Last week, a group of the country’s leading affiliate agencies gathered at the WPP office for a day of networking and content with the Agency Advisory Board (AAB).
Organised by Jess Smith and Kirsten Jayne Black, the AAB is a collective voice for agencies across affiliate, performance, and partner marketing.
Thursday’s sessions brought fresh insights and sharp takes on everything from Honey to affiliate storytelling to incrementality to Google and beyond.
APMA says traffic quality needs to be cleaned up
Kevin Edwards kicked off, presenting findings from recent APMA reports.
“We have to improve the reputation of our channel,” he said. While the headline stats were positive – 9% YoY increase, 16:1 ROI – the quality of affiliate traffic remains an obstacle for brands.
Over 50% of UK brands do not consider affiliate traffic quality to be ‘generally good’ or ‘very high’ – a figure Edwards called ‘concerning.’
“We need to shift that,” he said, before unveiling the APMA’s compliance and standards plans for 2026.
These focus areas include: standards and guidance, compliance framework, codes of conduct, transparency (including subnetworks), independent audits, and engagement with regulators and the ICO.
Edwards has also assembled an AI task force, led by Awin’s James Bentley and impact.com’s Alex Springer.
This year, the APMA will commit to ensuring that the “affiliate and partner marketing channel remains visible and fairly valued” in AI-driven environments.
The next launch will be the State of the Nation report, which comes out on April 30th.
