22 Affiliate Marketing Trends to Look Out for in 2024

With more and more brands looking for cost-effective ways to drive traffic and revenue to their businesses, the affiliate marketing industry has skyrocketed in the past year.

LinkedIn is full of job opportunities for affiliate marketers and partnership specialists, and it is an industry that is continually evolving and changing from one year to the next.

But what of the future of affiliate marketing? What new trends in affiliate marketing and for the affiliate industry do we expect?

1. Drive to Focus on Different Attribution Models

Affiliate marketing has traditionally been rewarded on last click with the argument that the last person on the customer journey is the most important to converting a customer into a sale.

However, many affiliates have an influence at different stages of the customer journey and would argue that they should be compensated too. Now sentiment is changing with brands and affiliate networks alike looking to fairly compensate their affiliates. This will be a force for change in 2024.

2. Brands Purchasing Affiliate Websites to Increase Market Share

More and more brands will begin purchasing affiliate sites relevant to their niches to increase their market reach and solidify their presence online. 

These aren’t the only benefits though, and brands who have money to invest could be onto a winner with the following benefits:

SEO Benefits: Established affiliate websites usually have high-ranking keywords and a strong backlink profile. By integrating these sites, brands can leverage this SEO strength to boost their own website’s ranking, increasing online visibility.

Expanded Customer Reach: These websites often come with a dedicated, niche audience, offering brands immediate access to new customer segments. This expansion is particularly valuable for brands looking to diversify their audience or enter new markets.

Data-Driven Insights: These websites provide valuable data on consumer behavior, preferences, and trends, which can be instrumental in shaping future marketing strategies and product developments.

Cost-Effective Market Expansion: Compared to the cost of building a website from scratch, acquiring an existing site with a loyal audience and proven traffic can be more cost-effective in the long run.

Direct Control Over Marketing Channels: By acquiring affiliate websites, brands gain direct control over their marketing on this website. This control allows for a more cohesive branding strategy and messaging, ensuring a consistent customer experience.

3. Enterprise Brands Embracing Affiliate

Affiliate marketing will become more popular with enterprise brands and software in 2024. 

This is because for Enterprise products the journey from research to purchase is much longer than a traditional product or service. As purchasers the decision to spend $10 on a lipstick is easier than spending potentially thousands of dollars on an enterprise solution for a company.

Affiliate marketing is the perfect way to influence decision makers at all stages of the funnel with a mix of how-to content and reviews.

4. Increased Focus on Affiliate Fraud

Affiliate fraud will become the target of many brand’s focus in 2024. There are many different types of affiliate fraud including ad hijacking, typosquatting, adware and spyware.

Brands will place a strong focus on cleaning up their affiliate programs to combat fraud and get rid of bad actors.

5. Brands Focusing on Supporting Affiliates From the Get-Go

Brands who want to drive success to their affiliate program will start to support affiliates more than ever in 2024. From onboarding new affiliates to SEO support, it will become essential for affiliate managers to provide the best resources that help to set affiliates up for success.

This could include anything from content writing, SEO help, creating bespoke images or creatives – whatever can help your brand drive sales through an affiliate. Affiliates will start to expect this from brands moving through 2024.

Brand-to-brand partnerships are when two non-competing brands with similar audiences work together on a campaign or product to effectively help them reach their goals and drive incremental revenue.

6. Increase in Brand-to-Brand Partnerships in the Affiliate Space

They could do this via newsletter features, social media competitions, on-site placements, and co-branded products.

We’ll see many more of these partnerships popping up. The affiliate channel will be a great way for brands to automate tracking and optimize these campaigns easily. 

7. Brands Will Increase Focus on Video, Podcast, and SEO Affiliates with Long-Tail Search

Different affiliate types go in and out of vogue depending on technical innovation, the economy, and trends. Advertisers will focus on video, podcast, and long-tail search.

Video

Video is one of the most preferred content for consumers and one of the fastest-growing trends for affiliate marketers to jump on board with.

With YouTube introducing shorts in 2021, and more social media channels pushing video content over still images, the trend to work with video affiliates over more generic affiliate types will grow.

And there are a lot of stats that show how powerful video can be:

• 72% of people would rather use video to learn about a product or service. (Wyzowl
• Viewers are 95% more likely to remember a call to action after watching a video compared to 10 percent when reading it in text format. (Forbes)
• 88% of consumers have bought something after watching a video. (Wyzowl

There are a few ways to add video to your affiliate marketing strategy.
Find and partner with affiliates that are familiar with video. This can be TikTokkers, Snapchatters, YouTubers, live streamers, influencers on Instagram Stories and Facebook Lives, etc.

