Affiliate marketing spending surpassed $10 billion in 2024. Experts expect that number to grow steadily in 2025 and beyond as brands and creators cook up fresh new ways to engage with audiences.
In some ways, affiliate marketing in 2024 is unrecognizable when compared to 2023. And in the new year, we expect things to evolve even more dramatically.
Let’s take a look at some of the hottest trends from 2024 and talk about some ways you can get in early on some of the excitement planned for 2025.
Let’s take a look at some of the hottest trends from 2024 and talk about some ways you can get in early on some of the excitement planned for 2025.Affiliate marketing has grown at a rate of over 10% year-over-year. Today, more than 80% of brands use affiliate marketing to boost brand awareness and drive sales as a part of their greater marketing strategy.
What makes affiliate marketing so popular? There are a few major reasons:
Working with creators can get expensive. But with affiliates working on commission, you only have to pay creators when their content directly leads to a sale.
In other words, you only pay for results.
Because brands only pay for results with affiliate marketing, creators have to be more thoughtful about how they present content to their audiences. Often, that type of performance-pay model results in higher conversion rates.
Affiliate marketing allows brands to reach audiences through diverse content creators, adapt budgets easily, and scale as needed. With performance-based payouts, brands also have the flexibility to experiment with new audiences and communities without risking too much financial loss.
Affiliate marketing will continue to gain popularity as even more brands adopt the strategy in 2025. However, affiliate marketing will rarely be the only influencer marketing strategy brands use.
Many big-name creators and creators with a higher following are reluctant to work as affiliates. They want flat-rate payments. That’s understandable, considering how effective their content has been at driving awareness over the years.
The most successful brands will implement an influencer marketing strategy combining paid and affiliate models. That will enable them to increase reach with big-name creators while building an army of cost-effective affiliates to drive conversions.
Influencer and affiliate marketing managers are doing a lot more than just running social media—they’re essentially the architects of their brand community.
But even the best architects need skilled builders, and that’s where creators come in.
Creators are relatable, authentic, and have earned the trust of their audiences. This trust makes them ideal community builders capable of turning your brand’s vision into genuine engagement with followers.
But getting talented creators to buy into working with their brand doesn’t always come easy. For starters, brands must engage creators as partners, not another promotional channel.
There has to be a genuine connection between both parties. If that doesn’t exist, a successful collaboration won’t either. It’s up to influencer and affiliate marketing managers to ensure it does.
Brands will continue to add affiliates to their roster in 2025. As a result, it will become much more challenging to build and maintain real connections with each one. Investing in advanced tools that facilitate genuine partnerships at scale will become critical.
As influencer marketing evolves, managing authentic, long-term creator relationships will require robust platforms that streamline collaboration and value alignment. These tools will be essential for brands to build engaged communities and sustain impactful creator partnerships.
Co-selling might be one of the splashier affiliate marketing trends of 2024. Traditionally, affiliate links were the best (and really only) way to facilitate commission-based partnerships. But now, brands and creators have more interesting options.
But let’s back up: What exactly is co-selling?
Co-selling is when brands and creators work together to sell products, typically through personalized, co-branded storefronts or unique landing pages.
Here is another way to look at it…
Your co-branded landing page is kind of like a digital pop-up shop for your business. You ask your creators to be the pop-up shop’s “curator.” Because they know what their followers like better than anyone, they select the products they know will generate the most interest.
You then host the pop-up shop as a unique URL on your brand’s website, and your creators promote the URL (or affiliate link) on their social media page.
Your creators win because they get the freedom to curate a highly engaging shopping experience that results in higher conversions and engagements.
The audience wins because they get personalized recommendations from someone they trust, making the experience feel far more relevant to their interests.
Your brand wins because your creators and your audience are both happy. Happy creators get conversions, and happy audiences convert.
Co-selling and co-branded landing pages will become the next big thing in influencer marketing. In 2025, we expect brands leveraging this strategy to dominate the affiliate marketing landscape.
“Co-selling is the next big frontier in the world of influencer marketing,” said Kenyon Brown, the co-founder and CEO of CreatorCommerce—a platform enabling brands to collaborate with creators on co-branded landing pages. “By merging creator content with better commerce fundamentals, brands can increase their affiliate conversion rates by two to three times.”
You can’t run a successful affiliate marketing program if you’re still shooting in the dark. Influencer marketers have caught wind of this across the board. As a result, access to more data became essential in 2024.
There are a few main reasons:
Brands will continue looking for new ways to collect and analyze data to optimize their affiliate marketing strategy. At the same time, they will offer more transparency to their affiliates on the data they collect.
Instead of keeping analytics behind the scenes, brands will provide affiliates with clear access to conversions, engagement metrics, and sales performance information. This helps affiliates understand the impact of their efforts, build trust, and refine their strategies based on real data shared directly by the brand.
See also: How RoseSkinCo uses data and analytics to fine-tune its creator engine
As brands continue to innovate with affiliate marketing, content formats have expanded beyond traditional blog posts and social media mentions. Co-branded landing pages are hot right now, and for good reason. But we’ve also seen a rise in:
And that’s only the beginning. The possibilities are truly endless when it comes to affiliate marketing content. You and your creators just have to determine the approach that will resonate best with your audiences.
Get ready for even more advanced, interactive affiliate content formats emerging in 2025. We wouldn’t be surprised to see more fully integrated, multi-platform campaigns emerge for brands.
It will also be interesting to see how AI improves affiliate marketing performance—perhaps unlocking more ways for brands and affiliates to deliver hyper-targeted content experiences.
It started with retail commerce—aka brick-and-mortar stores.
Then came ecommerce—selling products from a brand’s website.
Now, we’re in the era of social commerce—buying products directly from social media.
Ecommerce is far from dead. However, social commerce made huge strides in 2024, with roughly two out of three people saying they purchased a product directly through social media in the last 12 months.
This is all thanks to releases like TikTok Shop and Instagram’s in-app checkout, making it easier to discover and purchase products without leaving the platform. These features streamline the shopping experience, allowing brands to reach consumers where they’re already spending time.
The reason so many people prefer to shop directly on social media is because:
“B” is the real driving force here. As a result, we expect creator-driven storefronts to thrive in 2025. (Yes, we’re talking about co-branded landing pages again.)
But as you flesh out your co-branded landing page strategy, be sure to focus on in-app shopping on social media as well. A comprehensive strategy is the best strategy, and you need to make sure you have all your bases covered.
