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For those of us who’ve spent our careers in affiliate and performance commerce, it raises a simple question: What took everyone so long?

Earlier this year, Publicis Groupe announced it would acquire LiveRamp, a global data collaboration platform, for $2.2 billion. The stated rationale was to accelerate what Publicis calls “data co-creation” for the agentic AI era. The goal is to connect identity infrastructure, activate data across the entire customer journey and tie every dollar of media spend to measurable outcomes. To anyone who has worked in affiliate marketing for the last decade, it reads more like confirmation that what we’ve been doing for years is indeed the right way to operate. What other industry can boast proprietary, transaction-level purchase data at the scale of performance creators and affiliates? None.

The holding company world is spending billions of dollars to build systems in which real identities, connected journeys and verifiable outcomes form the foundation of advertising. Affiliate marketing built exactly that model, not by vision, but by necessity, and it’s been running at scale for years.

What Publicis Is Really Buying

The LiveRamp deal didn’t happen in isolation. Publicis acquired Epsilon in 2019 to build a proprietary identity layer. In early 2025, it acquired Lotame to expand its identity graph capabilities. Now, with LiveRamp, which connects over 25,000 publisher domains and 500+ technology and data partners across 14 markets, they are connecting all the dots in their largest and most consequential move yet.

The logic is clear: Epsilon provides the identity foundation, LiveRamp adds data collaboration and clean-room capability across publisher and partner ecosystems, and Publicis’s Marcel agentic platform activates it all across enterprise marketing functions. This solidifies the use case Publicis keeps returning to: connected retail journeys powered by CRM data, loyalty programs, in-store signals, retail media inventory and partner data, unified in one place and activated to drive measurable outcomes.

Framed that way, this is an “identity-to-outcome” stack—a system designed to know who a consumer is, follow their journey across touchpoints and attribute results to spend, accurately, at scale, across a fragmented ecosystem. Doesn’t that sound familiar?

Affiliate Marketing Has Always Been The Data Layer

Affiliate marketing was born performance-first, built around a simple and unforgiving principle: you don’t get paid unless something measurable happens. No conversion, no commission for publisher or creator, no user points or shopper cash back. That structural reality created discipline around identity resolution and journey tracking that brand advertising spent decades avoiding.

Before data clean rooms entered the marketing lexicon, affiliate networks were stitching together click-to-conversion paths across devices and sessions to assign attribution. Before identity graphs became a boardroom priority, performance marketers were resolving user identity across fragmented digital touchpoints because their economics demanded it. And, if they didn’t do this, their creators and publishers wouldn’t get paid properly. Before the cookieless era became an industry crisis, affiliate networks were building server-side tracking infrastructure to maintain signal fidelity, because their publishers needed it to survive.

As privacy regulations tightened and third-party signals degraded, performance-based partnerships gained ground: 74% of brands are increasingly shifting to affiliate programs and 59% of marketers are dedicating over a quarter of their budgets to Creators. That shift is a recognition that the affiliate model—outcome-first, identity-resolving, journey-connected—is better suited to the marketing environment we now live in.

You can build the most sophisticated identity graph in the industry, resolve users across every device and channel, and still lose the sale at the last step, because the journey itself breaks. When a consumer clicks a link from a creator, publisher or affiliate partner and lands on a degraded mobile web experience instead of the app they have installed, the conversion is lost. That loss never shows up in the analytics. It will only track completed journeys. The broken ones are invisible.

As commerce media spend approaches $100 billion and 45% of advertisers cite performance as their primary objective, the gap between data sophistication and journey execution is widening, not narrowing. Knowing your customer precisely doesn’t help if the path you send them down is broken. Plus, many brand advertisers still don’t understand foundational linking, despite now being focused on outcomes.

Affiliates have scale. What it has historically lacked is the strategic standing to match, and the positioning to walk into a CMO conversation and say, “The model you’re paying billions to build? We’ve been running it.”

This is the moment to make that case. Not defensively, but confidently. The principles that define modern marketing’s ambitions, real identity, connected journeys, measurable outcomes and performance accountability, are the principles that affiliate and commerce performance marketing has operated on since its founding and has now revolutionized the creator economy. The vocabulary has changed. The infrastructure has gotten more sophisticated and the content creators have evolved dramatically, but the model has been right all along.

The question for CMOs and revenue leaders isn’t whether this model matters. That question has been answered, loudly and expensively. The question is: Is your organization giving its affiliate and commerce partnerships the investment and accolades they deserve? Now that the rest of the industry has confirmed their model was right, are you ignoring your most valuable marketing team?

Affiliate marketing didn’t need a $2.2 billion acquisition to become outcome-oriented and data-driven. It started there. The rest of advertising is catching up, and the gap is closing faster than most people realize.

Feature image credit: getty

By Lauren Newman

Find Lauren Newman on LinkedIn. Visit Lauren’s website.

