Welcome to the first edition of my monthly round-up of how AI is changing the affiliate industry, covering the main developments from mid-July to late August.
I have followed advances in AI, both within and beyond the affiliate channel, for around five years. This summer has been packed with events and product announcements, so it truly feels like a great time to digest where we are, and where we are collectively going.
Fundamentally, I believe affiliate technology has three big jobs:
- Helping people run programmes
- Proving what those programmes are worth
- Creating mutual value for brands and publishers
AI is changing all of these.
Agents are becoming increasingly capable of handling everyday work through tools such as Claude Cowork and OpenAI’s Codex. At the same time, AI search is driving more zero-click discovery and disrupting the value exchange that has supported the open web for almost three decades.
These changes can create big opportunities for the affiliate industry. They also make it harder to prove where value was created, and who deserves credit for it.
The good news is that the industry is responding with innovation.
Much has happened, and there is so much more to do!
AI connectors move into the affiliate mainstream
One big announcement that caught my attention was impact.com releasing its new MCP connector in beta.
Wait… don’t go… I promise this is interesting!
MCP stands for Model Context Protocol, which is a complicated name for a fairly simple idea. It lets AI tools such as ChatGPT and Claude Cowork securely connect to other platforms, so you can chat with your data or ask an agent to complete tasks.
