Affiliate marketing: a strategic guide to 9 publisher levers

The success of an affiliation program depends on a detailed understanding and strategic activation of the various partners at your disposal. It’s essential to diversify your network of publishers, as each type, or “lever”, responds to distinct objectives and addresses specific audiences at different stages of the buying journey. Mastering the nuances of each lever is the key to building a high-performance, balanced and resilient acquisition strategy. This is the core of our expertise in affiliate publisher management.

This guide has been designed to give you a clear, expert overview of the main affiliation levers. We detail the role, objectives, prerequisites and best practices of each type of publisher, so that you can manage your program with precision and maximize your return on investment.

Media sites and content commerce: combining branding and performance

The content commerce refers to the strategy whereby premium media sites integrate tracked affiliate links within their editorial content (articles, tests) to monetize their audience while providing brand endorsement.

Media sites play an increasingly crucial role in modern affiliate marketing strategies. By transforming their editorial content into a high-performance, high-quality sales channel, they offer advertisers a unique opportunity to reach engaged audiences in a context of trust.

Leverage definition

Content commerce involves integrating tracked links directly into high-quality editorial content, such as feature articles, product tests or shopping selections. This approach is particularly well received by audiences, who see it as a time-saving service rather than intrusive advertising.

Strategic objectives

Activating media sites serves two complementary purposes:

• Brand Content: disseminate key brand messages (products, values, commercial offers) through dedicated articles written by professional journalists. This approach capitalizes on the reputation and credibility of major media to reach qualified targets.
• Content amplification: use the power of media platforms to amplify the reach of your own content on social networks. This maximizes the impact of your creations and amortizes production costs by reaching a wider audience.

Prerequisites for success

To generate tangible results with this lever, two elements are essential:

1. Content quality: this is essential. Articles must be well researched, credible and engaging to capture attention and encourage clicks.
2. Search engine optimization (SEO): good positioning on search engines is essential to ensure long-term content visibility and attract qualified traffic.

Effinity’s mission

Effinity’ s expertise in content commerce is based on our proprietary “Content Commerce” reporting technology, designed to precisely measure the transactional value of each editorial publication.

Effinity helps advertisers structure and optimize their content commerce campaigns. Our mission is to precisely define the purpose of each campaign and set up detailed performance tracking for each publication. This is what we do, for example, with Le Parisien or Humanoïd.

Best practices

The key to success lies in the creation of high-quality content, supported by a solid SEO strategy. Having explored how to reach a broad audience through content, let’s now look at how to target more specific communities through affinity publishers.

Affinity publishers and blogs: target committed niche audiences

Affinity publishers are content creators or blogs specializing in a niche theme (DIY, beauty, tech) that prescribe products to a committed community through authentic, expert recommendations.

Their thematic specialization gives them significant credibility and influence in their communities.

Leverage definition

Affinity publishers are content creators specializing in a specific theme (DIY, beauty, etc.) or targeting a specific type of audience (men, seniors, digital mums, etc.). There are two main categories:

• Theme portals: these sites deal with a single subject in a global way, and are particularly effective for product placement with a qualified audience.
• Performance blogs: these publishers take a more personal approach, sharing their product discoveries and tips with a loyal community in search of inspiration.

Strategic objectives

The main advantage of this lever is its ability to effectively relay merchants’ offers and sales operations. These players bring targeted, high-quality visibility directly to an audience that is intentional and receptive to recommendations.

Prerequisites for success

Successful collaboration with affinity publishers relies on personalized animation. Regular, direct contact is essential to build trust, boost engagement and optimize performance.

Effinity’s mission

To identify the best niches, Effinity deploys a predictive recruitment strategy combining traffic data analysis (via SimilarWeb), sourcing with artificial intelligence and rigorous human qualification of partners.

Effinity provides advertisers with the tools and expertise they need to build a dynamic, high-performance affinity network:

• Targeted recruitment: our AI-based recruitment tool identifies high-potential affiliates, especially those who are already well referenced on strategic keywords for your business.
• Identifying potential: thanks to the integration of SimilarWeb data, we analyze affiliate site traffic and propose lists of “lookalikes” sites to enrich and refine the recruitment of new partners.
• Dedicated tools: we provide publishers with tools to boost efficiency, such as our Ad-On browser extension, which enables them to retrieve tracking links with a single click.

