I finished reading Winterberry’s report “ Delivering Performance in the Era of AI”. It is full of interesting statistics and data points. However, it reflects something I keep seeing across the industry: marketers too focused on trying to adjust an evolving world to what they know, instead of adjusting what they know to match the evolving world.
The stat being pushed in the media is: AI is disrupting marketing and 71% of panelists reported that their organizations have placed greater emphasis on performance-oriented marketing over the past few years. This report, aimed at performance marketers, frames this as success. I’d frame it as a stress response.
As AI disrupts sales cycles, we see budgets shift towards performance. Tensions are on the rise at the C level and a lot of companies are pushing to show measurable growth for the quarter. So, what is their strategy? The push for more bottom funnel, easy-to-show-results growth.
Instead of trying to squeeze more juice out of shrinking channels,the wise move is to follow the audience. So why aren’t marketers doing that? Tracking. AI generates fewer clicks, and no clicks means no data for teams built on last-click or multi-touch attribution. When a consumer asks ChatGPT which mortgage lender to go with and gets a direct answer, they don’t click on your site. They don’t hit an affiliate link. None of this shows up in a performance dashboard. So from a measurement standpoint, it looks like nothing happened.
The study states “Marketers appear to be responding to AI-driven disruption in search, social media and content discovery by placing greater value on channels that deliver tangible, credible forms of engagement.” The implication: “AI is not tangible or credible.” However, instead of trying to make it tangible, or in other words, trackable, the industry is retreating to what it already knows.
A brand came to us recently that had been surpassed in traffic by a direct competitor for the first time in over a decade. Their competitor had concentrated entirely on bottom funnel affiliate marketing. However, this brand was winning on the channels that define how consumers will discover and choose products for the next decade: search (paid and organic), and generative AI.
My recommendation was to stay the course. Don’t pivot away from the search presence to look for short term gains. On the contrary, double down on affiliates with strong presence on SERPs and LLMs.The brand might lose in traffic comparison this quarter, but they’ll own the channels that matter next year.
What the brand is building is the foundation of what affiliate marketing is becoming. Here’s what the performance dashboard isn’t showing: According to our own study of over 100k+ citations, 1 in 5 citations come from publishers that brands can directly influence through affiliate placements or organic social content. Content affiliates are losing traffic, but they are gaining relevance.
Discounting this opportunity because it’s hard to track or hard to trust is a costly mistake, particularly for affiliate and SEO teams.
The biggest risk isn’t that AI changes customer behavior. It’s that our measurement systems haven’t caught up, and marketers mistake that blind spot for irrelevance.
