Headwinds of AI platforms, privacy and consent mean that circumstances when sales will not track in accordance with program rules will inevitably exist for affiliate marketing for the foreseeable future.
These challenges are compounded by the use by many brands of a single source of truth for their marketing, whether its GA4 or another analytics platform.
Such challenges are present for other online marketing models however in many cases there isn't an independent measurement such as affiliate tracking giving rise to the opportunity for discrepancies to exist. The single source of truth is thus the truth, regardless of the quality of the truth.
Reflections on 2025
To have accurate measurement requires diligence on many bases. 2025 had many businesses focusing on such bases, four of which remained prominent during the year:
- Trust
- Truth
- Transparency
- Tracking
Trust
Brands want to have confidence in the channel and can trust their publishers to behave such that they have confidence in their sales being from legitimate publisher activity. This was highlighted by actions such as Rakuten Advertising launching their Detect Initiative in 2025 and conversations amongst trade body members -- including the APMA in the UK -- about publishers being more accountable regarding their traffic sources.
When affiliate marketing is evaluated by CMOs having confidence in the model is a concern -- legitimate or otherwise -- of those CMOs.
Truth
The "Who owns the truth?" panel at PI LIVE London highlighted the challenges brands face and how it ripples to their affiliate partners. It can be summarised by these quotes from across the set of fantastic speakers.
"Your board, your c-level people are going to want to see a unified approach. They want everything to add up and all your revenue to add up". Brands "need a unified approach across all channels, rather than tracking for affiliates independent of everything else."
The confusion between affiliate measurement and analytics reporting was illustrated by the responses to the question "How much do you understand the reasons for discrepancies between networks and other data sources."
If affiliate marketers are not on top of the differences, its most unlikely CMOs are. These differences need to be understood for there to be higher levels of trust in the affiliate model by CMOs.
Transparency
Transparency being a two way street was a key topic within Moonpull's "Tracking and Transparency" mini conference in October 2025. The panel included network leaders from Awin (Stephen Short), CJ (Dan Staples), impact.com (Ant Clements) and Partnerize (Sean Sewell).
- Publishers want to know how advertisers track.
- Advertisers want clarity on where traffic comes from.
- Networks want to ensure advertisers are best positioned to benefit from affiliates.
Without that clarity, confidence erodes. As CJ's Dan Staples noted, when transparency is lacking -- whether around tracking methods, duplication, or cancellation rates -- partnerships weaken. Publishers lose trust, and advertisers hesitate to invest.
One of the most powerful points from the debate came when impact.com's Ant Clements and Partnerize's Sean Sewell agreed that transparency must flow both ways.
Advertisers need to share how tracking and consent are configured -- but they also need visibility into where traffic originates and how publishers are promoting their brands.
As Sean put it, "Each party has its own requirements to assess the value of that exchange."
When both sides communicate clearly, the result is fairer value assessment, stronger optimisation, and smarter media planning.
Tracking
Networks are increasingly working with advertisers to implement their best tracking implementations was a theme of network user conferences.
Awin's CPI is leading to many hundreds or thousands of improved implementations. CJU's kick-off keynote by Angela Ballard and Kelly Merkel included a reminder to advertisers about the importance of having their best tracking in place, including their universal tag.
Measurement in 2026
Measurement was also a focus of impact.com and Partnerize. Towards the end of the year Partnerize introduced VantagePoint, a conversion attribution solution built on Konnecto technology focused on measuring affiliate publishers contributions to AI platform sales. impact.com is also emphasising the importance of the UTT tag for their clients.
Network tags are important for tracking. The conversion tags -- on checkout pages -- are vital for reporting the knowledge on that page. This includes details on the customer -- new or existing -- and on the items purchased.
This is vital for the advertiser knowing the type and quality of sales resulting from each publishers' efforts.
CMOs want to know that the quality of each publisher's contribution to their objectives is being appraised.
Recording of the metadata associated with each publisher's traffic is vital. In turn the publishers can learn their importance to the advertiser and together they can grow together. There is thus transparency both ways leading to an improving relationship.
Measurement underpins confidence in the model
Quite simply measurement underpins confidence in the channel. Best-in-class tracking leads to best-in-class measurement. First party tracking -- even for recording sales with little or no metadata -- does need to be monitored and improved as it can degrade with time.
Keeping best-in-class tracking up to date achieves the multiple goals of:
- Recording as many sales as possible
- Recording metadata for matching the channels results to corporate objectives
- Having consistency in differences between affiliate tracking and analytics packages
- Having the bedrock for explaining the differences of affiliate measurement to analytics and knowing when to use each
Tracking is vital to affiliate marketing being understood in brands unified approach to measurement. By talking about tracking in terms of measurement can only encourage brands to act appropriately to get the best data for their own purposes and iterate the affiliate channel to being closer to being one of their must have sales and marketing activities.
Affiliate Summit West 2026
Just to prove the importance of measurement, leading networks are talking about tracking, measurement, transparency and how they are working with their partners to improve all three.
Moonpull mini-conference: Tracking is a Team Sport
January 11th 3.30pm
Speakers include:
- Rachel Tyrer, VP Customer Success US, Awin
- Vern Rodriguez, Director, Strategic Partnerships, impact.com
- Kelly Merkel, Senior Vice President, Client Strategy, CJ
Winning the Brand: How Networks Are Re-Engineering Trust and Tracking for 2026
Speakers include:
- Adam Ross, Chief Executive, Awin
- Santi Pierini, Chief Executive, CJ
As the power balance in affiliate marketing shifts, networks are under growing pressure to prove their value. With brands demanding transparency, reliability, and seamless data accuracy, only those who can track every sale with confidence will stand out.
In this live session, Moonpull steps into the spotlight to challenge three leading networks -- CJ, Rakuten, and Awin -- to demonstrate how they're future-proofing tracking and building brand trust in a post-cookie world.