Best practices

The fundamental practice for this lever is to personally solicit and animate publishers. Personalized, proactive follow-up is the best way to maximize engagement and guarantee optimum visibility for your offers.

While affinity publishers excel in niche targeting, the display lever offers a complementary approach focused on mass communication.

Performance-based display: mass visibility and retargeting

Performance-based affiliate display consists in distributing visual advertising formats (banners, skins) on a network of partner sites, with a remuneration model triggered solely by conversion (CPA) and not by display.

It’s a powerful lever for any mass communications strategy. It can significantly increase traffic to a site and raise the visibility of a brand or commercial offer to a large audience.

Leverage definition

Display consists of targeting Internet users via visual advertising formats (banners, expand, native, video) broadcast on a network of partner sites. There are three main targeting approaches:

• Contextual display: ads are displayed on pages whose content is relevant to the offer.
• Display targeting: ads target specific audience profiles, based on demographic or behavioral criteria (for example, lookalike audiences).
• Display retargeting: ads are shown to users who have already visited your site or viewed specific products.

Strategic objectives

The main advantage of affiliate display is that you can benefit from mass visibility at low cost. The pay-for-performance (CPA) model means that multiple displays of your banners are free, and you only pay when a conversion is generated.

Prerequisites for success

Before launching a display campaign, two steps are essential to guarantee its effectiveness:

1. Define the distribution environment: it’s crucial to choose a distribution framework (a network of sites) that’s perfectly suited to your business sector and marketing targets.
2. Script the approach: a successful campaign needs to be planned. The user journey needs to be scripted to optimize conversion, and checkpoints need to be set up so that the campaign can be adjusted progressively.

Effinity’s mission

As a trusted third party, Effinity secures your display investments through a strict “Labeling” process that audits inventories and systematically eliminates questionable traffic sources. To find out more, read our article on programmatic display from our partner antvoice.

Best practices

The fundamental good practice follows directly from the prerequisites: define a precise distribution framework and script the campaign in advance. This rigorous planning is the best guarantee of relevance and effectiveness.

From the mass visibility offered by display, let’s move on to the power of targeted prescription with the lever of influence.

Influence in affiliation: social recommendation and measurable ROI

Affiliate influence is an acquisition lever where content creators on social networks distribute tracked links or promotional codes to recommend a brand, enabling remuneration based on actual performance (clicks or sales).

Integrating influence into an affiliate program is a strategic approach that combines the power of personal recommendation by content creators with the rigor and measurability of performance marketing.

Leverage definition

Influencer affiliation allows influencers to distribute tracking links in their content (posts, stories, videos, etc.). This method offers merchants complete traceability of performance (clicks, sales) and the possibility of remunerating these partners on the basis of the results generated. Hybrid remuneration schemes, combining a fixed portion (for content creation) and a variable portion (based on performance), are very common in this area.

Strategic objectives

There are two major benefits to using influencers in affiliation:

• Gain notoriety: influencers enable us to broadcast messages to a large, but above all targeted and qualified, audience who trust their recommendations.
• Creating engagement: they excel at creating interaction. Their publications generate numerous likes, comments and private messages, creating an authentic dialogue around the brand and its products.

Prerequisites for success

For a partnership of influence to be successful, three conditions must be met:

1. Determine objectives and brief: it’s essential to set clear tracking indicators beforehand, and to provide the influencer with a complete brief (presentation of the offer, tracking links, products to be promoted).
2. Have an animation budget: most influencers charge fixed fees for content creation or product donations. It is therefore necessary to set aside a dedicated budget.
3. Offer dedicated codes: for social networks that don’t allow the integration of clickable links (like Instagram Stories for some accounts), it’s recommended to provide unique, trackable promotional codes.

