Affiliate Marketing Statistics 2026: 100+ Sourced Figures

How Big Is Affiliate Marketing? What Is Measured

There is no audited global figure for affiliate marketing spend. The most detailed recent estimate covers the US: the Performance Marketing Association’s 2025 study, built with London Research from eight affiliate networks and more than 50 publishers, puts US affiliate spend at $13.62 billion in 2024, up 49.8% from $9.1 billion in 2021. It credits affiliate marketing with $113 billion of US ecommerce sales, 9.4% of the total.

eMarketer’s forecast, made in August 2024, measures the same market differently: it counts commissions paid to publishers and puts 2024 at $10.72 billion, rising to $13.20 billion in 2026, so its 2026 figure is still below the PMA’s estimate for 2024. The two series use different methods, so quote the source and year with the figure and do not compare numbers across them. The most recent IAB UK and PwC study of UK affiliate spend measured £554 million in 2017.

Spend by Sector and Market

Retail still takes the largest share of US affiliate spend, but less of it than it did: 63% in 2024 against 76% in 2021, according to the PMA. Financial services, travel and telecommunications all gained share. The PMA also reports returns on affiliate spend by sector, with travel at $19 of sales per dollar and retail at $11.

No public source breaks affiliate spend down by region or country in a consistent way. The figures below are what national studies publish: US sector shares and returns from the PMA, the UK’s 2017 sector mix from IAB UK and PwC, and spend bands from IAB Australia’s 2026 survey, which describes its own sample rather than the whole market.

Commission Rates: What Programs Publish

No network was found publishing median commission rates by vertical, and the commission medians that circulate have no traceable source. What can be checked are the schedules that programs publish. Amazon Associates pays fixed rates by product category, from 10% on luxury beauty down to 0% on gift cards and other excluded categories, with 4% for anything not listed, plus flat bounties for actions such as Prime sign-ups. eBay Partner Network pays 1% to 4% of the sale price, with a cap per sale.

Most brand programs on networks set their own rates and do not publish them in a comparable form, so a published schedule from one large program is not a market average. Commission is also only one term: the attribution window and the excluded categories decide how much of a referral earns anything.

Use published schedules as reference points, not targets. A rate only means something next to the program’s attribution window and its exclusions, which the tracking section below covers. For how Meta’s affiliate program for creators works with Amazon and eBay links, see our guide to the Facebook affiliate program.

Networks and Programs: What They Disclose

No public dataset of affiliate network market share was found, so share figures for Awin, CJ, Impact or Rakuten Advertising cannot be checked. Networks disclose their own scale. Awin, for example, says it generated £18 billion in revenue for advertisers and £1.2 billion for publishers in its last financial year, without stating the year or method.

The landscape has also consolidated. Awin has owned ShareASale since 2017, began moving its users onto the Awin platform in mid-2025 with the ShareASale platform due to close by the end of 2025, and shareasale.com now redirects to Awin. Surveys show how programs are run: in IAB Australia’s 2026 survey, 42% of advertisers manage their program in-house and 29% use a network.

Publishers: Revenue, Concentration and Search Risk

Listed publishers report their affiliate income in their filings. People Inc. (IAC) grew digital performance marketing revenue, which includes its affiliate commerce commissions, to $291.9 million in 2025. BuzzFeed’s affiliate commerce revenue fell to $55.5 million, and Amazon alone paid 28% of BuzzFeed’s total revenue. BuzzFeed’s filing says Amazon accounts for the vast majority of its affiliate commerce revenue.

Search is the main risk publishers name. In the PMA’s 2025 publisher survey, 69% were concerned that Google’s algorithm changes and AI Overviews are reducing traffic and affiliate revenue. In IAB Australia’s 2026 survey, Google algorithm updates and the impact of AI on search were the top two publisher challenges. Google’s site reputation abuse policy, in effect from May 2024, also targets third-party coupon and partner sections hosted on publisher domains to exploit their ranking signals, though Google says appropriately marked affiliate links do not violate it.

No representative survey of what individual affiliates earn was found. A widely quoted figure, $8,038 a month, is an average from a 2023 survey promoted mainly to one publisher’s own audience, and an average of this kind can be pulled up by a few high earners.

