Affiliate marketing statistics for 2026, each with its source
Affiliate marketing statistics for 2026: US and UK spend, global market estimates, network size, returns, commission terms, cookie limits and FTC rules.
Muzahid Maruf, Founder
On this page
- 01Affiliate marketing statistics on market size and spend
- 02How many affiliate marketers are there?
- 03Adoption and sentiment among brands and publishers
- 04Returns and sector mix
- 05Published commission rates and tracking windows
- 06Cookie and browser facts behind the conversion counts
- 07FTC and IRS rules that affect affiliate programs
- 08Using these statistics for a SaaS affiliate program
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Affiliate marketing statistics are best documented in three places: US spend of $13.62 billion in 2024 (Performance Marketing Association, PMA), UK spend of £1.8 billion in 2025 (Affiliate & Partner Marketing Association, APMA), and a commercial estimate of $18.5 billion for the global market in 2024.
They disagree on scale because they count different things, so every figure below comes with its source, its year and its scope.
Key takeaways
- US brands spent $13.62 billion on affiliate marketing in 2024, up 49.8% from $9.1 billion in 2021, according to the Performance Marketing Association.
- UK brands spent £1.8 billion in 2025, which the APMA says generated £20.7 billion in revenue. A commercial estimate of the global market, $18.5 billion for 2024, leaves only $4.9 billion once the US figure is subtracted, so market-size figures are not interchangeable.
- I found no worldwide count of affiliates from any trade body or network. Awin alone lists 1 million publishers and 30,000 advertisers, and one publisher can sit in several networks.
- Published SaaS terms run from HubSpot's 30% recurring commission, capped at one year with a 180-day cookie, to Webflow's 50% of a first subscription with a 90-day cookie.
- Safari deletes script-written cookies after 7 days without a visit, and Safari is 30.42% of US browser use, so a long cookie window on paper is shorter in practice.
- FTC guidance says affiliate-link reviews need a clear disclosure, and the maximum civil penalty for a knowing violation of an FTC rule is $53,088.
Affiliate marketing statistics on market size and spend
The PMA released its Industry Study 2025 on June 18, 2025. It reports US spending up 49.8% in three years, a compound annual growth rate of 14.42% that it calls twice the pace of the broader e-commerce market.
The text of the release gives 2024 spend as $13.62 billion, and its headline rounds the same figure to $13.63 billion.
The PMA also estimates that spend produced $113 billion in sales, 9.4% of all US e-commerce, and 15% to 20% of sales at companies that use the channel.
| Measure | Figure | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| US affiliate marketing spend | $13.62 billion | 2024 | Performance Marketing Association |
| US spend in the previous study | $9.1 billion | 2021 | PMA baseline |
| US e-commerce sales tied to the channel | $113 billion (9.4% of the total) | 2024 | PMA estimate |
| UK affiliate and partner marketing spend | £1.8 billion | 2025 | APMA State of the Affiliate Nation |
| UK revenue generated by that spend | £20.7 billion | 2025 | APMA report |
| Global affiliate market, commercial estimate | $18.5 billion | 2024 | Cognitive Market Research |
| Global projection from the same firm | $35.4 billion | 2033 | Cognitive Market Research forecast |
Spend and market-size figures as each publisher reports them. The scopes differ, so the rows do not add up.
The APMA pooled data from 11 affiliate networks for its report, published on May 6, 2026. The full report is for APMA members, so these figures come from the release as carried by MarTech Series.
UK spend rose 7.3% to £1.8 billion and generated £20.7 billion in revenue, also up 7.3%. The APMA modelled part of the total and calls its estimates conservative.
Why the market-size figures disagree
Subtract the PMA's US figure from the global estimate and about $4.9 billion is left for every other country, a pool that also has to cover a UK market the APMA puts at £1.8 billion for 2025.
The two sources probably do not share a definition, so read the global number as a rough order of magnitude. Cognitive Market Research's own page quotes both 8.5% and 8.00% as the annual growth rate.
Older forecasts deserve the same suspicion. A Rakuten Advertising post from October 2022 cites Statista at $8.2 billion for 2022 and, earlier in the same text, the PMA at $9.1 billion for 2021, which read together would mean spend fell.
For US trends, use the PMA's measured series.
How many affiliate marketers are there?
I could not find a worldwide count of affiliates from any trade body or network. What exists are counts inside individual networks, and one publisher can belong to several, so the numbers overlap and cannot be added together.
| Network | What it counts | Figure | As of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Awin | Publishers and advertisers | 1 million publishers, 30,000 advertisers | October 2026 |
| PartnerStack | Active partners in its B2B software network | Over 123,000 | September 2025 |
| impact.com | Active partnerships | Nearly 350,000 | 2025 |
Figures from each network's own page or press release.
Awin's 1 million is the largest of these figures. impact.com counts partnerships, which is a different unit from people, and PartnerStack's figure covers B2B software only.
Money is easier to pin down than headcount: impact.com said in January 2026 that it powered close to $120 billion in partner-referred sales and over $5 billion in partner payouts during its fiscal year.
