Across content publishers, organic sessions are falling quite significantly.
Research shows that over the past two years, referral traffic from traditional search engines is down 60% for small publishers, 47% for medium-sized publishers and 22% for large publishers.
Back in 2024, hundreds of the affiliate sites I audited had already lost serious traffic to Google's helpful content updates. Now, AI Overviews are adding to the damage.
What made me realise we are facing a new reality was a comment from Roger Lynch, CEO of Condé Nast, who said publishers now need to plan “as if search is zero.”
That is a completely different reality from the SEO playbook of the last two decades, where a portfolio of high-ranking articles acted as a traffic acquisition source.
In 2024, Sparktoro found that 58.5% of Google searches in the US ended without a click to the open web, while Ahrefs data showed that AI Overviews reduced the click-through-rate for position one rankings by 58% in late 2025.
This matters because affiliate marketing economics are still heavily click-based.
AI summaries and chatbots may track impressions and citations internally, but there is still no standardised attribution system for publishers. Google offers nothing meaningful; Bing is one of the few exceptions with its Webmaster tools.
This is a serious issue, and not just for publishers.
Cashback and loyalty publishers still have one advantage: users have to visit their platforms to activate rewards before purchasing. The click survives, and so does affiliate attribution.
Coupon publishers are more exposed because AI systems can easily surface discount codes directly inside the answer itself. Meanwhile, bloggers, reviewers and comparison publishers are squeezed from both sides, with less organic traffic, and more paid spend needed to replace it.
Some publishers are already compensating by requesting fixed placement fees and charging for AI citations, which I understand, because bills need to be paid.
However, that leads to a dangerous cycle. Publishers increase costs; advertisers face higher CPAs; affiliate becomes less efficient compared to other channels (but still very efficient).
We are looking at a redistribution of affiliate revenue and traffic. From publishers to AI companies.
So, what’s the turnaround plan?
There are a few possibilities.
- AI companies sign licensing and scraping deals with publishers (which have already started, but are very hard to scale)
- Publishers move away from CPA and charge fixed media fees (this would basically be the antithesis of affiliate marketing)
- Brands pay directly for AI citation visibility (I do not envy the brands that have to forecast and justify this new ROAS to management)
- Networks integrate AI impression and citation tracking systems (this is only a mere approximation of influence and not very accurate)
Licensing is the cleanest fix. If AI systems use publisher content, the AI platforms should pay them, not push the cost to advertisers. Everything else makes affiliate more expensive and less measurable.
For advertisers, start monitoring how dependent your publisher portfolio is on SEO traffic. There is a high probability that some publishers will not have the same level of organic visibility six months from now.
Publishers, be careful not to overestimate current AI citation metrics. Attribution and monitoring systems are still immature, and brands are cautious about paying for visibility they cannot properly measure.
And networks, you just need to go with the flow.
The question for 2026 and beyond is whether cashback’s current advantage lasts.
Once Google or ChatGPT build affiliate or cashback mechanics into AI answers, cashback publishers may face the same challenge that content publishers do today.
