The APMA has published The New Rules of Discovery: How AI is Reshaping Affiliate Marketing, the industry’s first definitive report on how AI Search is shaping the affiliate and partner marketing channel.
Produced in three parts, the report has been written by the APMA’s AI Taskforce and explores how AI is changing affiliate discovery, measurement, attribution and commercial models.
The first part broadly covers the foundations of AI search. The second part explores the situation at the moment and the tracking and measurement challenges, while the third part deals with how the space is developing, with advice on potential commercial models that may emerge.
AI presents a unique challenge to the affiliate industry, creating unprecedented disruption and potential harms. So, alongside the detailed explanations, the report also states how the channel needs to coalesce around common principles and standards.
The seven themes shaping AI search and affiliate marketing
The report opens with a synopsis of seven core affiliate marketing and AI search themes, each presenting specific challenges:
- AI adoption has scaled at exceptional speed: AI search has moved from an experimental tool to a mainstream way for consumers to discover products and information. We are struggling to keep up.
- Open-web traffic is under pressure, especially top of funnel: AI-generated answers can satisfy early research needs without users visiting the publisher websites that supplied the information. This presents a unique tracking challenge.
- Influence is decoupling from the click: Publisher content can shape an AI answer and influence a purchase even when no referral click takes place. For a last click-CPA channel, we need to find solutions, fast.
- Attribution is missing in the middle: Current tracking can often identify the final visit or sale but cannot see the publisher influence that occurred earlier inside an AI platform.
- Agentic commerce risks collapsing the customer journey: AI assistants combine research, comparison and purchasing into one interaction, removing many of the stages where affiliates are currently tracked. We lack the current ability to stitch journeys together.
- The commercial model needs to evolve: Commission based only on clicks and sales may need to be supplemented by new business models such as fixed fees, licensing and other rewards for measurable influence. This will require a repositioning of the channel.
- AI advertising creates a new attribution challenge: Paid placements inside AI answers could influence recommendations and purchases without providing clear evidence of which source deserves credit.
While the majority of purchases still occur outside of AI search functions, this is rapidly changing and if influence is becoming separated from the click, how do we identify it, measure it and reward it fairly? For a performance channel premised on tracking and measurement, this is particularly challenging.
A report in three parts
Part One: Understanding the Shift examines how AI is changing discovery and consumer behaviour.
It looks at the rapid development of AI search, the growth of zero-click journeys and the pressure placed on traditional publisher traffic.
The first part also considers what these changes mean for publishers in 2026. Although the full effect remains difficult to quantify, the direction of travel is increasingly clear: publisher content continues to influence consumer decisions, but that influence is becoming harder to track and manage using conventional affiliate tracking.
Part Two: Measuring Influence introduces a new framework for understanding AI search affiliate journeys.
The report identifies three ‘layers’ that connect the journey from AI accessing a publisher’s content, to showing it in an answer, and ultimately to influencing a visit or sale.
Each layer provides useful evidence, but none tells the complete story by itself. And as independent layers, there is no current ability to ‘stitch’ them together. The report explains what can and cannot currently be measured, reviews the tools beginning to emerge and sets out why connecting the three layers will be essential if the industry is to thrive.
Part Three: Building the Future looks at how affiliate remuneration and commercial models may need to evolve.
Traditional commission remains important, but it cannot reward influence that never produces a measurable click. The report explores a range of potential models, including fixed-fee partnerships, visibility-based rewards, licensing agreements, retrieval tracking and hybrid commissioning.
It also considers the arrival of advertising in AI search, the attribution challenges created by agentic shopping and emerging regulation that seeks to offer checks and balances. The report also asks whether the industry is doing enough to protect its future.
The final part sets out practical steps for publishers, advertisers, networks and technology providers, while identifying the questions the industry still needs to answer. It also explains the APMA’s role in coordinating research, developing shared standards, supporting testing and representing the industry in regulatory discussions.
Survey results and current tech developments
The report also includes two appendices.
The first contains the complete results of the APMA’s recent publisher survey that asked questions about AI search traffic, measurement and commercial fallout.
The survey shows how nascent developments within AI search are and how the industry is in flux.
The second appendix showcases the new tools, tech and features that APMA members are developing, specifically around measurement and optimisation.
The New Rules of Discovery is the first overview of technology that is rapidly changing and disrupting all aspects of digital marketing. As such, we will update the content over the course of the next 12 months.
A huge thank you to James Bentley, who authored the report and the wider AI taskforce team who added their thoughts and comments.
If you’d like to hear from James and Alex Springer, who also contributed to the report, they recently joined the APMA for a webinar to discuss the current AI search landscape.
You can download the full three-part report, for free, here:
