By advertiser type · Brands
Affiliate Programs
for Brands
The First Question Is Not What It Costs — It Is Who Gets to Say It
In this channel other people describe your product in their own words, to audiences that trust them. That is the whole value and the whole risk. So the terms that decide whether it works for a brand are not the rate — they are who is allowed to run it, what they may say, and what happens to a conversion that broke the rules.
- Publishers screened first
- Brand bidding refused by default
- Codes signed off one by one
- Who you reach
- Publishers screened before they see your campaign
- What you approve
- Sources, placements and codes, in advance
- What you pay on
- CPA, CPL, CPS or RevShare — the event you confirm
- How it runs
- A managed account team, not a self-serve console
Start here
Three ways a brand can run this channel
Before comparing rates, decide which of these you are actually choosing between. They differ on one axis that matters more than cost: who picks the publisher, who writes the rules, and who catches it when a rule is broken.
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Route one
In-house, on your own stack
You own everything, including the work.
A plugin on your own site and a spreadsheet of partners. You keep the relationship and set every rule — and you also own recruitment, screening, fraud checks, disputes and every payment. It reaches the publishers you already know, and almost nobody else.
Fits a short list of partners you personally manage.
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Route two
An open creator marketplace
Reach first, control second.
Anyone who clears the platform's own bar can pick up your product and start posting. That is what open means, and it is the trade: the channel decides who represents you and what the format allows them to say, not you. Brands usually find that out after a placement they would not have approved.
Fits products where volume matters more than voice.
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Route three
A managed network
Approval before exposure.
Publishers are reviewed before they can see your campaign, access is granted against the traffic sources they declared, and the placements are ones you approved in advance. Slower to open than a marketplace, and the control is the entire point of the difference.
Fits a brand whose name is part of what it sells.
One thing to be plain about before you read further: there is no self-serve advertiser console here. Campaigns are fully managed by an account team, which is the network's own stated reason that traffic quality and compliance stay enforceable rather than advisory — see affiliate.love for brands. If what you are shopping for is a dashboard to scale from, this is not that; if it is a channel where the rules are applied by somebody other than you, it is.
Publisher fit
Who would be representing you
Five kinds of publisher run campaigns on this network. What a brand owner needs is not a description of each — it is the specific lever that keeps each one inside your rules, which is the third column.
| Publisher type | What it brings your brand | The lever that governs it |
|---|---|---|
| Content and review sites | Search-led pages that keep working long after a campaign flight ends, and a recommendation in somebody else's voice. | The creative rules — including the wording a claim has to match — set on your brief. |
| Paid traffic buyers | Volume you can turn up and down, on sources you name in advance. | The traffic list source by source, plus the network-wide refusal to bid on your brand terms. |
| Cashback and coupon sites | Presence at the moment of checkout, where a buyer is already deciding. | Code-by-code sign-off, and whether incentive traffic is accepted on the campaign at all. |
| Email and community publishers | An audience that opted in, reached on a schedule rather than by an algorithm. | Permission-based lists only, and email named as an accepted source on the brief. |
| Social and creator placements | Formats and faces you cannot produce in-house, in front of an audience that already trusts them. | The same creative rules apply to a caption, and each channel is approved as a declared source. |
You do not have to take all five. The traffic list on your brief names the sources that may run the campaign, source by source, and anything you do not name is not permitted — which is how a campaign runs on content and email alone if that is what your positioning needs. The full publisher breakdown and the two lever lists are on the advertiser overview, and what every publisher signs up to is on campaign guidelines.
Why the controls are the product
Other people speak in your voice
A brand can buy media without anyone else's words being involved. It cannot do affiliate that way — the recommendation is the mechanism. Five rules exist because of that, and between them they are most of what you are actually buying.
- 01
Other people will speak in your voice
Every placement is a third party describing your product in their own words, to an audience that trusts them more than it trusts your homepage. That is what makes the channel work, and it is the only risk in it that matters. Everything below exists because of that one sentence.
