrals.
  • ITP: Intelligent Tracking Prevention, Safari's system for limiting cross-site tracking and cookie lifetimes.
  • Last-click attribution: crediting the whole sale to the final link clicked before purchase.
  • PMA: Performance Marketing Association, the global trade body for affiliate marketing.
  • ROAS: return on ad spend, revenue earned per dollar spent.
  • Server-to-server tracking: recording a conversion from the advertiser's server to the network's server, without relying on a browser cookie.
  • Soft click: an Awin cookie status that stops browser-extension clicks from overriding earlier publisher clicks.
  • Tenancy: a flat fee an advertiser pays for a fixed placement with a publisher.

Cite this page

Every figure here links to the study that produced it. Quote any of them with a link to this page or the original source.

BlazeHive. "171 Affiliate Marketing Statistics October 2026." BlazeHive, October 2026. https://www.blazehive.io/statistics/affiliate-marketing-statistics/
<a href="https://www.blazehive.io/statistics/affiliate-marketing-statistics/">Affiliate Marketing Statistics</a> (BlazeHive, October 2026)
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