It’s important to note that although YouTube is king (and with the launch of YouTube Shorts to try and overtake Instagram and TikTok) – video can still be very effective as blog and website content.

Popular video content includes

• Tutorial & How-To videos
• Product Reviews
• Favorites & Best Features
• Unboxing Videos
• Styling Sessions

For example, an e-commerce store could partner with a fashion vlogger for a styling video on how they wear their product. Or, a software company could work with a YouTuber to make a tutorial video, going step-by-step on how to use certain functions and the end outcome.

For more collaborative content, consider doing an interview or giving sample products that can be used in the video.

This is also a great way to create hype around new products. Provide
affiliates with materials beforehand, and then they can create videos with “insider” details and be used for promotion prior to a product launch.
Marketing materials you should prepare for video promotions include:

• Referral links and promo codes
• Brand logo for thumbnails
• Accurate pricing/sale information

Affiliate links can be placed in the video caption, directing traffic to the products shown in the video. Another option is coupon codes that can be promoted in the video and in the caption.

Video promotions are more in-depth and, in some cases, more time-consuming to create.

Really take time to seek out affiliates that you can create a strong partnership with, and prepare to have more involvement in the process (especially with product samples & demos).

Podcast

Who wouldn’t want 4x ROI on their ads?

With podcasting, the potential for returns is high, and the reason they are successful is that people consume content because they want to listen to it. Placing an ad in the middle of a podcast and a text link and coupon is an effective way to drive sales.

Bigger podcasters have already been advertising for years already, but now more brands are going to want to grab a slice of the pie in 2024.

This means smaller podcasters in specific niches will get advertising deals, and there will be more competition to get placements with bigger podcasters with heavily engaged audiences.

The concept is simple. The podcaster creates an ad that will play at the beginning, middle, or end of their podcast. This promotion is usually combined with a coupon code, and a text link in the show notes.

SEO

Advertisers will focus on utilizing long-tail search, so they will have a healthy mix of content affiliates. Brands will prioritize partnerships with affiliates who rank for long-tail search terms; they will have a bigger market share because of this.

Quality content is an essential part of selling, and ensuring that you have affiliates with high-ranking articles will help you to drive sales.
Google is a brand’s best friend for this. Brainstorm different ways that people might search for your products.

• Focus your search on the areas you ship to
• Think about what people might be searching for (You can check in Google Analytics to find search terms that people type in search engines to find you)
• Find bloggers and high-ranking content for these search terms
• Contact them and ask to be added to their content

8. More influencer Marketing Focused on Performance

With the absolute explosion of influencer marketing focused on Micro-Influencers, macro influencers, and nano-influencers, performance-based influencer marketing will see a marked increase.

Brands will focus on sales combined with vanity metrics to drive incremental revenue and use influencer tracking software to measure sales performance.

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9. Affiliate Marketing in the Metaverse Will Take Off

This is the year many brands will begin to delve more into the Metaverse. It’s only a matter of time before more brands see the potential for affiliate partnerships for both physical products and virtual-world wearables and products.

The Metaverse is a network of different digital 3D worlds that are all integrated together and can be accessed through virtual reality. This whole new world offers a whole new world of opportunities to marketers, advertisers, and businesses.

Nike is already there with their community .swoosh where creators can design Nike sneakers to sell in the Metaverse for a cut of the profit. It’s unclear exactly how this will work, but it’s a promising start to what could become a major revenue driver.

Additionally, L’oreal has joined the game and has launched beauty products in the Metaverse after teaming up with Ready Player me.

It opens up potential new markets for brands whose products might not appeal to a wider audience in the real world, but in the virtual world, they could reach new customers. There is an excellent opportunity to be some of the first to offer virtual products.

If gamers and augmented reality or virtual reality users are your target market, then it shouldn’t be hard to quickly find affiliate partners in this universe (as long as your commission offering is strong).

The metaverse is only set to grow in its’ size and popularity, so now is the time to get started with your metaverse affiliate marketing before the market becomes too saturated.

10. Increase in Performance-Marketing Budgets and Decreasing Budgets in Other Channels

Brands will focus on the best channels to drive sales and, in particular, performance marketing.

Because performance marketing is results-driven, it means that brands will receive more affiliate marketing budgets. Other channels will see a decrease in budgets.

Statista estimated that spending on affiliate marketing would reach $8.2 billion in 2022 in it’s highest jump since 2015. This is set to go even higher.

This is partly due to the increase in popularity of influencer marketing and influencers using the commission payment model and partly because affiliate marketing and the creation of affiliate networks are becoming more and more popular as a whole.

