Platform and Publisher Pecuniary Pairings Progress

Written by Brook Schaaf

As my forthcoming book argues, affiliate marketing’s current size does not represent its true value or future potential. Right now, we are undercredited, undercompensated (heterodox thinking, yes), and underdistributed. The channel can and will grow multiples larger; ultimately, we’ll see the monetization, i.e., affiliate-ization, of most commercially relevant links. 

One critical pathway for distribution will be the monetization of content on-platform, i.e., by creators on social media. YouTube probably leads the way for this, having played catch-up over the last couple of years to empower creators who have (had?) been adding links from other tracking platforms. 

Last month in India, following “more than 250% year-on-year” growth by “over 200 million logged-in users” who “searched for shopping-related content,” the YouTube affiliate program (actually its own sub-affiliate network) announced new, prominent merchants and “an AI-powered system that can automatically display product tags at the moment items are mentioned in a video. Later this year, YouTube will begin testing automatic detection and tagging of eligible products across videos.”

Also overseas, Facebook announced a partnership with Shopee “to introduce new tools that enhance how people discover and buy products through Facebook while supporting creators and small businesses across Southeast Asia, Taiwan, and Brazil.” This is a long-overdue re-engagement with affiliate after Meta shuttered its Instagram pseudo-affiliate program in 2022. (As with TikTok today, it apparently was a program for Instagram as the merchant of record, which, unlike TikTok Shop, did not take off for whatever reason.) 

Speaking of Instagram, observer Lindsey Gamble noted that Instagram’s new skippable ads aren’t eligible for ad sharing with creators. Why mention this, especially when it’s presumably in reference to the double-dipping in non-affiliate ad revenue? Because it is further evidence that the emerging new standard and expectation for social platforms is the enablement of direct monetization as well as participation in adjacent ad serving. 

Other social platforms like Snapchat, X, Bluesky, Nextdoor, BAND (if you have kids, you have it), Pinterest, Reddit, Rumble, and Signal seem to be asleep at the switch. (Let me know if I missed anything. This excludes advertiser or user signup programs.) Even if they offer ad revenue sharing, they are not supporting monetization as they could, which means competing platforms will appear more and more attractive, not only to creators, but also to shoppers looking for relevant content. 

While any affiliate revenue for YouTube and Facebook is probably a rounding error for these behemoths, it is not for the millions of eligible creators, nor for the affiliate channel as a whole. As the natural commercial potential of social media is gradually realized, we can see that the pecuniary pairing between publisher and platform is crucial to the growth and success of both parties.