The Affiliate & Partner Marketing Association has written to the Government calling for a practical statutory exemption from consent requirements for low-risk affiliate marketing attribution.
The letter forms part of the APMA’s ongoing work to ensure that privacy regulation recognises how affiliate marketing operates and protects the businesses and consumers who depend on it. We also call for the affiliate and partner marketing industry to be viewed as a distinct discipline that is privacy-conscious and data-light by design.
An ecommerce powerhouse
In 2025, UK brands invested £1.8bn in the channel, generating more than £20bn in ecommerce revenue. Behind those figures are thousands of affiliates and publishers helping consumers compare products, find better deals and make save money, largely driven on a cost-per-acquisition basis.
A proportional approach to attribution
Attribution connects a consumer’s click to a subsequent purchase, allowing the publisher responsible to receive payment. When that connection is lost, a company can still deliver a sale, but the commission that is vital in growing publisher businesses is lost.
Our request is for a tightly defined exemption covering transactional billing and attribution data, with its use restricted to confirming transactions and paying commissions.
The ICO’s support for an attribution exemption is welcome. However, the APMA is concerned that its proposed technical conditions would make the exemption commercially unviable for much of the sector. An exemption that businesses cannot realistically use would offer little immediate benefit.
The industry has already invested substantially in server-side tracking and first-party infrastructure. We believe the Government should recognise that progress and provide clear, proportionate safeguards against data being repurposed for unrelated activities.
APMA members have developed draft legislative wording to support this approach, and we have requested a meeting with the Minister to discuss how it could be implemented.
A workable framework would give businesses greater certainty, protect publisher income and support innovation while preserving consumer privacy. It could also reduce unnecessary consent prompts.
A Great British success story
The UK affiliate industry is a Great British success story, and the channel leads the world in innovation and scale. Many of the country’s most creative start-ups rely on the affiliate industry to fuel their ongoing investment.
In 2025, the affiliate and partner marketing channel grew five times faster than the overall UK economy, resulting in new jobs and tech investment. As the industry is predominently online, it also enjoys success and coverage across the whole of the UK.
The APMA will continue making the case for rules that reflect the channel’s purpose and allow a British success story to contribute to the Government’s ambitions for economic growth.
