It’s been a tough couple of years for affiliate marketers, who make money by recommending products for their followers to buy. Google cracked down on the types of websites that can offer online coupon codes. Several automatic coupon code finders were sued by affiliate marketers who said they weren’t playing fair. And shoppers are continually complaining about coupon codes that just don’t work.
But coupons are still a major force in encouraging online shoppers to buy, and helping to turn affiliate marketing into a multibillion-dollar business.
These days, merely offering a product for sale online, and maybe advertising it, isn’t enough to entice many shoppers. These shoppers might follow online influencers or product reviewers whose opinions they trust, and whose recommendations can encourage a sale. So merchants are increasingly leveraging these relationships to move merchandise, by offering affiliate marketers a cut of their profit if a recommendation results in a purchase.
As a result, the latest report by the Performance Marketing Association has found that affiliate marketing is a booming business. As of 2024, nearly 10% of all e-commerce sales in the U.S. were the result of affiliate recommendations, accounting for $113 billion in sales. And merchant spending on affiliate marketing has soared nearly 50% in just the past three years.
When it comes to the shoppers who are clicking affiliate links and making purchases, trusted recommendations are one thing. But what these shoppers really seem to like are coupons.
The PMA found that deal sites – those offering cash back, coupons, rebates or rewards – account for nearly half of all affiliate marketing spending. That’s far more than product review sites, bloggers and influencers who might recommend a product but don’t necessarily offer deals.
Then again, often they do. Followup data from the affiliate marketing firm Awin examined couponing among each of the top ten affiliate publisher types, and found that seven of the ten have increased their use of coupons so far this year. That’s true of direct email marketing most of all, where more than half of all purchases were made using a coupon.
That’s a sign that those recommending a product might get shoppers’ attention – but increasingly, it takes a coupon to turn that curiosity into a sale.
But that’s only if the coupon actually works. The PMA found that “user trust in coupons declined due to inaccuracies and non-working codes.” Artificial intelligence is being utilized more often to find deals, but all AI can do is scrape what’s out there. And if there are a lot of outdated, invalid or just plain fake coupon codes out there, that’s what AI is likely to come up with.
So the PMA says a priority for the industry needs to be “improved customer trust through legitimate, functional coupon codes.”
When shopping online these days, shoppers aren’t necessarily going directly to a retailer’s website. They may end up there, but only after clicking their way there through a recommendation link, a marketing email, or a coupon site.
And increasingly, as tariffs, inflation and other economic concerns have shoppers looking for value more than ever, it’s the coupons that are working. Recommendations from trusted influencers are nice. But it seems saving money is a whole lot nicer.