COUNCIL POST | Membership (fee-based)

Lauren Newman is CRO at Button, an AI-powered commerce platform optimizing creator and affiliate marketing performance. Read Lauren Newman’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

By Rolf Joho

There are many web marketing tips that can be employed depending on what you’re able to do technologically.

Affiliate promotion is not spamming everyone on the Internet. It takes a lot of understanding and strategy.When taking a chance on affiliate marketing, it will be beneficial to seek out and sign up with affiliates that will provide you with the products and service you will be selling.

Try to have multiple affiliates. This will give you a variety of income feeds. Research the affiliate programs thoroughly before working with them. You need to know that you will feel comfortable promoting their products.See how a company tracks outside orders when choosing an affiliate company. You might lose a lot of commissions if those outside sales are made by mail or on the phone.

In order to make sure the money gets where it needs to be, you need to consider affiliate companies that provide different payment options. There are companies that require you to make a certain amount of money before they will pay you, but there are also those that direct deposit funds into your bank at your discretion.

A lot of affiliates end up losing valuable time by having to re-read emails that contain instructions for tasks in their email and then check them.

This is a great way to save time as you will have all the important information in one document.

When searching for an affiliate marketing partner, find companies that continuously make new products. Go with a solid reputable company and one that is constantly coming out with many new products, this way you can get repeat business. You may not succeed with the new hot product.

You should choose an affiliate that has a lot of different options when it comes to getting your payments.

People who access a themed website, like sports, are already thinking about sports. Placing a link for an affiliate website won’t give you any benefit unless it is related to sports. Links that have some pertinence to what is on the mind of your visitors will provide you with the most benefit.

Only partner with reliable affiliate companies. You should look for less than 20% or higher on their products.The best affiliates offer high percentages to their business.

Think carefully about the products that you want to link to before you do it. You will see money roll in when you know how to put your links in the right places.

Carefully consider which products you put on your site. It is crucial to strategically place your affiliate links in order to ensure profitability.

When doing affiliate marketing you should never be deceptive about what business you are in. If you are endorsing a product that you are profiting from, let the audience know and don’t attempt to mislead their choices. If a visitor thinks there is any dishonesty going on with your site, they will go instead to the merchant site for their purchase.

There is a variety in affiliate programs. Each one is unique in it’s product and level of flexibility.

Look for affiliate partners with a high ratio of customers to visitors. A 1% transformation equation is a favourable gauge.Knowing what is going on in real time is essential. This lets you know how many users have been to your site and the number of sales conversions.

Offering a product for only a limited amount of time can be an effective affiliate marketing strategy. If your customers see there’s a small window of time for them to purchase your product, it may give them a push to purchase it. This extra push can be a terrific way to maximize the volume and efficiency of sales.

Be honest with readers about your audience when you have affiliates. Being honest shows that you respect your customers and they can trust you.

Tell your readers information about your affiliations. Being honest shows that you respect your customers and they are sure to appreciate that.

Make sure you attract a good audience for the products you are going to market. When you have a product that is costly, more direct targeting is necessary.Putting a trivia question in a banner ad can intrigue your visitors to want to answer it by viewing your site. Curiosity is a powerful motive and can add many clicks to your banner ad. Sweeten the pot by offering discounts to visitors who got the question right.

Do not rely on just a small number of affiliate partners to make up the entirety of your internet marketing campaign. Have a large variety of products in your inventory. A spread out group of affiliates will prevent you protected from large losses when you cut out one that have become unprofitable. If you are not advertising just as many products as you can comfortably handle, seek out more.

The most sought after commission in affiliate marketing enterprises is known as a lifetime commission. Lifetime commissions are very difficult to find. They amount of money you can generate however, means that they are still worth looking for. Vendors pay the webmaster a commission for purchases made by the customers steered to them by the webmaster. Usually, the commission is given only if a buyer buys within a time period after they click on the link. The potential rewards are so great that it is worth it to find the rare lifetime commissions out there.

Even a slight negative connotations are not good.

Back-links are a great way to attract more visitors, but you should always make sure your back-links describe your content accordingly. If your customer comes to your site looking for an HP tablet, they won’t be able to see iPads. It takes an extremely compelling marketing effort to overcome the mistrust that such deceptive backlinks foster in your would-be customers.

It is important to always be honest with anyone reading your clients in online marketing. Honesty is the key to having a loyal user base.Keeping your affiliate marketing techniques relevant and timely is one of the most crucial elements to success. Take the time every few months to look at new programs your affiliates may be offering. New tools are currently being implemented to maximize the usability of affiliate programs to make ads appealing to readers.

You should do your web marketing in the same manner you would any other business. You want your links that do not directly mention the real seller.You want your customers to get the impression that you are closely connected to the product you are selling.

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When you use affiliate marketing you should use your products personally. Placing reviews and articles about the product online is a great way to let people know how useful you find the product to be. In addition, you can post on a number of forums and discuss the ways in which the product has been beneficial to you. Each time you post anything, remember to link back to your site.

