Affiliate Marketing on Track to Grow 10% Annually as Brands Shift to Performance-Based Ads

The marketing landscape has undergone a remarkable transformation since the days of advertising executives like Don Draper, with emerging forms of technology completely revolutionising the way that brands reach their target audience. Global affiliate marketing spending surpassed $17 billion in 2024, a 65% increase over five years, reflecting its growing importance in the digital economy.

In the digital age, affiliate marketing has become one of the most powerful tools in an advertiser’s arsenal. From retail and fashion to iGaming and financial services, affiliate marketing has proved not just successful but also cost-effective for millions of brands and companies. Industry analysts say the model has become especially valuable amid tightening marketing budgets and the ongoing shift toward performance-based advertising.

The beauty of affiliate marketing lies in its simplicity. Rather than commissioning huge studies of consumer behaviour and spending fortunes on advertising campaigns with unreliable results, companies can leverage networks of partners to promote their services to an audience who is already interested in their services.

Understanding How Affiliate Marketing Works

If you were to take your car into your local mechanic and ask about getting your car resprayed whilst you were there, the owner would likely recommend someone they know to do the work. Then, the next time someone enquired about changing their timing belt when they were in for a respray, the same body shop would return the favour and recommend the mechanic.

This is essentially affiliate marketing and has been going on for centuries, if not millennia. The only difference in the modern day is that it primarily takes place online and is more sophisticated than word-of-mouth recommendations. Today, the practice is increasingly powered by data analytics, cookies, and AI-driven recommendation systems, allowing marketers to track and optimise referrals in real time.

The Two Most Common Types of Affiliate Marketing

Commission-Based Recommendations: The latest Bet365 bonus codes are found at Casino.org, an online casino comparison site. Whilst we don’t claim to be privy to the finer financial details of this agreement, we can speculate that Casino.org will receive a financial incentive for every person who avails of Bet365’s bonus codes through that link.

That’s an example of a commission-based recommendation through affiliate marketing, which is perhaps the most common type of deal. A good place to look for this type of deal is on any social media influencer's videos or profile page. The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has also tightened rules on influencer and affiliate disclosures in recent months, requiring clearer labelling of paid partnerships online.

Affiliate marketing works in the online gambling industry because it effectively connects casinos with targeted audiences through trusted partners. Affiliates use content, reviews, and SEO to attract players who are already interested in gambling, reducing acquisition costs for operators. Commissions based on player deposits or activity incentivize affiliates to deliver quality traffic. This performance-based model ensures mutual benefit, scalability, and compliance-friendly promotion within a competitive and highly regulated digital market. Experts say this model has helped sustain iGaming growth despite increased scrutiny from regulators across Europe.

Why Affiliate Marketing is Important

Within both high-revenue businesses and more niche ones, simple Google Ads campaigns can work wonders in terms of capturing customers. For businesses in between these two ends of the spectrum, Google Ads campaigns can be expensive and ineffective.

Conversely, affiliate marketing is cheaper and offers more concrete results with an awful lot less hassle. It’s why it’s the tool of choice for so many businesses in the modern market. Data from the Performance Marketing Association suggests that for every $1 spent on affiliate marketing, advertisers earn an average return of $12, underlining its efficiency compared to traditional ad channels

Key Things to Consider Before Implementing Affiliate Marketing

Clear goals and tracking are two of the main things that you need to consider before setting up an affiliate marketing campaign. There’s no point, for example, going into your campaign with a scatter gun approach that sees your site becoming nothing more than a collection of links.

Similarly, you want to ensure that you have a way of tracking conversions from affiliate links so that you can constantly review the efficacy of your campaigns.

Another point to consider is the reputation of the company with which you’re entering into the agreement. Just as the mechanic would never recommend an unreliable company for bodywork, you should never partner up with a dodgy or morally questionable site. Analysts also warn that affiliate fraud and fake traffic remain growing risks, with some firms investing in anti-fraud software and third-party verification tools to protect campaign integrity

Obviously, you should also try and make sure that you are partnering with companies and brands that are related to yours. A tree surveyor providing links to a fast-food restaurant wouldn’t make much sense, for example, unless of course the name made sense…

In Summary

The digital revolution has touched every aspect of our lives, and it has had a huge impact on the world of advertising. Whilst the internet and social media have had many negative impacts, in terms of business, the difference it has made to advertising and marketing has been incredibly beneficial.

Large corporations no longer have a monopoly on marketing, and anyone, even small business owners, can take advantage of online visibility if they’re savvy enough. With affiliate marketing projected to grow by a further 10% annually through 2028, according to Insider Intelligence, its role in levelling the playing field between major brands and smaller enterprises looks set to expand even further.