What The First 6 Months of 2025 Have Taught Us About European Affiliate Marketing

As the founder of one of Eastern Europe's leading affiliate marketing platforms, I've had a front-row seat to how performance marketing has evolved across different markets. The first half of 2025 delivered actionable insights into European affiliate marketing, and paints a fascinating picture of how affiliate and influencer marketing strategies differ - and converge - between emerging markets like Romania and mature ones like the UK.

The Great Performance Marketing Shift

Let me start with a reality check: traditional advertising is hemorrhaging effectiveness. While TV ad recall rates have plummeted to single digits in many demographics, our platform data shows affiliate marketing consistently delivering results for around 33.8% of affiliates, with an overall average conversion rate of 3.4%.

With paid advertising costs skyrocketing, these numbers highlight why performance-based partnerships have become essential for sustainable growth.

But here's what's really interesting - the gap between Eastern and Western European performance marketing sophistication is closing faster than anyone predicted. Romanian brands that once focused purely on price-driven affiliate partnerships are now investing heavily in content-driven influencer collaborations, while UK brands are discovering the untapped potential of micro-influencers in smaller European markets.

What's Actually Working

Top performers tell a fascinating story: bookstores, pharmacies, fashion retailers, and cosmetics retailers dominate the leaderboard. This isn't random - it reflects deeper consumer behavior trends.

Bookstores leading might surprise marketers, but makes perfect sense considering affiliate marketing's trust factor. Books represent considered purchases where consumers actively seek recommendations. The affiliate channel becomes a natural word-of-mouth extension.

Pharmacies occupying a top-ten spot reveals another crucial trend: health products benefit enormously from credibility transfer in affiliate partnerships. When trusted health bloggers or cashback platforms recommend pharmacies, conversion rates jump significantly versus traditional advertising.

The Affiliate Evolution

The landscape has consolidated around two dominant types: PPC/CSS agencies and cashback/coupon sites. The split is roughly 60-40, representing a mature market where performance-driven professionals have squeezed out casual participants.

PPC agencies dominate because they've mastered paid traffic arbitrage - understanding keyword economics, audience segmentation, and conversion optimisation at granular levels. They've built systems scaling across multiple verticals simultaneously.

Cashback sites succeed by tapping into fundamental consumer psychology shifts. In inflationary environments, consumers aren't just seeking products, they're optimising every purchase for maximum value. These platforms have become essential customer journey infrastructure.

The Platform Integration Trend

This brings me to what I consider the next frontier: integrating with major cashback and banking platforms. We've facilitated partnerships between hundreds of brands and platforms like Revolut, Curve, and various national banking apps, and the results have been eye-opening.

Traditional affiliate marketing operates on a simple premise: drive traffic, track conversions, pay commissions. But when you integrate with banking and cashback platforms, you're tapping into a different psychology entirely. Consumers aren't just making purchases - they're optimising their financial behavior.

Brands integrated with major cashback platforms see a 35% increase in repeat purchasing. Why? Because cashback users are inherently deal-seekers, but they're also repeat purchasers. They're not just hunting for one-off bargains - they're building habits around maximum value.

Practical Implementation: What Actually Works

After managing thousands of these partnerships, here's what separates successful campaigns from mediocre ones:

Start with Data Integration: Before launching any affiliate or influencer campaign, ensure your tracking infrastructure can handle cross-platform attribution. We've seen brands lose significant portions of their performance data simply because they couldn't track users moving between influencer content, cashback apps, and final purchase environments.

Tier Your Partnerships: Not all affiliates or influencers are created equal, and neither are cashback platforms. Tier your partnerships based on customer quality, not just volume. A smaller cashback app with highly engaged users often outperforms a massive platform with passive participants.

Creative Flexibility: Give your partners room to breathe. The most successful influencer campaigns in our network are those where brands provide guidelines, not scripts. Similarly, cashback platforms perform better when they can integrate offers naturally into their user experience rather than forcing prominent placements.

Looking Forward

The data is clear: Affiliate marketing isn't just surviving the current economic environment, it's thriving. But only for those approaching it with sophistication and long-term thinking today's market demands.

Consumers want seamless, value-driven experiences that span multiple touchpoints. They want to discover products through trusted influencers, purchase through optimised affiliate paths, and earn rewards through their preferred financial platforms.

The future belongs to brands understanding performance marketing as ecosystem building rather than channel management. The convergence of affiliate marketing, influencer partnerships, and financial platform integration represents the future of performance marketing. Brands that master this trifecta will dominate the next decade of digital commerce.

The winners won't be the brands with the biggest marketing budgets—they'll be the ones with the most sophisticated partnership strategies and the infrastructure to support them.

Dorin Boerescu is the founder of 2Performant, an affiliate marketing platform operating across Eastern Europe.

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