Effinity’s mission

Effinity’ s methodology structures influencer marketing by transforming social recommendation into a measurable acquisition channel, thanks to end-to-end management, from creative brief to ROI reporting.

Effinity manages the entire influencer campaign process. Our teams contact the relevant profiles, then prepare a comprehensive brief in collaboration with the brand, detailing its history, values, key messages, as well as mandatory mentions and hashtags. At the end of each campaign, we draw up a detailed report to identify the best-performing influencers for future collaborations.

Best practices

You don’t need a large budget to get started. An initial test can be carried out with a controlled budget to assess the potential of the lever. For example, a first campaign can be launched with 3 influencers for an overall budget of around €4,000.

The influence lever creates a strong bond with a community. The Reward lever, which we’ll now look at, offers another way of uniting consumers around shared values.

Reward (loyalty & solidarity): commitment through ethics and rewards

The reward lever groups together affiliate programs that encourage purchases by transforming the commission generated into a reward for the end user, whether in the form of personal loyalty points or donations to charities.

It represents an innovative and committed facet of affiliation. It combines commercial performance with ethical and responsible values, offering a unique opportunity to positively reinforce your brand image.

Leverage definition

The Reward principle is based on players offering their members the opportunity to create kitty-pools with their online purchases. These kitty-pools can then be used to finance personal projects, donated to charities or converted into loyalty points. There are two main families:

• Reward loyalty: focused on rewarding consumer loyalty.
• Solidarity Reward: focused on supporting social or environmental causes.

Strategic objectives

The Reward lever offers a dual strategic advantage:

• Commitment to social or environmental causes: activating these partners brings a tangible ethical dimension to your affiliate program, and associates your brand with positive values of solidarity and responsibility.
• Boost conversions and optimize ROI: by promoting your offers to engaged communities, this lever enables you to arouse the interest of specific consumers and effectively stimulate sales.

Prerequisites for success

To succeed with this lever, the prerequisites are similar to those for cashback:

1. Clearly define the terms of the partnership.
2. Ensure that products are eligible for the scheme.
3. Multiply the players to reach different communities and causes.

Effinity’s mission

Effinity secures the reward model thanks to its advanced tracking algorithms, guaranteeing reliable attribution of sales to support brands’ ethical and solidarity-based commitments without any technical faults.

Effinity’s mission is to enhance the value of cashback, even for advertisers who have traditionally shied away from it, by demonstrating its unique added value. We help brands to :

• Enhance their image with a strong social dimension.
• Identify exactly which members are driving sales with our advanced tracking tools.
• Monitor campaigns on a daily basis to ensure that they run smoothly.

Best practices

Effinity provides concrete solutions to advertisers’ common objections to :

• adapt remuneration levels by product category to preserve your profitability
• set up specific and attractive remuneration schemes for the acquisition of new customers.

Reward uses incentives to create commitment. Its more direct and transactional cousin, cashback, uses a similar approach to trigger the act of purchase.

Cashback: a transactional conversion lever at the end of the purchase process

Cashback is a transactional incentive mechanism whereby a specialist publisher pays the consumer directly (into a virtual kitty or bank account) a percentage of the amount of an order placed with a merchant partner.

It’s a major conversion lever and one of the most popular mechanics with consumers. By offering a direct financial incentive, it acts very effectively at the end of the purchasing process to remove the last hesitations and trigger the decision.

Leverage definition

The principle of cashback is simple: specialist publishers (“cashbackeurs”) reimburse their members a percentage of the amount of their purchases from partner merchants. This is the case, for example, with Widilo, an Effinity partner we interviewed about theimpact of cashback on acquisition and loyalty.
There is also a leveraged version, bank cashback, which works on the same principle, but uses consumers’ bank details to award rewards. You can read our article dedicated to bank cashback and its benefits, or a case study on the implementation of bank cashback by Pandora.

Strategic objectives

The main and almost unique objective of cashback is to boost conversions and optimize return on investment (ROI). It is a purely transactional lever, designed to increase sales volume.

