Affiliate marketing is bigger than ever. But where the growth comes from has changed significantly over the last 18 months.
The industry size
According to a September 2025 EMARKETER forecast, affiliate spending in the US is expected to reach $13.81 billion in 2026. This makes affiliate marketing one of the largest performance marketing channels in the US market. Global figures predict the industry will reach $31 billion in sales by 2031.
Latin America’s e-commerce market is forecast to reach $215.31 billion in 2026, providing significant expansion opportunities for affiliate marketers targeting emerging markets. The geographical story of affiliate growth increasingly revolves around markets outside the US, UK and Western Europe.
Reddit’s R/Affiliate Marketing at https://www.reddit.com/r/affiliatemarketing/ regularly publishes income reports from affiliate marketers operating in different regions. Emerging market threads consistently have higher commission rates and lower competition for keywords in markets like Brazil, Mexico, and Southeast Asia.
The channel mix in 2026
SEO is the most used channel at 69%, followed by social media at 67%, content marketing at 65% and blogging at 64%. TikTok Shop GMV reached $23.4 billion, and the mobile-first affiliate funnel trend is changing the way commissions are earned.
The TikTok Shop Number is the most striking single data point in the current affiliate landscape. A trading platform that barely existed three years ago is now generating tens of billions of dollars in GMV, and affiliate commissions are a key part of how products move through this system.
Where AI disrupts the channel
Generative AI chatbots are changing the purchasing journey that affiliate marketing relies on. Consumers using genAI said 54% used it to compare prices, 41% used it to find deals, and 41% used it to check reviews.
This creates a core voltage for the channel. AI chatbots perform the same tasks that affiliate publishers build their businesses on: product comparison, deal hunting, and recommendation.
On X aroundhttps://x.com/search?q=affiliate+marketing+AI+disruption+2026The discussion is divided between publishers who see AI as an existential threat and those who see it as a distribution layer that needs to be optimized for.
Those who see AI search as a new traffic source to optimize for are building on GEO – generative engine optimization – rather than waiting for the old organic traffic to come back.
Quora onhttps://www.quora.com/What-is-the-future-of-affiliate-marketing-with-AIhas responses from affiliated practitioners with significant income.
The consensus is that AI raises the ceiling on content quality while lowering the ceiling on generic content. The affiliate websites that survive will be the ones where human expertise is truly irreplaceable.
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