Affiliate Roundup: Affiliate Spend Nears $14B, Pinterest Expands Affiliate Shopping, Publishers Target AI Bots, & More

This week in FMTC’s Affiliate Roundup: U.S. affiliate marketing spend is forecast to reach $13.81 billion in 2026, up 11.3% year over year. Pinterest partnered with Shopee to bring affiliate shopping to creators in Indonesia. More than 300 publishing executives are pushing for a federal bill requiring AI crawlers to identify themselves.

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• U.S. affiliate marketing spend is forecast to reach $13.81 billion in 2026, up 11.3% year over year and growing faster than U.S. retail ecommerce overall. 

• Pinterest partnered with Shopee to launch affiliate commerce in Indonesia, allowing eligible creators to tag Shopee products in Pins and videos and earn commissions on qualifying purchases.  

• More than 300 publishing executives are pressing Congress to pass the Stealth Bot Prohibition Act, which would require AI crawlers to identify themselves rather than evade publishers’ efforts to block unauthorized scraping. 

• Adobe projects U.S. online holiday sales will reach $275 billion in 2026, as AI-assisted shopping and mobile commerce continue to shape how consumers shop online. 

• AdExchanger argues that open-web advertising may be poised for a comeback as rising costs on Google, Meta, and Amazon push advertisers toward cheaper, more controllable programmatic channels. 

• AppLovin and Unity are locked in a legal dispute over allegations that Unity improperly collected proprietary data from AppLovin’s advertising platform to improve its competing ad technology.