[eMarketer] The pandemic gave way to a boom for affiliate marketing

The surge in consumer time and money spent online because of the pandemic led to a significant boom in the affiliate marketing ecosystem. Much of the increase in ecommerce activity was facilitated by affiliates across a range of channels—from established formats such as coupons and loyalty programs to emerging ones like influencers and BNPL providers.

Publicly available data does not map precisely to the start of the pandemic, but according to research by The Performance Marketing Association (PMA) and PwC, US affiliate marketing grew from $6.2 billion in 2018 to $9.1 billion in 2021.

While industry observers do not regularly measure or forecast the affiliate marketing ecosystem, these figures were comfortably ahead of projections made in 2016, when the Rakuten Marketing and Forrester Consulting study forecast that affiliate marketing would grow to $6.82 billion by 2020. That same report estimated that spend would reach $5.94 billion in 2018.

But the report could not have foreseen the significant uptick in ecommerce activity spurred by the pandemic. US retail ecommerce sales rose 84.8% between 2018 and 2021, to $960.44 billion, according to our estimates.

According to eMarketer, while affiliate marketing practitioners have been focused on content sites and their growing roles over the past couple years, brands spent 2020 and 2021 pouring resources into channels they knew to be effective.

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