Gone are the days when brands could rely solely on paid media to reach their growth ambitions. As budgets come under increasing scrutiny, marketers are navigating a landscape shaped by media inflation, inefficient platform spend, and intensified competition for attention. With global ad spend projected to surpass $1 trillion in 2025, relying on a larger budget is no longer a sustainable strategy.
The challenge today is not just growth but also efficient, accountable scaling. The rise of AI has also shifted the consumer’s role from “researcher” to “requester”, where brands appearing in AI’s initial recommendations become part of the decision-making process. This fragments the digital environment and makes it harder for brands to drive measurable impact through traditional channels alone.
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Affiliate Marketing as a strategic growth engine
While affiliate marketing began as a transactional relationship between brands and traditional affiliates such as cashback platforms and coupon sites, it has since evolved to include other performance-based partner types such as influencers, content publishers, and even customer advocates. Recent insights drawn from 1,500 marketers across eight markets show that 74% of brands have increased their investment in affiliate marketing due to the rising costs of other marketing channels. More notably, 71% consider it more cost-effective than other channels, while 66% report stronger return on ad spend (ROAS).
What this reflects is not merely a reallocation of budget, but a broader shift in mindset. Rather than treating affiliate marketing as a standalone performance tactic, leading brands are building diversified partnership ecosystems, where each partner plays a distinct role across the entire customer journey, from discovery to conversion and later, advocacy.
Increasingly, these ecosystems are supported by AI-powered automation and data-driven optimisation, with 97% of brands leveraging AI to scale and enhance performance. The results are tangible: 74% of brands now generate between 11% and 30% of their total revenue from affiliate marketing alone. This underscores a critical shift: growth is no longer about expanding channels, but about orchestrating partnerships that deliver measurable, incremental value.
Southeast Asia’s creator affiliate boom
In Southeast Asia, the evolution of affiliate marketing is particularly evident. The same study found that in Singapore, 60% of brands are now allocating at least 25% of their affiliate budgets to influencers. Those who are combining the creative storytelling power of influencers with measurable outcomes (i.e., driving sales) are seeing the best ROI.
This momentum is echoed in broader regional research, which shows that influencer marketing now drives 20% of online sales in Southeast Asia and is projected to reach $125 billion by 2027. Yet beyond the scale of this growth, the true power of partnership-led commerce in Southeast Asia lies in trust.
The research further highlights a growing preference for authenticity in how audiences engage with creators. Today’s content creators are building thriving businesses and cultivating loyal communities that actively engage with their content beyond a single post.
As a result, creators are able to move beyond awareness and meaningfully shape purchase decisions, with 80% of purchases reportedly influenced by creator recommendations, which are seen as trusted advice rather than traditional brand messaging.
More brands are now recognising this shift and viewing creators as long-term partners rather than short-term promoters. This has created a fundamental evolution in payment structures, forcing brands and creators to move beyond static one-off fees to dynamic hybrid models. By blending flat fees along with performance-based commissions, brands can ensure that the creators they collaborate with not only drive initial discovery but also bottom-line results, effectively closing the marketing loop.
By leveraging commerce partnership marketing platforms such as impact.com, brands are able to measure creator impact across the entire customer funnel, benchmark their performance against other partners, and continuously optimise partnerships based on data-driven insights. This transforms creator collaborations from one-off brand activities into scalable and accountable growth channels.
The future of affiliate marketing
As marketing budgets face continued pressure and consumer journeys grow increasingly fragmented, the brands that outperform will be those that rethink growth beyond traditional media models. Affiliate marketing is no longer a peripheral channel, but a strategic growth engine powered by orchestrated partnerships, measurable performance, and authentic influence.
In this region, the rise of partnership-led commerce reflects a structural shift in how brands drive performance. Those that embrace integrated ecosystems through uniting traditional affiliates, creators, content publishers and customer advocates will be best positioned to convert trust into measurable impact and sustained revenue growth.
The article titled “Why 2026 will be the year Southeast Asia brands look beyond paid, traditional media to partnership-led growth” was authored by Adam Furness, Managing Director (APJ), impact.com
About the author
A seasoned business operations and development executive, Adam Furness has logged 16 years of experience in the APAC market and has a true passion for technology-based startups.
Prior to joining impact.com, Adam spent four years at RhythmOne (formerly RadiumOne) where his most recent role was Managing Director, Asia Pacific. He’s also held senior leadership roles in sales, strategy, cross-platform, and business development at Southern Cross Austereo, Macquarie Radio Network, and MI9 (formerly ninemsn). Adam is based in the company’s Sydney office.