What We Learned at the 2025 iPX Conference: How Creators & AI Are Reshaping Affiliate Marketing

Impact, a leading affiliate partnership management platform, hosted its 2025 iPX conference this summer to unveil the next evolution of affiliate marketing. This year’s headline? Sweeping platform updates, most notably the integration of embedded AI features that are poised to reshape the operational layer of the channel. From automated outreach to data-driven decision support, Impact is moving fast to modernize affiliate infrastructure. Paired with the growing role of creators as performance partners, this year’s event surfaced two major forces reshaping affiliate marketing: smarter systems and deeper human connection.

While we’re still in the early stages of applying these insights, the direction is promising. Creators are becoming full-funnel performance partners, and AI is emerging as a powerful tool to help teams operate more efficiently and intentionally. Together, these two forces—smarter systems and creator centrality—are shaping the channel's direction for the future.

In the keynote “Reimagine Performance Marketing” and throughout the product roadmap sessions at iPX, Impact made one thing clear: AI has moved beyond experimentation. It’s becoming a foundational part of how affiliate programs are built and run. And while it won’t replace marketers, it’s already helping reduce friction, cut back on repetitive work, and create more space for strategic thinking.

PMG gained early access to the beta for Ask Impact, the platform’s integrated AI assistant. As a long-standing partner, Impact continues to lead in building tools that support day-to-day execution within its ecosystem. Early stages of Ask Impact can help simplify tasks such as generating smart partner recommendations, updating rates, and drafting campaign briefs. More advanced features, such as sentiment analysis and automated agents (coming soon), are designed to significantly reduce the manual lift. For example, we currently manage monthly brand newsletters that highlight key promotions, priority SKUs, and new product launches, all of which require consistent updates, approvals, and formatting that could benefit from automation over time via Ask Impact. While we’re still exploring how Ask Impact fits into our workflows, its potential to streamline recurring work is promising.

That said, what Ask Impact addresses within the platform is just one part of the broader opportunity. At PMG, tools like Alli are helping us connect data across channels, surface strategic insights, and act on them in a way that keeps performance grounded in the bigger picture. Where Ask Impact improves efficiency within a platform, Alli ensures strategy stays connected across the full media mix. As Max Ciccotosto, Chief Product Officer at Impact, put it: “The real unlock isn’t automation for the sake of speed—it’s automation for the sake of focus.”

One of the sessions that really stuck with us at iPX was “From Community to Conversion.” It offered a clear shift in perspective, positioning creators as full-funnel partners capable of driving measurable outcomes. Nano creators are converting at a rate of 7%, compared to just 3% for macro creators. That stat alone changed how we think about scale versus specificity.

It was a clear reminder that trust often beats size. Smaller creators with highly engaged communities are delivering results that were once expected only from big names. Success in this space isn’t about reach. It’s about relevance, consistency, and creators who know how to move their audience to act.

That statistic is backed by a February 2025 EMarketer + Later study, which found that nano-influencers have the highest impression rate (34.1%) and the second-highest engagement rate (6.2%) across all tiers. These creators succeed because their content feels personal. Their audiences know them, trust them, and are more likely to take action when they recommend a brand.

At PMG, we’ve noticed a shift in the landscape as the performance has come to speak for itself: activating based on relevance, engagement, and trust converts better than sheer traffic. As a result, we prioritize affiliate creators who are already discussing a brand organically as part of our casting strategy and intentionally cast across various creator sizes to maintain a healthy balance of engagement and performance.

Another standout moment at iPX was hearing directly from creators about what makes brand partnerships work—from how they build community to the kind of collaboration that drives real results. Even compensation, a topic once considered off-limits, came up with a surprising amount of alignment. Many creators said they prefer hybrid payment models—a structure that balances guaranteed fees with performance incentives, rewarding both effort and impact. According to Impact, 61% of brands now use this model, and those that do report 32% lower acquisition costs. It’s a system built on mutual trust, not transactions.

As this shift for greater transparency and clarity around payment terms continues, we’re seeing other platforms evolve to support it. YouTube is rolling out native affiliate tools, and ShopMy is enabling transparent performance tracking for creators already advocating for brands. From an activation standpoint, we’re taking the technological advancements across the industry and using them to enable scalable compensation frameworks for long-term, high-trust partnerships, because, as Courtney Sauceda, Senior Director of Product Management at Impact, put it best: “A creator program isn’t a campaign—it’s a channel.”