Discover more about how to choose the best social media platform for affiliate marketing channels.

11. Brands Will go More Data-Driven Than Ever Before

Having more data will become essential for brands hoping to thrive.

Brands will demand campaigns that deliver results, so they will focus on the data that drives results in their affiliate, influencer, and referral campaigns.

Data-driven decisions = informed decisions.

Performance will be measured in terms of return on investment and actual sales, and brands will focus on optimizing the results using data to drive more sales and success.

This will cause businesses to become more strategic with who they work with, what content their partners produce, and how they are remunerated.
Initially, trial and error will be a significant part of their strategy until they have found the right mix to get the return on investment and revenue they are looking for.

Do you need turnkey affiliate software to run your affiliate campaigns? Check out all of the features of Tapfiliate to learn more.

Tapfiliate has an outstanding Reporting feature. With our automation tool, you can easily analyze all your affiliate data in one place, in real-time – giving you a clear understanding of what is working and what can be improved. And we use first-party data, so no worries about when Google finally phases out the 3rd party cookie in 2024. Cookieless future? Bring it on!

Drill down where your promotions are most successful, what type of content leads to conversions, and who your top performers are.

What you can expect from our reporting feature:

• Reporting overview showing active affiliates, affiliate traffic, affiliate marketing sales, total conversions, conversion amount, and commission amount
• Conversion Trend reports filtered by day, month, year
• Geo-mapping to show where conversions are coming from
• Top-performing affiliates with their conversion & commission data
• Asset Type & Landing Page conversion data

12. More Brands Showing Personality to Drive Revenue

Brands that highlight who they are and what they stand for will become an essential part of marketing in 2024. Consumers don’t only want to hear about a brand’s products. Companies that show who their company is will thrive in the affiliate industry.

Consumers want to buy from brands they like.
87% of consumers say they would switch from one brand to another if the other brand were associated with a good cause.

Giving a fantastic customer experience starts with giving them a good feeling about who they are buying from and where they are spending their money will help drive revenue.

More and more, people care about brands being environmentally conscious. They like to read stories about employee well-being. They find it important to see diversity and inclusion.

Blogger The Eco Hub shares articles including products that align with her goals of zero waste, sustainable living, green beauty, and natural cleaning.

Featuring products like shampoo bars, the blog provides a detailed description of how the product uses less single-use plastic and why this is important. This offers a new angle and appeals to readers who care about this issue.

Share any brand-related content with your affiliates so they can use them as part of their promotions. You can send this in your newsletter, and in affiliate marketing materials (such as images or graphics).

Great brand-related content for affiliate marketing includes:

• Company initiatives
• Social Issues (i.e., Black Lives Matter)
• Non-profit sponsorships
• Local outreach efforts (i.e., volunteering at Food Banks)
• Company backstory and founding
• Office culture (i.e., paid paternity leave)

13. The Explosion of Brands Working With Micro and Nano Influencers Will Continue

Discover more about how to choose the best social media platform for affiliate marketing channels. Audiences want to see more authentic, real content that provides value from their beloved content creators.

Trends like working with video and micro-influencers will remain strong for any affiliate marketing business and its affiliate campaigns.

Influencer marketing is used by 93% of brands, and this is showing no signs of slowing down.

Micro, macro, and nano influencers. will continue to dominate the affiliate marketing industry.

The big shift will come in the type of influencer content used for influencer marketing trends. Highly curated influencer content will no longer have the same effect as it previously did because of the audience’s ability to spot paid promotions.

Affiliate and influencer marketing are perfectly matched.
Micro-influencers are social media influencers and content creators on a smaller scale, with somewhere between 1,000 to 100,000 followers. They tend to be more niche focused with expertise in interests like health, design, cooking, travel, gaming, beauty, etc.

Micro-influencers tend to have a more engaged following and, therefore, a bigger influence over buying decisions.
[Markerly found] that(https://markerly.com/blog/instagram-marketing-does-influencer-size-matter/) when an influencer’s follower total rises, the rate of engagement (likes and comments) with followers decreases. Higher engagement rates mean more visibility, and a micro-influencer’s post is more likely at the top of their follower’s feed.

On top of that, they can be perceived as authentic and genuine.
It’s likely that a micro-influencer is actually a consumer of that product, and most people don’t question this.

In contrast, do we really believe that celebrity influencers are using $20 Proactive skincare?

Brands that are on a budget will seek out micro-influencers and nano-influencers to work with on an affiliate basis to maximize their return on investment on all social platforms. More budget will be put aside for influencer campaigns, and a large chunk of that will be for micro and nano influencers who are experts in their fields.

