Navigating Holiday 2025: Strategic Affiliate Trends to Watch

This holiday, one thing is clear: affiliate marketing is no longer operating on the sidelines. It’s influencing every stage of the funnel in a competitive ecosystem where meaningful, measurable customer connections are paramount. This year, brands must strike a balance between foundational strategies and an appetite for experimentation, particularly in the face of ongoing economic uncertainty and margin pressure.

While much has changed in the past 12 months, many of the strategic recommendations we made last year continue to ring true: build early, prioritize full-funnel partnerships, and lean into flexibility. This approach was instrumental in driving growth across PMG’s affiliate portfolio in Holiday 2024, delivering +17% YoY Revenue. 

However, 2025 presents new opportunities that brands must address head-on. Creator-driven commerce has scaled to new heights, AI is reshaping how we plan and measure, and incentive-based strategies have evolved to deliver more personalized, data-driven experiences. For brands that strike a balance between innovation and execution, the channel holds more potential than ever to drive growth this holiday season.

While the affiliate landscape is expanding in exciting new directions, the fundamentals haven’t lost their power, especially when it comes to lower-funnel, incentive-based strategies. Last year, we emphasized the continued importance of loyalty publishers in driving conversion during high-intent moments, and that message still holds. 

In fact, it may be even more relevant this year. As economic pressures continue to weigh on consumer sentiment, shoppers are increasingly seeking value before committing to a purchase. This environment favors promotional strategies that provide clear financial benefits at the point of sale. 

Top cashback partners like Rakuten and Capital One are leading the charge in transforming traditional incentive strategies into sophisticated, data-driven engines. Both have adopted programmatic and algorithmic approaches that allow them to serve personalized cashback offers to users across their ecosystems by leveraging first-party data and machine learning to determine the right incentive, at the right time, for the right user, maximizing the likelihood of conversion while protecting efficiency.

For brands, the key is not to treat lower-funnel partners as purely transactional, but as strategic drivers of conversion efficiency. When paired with strong mid- and upper-funnel efforts, these partnerships ensure that interest generated upstream is not left unclaimed. Heading into the 2025 holiday season, allocating a portion of spend toward tested, incentive-based partners remains a smart way to protect against volatility.

Last year, we encouraged brands to lean into mid-funnel partnerships, particularly creators and publishers focused on inspiration and discovery. In 2025, that’s no longer a recommendation; it’s table stakes.

Platforms like LTK and ShopMy are redefining what’s possible with affiliate creator content, offering brands more turnkey, scalable, and far-reaching ways to drive performance. 

LTK’s redesigned, video-first app reflects a shift toward localized, short-form content that aligns with how today’s consumers prefer to discover and engage with brands. Its integration with Pinterest further extends the reach of its creator content into high-traffic discovery environments, expanding opportunities for visibility and impact.

ShopMy, on the other hand, offers brand partners quick-turn Opportunities campaigns, which guarantee social mentions—an evolution that moves creator partnerships closer to predictable, performance-driven media. This offering enables brands to buy into creators with a more conservative upfront investment, while allowing creators to maintain their authenticity. PMG has seen that this is a powerful combination, with Opportunities campaigns consistently delivering a 3–5x ROAS. This is poised to be especially effective for brands during high-pressure, high-volume periods, such as the holidays, where rapid activation and guaranteed placements are critical in capturing peak demand.

Creators represent just one facet of the broader partnership and program diversification opportunities available in the affiliate channel heading into the 2025 holiday season. CTV platforms like tvScientific are now fully integrated with affiliate networks and capable of running campaigns on CPA terms. This opens the door to a new format for the channel that combines top-of-funnel storytelling with measurable outcomes.

With access to 95% of streaming platforms and deterministic IP-level attribution, CTV affiliate campaigns can deliver the scale and accountability that brands expect from digital media. Most importantly, with outcome-based pricing and flexible budget caps, these campaigns offer lower financial risk and greater efficiency potential, making them well-suited for holiday testing.

AI is beginning to reshape how affiliate programs are planned, managed, and optimized; however, it’s essential to view these advancements as strategic enablers, rather than replacements for human oversight.

Leading platforms that power PMG’s affiliate programs, such as Partnerize and Impact, are introducing AI-powered tools to streamline workflows, reduce manual effort, and unlock deeper insights into partner performance. Partnerize’s acquisition of Konnecto brings predictive intelligence and path-to-conversion modeling to the platform, providing brands with earlier visibility into which partners are most likely to drive results. On the other hand, Impact is integrating AI-augmented workflows that help automate tasks like partner discovery, placement optimization, and content validation. As these tools mature, PMG sees them playing an increasingly significant role in guiding both tactical execution and holiday planning.

Meanwhile, on the consumer side, AI is transforming the shopping experience. More users are discovering products through conversational AI platforms like ChatGPT, which can bypass traditional content journeys altogether. For content publishers, this shift poses a threat to their traffic and monetization models. But many are seeing this as an opportunity to adapt: Condé Nast, Future, and others are already licensing their affiliate-rich content to AI platforms, ensuring visibility in responses and preserving last-click attribution.

For brands, this underscores the importance of continuing to invest in affiliate content partnerships with high-authority publishers. Visibility in both human and AI-powered discovery channels will hinge on strong relationships, editorial quality, and a strategic share of voice. During the holidays, this means securing premium placements and content commitments well in advance of peak shopping weeks, ensuring that gift guides, deal roundups, and seasonal features prominently position your brand when consumer intent is at its highest.