Rockin\u2019 around the Linktree, or so it goes.<\/p>\n
Whether it\u2019s a creator rounding up the best Black Friday sales or sharing a gift guide on what to buy for friends and family, the holidays have become ripe for affiliate content across social platforms. This November, affiliate holiday content was 17% higher than it was a year ago, according to the influencer marketing platform Traackr.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s in part because affiliate marketing can be a safer\u2014and often less expensive\u2014bet than larger creator deals.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it comes to the holiday season, every brand wants an affiliate deal because it\u2019s commission-based and therefore a little bit less risky,\u201d Lily Comba, founder and CEO of influencer agency Superbloom, told us.<\/p>\n
As creator marketing budgets tighten and brands experiment with compensation methods amid economic uncertainties, marketers tell us that the affiliate space shows no signs of slowing down, which means this year\u2019s holiday campaigns could set a precedent for how some creator deals are executed in 2026.<\/p>\n
Bye-bye, flat fee?<\/strong><\/h2>\nIt wasn\u2019t long ago when the industry was abuzz about ever-increasing creator rates. As the economic climate has grown more tenuous, some executives are placing more pressure on marketers to show a return on their creator investments this holiday season, Megan Vasquez, director of creator strategy and strategic marketing at creator management platform Grin, told us.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was this golden era of influencer, where everything was very PR-focused with huge, elaborate giftings and a lot of top-funnel campaigns where you were\u2026paying people for posts and it was really about flooding the market with as much content as possible with not a lot of concern about what came at the bottom of the funnel,\u201d Vasquez said. \u201cThat notion of correlation has fallen off in the past two years.\u201d<\/p>\n
If brands\u2019 CFOs and other execs are demanding more performance, attribution, and forecasting data, Vasquez said, many brand marketers, especially from small- to mid-size companies, are switching to affiliate or hybrid deals that mix lump-sum payments with additional affiliate earnings based on trackable conversions.<\/p>\n
\u201cAffiliate gives you a very clean line of attribution,\u201d Vasquez said. \u201c[It\u2019s] made it a lot easier for us to communicate with financial leadership and actually show success.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Traackr, mid-tier creators with between 50,000 and 250,000 followers were the most efficient and effective at driving conversions on affiliate platform ShopMy and on TikTok, with a 4.9% average engagement rate on ShopMy, three times higher than average across all content. The most-engaging posts across platforms were focused on purchase convenience (like sharing a list of linked products) or on holiday nostalgia.<\/p>\n
Comba said hybrid deals can help break through holiday noise online by encouraging creators to post more, since they can earn from those posts, while feeling like active participants in the campaign. \u201cYou have to get creative in the offers that you\u2019re sending creators and really make something incentivizing, which is where these hybrid deals come into place,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
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Mae Karwowski, founder and CEO of the influencer marketing agency Obviously, said that the company has seeded more products this year than in recent years, sometimes with affiliate links, as part of an effort to source potential long-term partners and diversify its payment structures.<\/p>\n
\u201cOverall, it\u2019s not like, \u2018Oh, this is what we always do. We always do one upfront payment, and we\u2019re done,\u2019\u201d Karwowski said. \u201cNow it\u2019s like, \u2018Let\u2019s experiment with some different ways of working and different compensation models.\u201d<\/p>\n
While only about a quarter of Obviously\u2019s clients are using affiliate codes and links, Karwowski said she\u2019s seeing growth in the space as more brands blend e-commerce and performance marketing with creator marketing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m seeing a lot of interest in making sure affiliate is a part of the overall influencer marketing mix,\u201d she said. \u201cA lot of my conversations for 2026 are like, \u2018How are we doing this in addition to everything else?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Not so fast?<\/strong><\/h2>\nAccording to Vasquez, a hybrid deal can benefit creators just as it can benefit brands. \u201cAlmost every time I\u2019ve negotiated a deal like this, the influencer would have got less money if they would have opted out of the commission and just taken a flat fee,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Still, it can feel risky for some creators to agree to a deal that relies on their ability to move product, and some turn down the offers. Comba said hybrid models average around a 50% success rate when pitched to creators, which she said was due to fears of giving up a fixed income or relying too heavily on algorithms.<\/p>\n
That fear isn\u2019t exactly unfounded. While the amount of affiliate content was up last month, engagement was down 34% and views were down 38%, Traackr found. TikTok, it seems, was the exception, with 12 times higher share and save rates than Instagram. ShopMy saw 19% of tagged holiday posts on TikTok driving 72% of total engagement.<\/p>\n
Anders Bill, co-founder and CPO of affiliate marketing platform Superfiliate, said that the brands that he saw perform best this Black Friday and Cyber Monday were those that combined \u201cTier 1\u201d influencers who were paid upfront with lower-level affiliate creators and paid media.<\/p>\n
Across the board, Vasquez, Karwowski, Comba, and Bill agreed that inking long-term, baseline deals can help brands build audience rapport while alleviating creators\u2019 fears around not having a steady income.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur brands that were the most successful over the holiday,\u201d Comba said, \u201cunderstood the longevity available to [them] in an influencer affiliate partnership.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Marketing Brew informs marketing pros of the latest on brand strategy, social media, and ad tech via our weekday newsletter, virtual events, marketing conferences, and digital guides.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Mae Karwowski, founder and CEO of the influencer marketing agency Obviously, said that the company has seeded more products this year than in recent years, sometimes with affiliate links, as part of an effort to source potential long-term partners and diversify its payment structures.<\/p>\n
\u201cOverall, it\u2019s not like, \u2018Oh, this is what we always do. We always do one upfront payment, and we\u2019re done,\u2019\u201d Karwowski said. \u201cNow it\u2019s like, \u2018Let\u2019s experiment with some different ways of working and different compensation models.\u201d<\/p>\n
While only about a quarter of Obviously\u2019s clients are using affiliate codes and links, Karwowski said she\u2019s seeing growth in the space as more brands blend e-commerce and performance marketing with creator marketing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m seeing a lot of interest in making sure affiliate is a part of the overall influencer marketing mix,\u201d she said. \u201cA lot of my conversations for 2026 are like, \u2018How are we doing this in addition to everything else?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n