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Top affiliate marketing trends 2026
Affiliate marketing is a constantly evolving industry, so much so that many advertisers simply can’t keep up with the new trends. The year 2025 was evidence of that: policy updates and instability of traffic sources have significantly complicated the processes of planning and scaling campaigns.
To better understand the changes and where they will lead the industry, we’ve compiled key insights and prepared a practical breakdown of which ad formats, approaches, and GEOs will dictate your earnings in 2026.
Moreover, we recorded an interview with Mary and Kate, RollerAds’ account managers, where they shared their observations on the current state of the market, effective strategies, and promising avenues for scaling campaigns.
The full video you can check out on RollerAds’ YouTube channel.
Push traffic: Still alive and well
Until recently, many considered Push Notifications an unstable traffic source due to numerous policy changes and restrictions in 2024 and 2025. These events led to bans, loss of subscriptions, and revenue declines for some advertisers and publishers.
But the market quickly adapted, and today, with the right strategy, Push once again shows stable results. Our solution was Landing Page Service, which reduces the risks associated with platforms’ policies and protects your subscribers' database.
Basically, it allows advertisers to:
Direct Click: One of the main profit drivers
Direct Click became one of the fastest-growing ad formats on RollerAds. Despite its relatively recent introduction, it is already in second place by volume, right behind the Push ad format.
Direct Click works not just with interactive elements on the page (e.g., buttons on websites with some sort of content), but is also used with:
By this point, hundreds of Direct Click campaigns are launched daily, collectively generating more than 8 million impressions.
Verticals that perform best with Direct Click
Direct Click works especially well with the following verticals:
Top traffic channels for Direct Click
Survey traffic
As of this writing, traffic from completed surveys is considered one of the “warm” sources. It consists of the audience that is already engaged and waits for the next step.
This traffic converts better in the following regions:
Domain traffic
Domain traffic consists of users who intended to visit a particular website but instead arrived at a parked, expired, or mistyped domain. Rather than hitting an empty page, the users land on the advertiser’s offer. Such a scenario makes domain traffic more similar to search traffic in terms of quality, because the audience shows a clear intent to complete an action.
Thanks to that, the domain redirect traffic often drives more engagement and conversions than a more “traditional” Banner ad format.
Direct Click is also effective with verticals that have clear and straightforward actions for users, such as:
Chinese traffic
As one of the fastest-growing mobile markets in the world, China deserves special attention.
China is a completely mobile-first country, where ad formats targeted at high-intent users work especially well, including Direct Click.
The volume of Chinese traffic in Direct Click campaigns can reach more than 2 million daily impressions, while the cost per click starts at $0.005, making it extremely attractive for testing and scaling.
Long-term trends: Where the industry goes
Additional monetization tools
Currently, increasing attention is being paid to tools for boosting revenue from existing traffic.
Among these is the push notification subscription tag, which enables the additional monetization of an audience. Test results indicate that the push tag helps increase campaign profits by an average of 10–40%.
The industry becomes smarter, not harder
To conclude this article, the affiliate marketing industry is becoming more technologically advanced and user behavior-oriented in 2026.
If you want to have a successful career in this business, then you need to:
2026 promises to be a big year for those who can quickly test, adapt, and scale well-performing funnels. Join RollerAds today and start earning more!
To better understand the changes and where they will lead the industry, we’ve compiled key insights and prepared a practical breakdown of which ad formats, approaches, and GEOs will dictate your earnings in 2026.
Moreover, we recorded an interview with Mary and Kate, RollerAds’ account managers, where they shared their observations on the current state of the market, effective strategies, and promising avenues for scaling campaigns.
The full video you can check out on RollerAds’ YouTube channel.
Push traffic: Still alive and well
Until recently, many considered Push Notifications an unstable traffic source due to numerous policy changes and restrictions in 2024 and 2025. These events led to bans, loss of subscriptions, and revenue declines for some advertisers and publishers.
But the market quickly adapted, and today, with the right strategy, Push once again shows stable results. Our solution was Landing Page Service, which reduces the risks associated with platforms’ policies and protects your subscribers' database.
Basically, it allows advertisers to:
- Minimize the impact of policy updates
- Retain the stable income
- Focus on scaling, rather than technical issues
Direct Click: One of the main profit drivers
Direct Click became one of the fastest-growing ad formats on RollerAds. Despite its relatively recent introduction, it is already in second place by volume, right behind the Push ad format.
Direct Click works not just with interactive elements on the page (e.g., buttons on websites with some sort of content), but is also used with:
- Mistyped domains
- Parked/expired domains
- Traffic from survey pages
By this point, hundreds of Direct Click campaigns are launched daily, collectively generating more than 8 million impressions.
Verticals that perform best with Direct Click
Direct Click works especially well with the following verticals:
- Mobile subscriptions
- Sweepstakes
- Financial offers
- Browser extensions
- Ecommerce
- Entertainment
- VPN & Software
Top traffic channels for Direct Click
Survey traffic
As of this writing, traffic from completed surveys is considered one of the “warm” sources. It consists of the audience that is already engaged and waits for the next step.
This traffic converts better in the following regions:
- Africa
- LATAM
- Southeast Asia
Domain traffic
Domain traffic consists of users who intended to visit a particular website but instead arrived at a parked, expired, or mistyped domain. Rather than hitting an empty page, the users land on the advertiser’s offer. Such a scenario makes domain traffic more similar to search traffic in terms of quality, because the audience shows a clear intent to complete an action.
Thanks to that, the domain redirect traffic often drives more engagement and conversions than a more “traditional” Banner ad format.
Direct Click is also effective with verticals that have clear and straightforward actions for users, such as:
- Software
- Utilities
- Ecommerce
- Search Feed
Chinese traffic
As one of the fastest-growing mobile markets in the world, China deserves special attention.
China is a completely mobile-first country, where ad formats targeted at high-intent users work especially well, including Direct Click.
The volume of Chinese traffic in Direct Click campaigns can reach more than 2 million daily impressions, while the cost per click starts at $0.005, making it extremely attractive for testing and scaling.
Long-term trends: Where the industry goes
- Mobile traffic remains the head of everything and continues to dominate the market. Campaigns optimized for mobile devices usually show higher CTR and conversion rates.
- Context and segmentation are becoming critical. The importance of precise targeting, including segmentation by website category (IAB), is growing. The more precise the match between the audience and the offer, the higher the ROI.
- Social media traffic via built-in browsers is also becoming increasingly popular. More and more users visit landing pages through social media apps’ (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, and so on) browsers. This creates a completely new audience that engages with the content “within the ecosystem”.
Additional monetization tools
Currently, increasing attention is being paid to tools for boosting revenue from existing traffic.
Among these is the push notification subscription tag, which enables the additional monetization of an audience. Test results indicate that the push tag helps increase campaign profits by an average of 10–40%.
The industry becomes smarter, not harder
To conclude this article, the affiliate marketing industry is becoming more technologically advanced and user behavior-oriented in 2026.
If you want to have a successful career in this business, then you need to:
- Work with warm traffic
- Use flexible ad formats, like Direct Click
- Test new GEOs and approaches
- Actively optimize the funnel
2026 promises to be a big year for those who can quickly test, adapt, and scale well-performing funnels. Join RollerAds today and start earning more!