All good affiliate marketers should be aware that pay-per-sale plan can be risky. It can also be quite lucrative if done properly. Do your homework and look into the affiliate’s background to determine if it will be a good partnership before you might be interested in.

Do not put an excessive amount of banners on your site. A website stuffed with advertisements is not one that welcomes visitors. You will drive away potential business and appear unprofessional if you load your pages down with too many ads. Make sure that there is an abundant amount of content on your website. Design your website so that when someone visits it, their attention is immediately focused on the content, and not the banners.

Affiliate marketers who reside in California have been resolved so accounts suspended in 2011 can now replace the links that they lost. The law that made Amazon drop their clients has been edited so that they can participate again. Be sure to sign up for the program if affected.A person going into affiliate marketing has to realize that working with a pay-per-sale company, through affiliate marketing, can be a risky undertaking. But if it works well, they can lead to a great deal of money. Look into how the affiliate performs for others and how well the product would fit your site, and make a careful decision.

Join an online web marketing forum to get fresh ideas and advice. There are a number of different online forums on the internet that allow you to exchange ideas and help each other.If isn’t broke, don’t fix it; sell what is already sought after instead of coming up with something new. Some affiliate marketers will stay away from the popular categories because of the increased competition. It is easier to persuade visitors to your site to buy things if you are selling a popular product. You should remember that the popular niches have a buyer pool that is already primed for the products and connecting with them is the only challenge. You have to create a marketing plan that gets you noticed.

Back-end sales are necessary in order the maximize the success of web marketing campaigns. You should get commissions on the sales that result from referrals you refer customers to. Get everything you deserve by being involved with businesses that give you a percentage for these back-end sales.Become a member of some of the reputable online affiliate forums to learn new tricks and share what has worked for you. There are a huge number of affiliate marketing forums where you can get help, as well as tools and programs to make your affiliate site even better.Use paid advertising to increase the sales and profits on your campaigns. Buying ads focused on the right keywords will create sales and sales. The numbers of prospective buyers will increase when doing this.

Set yourself small goals every single day to aid you in your affiliate marketing strategy. Motivation remains as long as there are unfinished tasks visible in the task bar.

Tracking Service

Try converting customers into affiliate partners. People that actually use and like the products are going to be better at selling it. By recruiting customers to be affiliates, you can greatly increase the number of sales you make. You can increase your gain and you will have another outlet for new customers to visit.

Use a reputable tracking service you are owed. If an affiliate doesn’t calculate your sales correctly, it will be your bank account that suffers. Avoid this by using a reliable tracking service at all times. Paying for a small fee is worth finding a reputable service.Use a reputable tracking service that provides accurate reports of what you are owed. Affiliates have been known to incorrectly track sales, which can cause a loss of profits for you. A reliable tracking service will protect you from this let down and inconvenience. This service will be a very practical investment that will protect your profits.

Consider creating an e-book to post on websites that share documents. This helps highlight your expertise and also attract those that are searching for information that is similar to content on your website. Do not be shy about promoting yourself and your website links in the document.Know your niche when you pick affiliates. You should make sure that your affiliates are promoting products and services that are compatible or complementary to what your website offers. The clients come to your website for a particular product and have particular ideas in mind ahead of time. Always offer advertisements that will meet the needs of your clientele.

Use a multitude of advertising to spread the word about your affiliate product. A lot of your customer base will prefer online shopping. Some customers prefer to receive brochures and fliers. Some people might respond well to a special deal or savings coupon. You will draw a wider audience by employing several venues to advertise your product.You need to think about how your article affiliate marketing is leveraging the power of social media. Social media is certainly considered important to Google. Social media is a large factor in how market sites are booked and how search results are produced through Google. The tendrils of social networks like Twitter and Facebook grow deep, touching nearly every page on the Internet.

You need to invest some money in online marketing before you see the profit you want to garner. Reinvest in web marketing profits by advertising to new venues. Many major sites, Yahoo, which can draw a lot of traffic with the right ad.Make education into the best ways to market product a priority if you wish to be a profitable affiliate marketer. Some affiliates use whatever they can find for free. It is true that you have nothing to lose if you find a program that is free; however, it is crucial to keep your goals in mind and chose ones that will get you there.

Try to mention different uses for the products if you can. For instance, if you have a shoe mat, post a video to your site of using it as a dog water and food tray, or putting one under a candle to prevent wax dripping everywhere.This will greatly appeal to an older audience, like baby boomers. Design your website for this audience. You could for instance make your font a few points bigger to make it easier to read.It is common to see newcomers to internet marketing jump at the first option that is offered free offering. Free methods are not necessarily bad; however, but you need to focus on effectiveness.

If you use these ideas, you will be able to find how to get the right people and make a good profit. Your skills may advance past those in this article through practice in this field. It’s always key to remember the fundamentals and keep your marketing campaign as simple as you can.