Affiliate Roundup: Affiliate Tracking Boosts Performance, AI Discovery Shifts Visibility, LLMS.txt Expands Publisher Control, & More

This week in FMTC’s Affiliate Roundup: Accurate affiliate tracking helps brands identify top partners, cut fraud, and improve performance. AI-driven discovery is changing how content gets found, so affiliates need clear, trustworthy content that AI can surface. llms.txt gives publishers a new way to guide how AI models access and use their site content.

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• Meta Platforms, Inc. has won a landmark antitrust case as a U.S. federal judge ruled that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) failed to prove it holds monopoly power—so Meta is not required to divest its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp.

• eBay is facing criticism for applying a 30-day attribution window and broad sale-triggering rules for its Promoted Listings ad program while using a stricter 24-hour attribution window for its Ambassador affiliate program—a move sellers say represents a troubling double standard.

• Accurate affiliate tracking—using methods such as first-party cookies, server-to-server APIs, promo-codes, CPC models, and direct URL rules—helps brands identify high-performing partners, optimize budgets, reduce fraud, and future-proof their programs amid evolving privacy and device-usage trends.

• The EU has launched an antitrust investigation into whether Google’s anti-spam policy unfairly lowers legitimate publishers’ search rankings, potentially violating the Digital Markets Act.

• AI-driven discovery tools are rapidly replacing traditional search, pushing affiliate marketers to focus on trustworthy, well-structured content that AI systems can reliably surface and cite.

• A German court found Google LLC abused its dominant market position in the price-comparison sector and ordered it to pay €572 million in damages to two German platforms for unfairly favoring its own shopping service.

• llms.txt is a new standard file format that lets website owners give large language models a clear, structured map of important site content to improve AI-driven discovery.