Tracking and Attribution Windows: The Rules

Attribution windows are set by each program and limited by browsers. Amazon credits a purchase that starts within 24 hours of the click, and still pays on items added to the cart in that session if the order is completed within 89 days. eBay uses 24 hours for Buy It Now purchases and gives auction wins up to 10 days.

Safari and Firefox limit cross-site tracking by default: Safari caps cookies set by page scripts at seven days, and one day after certain tracked navigations, while Firefox keeps a separate cookie jar for each site. Chrome did not follow. In July 2024 Google proposed a user choice instead of deprecating third-party cookies, in April 2025 it said Chrome would keep its existing cookie settings without a new prompt, and in October 2025 it announced it would retire most Privacy Sandbox technologies. Programs that rely on third-party cookies alone lose credit mainly on Safari and Firefox, not on Chrome.

Server-side and first-party tracking reduce the reliance on browser cookies, but no public dataset measures how much attributed revenue they recover. Treat vendor claims on that point as claims. Our analytics team sets up and audits conversion tracking across channels.

Creators and Video Commerce

Video platforms now run their own affiliate programs. YouTube says its Shopping product tags draw more than twice as many clicks as description links, and that its affiliate program will reach 35 countries by the end of 2026; its affiliate program Help page listed 14 eligible countries on October 21, 2026. YouTube says more than 1.3 million creators are in the program and that the GMV they drive grew 13x over two years, but it publishes no affiliate sales totals.

The largest independent measure of creator affiliate activity found for this page is academic. A 2026 study of 2 million YouTube videos found affiliate links in 7.35% of them, rising from 5.3% of videos uploaded in 2015–2018 to 8.5% in 2018–2024; among channels under 100,000 subscribers the rate nearly doubled, from 3.22% to 6.38%. For the wider creator market, see our creator economy statistics; IAB’s $37 billion projection for US creator ad spend in 2025 excludes affiliate-link revenue.

Creator partnerships sit between affiliate and paid social. Our social media team manages creator programs, and our content engine covers the content side.

Disclosure Rules and Compliance

US, EU and UK regulators all expect affiliate links to be disclosed as advertising. The FTC revised its Endorsement Guides in 2023 and says a “Paid link” label next to an affiliate link should be adequate. Its 2024 rule on fake reviews and testimonials lets it seek civil penalties against knowing violators, currently up to $53,088 per violation. In the UK, the ASA and CMA advise “Ad” or “#ad” and treat “affiliate” alone as inadequate, and since April 2025 the CMA can fine companies up to 10% of global turnover directly.

Compliance remains low. The European Commission’s 2024 sweep found that 97% of 576 influencers posted commercial content but only 20% systematically disclosed it. The ASA estimates that about 57% of UK influencer advertising on Instagram and TikTok was adequately disclosed in 2024. On YouTube, a 2026 study found that only 12.20% of videos with affiliate links clearly met FTC guidelines, while videos using YouTube Shopping’s built-in tools reached 61.9%.

Fraud, Browser Extensions and Incrementality

No published affiliate fraud or invalid-traffic rates with a stated method, and no public dataset of incrementality by partner type, were found for this page. Platform rules are tightening instead. Since June 2025, Chrome Web Store extensions may add or replace affiliate links only when the program is disclosed, the user takes an action and the link brings a direct benefit, such as a coupon actually found.

Surveys show where advertisers see value. In IAB Australia’s 2026 survey, 70% of advertisers rated reward and cashback partners highly for value, against 31% for browser extensions and 30% for coupon and deal sites. These are ratings, not incrementality measurements. Holdout tests on your own program remain the most direct way to know which partners add sales.

Outlook: Forecasts and Stated Intentions

Forward-looking figures are forecasts or intentions, not results. eMarketer’s August 2024 forecast puts US affiliate spend at $13.20 billion in 2026. In IAB Australia’s 2026 survey, 45% of advertisers intend to raise affiliate spend next year, 95% are satisfied with its return on investment, and 45% already rate visibility in AI-driven discovery as an important success metric.

For comparable benchmarks in other channels, see our Google Ads benchmarks and mobile app marketing statistics.

Widely Quoted Figures, Checked

Several affiliate statistics circulate without a source, or with a source that says something different. Each one below is checked against the publisher’s own page.

Sources

Every figure on this page comes from one of the sources below, grouped by who published them.