Affiliates

TikTok showcases new tools to become a full-funnel powerhouse

TikTok plan to majorly upgrade their affiliate marketing capabilities in an effort to secure a larger share of brand budget, becoming a full-funnel, performance led advertising channel. 

Announced at their recent TikTok World event, the platform introduced new tools aimed at encouraging creators and affiliates to drive measurable results. 

Key updates include:

• Search Ads Toggle – Allowing advertisers (and potentially affiliate partners) to capture high-intent traffic directly with TikTok’s search function. 
• Affiliate Market Scope – A dashboard providing visibility into the entire customer journey, from discovery to conversion.

TikTok, like most, are focused on implementing more AI functionality, such as dynamically generating video creatives and shoppable formats directly from product feeds. These updates allow brands and creators alike, to reduce friction and make it easier to scale affiliate campaigns.

What this means for affiliate marketing:

More conversion opportunities: Searchable ad placements now allow affiliates to reach users actively looking for products, bridging the gap between awareness and purchase.

Better funnel visibility: The Market Scope tool give partners insight into how their content is performing at each stage of its journey, helping refine strategies quicker.

Accessible creative automation: Smaller creators can simplify their campaign set ups using AI generated video and product ads, meaning faster launches and easy testing at scale.

For affiliate marketers, this is a clear sign to start taking TikTok seriously and treat the channel as more than just an entertainment app, especially as advertisers seek new ways to cut through the noise.

The APMA offers new Bronze membership tier

The APMA (Affiliate & Partner Marketing Association) is opening its doors to emerging new talent, by offering an accessible, affordable new tier offering. The Bronze membership tier, priced at £500, allows startups, consultants and freelancers access to valuable benefits that were previously unaffordable under higher membership tiers.

This pivot opens the APMA up to a more diverse base of members, encouraging independent affiliates and smaller agencies to capitalise on the ability to to establish industry credentials and unlock exclusive research, data, training and more.

A significant impact of this new tier gives Bronze members the opportunity to share and promote work, input into industry-wide research, and attend tailored events specifically designed for emerging professionals.

The launch aligns with the recent rapid growth of solo and micro agencies, who are innovating the future landscape of affiliate marketing, signaling a new era for emerging leaders aiming to challenge the industry’s dominant players.

Awin introduces ‘Ava’ AI assistant and more platform updates

Awin have officially thrown their hat into the AI ring, launching their new AI-powered assistant Ava, in a huge Spring 2025 platform upgrade. 

Designed to help advertisers and publishers manage affiliate programmes more efficiently, Ava provides tailored recommendations, campaign optimisation tools and real time insights in the click of a button. Currently available to UK users, the feature will roll out globally soon.

Awin, a giant in the affiliate network industry, has taken a huge leap with this transition towards a smarter, AI-powered approach to affiliate management, marking a key moment in their platform enhancements. Ava provides users with instant campaign performance analytics, suggestions of highly aligned partners and can even flag underperforming areas, at no additional cost.

Other exciting updates added in addition to Ava:

• Advanced commission flexibility – Set payout rates based on product SKUs, transaction timing, or custom attribution models.
• Enhanced tracking tools –  Upgraded Conversion API supports more accurate reporting, plus improved in-app browser tracking.
• Deeper Zapier automation – Users can automate tasks like offer uploads and validations.

These changes allow programmes to be scaled faster and with greater precision. With data-privacy and multi-device use always evolving, the tracking improvements deliver huge benefits for publishers, ensuring they receive proper credit for their results.

This ultimately reflects broader industry trends, where affiliate marketing is embracing new, innovative ways to evolve beyond traditional manual management. 

Read more about Ava

Bauer Media completes acquisition of Clear Channel Europe-North

The acquisition marks a major move for Bauer into the Out of Home (OOH) advertising space, under the new name Bauer Media Outdoor. The expansion adds 110,000 OOH sites across 16 European markets to Bauer’s current portfolio of 200 magazines and 150 audio brands.

The acquisition results in Bauer unlocking up to 350 million customer touchpoints. This increased reach allows more integrated, multi-channel campaign opportunities for affiliates, such as:

• Cross-channel promotion (audio, print, and OOH)
• Broader brand exposure and customer acquisition methods, like utilising QR codes on billboards, or promotion codes on digital screens.
• More innovative, data-led campaign formats backed by Bauer’s growing digital infrastructure

As Bauer continues its digital transformation, affiliate programmes could see stronger media collaborations and performance driven opportunities across the expanded network.

Awin to launch new Conversion Protection Initiative

Awin is implementing a new initiative to ensure an enhanced, future-proofed tracking system to combat current tracking restrictions and capture missed transactions. The Conversion Protection Initiative (CPI) will take effect on April 7th 2025, and while the new mechanism will ensure publishers are fairly rewarded, it could come with some additional monthly fees if not implemented correctly by advertisers.

If tracking isn’t set up properly, CPI charges are applied as separate transactions in your Awin dashboard per publisher. The estimated costs are applied based on Awin’s network averages of missed sales.

• No S2S tracking: 12.6% of the sale value
• No app tracking: 20% flat fee

Unsure if this will affect you? You can review your current Awin setup to ensure that the following are in place to avoid any unnecessary costs:

Server-to-Server (S2S) Tracking
This bypasses limitations with cookies, add-blockers and browsers, to ensure conversion data is sent directly from your server to Awin.

App tracking
App tracking is also required if you have a transactional mobile app. In-app sales and activity won’t be attributed correctly without this, which leads to missed commission and unwanted CPI fees. However, if your app is non-transactional, it’s exempt.

You can directly integrate with a range of Mobile Measurement Partners (MMPs) with Awin.

Meta launches updated affiliate link displays

Meta is increasing affiliate link exposure within reels, videos, photos and text posts. Prior to this update, affiliate links had to be included in comments instead. This update increases the visibility of affiliate links, which mirrors what we’re already seeing across TikTok, where affiliate links are front and centre, driving sales in the TikTok Shop. For brands, this could be an opportunity to expand affiliate offerings with creators, as it’s likely to get more reach. For creators, they’re going to have to find the balance between genuine content and content that appears to be overly commercialised and revenue-driven, as it very quickly highlights when they are working as an affiliate.

Expert opinion

Olivia Jones, Affiliate Manager at Embryo

"For brands, this update will have a positive affect on reach, click through rate and conversions and will make it easier to measure success more accurately from influencer campaigns. For influencers, especially micro-influencers who are still growing their audiences and building their platform, it enables them to monetize their content in an easier way. However, influencers need to ensure they still create a healthy mix of organic content as well as promoted content to remain authentic and relatable to their audience."