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You approve before they run
Publishers are reviewed before they can see your campaign, and campaign access is granted against the traffic sources they declared. Nothing goes live in front of an audience you never agreed to, which is the difference between distribution and exposure.
- 03
Your name is not an open keyword
Bidding on your brand, your trademarks or misspelled versions of your domain is refused across the network unless you permit it. It is a standing rule rather than something you negotiate publisher by publisher after you notice it.
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Discounting stays a decision
Coupon and deal listings are signed off code by code, and whether incentive traffic is accepted at all is yours to set. A price you did not choose to publish does not get published on your behalf.
- 05
A breach costs a conversion, not an argument
Automated monitoring runs alongside manual audits, and conversions from prohibited sources are rejected before they reach your invoice. After that the escalation is a pause with a notice, then invalidated conversions, then termination.
None of those five is a promise about the wider internet — no network can govern what unrelated sites publish about you. They are rules that apply to the publishers running your campaign, which is the part anyone can actually be held to. What a reviewer checks, and when, is on compliance.
Which brand are you
Two briefs, built differently
The same network, set up two ways. Most brands know which of these they are within a sentence, and it changes which lines on the brief you should spend the meeting on.
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Situation one
Scaling a direct-to-consumer brand
You have something that sells and you want more of it, from places you are not already buying. The levers that matter are the traffic list — so you are not paying twice for a click you already own — the qualifying event your own systems can confirm, and the validation rules that reverse a return before it reaches an invoice.
Settle what reverses a conversion before you settle the rate.
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Situation two
Protecting a premium position
Price integrity is part of the product, and a discount in the wrong place costs more than the sale is worth. The levers that matter are code-by-code sign-off, whether incentive traffic is accepted at all, and the exact wording a claim has to match — all three sit on your brief rather than in a support conversation afterwards.
Coupon placements exist on your campaign only if you sign them off.
If your product decides the answer rather than your positioning, two sibling pages go deeper: e-commerce and retail brands for a basket that can be partly returned and a calendar that drives the year, and SaaS and software brands for a subscription where the model has to follow the billing. Running programs for clients rather than for yourself is agencies and OPMs.
Before the first call
Eight decisions only you can make
Onboarding itself is handled for you. These eight are the inputs it needs, and a campaign moves at the speed of whichever one is still undecided — so they are worth settling before the meeting rather than during it.
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The qualifying event
The one your own systems can confirm and send back. If it cannot be confirmed server-side, it cannot be the event you pay on.
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What reverses it
Returns, cancellations, rejected leads, chargebacks. Writing the rule now is what stops it becoming a dispute in month three.
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The country list
Where you are ready to sell, and any market you are not ready to open yet. A conversion from an unlisted market is rejected rather than repriced.
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The traffic sources
Named source by source. Anything you do not name is not permitted, which makes the list the single most powerful line on your brief.
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Codes and incentives
Whether coupon and deal listings are signed off code by code, and whether incentive traffic is accepted anywhere on the campaign.
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The claim wording
What a publisher may say about the product, in the words you want it said. Misleading creatives are refused network-wide, but only you know your own substantiation.
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Brand terms
Brand bidding is refused by default. Decide whether any publisher is ever allowed an exception, and on which terms exactly.
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The commission model
CPA, CPL, CPS or RevShare — matched to the event you just defined and to what your margin carries, rather than to somebody else's benchmark.
What happens after you have those eight is four steps, and they are published: terms and offer reviewed, the model and conversion event agreed, tracking configured, then the campaign listed to publishers whose declared traffic matches it. That sequence, the model comparison and the partnership form are all on the advertiser overview.
Decide
Ready now, or fix one thing first
Neither column is a verdict on the brand. The second is a list of things that make a performance channel expensive to run, and every one of them is cheaper to solve before a campaign is live than after publishers are sending traffic.
