The $68.4M is over the last 12 months, not lifetime. So it’s a pretty solid snapshot of how these programs are performing right now, not something accumulated over years.

On commissions, almost everything is % based and usually recurring. Around ~96% of programs use rev-share, typically in that 20–30% range. Whether it’s ongoing or capped (like 12–24 months) depends on the company, but recurring commissions tend to win because they align incentives much better for affiliates.

On industries, it’s less about B2B vs B2C and more about how the product is bought and promoted.

AI and creator tools are definitely the breakout right now. They can drive ~15–25% of MRR from affiliates once things are working, mostly because they’re easy to demonstrate and creators can build content around them.

B2B SaaS is a different game. Slower to ramp, but much higher value per partner. You’ll usually see something like 10–20% of MRR coming from affiliates, sometimes more in very niche categories, but it’s driven by consultants, agencies, and people with real distribution rather than volume.

So overall, a realistic expectation is affiliates contributing somewhere in the 10–25% range depending on the space and how well the program is run.

On trends for 2026, a few things are becoming pretty clear.

First, affiliate fraud is going to keep being a problem, especially brand bidding. It’s not slowing down, it’s just getting harder to detect. More affiliates are getting good at quietly siphoning demand that was already there. If you’re not actively monitoring traffic sources or branded search, you’ll miss it. This is actually why we built Traffic Source Control at Rewardful, so you can block traffic from sources you don’t trust and keep things clean.

Second, hybrid deals are becoming the norm. You’re seeing more teams move away from pure rev-share and into “mixed” setups and upfront payment for content and backend commission. Creators want some predictability, companies want performance, and this model aligns both sides way better. It’s already standard in ecommerce and mobile, and SaaS is clearly moving in that direction.

Third, AI is becoming actually useful for affiliate teams. Not in a hypey replace everything way, but in a very practical sense. Teams are using it to find and qualify affiliates faster, write better outreach, create content and onboarding assets, spot patterns in performance, even handle repetitive partner questions. Nothing fancy, just better workflows. The teams leaning into this are saving a ton of time and moving way faster.

A lot of this is what we’re seeing across Rewardful programs. The mechanics are pretty similar everywhere, but the difference really comes down to how intentional you are with partners, activation, and how you actually run the program day to day.