Image source: Tiara Willis/Instagram

Cerave achieved this by partnering with top estheticians like @makeupforwomenofcolor to create content around their skincare products. Despite having large niche audiences, the partners are not simply holding up a product and telling their followers to buy it.

Instead, they use their position as industry leaders to create in-depth, educational content around the products they are promoting. They discuss how to use the product, what skin conditions they target, and why the ingredients work.

The focus is less on their popularity and more on their expertise.
This type of content has become increasingly popular on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels. This content is also fitting for Live streaming, Q&A sessions, and blog content (both onsite and offsite).

Tips for creating this type of content for affiliate campaigns & promotions include:

• Finding top influencers in your specific niche the more specific, the better
• Looking beyond just follower counts, more on expertise
• Providing influencers with free samples or product previews to review
• Allowing influencers to have more control over their promotions

Audiences want to see real people and quality content. Accredited professionals, industry analysts, brand employees, and niche experts can all be excellent influencers.

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14. More Community-Based Affiliate Marketing

Online communities can be found all over the place, and generally, they have much more engaged users. People are always searching for authentic communities that provide value for them. Think Facebook groups, Reddit, Quora, Medium, Discord, and Mighty Networks – these give you a new way to share affiliate content and promotions (and increase purchase decisions in your favor.)

These platforms tend to be more niche-focused, with communities built around a common interest, so you have a better chance of reaching your target audience.

This is a great opportunity to put your brand at the center of the conversation. This could be affiliates providing reviews and links to your products. Or it could be a way to find high-qualified affiliates to join your program. Either way, you can spark interest and build brand awareness.

As an added bonus, this will help your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts and expand your online presence.

15. AI and Automation Will Transform Affiliate Marketing

Artificial intelligence will change the affiliate marketing industry. It will save brands time, energy, and resources and enable companies to increase their sales.

It could be anything from helping you find an influencer or affiliate for your campaign, automatically filtering your potential affiliate list, or having an AI affiliate that helps your brand increase your basket value. Either way, it looks set to change how brands work on affiliate marketing.

Another advantageous type of AI is A/B testing. A/B testing allows you to test two variants of an affiliate marketing campaign against each other so that you can make sure that you go with the most effective variant. You can test specific elements to find the combination which ultimately leads to the highest conversion rate.

16. Loyalty Marketing as Part of the Affiliate Marketing Mix

Loyalty marketing refers to a way of marketing that focuses solely on retaining your existing customer base and making sure that they are as satisfied as they can be.

This kind of marketing is all about building trust with your customers so that they engage and buy with you repeatedly.

The easiest form of loyalty marketing is to offer a loyalty program. Loyalty programs target high-value customers and reward them for returning and purchasing from your business again.

There is even another benefit for affiliate marketing businesses, and that is that through loyalty programs, you can gather valuable insights about your customer base that can then help you to create a personalized shopping experience.

Loyalty marketing will become part of the affiliate marketing mix to encourage shoppers to keep coming back again and again. Incentives will be allocated to customers easily using the same tech as your affiliate marketing software.

Incentives like cashback, charity donations, or points will enable advertisers to form closer customer relationships. They will be able to reward customers more than a cashback website because they will be shopping directly with the brand.

17. Live Shopping Will Become More Popular and Mainstream on Social

Already a booming industry in China, live shopping (or virtual shopping) will increase in popularity in other markets.

Livestream shopping will be something that influencers get into more and more – it’s already gaining some popularity on platforms such as Twitch, where gamers will play a game and then issue a coupon code to drive online sales.

So what is live shopping?

Live shopping is the act of influencers, or anybody else, selling products online through digital platforms in real time.

This allows consumers to ask questions or make comments that the host of the video can address for them then and there.

This kind of shopping has increased levels of engagement and can be coupled with promotions, discounts, or affiliate links!

18. More Diverse Affiliates for Advertisers Than Ever Before

There are several different affiliate types that advertisers can work with, but every year innovation gives advertisers more options to diversify their revenue. The next years will be no exception.

Whether that’s innovations with AI affiliates, new groundbreaking apps, or employees, it will offer advertisers more opportunities to grow their affiliate marketing business and get in front of new audiences.

Between blogs, social media, and even word-of-mouth, there are a lot of opportunities to promote your brand in different online spaces. And with a pay-for-performance marketing model, why would you limit yourself?

Make it a goal to recruit new affiliates. Find affiliates that are different from those you typically work with on your affiliate marketing campaigns.

Affiliates can be anyone from existing customers, bloggers, vloggers, influencers, website owners, review sites, other businesses, and even professional affiliate marketers.