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Ready to open the channel
- You can confirm the conversion server-side and return the click identifier
- You know what reverses it, and can report that back too
- Your margin carries a commission at the order value you actually see
- You can say which markets are open and which are not
- You have wording a publisher may use about the product
- Somebody on your side owns the channel week to week
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Worth fixing first
- The conversion can only be confirmed by hand, or a week later
- Returns and cancellations are not reportable from your systems
- Nobody has decided whether discount codes are allowed at all
- The claim you want made is one you cannot substantiate
- The country list depends on a logistics decision not yet taken
- There is no owner, so every approval will sit in a queue
Questions
What brands ask before they brief a campaign
Including the one this page answers with a plain no — there is no self-serve console, and the reason is the rest of the page.
What does an affiliate program for a brand actually involve here?
Managed distribution. Your campaign is briefed with the commission model, the conversion event, the country list and the traffic rules you set; publishers are screened before they can see it; and you pay on the event you defined once your own systems confirm it. Onboarding, tracking setup and publisher recruitment sit with the account team rather than with you.
How do I get started?
Submit the partnership request form on the advertisers page. Business development reviews your offer terms, agrees the commission model and the conversion event, configures tracking, and then lists the campaign to the publishers whose declared traffic matches it.
Is there a self-serve dashboard I can log into and scale from?
No, and that is a deliberate design rather than a missing feature. Campaigns are fully managed by the account management team, which is what keeps traffic quality and compliance enforceable rather than advisory. The reporting you need comes through your account manager; the levers you care about live on the brief, not in a console.
Which commission models are supported?
CPA, CPL, CPS and RevShare, matched to your business model and to the conversion event your own systems can confirm. The four are compared side by side, with what each one has to send back, on the advertisers page.
Can I keep my brand out of coupon and discount placements?
On your campaign, yes. Coupon and deal listings are signed off code by code, and whether incentive traffic is accepted at all is a line you set on the brief. What no network can promise is what unrelated sites publish about you elsewhere on the web — that is not something anyone controls on your behalf.
Can publishers bid on my brand name in paid search?
Bidding on your brand, trademarks or misspelled domains is refused across the network unless you explicitly permit it. It applies to every publisher on every campaign by default, so it is not something you have to detect and then argue about afterwards.
We had a bad experience with an open creator marketplace. What is different?
Who chooses. On an open marketplace the platform sets the bar and anyone who clears it can start posting about your product. Here publishers are reviewed before they can see the campaign, access is granted against the sources they declared, and placements are ones you approved in advance — with monitoring and manual audits behind that, and non-compliant conversions rejected before they are invoiced.
Does this work for a premium or luxury brand?
The three levers that decide it are all yours to set: whether coupon and deal placements are signed off at all, whether incentive traffic is accepted, and the exact wording a claim has to match. A campaign can run on content and email publishers with discounting switched off entirely — that is a brief decision, not an exception you have to request.
What do you enforce, and what do I decide?
Brand bidding, source-matched approval, the incentive tag, misleading creatives and prohibited traffic are enforced network-wide and do not move per campaign. The traffic list, incentive acceptance, code sign-off, the country list, the creative rules and the qualifying event are yours. Both lists are printed in full on the advertisers page.
How long before a campaign is live?
It depends on the terms and on how quickly tracking can be confirmed on your side, so no honest number belongs on a page. What is fixed is the order: terms agreed, model and event agreed, tracking configured, then listed to matching publishers. The faster half of that is usually the half you control.
Keep reading
- Advertiser overview The parent: verticals, models, the lever lists and the form
- E-commerce & retail brands When the problem is margin: baskets, returns and the calendar
- SaaS & software brands When the product is a subscription and the model has to match it
- Agencies & OPMs Running client programs on this network under your own brief
- affiliate.love for brands Managed distribution, summarised
- Campaign guidelines The accepted sources and the rules every publisher signs up to
Bring the eight decisions, not a budget
Send your offer terms and the conversion event your systems can confirm. Business development agrees the model, configures tracking, and lists the campaign only to publishers whose declared traffic matches your brief.