What Affiliate Marketing Looks Like in 2026

This newsletter is focused on what affiliate marketing will look like next year in 2026. It is inspired by a few discussions:

• Asking for questions on the NEXT.io - The World’s iGaming Community WhatsApp channel

• Interviewing Jenny Gonzalez

• Preparing for my panel at SBC: The future of affiliate marketing

I have my questions ready for the SBC Summit happening in Lisbon Sept 16th to 18th, 2025. I'll be joined by Andre Sousa Machado, MSc / MBA from Clever Advertising, Mikael Strunge from Acroud and Peter Gunni from Traffic Lab. I won’t share those questions just yet but you can imagine, I’ve been asked this question the most. I also am asking others their answers to this very question so it helps me in my thinking of what might happen in 2026.

Kicking it off in the group was Antti Koivula asking how AI will affect affiliates.

I gave 8 points on what I think is happening now and how it will shape the affiliate space next year. 

1. Brands will benefit the most

2. More drive towards 1st party data

3. Some will be able to use AI to build data sets or products that used to take serious resources increase 

4. Products for players where that product owns the player and becomes less reliant on search

5. Parasite SEO is still doing insanely well

6. Big affiliates will gain more power, likely because of their brand

7. Affiliate networks could benefit, they will become a go to source for new streamers that don’t want to deal with accounts

8. Less of the smaller affiliates means increasing flat fee and cpa costs for operators

There is a lot to unpack here. 

I think from the iGaming industry’s perspective, most people view affiliates as being SEO sites. That was the case for quite some time but how players find operators is changing.

Next week I’ll be publishing an episode recording with Jenny Gonzalez from Trackfinity and Rocahead while I was reppin the Surfer SEO tshirt. 

We chatted about where affiliate marketing is going today and I wanted to get her take on the very question. SEO will be a channel but the channels are now variable and affiliates will have to work harder for that click. 

I’ll keep this newsletter short and finish it off with a teaser from Jenny’s podcast recording. She believes affiliate marketing is starting to become mainstream and I think there is some truth to that.

I mean why is Drake all up in a fuss over his deal with KICK? Maybe he already knows that rev share is likely a better deal than his flat fees. 

I do think affiliate marketing could hit another level and that makes me feel a bit comfortable knowing we’ll always have customers to help with StatsDrone. 

StatsDrone Feature of the week

Did you know that you can relabel your brands and campaigns inside the app? To activate this feature, it has to be enabled so DM me if you want to organize your data better.