Adoption and sentiment among brands and publishers
The most-quoted adoption figure is 81% of advertisers and 84% of publishers using an affiliate program. It comes from a Forrester Consulting study commissioned by Rakuten Advertising, as cited in the Rakuten post dated October 1, 2022.
The post gives no date for the study, so read the numbers as a rough signal of adoption.
A newer survey is narrower. PartnerStack and Wynter asked 100 senior leaders at B2B SaaS companies in the $50M+ bracket and published the results on September 29, 2025.
Of those, 69% planned to raise partnership investment in the coming year, 30% ranked partnerships a top strategic priority for 2026, and 74% said partners are essential to customer satisfaction, expansion and retention.
PartnerStack sells partner-program software, which makes this a vendor survey of a small sample.
The PMA's publisher survey covers the supply side.
Of the publishers it asked, 54% were confident or very confident in the future of their affiliate business, 69% were concerned that Google actions, including algorithm changes and AI Overviews, are reducing site traffic and affiliate revenue, and 52% said they will try new forms of promotion.
On measurement, Influencer Marketing Hub's 2026 benchmark report, a survey of 600+ marketers published on May 4, 2026, found promo and discount codes were the most common way to measure influencer campaigns at 45.9% of those answering, ahead of affiliate links at 26.0% and native shop features at 25.0%.
How codes and links fit together is covered in coupon code tracking for affiliate programs.
Returns and sector mix
Return on ad spend (ROAS) divides tracked sales by spend, so it shows what the channel was credited with and says nothing about how many of those sales would have happened anyway.
| Measure | Return | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Average ROAS across seven networks and platforms | 12:1 | Rakuten Advertising, citing Awin, CJ, LinkConnector, Partnerize, Ascend by Partnerize, Rakuten Advertising and ShareASale |
| US travel | $19 per $1 | PMA Industry Study 2025 |
| US retail | $11 per $1 | PMA, retail vertical |
| US department stores | $21 per $1 | PMA, retail breakdown |
| UK, all sectors | 15X | APMA, 2025 data |
| UK travel and retail | 19X | APMA, sector split |
| UK voucher partners | 24X | APMA, publisher type |
Returns as reported by each network group or trade association.
Sector mix shifted between the PMA's two studies. Retail still takes the largest share of US spend, and the PMA says content creators and bloggers gained a larger share of investment.
| Sector | Previous PMA study | PMA study 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Retail | 76% | 63% |
| Financial services | 12% | 15% |
| Travel | 5% | 9% |
| Telecommunications | 3% | 7% |
Share of US affiliate spend by sector.
UK retail takes 47% of spend in the APMA data.
The report counted 357 million transactions through affiliate links in 2025, or 41,000 an hour, and found that across Cyber Weekend £1 in every £7 spent tracked through an affiliate link, up from £1 in every £8 in 2024.
In UK telecoms, affiliates delivered 1 million new customers a month, and finance affiliate spend ran at £10 million a month, up 9%.
The ratios do not reconcile with the totals.
The APMA's £20.7 billion in revenue over £1.8 billion in spend is 11.5, against its stated 15X, and the PMA's $113 billion over $13.62 billion is about 8.3, below the travel and retail returns it reports.
The press releases do not say how each ratio was built, so quote each one as published and do not mix them.
Published commission rates and tracking windows
As of October 2026, Amazon Associates pays fixed rates by product category: 10% on luxury beauty, 5% on digital music and handmade goods, 4.5% on physical books, kitchen and automotive, 3% on toys, furniture, home and beauty, 1% on grocery and health and personal care, and 0% on gift cards.
Everything outside the schedule's named categories pays 4%.
Software programs publish bigger numbers, and each states its own window for crediting a sale.
| Program | What it pays | Tracking window |
|---|---|---|
| HubSpot | 30% monthly recurring commission for up to one year | 180-day cookie |
| Webflow | 50% of a new customer's first subscription for up to 12 months | 90-day cookie, first-touch attribution |
| Notion | Up to $50 per activated sign-up plus 20% of year-one revenue (closed to new affiliates when checked) | Upgrade within 180 days of the click, last-click |
| Shopify | Up to $150 per qualified referral, credited to your balance monthly on the 22nd | 30 days from the click, up to 400 days from free trial to paid plan |
Terms from each program's own page, October 2026.
HubSpot and Webflow pay a share of revenue for a year. Shopify pays a bounty per referral, and Notion pays a bounty plus a year-one share.
For medians across many SaaS programs, see the compiled SaaS affiliate benchmarks and commission benchmarks by category.
Cookie and browser facts behind the conversion counts
A tracking window only counts if the cookie survives. WebKit's Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) deletes cookies created in JavaScript, and other script-writable storage, after 7 days of no user interaction with the site.
When it detects click IDs added to link URLs and read by script, it caps JavaScript-written cookies on the landing page at 24 hours.
It also caps cookies set in HTTP responses by CNAME-cloaked or IP-cloaked third-party requests at 7 days.
StatCounter's September 2026 data puts Safari at 18.27% of worldwide browser use, 24.71% on mobile and 30.42% in the United States, against 66.36% for Chrome worldwide.
