The Affiliate Era: How Creators Became the New Sales Channel

Affiliate marketing used to live in a silo. Discount codes, last-click attribution, and the assumption that affiliate meant "bottom of the funnel."

That's not how it works anymore.

Today's most effective creator programs are built around affiliates from day one. Influencers are driving awareness, consideration, and conversion in the same piece of content, and platforms like TikTok Shop have collapsed the funnel into a single swipe. The brands winning right now have stopped treating affiliate as a separate channel and started treating it as the connective tissue between content and revenue.

In this session, we’ll cover:

• What makes a successful affiliate program in 2026 (commission structures, recruitment, and scale)
• How to measure full-funnel impact when creators are driving awareness, consideration, AND conversion
• The role of TikTok Shop and social commerce in modern affiliate strategy
• How they're blending influencer, affiliate, and paid media into one performance-driven motion
• The metrics they've stopped caring about (and the ones they wish more brands tracked)
• Where affiliate and creator-led commerce are heading next

RSVP to learn more about how you can stucture and scale your influencer affiliate program.  

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