This "2025 New Paradigm White Paper on Overseas Brand Affiliate Marketing Growth" is released by BlueOcean Interactive, mainly exploring the current status, challenges, future opportunities, and related solutions for Chinese overseas brands in affiliate marketing.
1. The growing importance of affiliate marketing
- Continuous industry growth: Driven by technological innovation, the rise of e-commerce, and brand strategy transformation, the global affiliate marketing platform market sales are expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 15% from 2024 - 2031.
- Becoming a key driver of brand revenue: More and more brands rely on affiliate marketing to drive sales growth, with some affiliate marketing projects generating considerable income and offering a high return on investment.
- A core part of customer acquisition strategy: Over half of marketers rank affiliate marketing as one of the top three customer acquisition channels, as it covers all stages of the consumer journey and enjoys high consumer trust.
- High value of content partners: Content partners help consumers learn about products through diverse formats and are considered the most valuable in affiliate marketing. Other types include paid search, cashback & loyalty, influencers, etc.
2. Challenges facing industry development
- Traffic and order fraud: Traffic fraud and order fraud threaten merchant revenue and reputation, including bot traffic, click fraud, fake orders, stolen credit cards, etc., causing financial losses and brand reputation damage.
- Tracking and attribution difficulties: Google Analytics has shifted from Universal Analytics to Google Analytics 4, whose data-driven attribution model leads to a decline in affiliate channel revenue attribution data, creating gaps with affiliate platform backend data and affecting merchants' evaluation of affiliate channel value.
- Impact of Google algorithm policy changes: Google algorithm updates affect affiliate traffic and monetization, causing greater traffic volatility, higher content credibility requirements, and increased search dependency risks. Affiliates and advertisers need to take respective countermeasures.
3. Future development opportunities
- Expanding into the Japanese and Korean markets: The e-commerce markets in Japan and Korea are growing significantly, with consumer shopping habits shifting online, close integration of social media and influencer marketing, data-driven decision-making, and the rise of mobile commerce providing ample space for affiliate marketing. A leading auto parts brand successfully expanded into the Japanese market through affiliate marketing.
- New layout for Amazon off-site promotion: Amazon affiliate marketing is large-scale and influential. The rise of the Levanta platform, innovative collaborations between CJ and PartnerBoost, and new features launched by Refersion offer new opportunities for merchants, who can seize them by optimizing product selection, building partnerships, and strengthening data analysis.
- Strengthening brand power: Affiliate marketing drives brand awareness, consideration, and conversion. By increasing budget allocation, brands can achieve synergistic development of brand power and sales power. A leading 3C brand enhanced its brand influence and sales through affiliate marketing.
- BlueOcean Interactive empowers brand development: BlueOcean Interactive provides one-stop affiliate marketing solutions, including leading service systems, technology, and resource advantages, helping brands build affiliate marketing operation systems and achieve long-term growth.
4. Affiliate marketing benchmark indicators: The white paper also includes affiliate benchmarks covering 21 indicators such as click-through rate, conversion rate, and average order value, providing reference for brands to evaluate affiliate marketing effectiveness.
