Affiliate Roundup: YouTube Adds Affiliate Shopping, LLMs Drive Guidance & Content, Amazon Pays $2.5B, & More

This week in FMTC’s Affiliate Roundup: YouTube now lets creators earn affiliate commissions by tagging products directly in videos. A study found people mainly use LLMs to ask questions, get guidance, and create content. Amazon will pay $2.5B after the FTC accused it of deceptive Prime signups and cancellations.

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• YouTube now lets eligible creators tag products and earn affiliate commissions, making it a new growth channel for brands.

• A study found that people use LLMs mostly to ask questions, seek practical guidance, and create written content, highlighting a shift in how information and tasks are approached.

• Amazon will pay a $2.5 billion settlement after the FTC accused it of using deceptive tactics to enroll customers in Prime and making cancellation unduly difficult, with $1 billion as a civil penalty and $1.5 billion set aside for consumer refunds.

• Marketers are increasingly shifting ad budgets toward performance and lower-funnel strategies as macroeconomic pressures mount, according to an IAB report.

• A webinar titled “Beyond the Affiliate Coupon Code, The Future of Deals and Discounts” covered insights from the PMA’s 2025 U.S. Affiliate Marketing Study, including shifts in consumer trust of coupons, growth in card-linked offers and BNPL, and the need for better deal classification and attribution.

• PayPal is integrating its Honey shopping tools with ChatGPT and other AI systems to enhance shopping assistance and deal discovery.

• Penske Media, parent of Rolling Stone, is suing Google over its AI Overviews feature, marking a potential turning point in publishers’ fight for fair compensation and control over their content in the AI era.