Affiliate Roundup: YouTube Adds Brand Tagging, Off-Price Retailers Rise, E-Commerce Returns to Pandemic Peak, & More

This week in FMTC’s Affiliate Roundup: YouTube adds brand tagging for co-branded ads. Women’s frugal spending lifts off-price retailers. U.S. e-commerce returns to its pandemic peak.

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• YouTube’s new Brand Partner Tagging lets creators tag brands, share real-time metrics, and turn content into co-branded ads with more control.

• An AI-backed super PAC launches with $100M, Perplexity AI unveils a $42.5M publisher revenue-share program, and UK publishers test a “consent or pay” cookie model.

• Women’s cautious spending is boosting off-price retailers like TJX, which reported strong profits and raised its outlook.

• The IAB Tech Lab has launched a publisher-focused working group called AI Content Monetization Protocols (CoMP), creating technical standards—like bot-blocking tools, opt‑in APIs, and tracking mechanisms—to ensure publishers are fairly compensated when AI scrapes their content.

• U.S. e-commerce has finally matched its early-pandemic peak share of retail, signaling steady long-term growth over crisis-driven spikes.