Sometimes we can overestimate the importance of new technologies and underestimate the changes in behaviour they create. Take AI.
Most of the conversation has centred on the models themselves. Which is better, which is faster, which will replace what. Useful debates, but they miss the bigger shift.
The important question isn't what AI can generate. It's how people will use it.
For the first time since Google emerged, the way people discover products, services and information is changing at an enormous scale. Search is no longer the only gateway.
Increasingly, discovery happens through conversations with AI assistants, recommendations from creators, trusted communities, specialist publishers and algorithms that decide what deserves attention.
That doesn't mean search is dead. Nor does it mean AI replaces marketing.
It means the journey has become far more complex.
Consumers now bounce between a YouTube creator, a Reddit thread, ChatGPT, a comparison site, TikTok Shop, a voucher code site and Google before making a purchase. Sometimes they never click a search result at all. Sometimes they never visit a brand's website.
The path to purchase has become an ecosystem rather than a funnel.
That's forcing brands to rethink some long-held assumptions:
- Visibility is no longer enough. Recommendation matters more.
- Owning attention is becoming less valuable than earning trust.
- And perhaps most importantly, no single channel can deliver growth on its own.
Affiliate marketers will recognise this before most.
For years, partnership marketing has quietly solved problems the wider industry is only now beginning to confront. How do you reward outcomes instead of activity? How do you measure influence across multiple touchpoints? How do you build commercial relationships that benefit everyone in the ecosystem rather than extracting value from one part of it?
Those questions suddenly feel much bigger than affiliate.
Creator marketing is becoming more accountable. Retail media is borrowing performance principles. Publishers are adapting to Answer Engine Optimisation and a world in which LLMs increasingly influence what consumers see. Communities have become commerce channels. AI is changing discovery, but it still depends on trusted people creating trusted content.
Different technologies, different disciplines. The same underlying challenge.
How do brands earn trust, recommendation and commercial outcomes in an increasingly fragmented digital world?
That is why partnerships have become strategically important.
Not because every marketing channel is turning into affiliate. It isn't.
But because every successful growth strategy now depends on an interconnected network of creators, publishers, retailers, technology platforms, agencies, communities and commercial partners. The businesses that understand how those relationships reinforce one another will have a significant advantage over those still managing channels in isolation.
That is the conversation driving PI LIVE Europe 2026.
Across the main conference, we'll explore the commercial, technological and organisational shifts reshaping the partnership economy.
From measurement and incrementality to retail media, publisher innovation, partnership technology, customer acquisition and the changing role of partnerships within modern organisations, the focus is not on predicting the future but on understanding the forces already changing the present.
Alongside the core programme sit two dedicated deep dives.
The AI & Partnerships Summit explores the implications of AI for commerce, from Answer Engine Optimisation and LLM visibility to AI agents, attribution and the changing economics of digital discovery. It is designed for those who want to move beyond headlines and understand what AI means in practice for partnership professionals.
The Influencer & Commerce Summit examines another profound shift, the convergence of creator marketing and performance. As creators become commerce businesses in their own right and brands demand greater commercial accountability, the distinction between affiliate and creator is becoming less useful. This summit explores the new models emerging in their place.
Taken together, these conversations point towards a broader truth.
The future of digital commerce won't be defined by AI alone. Nor by creators. Nor by retail media.
It will be defined by the organisations that are best at connecting them.
That's the new story of partnerships.
And that's the conversation we invite you to join at PI LIVE Europe.