Prerequisites for success

To set up an effective partnership with cashback players, there are three points to consider:

1. Partnership terms: define clear repayment terms and an attractive rate to attract community interest.
2. Product eligibility: to maximize sales opportunities, we recommend launching cashback on the entire product catalog.
3. Partner selection: each player has its own community. It is therefore strategic to multiply the number of partners to cover a wider audience spectrum.

Effinity’s mission

More than just a technical connection, Effinity maximizes the potential of cashback through proactive sales promotion (rate increases, special operations) and the exploration of innovative channels such as in-store cashback.

Effinity manages and optimizes this leverage to ensure that your program remains attractive:

• Control and reporting: we check daily that your offers have been properly integrated, and send you a detailed monthly report on the promotions carried out by our partners.
• Animating the network: we energize the program with regular “cashback boosts” to stimulate consumer interest.
• Innovation: we invite you to explore innovative technologies such as “physical cashback“, which extends in-store offers.

Best practices

Some key partners have specific integration conditions that you need to be aware of. For example, Shopping Rakuten requires a minimum remuneration of 3% or 3€. For iGraal, the conditions depend on your site’s traffic:

• If your site generates more than 50,000 monthly visits, iGraal offers you a cashback boost of +2% during the first month to boost your launch.
• If your site generates fewer than 50,000 visits per month, a minimum fixed cost (FF) budget of €500 is required.

Cashback is one form of financial incentive. Coupon sites, another highly conversion-oriented lever, are another.

Promo codes and vouchers: boosting average basket size and conversion

Coupon code sites are affiliation platforms that aggregate, verify and distribute merchants’ active discount offers to trigger immediate conversion of bargain-seeking web users.

They are a key factor in affiliate marketing performance. They meet a strong expectation on the part of consumers, many of whom are looking for a discount before finalizing a purchase. Correctly managed, this lever can significantly increase the average basket and conversion rate.

Leverage definition

This lever brings together all the sites specializing in thesearch, verification and distribution of discount codes and good deals to a large audience of informed consumers.

Strategic objectives

The main objective is to stimulate sales and increase the shopping basket. A Forrester study showed that 44% of users spend more than expected when using a promotional code. Coupons can also be a way of testing your offer in a new international market.

Prerequisites for success

Each couponing player has its own integration criteria. It’s important to know what they are, so you can select the most appropriate partners. For example:

• Cuponation analyzes brand awareness, budget and program conditions.
• Ma Reduc is based on promotional offers and user search volume.
• Afiliza requires a minimum monthly traffic of 30,000 visits.
• Savoo prioritizes brands according to search volume and commission level.

Effinity’s mission

To reconcile sales volume and margin protection, Effinity integrates an exclusive “code blacklisting” feature that automatically adjusts the affiliate commission according to the validity of the coupon used.

Effinity provides you with the tools and the framework for a controlled and qualitative management of this leverage:

• Control tools: our platform integrates a “code blacklisting ” function to adapt remuneration according to the coupons used, as well as code-based reporting to precisely analyze the performance of each offer.
• Network quality: we offer you the possibility of working only with partners who have signed a charter of good conduct. These trusted partners are identified by a specific pictogram in our Performance Center.

Best practices

• Adding a minimum purchase amount to use the code and adjusting the commission paid to the publisher are two effective variables for preserving or even improving your margin.
• Well-mastered communication and a well-executed operation (for example, limited in time or reserved for a specific audience) ensure a very positive image and boost customer satisfaction.

Couponers are often involved at the end of the process. Comparators, on the other hand, play a key role just before, in the final consideration phase.

Price comparison and CSS (Google Shopping): capturing purchase intent

Comparison Shopping Services ( CSS ) are Google-certified services that leverage e-tailers’ product feeds to display their offers in Google Shopping results via a cost-per-performance (CPA) model.

These are essential tools for capturing highly-qualified traffic, made up of Internet users in the final stages of making a purchasing decision.
Read our full article on the impact ofcombining CSS and affiliation for shopping campaigns.

Leverage definition

CSS (Comparison Shopping Services) are price comparison services certified by Google. They display e-tailers’ product feeds on their own sites as well as in Google Shopping ad slots. This lever works exclusively on a CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) basis, and brings incremental traffic and sales, i.e. not already covered by the merchant’s own advertising campaigns.