Seek out affiliates on a variety of channels and platforms. Having a wide range of affiliates means more diverse content to showcase your products & service, and your brand will be seen in new spaces by untapped audiences.
If most of your affiliates are bloggers, think about being more active in inviting your existing customers for more personalized promotions.

19. Crypto to Become More Mainstream

Crypto affiliate programs might have sounded strange to us before the blockchain came along, but not anymore. Cryptocurrencies have become more and more mainstream over the past couple of years. There are hopes that BlackRock will get a crypto ETF approved with the SEC making it even more mainstream.

There are already crypto affiliate programs out there
Since bitcoin launched in 2009, the industry as a whole has grown tenfold thanks to multiple businesses recognizing them as a valid currency and accepting them as payment.

More and more people are investing in altcoins, and a few years ago NFTs exploded onto the scene.

This has opened the door for more crypto advertisers and affiliates to partner up and maximize their revenue as it becomes more mainstream and governments and banks start to accept and invest in the industry.

So why not start a crypto affiliate marketing program?

20. Comarketing Partnerships Between Affiliates and Brands to Benefit Everyone

Comarketing partnerships between affiliates will start to gain popularity, which will be a great opportunity for advertisers to earn more revenue and get a more diverse audience in front of their products or services.

For affiliates, the co-marketing opportunities are endless – content affiliates could collaborate with one another, or different affiliate types could work together to maximize their revenue.

In terms of comarketing and commissions, it could look like a revenue share agreement between the two, or each keeping the commissions their site referred, depending on the partnership, or passing on a percentage of their own commission to the other.

Additionally, brands can benefit from comarketing opportunities with affiliates – think selling influencer products on your website, brand ambassadorship, branded landing pages and more.

21. More Competition for Brands and Affiliates – More People Looking to Stand Out

We will see increased competition in the affiliate marketing world. Affiliates and advertisers will look to Quora to find new niches and offerings that will help them stand out, help people, and increase their revenue. Why? Because Quora is often a last resort where people go to find answers they can’t find on Google.

For brands looking to increase their revenue, finding those key product and service niches is essential – it means you can stock up on a product and start an affiliate marketing campaign around it to generate more online sales.

For affiliates, being able to provide an answer to those questions on your website or in any other form can provide a valuable additional revenue stream.

With more and more brands turning to affiliate marketing, attracting affiliates can be tough.

22. Brands to Feature More Affiliate Content

For years, brands have tried to hide paid promotions, but lately, things have completely flipped. Affiliate disclaimers and paid promotions are now required to be labeled in many jurisdictions. Affiliate marketing has skyrocketed, even in the past year.

When you add in top affiliate marketing tracking software, affiliate marketing is now a fixture in marketing strategies, just as much as email campaigns or display ads.

There’s no longer the need to shy away from your affiliate-driven promotions.

• Feature your affiliate partners.
• Leverage affiliate-generated content on your site.
• Promote your affiliate program and highlight your offers.
• Attract more affiliates and get more people promoting your brand.

Amazon partnered with creators as part of their Amazon Associates/Influencer Program to create content that is featured directly on their site. Using live stream videos, the affiliates promote products specific to their niche and include links to buy the featured products in the Amazon marketplace.

Amazon uses this content from Amazon Associates throughout its site on product, category, and holiday promotional pages.
Some affiliate content ideas to feature on your site includes:

• Livestreams with Q&A sessions about products
• Video tutorials and how-to guides
• Curated product feeds such as a gift guide or wish list
• In-depth product reviews and testimonials

Given that this original content is being used as part of your site, consider using different commission structures. You can offer a higher commission or bonus incentive for affiliates that create content for your site.

This is one of the most exciting trends for affiliate marketers as it is easy to implement. Why? Because it’s easy.

As consumers lose trust in brands and begin to turn to other consumers for insights into products and services, using social proof in marketing content and even affiliate website copy because increasingly important.

Online reviews and community forms are the go-to places for consumers to turn to when looking for purchasing advice. Once your business starts racking up good reviews, your affiliate marketers can include screenshots of these reviews in their affiliate marketing campaigns so potential customers and potential affiliate partners can see the true value that you offer

Get Ahead of the Competition

With new technology and excellent features from Tapfiliate (plus a free 14-day trial, there are plenty of opportunities to grow your affiliate program into a profitable business opportunity in the new year.

But, as we all know, technology and interests change fast. It’s essential to know the trends and adapt to ensure you’re engaging audiences and continuing to grow your affiliate marketing business.

So, watch out for these biggest affiliate marketing trends and stay ahead of your competition by implementing the aspects that work for you, your affiliate partnerships, and your affiliate campaigns.