Google's October 17, 2025 update restates that Chrome keeps its current approach to third-party cookie choice and retires the Attribution Reporting API along with several other Privacy Sandbox technologies.
Worked example: a Safari visit on day 10
A program advertises a 90-day window, and the affiliate link sets its cookie with JavaScript. A Safari visitor clicks on day 0, does not visit again, and buys on day 10. WebKit deleted the cookie after 7 days without interaction, so the sale arrives with no affiliate attached. A cookie set by the site's own server in an HTTP response escapes that 7-day deletion, except in the CNAME-cloaking cases WebKit lists. The Safari ITP and SaaS attribution post covers the fix.
FTC and IRS rules that affect affiliate programs
The FTC's Endorsement Guides (16 CFR Part 255, revised in 2023) work through a coffee blogger whose reviews carry affiliate links to retailers.
Because knowing about the compensation could change how much weight readers give the reviews, the Guides say they should disclose it clearly and conspicuously.
The agency's FAQ on the Guides adds that "affiliate link" alone may not tell readers anything, a "buy now" button is not a disclosure, and the closer the disclosure sits to the recommendation, the better.
A separate FTC rule on consumer reviews and testimonials took effect on October 21, 2024.
It bans fake and AI-generated reviews, undisclosed reviews by company insiders and the purchase of fake social media followers or views, and it lets the agency seek civil penalties from knowing violators.
The maximum civil penalty under section 5(m)(1)(A) of the FTC Act is $53,088 per violation, and a September 15, 2026 notice says its amounts stay at 2025 levels through 2026.
A program that pays commission on reviews should police what its affiliates publish; affiliate compliance under FTC and GDPR rules covers the wider set.
On tax, the IRS instructions for Forms 1099-MISC and 1099-NEC set the Form 1099-NEC filing threshold at $2,000 for tax years beginning after 2025, with inflation adjustments possible from 2027.
Collect tax forms before the first payout; how to pay affiliates covers methods and forms.
Using these statistics for a SaaS affiliate program
Most of the spend figures above come from retail, travel and finance, and the PMA puts retail alone at 63% of US spend.
A subscription product cares about a different number: what a referred customer pays over many months, net of refunds. Industry returns say little about that. Your commission per paying customer and your refund rate decide whether the channel pays.
TrackRev's Affiliate Program product handles the SaaS case. Paid plans sync revenue from Stripe, Polar, Lemon Squeezy and Paddle, calculate recurring commission for every month a customer renews, and take a commission back when a charge is refunded or disputed.
The same data model carries link tracking and channel attribution, so the affiliate slice sits next to every other source of revenue.
The free plan has 50 links and 1,000 tracked events a month with revenue figures hidden, and paid plans start at $39 a month (see pricing and the affiliate program page). TrackRev has no partner marketplace.
If you need to recruit from a large pool of publishers, a network such as Awin or impact.com does that and TrackRev does not.
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Frequently asked questions
- It depends on the scope, because no single measure covers everything. The PMA counts US spend, the APMA counts UK spend reported by networks, and commercial research firms publish global estimates with looser definitions. Quote the one that matches the market you are describing, and name its year.
- Prefer trade associations that publish a scope and a year: the PMA for the US and the APMA for the UK. Network press releases are reliable for that network's own totals. Commercial market-size estimates are order-of-magnitude guides, and vendor surveys describe the attitudes of the vendor's own audience.
- Yes, in both countries that publish a series. US spend grew 14.42% a year from 2021 to 2024 and UK spend grew 7.3% in 2025. An individual publisher can still lose out if search traffic falls, which is what 69% of the PMA's publisher respondents said worried them.
- There is no industry-wide count. The closest figures are network-level, led by Awin's 1 million publishers, and adding networks together would count shared publishers twice.
- The figure quoted most often is 81% of advertisers, from a Forrester Consulting study commissioned by Rakuten Advertising. The Rakuten page that cites it gives no date for the study. A newer, narrower survey found 69% of B2B software leaders planning to increase partnership investment. Use either as a rough signal.
- Rates follow the product. Amazon Associates pays 1% to 10% by category and 4% on categories outside its schedule. Software programs run higher: HubSpot pays 30% recurring for one year at most, and Shopify advertises up to $150 per qualified referral.
- In the US, yes. The FTC's Endorsement Guides say a reviewer who earns commission through affiliate links should disclose it clearly and conspicuously. The FTC's FAQ adds that the disclosure belongs near the recommendation, and on a video it belongs in the video and in the description next to the links.
- Only some of them. Cookies written by JavaScript are deleted after 7 days without a visit, and capped at 24 hours when Safari detects click IDs in link URLs. Cookies your own server sets in an HTTP response are not capped, apart from the CNAME-cloaking cases WebKit describes.
Written by
Founder, TrackRev.io & Contant.io
Muzahid Maruf is the founder of TrackRev.io and Contant.io. He writes about marketing attribution, link tracking, and revenue analytics for SaaS teams.
Writes about Marketing attribution · Link tracking · Revenue analytics · SaaS growth
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