Strategic objectives

The aim is to generate qualified traffic and additional sales by positioning your products directly in front of consumers who actively compare offers before buying.

Prerequisites for success

The fundamental technical prerequisite is a high-quality product flow. This flow must be perfectly structured and regularly updated. Essential elements include :

• Clear, fast-loading product page URLs.
• High-quality images.
• Stock information updated in real time.
• Complete product attributes (SKU, Name, Description, Link, Price, Brand, GTIN, etc.).

Effinity’s mission

The “Feed Center” developed by Effinity acts as a control tower for your product feeds, optimizing their quality in real time to ensure profitable distribution on the Google Shopping (CSS) ecosystem.

Effinity plays a dual role in maximizing the effectiveness of this lever:

• Technical facilitation: our Feed Center is a powerful tool that facilitates the management and distribution of your feeds. It ensures optimum update frequency, automatically corrects errors, manages the content to be broadcast and optimizes performance via deactivation rules.
• Partnership optimization: we ensure the profitability of your campaigns by closely monitoring the eCPC (effective cost per click) of each CSS partner, guaranteeing that your investments are always profitable.

Read the testimonials of our partners Ciao! from Kelkoo Group and leDénicheur, who help consumers make informed purchasing decisions.

Best practices

It’s essential to clarify one crucial point: there’s no risk of cannibalization or increased CPCs when working with multiple CSS partners. Google’s technology is designed to prevent ads from the same merchant from competing with each other. A product will only appear once, and the cost per click will always be based on the bid of the first losing competitor. What’s more, CSS partners are not allowed to bid on your brand name.

To further extend the reach of a program, the “Networks” lever offers a scaling solution.

Networks (sub-networks): scaling up your program

Networks (or sub-networks) act as technical intermediaries, enabling an advertiser to distribute its campaigns to a large number of “long tail” publishers via a single point of entry, thus facilitating program scaling.

Leverage definition

In the context of affiliation, a network is a partner that has its own network of affiliates, and may hold exclusivities with some of them. By activating a network, you distribute your program to its partner publishers.

Strategic objectives

The main objective is tomassively extend the reach of its affiliate program by accessing publishers who are not directly registered on the main platform.

Prerequisites for success

A healthy and successful collaboration with a Network rests on two pillars:

1. Partner transparency: the network must be able to provide as much information as possible about its traffic sources (publisher URLs, referrers, etc.).
2. Complementary players: as each network has its own exclusivities, it is advisable not to limit yourself to a single partner to maximize coverage.

Effinity’s mission

Faced with the potential opacity of sub-networks, Effinity imposes a standard of total transparency via its “Tracking & Reporting Center”, making it possible to visualize the real performance of each publisher within the network.

• Effinity label: this label guarantees that we only work with players who comply with a very strict code of conduct, particularly with regard to transparency on their sub-networks.
• Tracking & Reporting Center: our platform gives you full access to all performance information, including detailed listings of publishers within the network and their associated KPIs.

Best practices

We have put in place clear solutions to control potential risks:

• Against lack of transparency: only work with partners who have obtained the Effinity label.
• Against compensation bypass: offer networks slightly lower compensation than direct affiliates to encourage them to join your main program.
• Key rule: Effinity does not authorize the presence of “couponer” type publishers within partner networks, in order to maintain total control over this sensitive lever.

Conclusion

At the end of this guide, it’s clear that there is no single perfect lever, but rather a combination of levers to be orchestrated according to your strategy, your products and your marketing objectives. The strength of an affiliate program lies in its diversity and adaptability.

Here is a comparative summary of the different publishers to help you choose the right partner for your objectives:

Comparatif des leviers d'affiliation par Effinity : objectifs et rémunération

Building a high-performance, resilient program requires a diversified, data-driven approach, driven by in-depth knowledge of each publisher type. We encourage you to consider all these levers as pieces of a strategic puzzle, where each partner plays a precise role in contributing to the overall success of your digital acquisition.