The affiliate marketing industry is navigating a structural shift in how content gets discovered — and by whom.
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Referral traffic from traditional search engines is down 60% for small publishers and 47% for medium publishers over the past two years, according to research cited by Axios. AI Overviews appear to be accelerating that decline: Ahrefs data from late 2025 showed click-through rates for top-ranked content down 58% when AI Overviews are present.
Roger Lynch, CEO of Condé Nast, recently told publishers to plan “as if search is zero.” Julian Henrichs, an affiliate marketing analyst at Audile Media, made a similar point in a post on Hello Partner last week — arguing that cashback and loyalty publishers retain an advantage because users must visit their platforms to activate rewards before purchasing, keeping the click intact. Coupon publishers face greater exposure, since AI systems can surface discount codes directly in answers without requiring a visit.
The affiliate model has no standardized replacement for click-based attribution. AI summaries track impressions internally, but Google offers no meaningful attribution tool for publishers; Bing is among the few exceptions with AI-focused webmaster tools.
Henrichs outlined several potential paths forward: licensing deals between AI companies and publishers; publishers shifting to fixed media fees; brands paying directly for AI citation visibility; or networks integrating AI impression tracking — though he called that last option “a mere approximation of influence and not very accurate.”
“Licensing is the cleanest fix,” Henrichs argued. “If AI systems use publisher content, the AI platforms should pay them, not push the cost to advertisers.”
Whether those paths materialize at scale remains an open question. In the meantime, Henrichs advised advertisers to audit how dependent their publisher portfolios are on SEO traffic, and publishers to be cautious about overestimating the value of AI citations, given that attribution systems remain immature.
