How to run an affiliate marketing product comparison

What to take away

An affiliate marketing product comparison is a scored, documented shortlist of platforms or networks measured against the same weighted criteria before budget is committed.

How do you set criteria before you compare products?

Start from the programme's commercial job, not the feature list. Long-tail publisher recruitment rewards discovery and commission flexibility. Margin protection rewards fraud controls and de-duplication.

Write six to ten criteria and weight them. Illustrative weightings for an English retailer: integration effort 25 per cent, reporting depth 20 per cent, commercial model 20 per cent, support 15 per cent, compliance 20 per cent.

Whichever categories you score, the same affiliate-specific terms belong in the criteria: how commission is structured (revenue share, CPA or tenancy), how long the attribution or cookie window runs, how de-duplication and cross-device sales are handled, when publishers are paid, and the notice period for changing commission rates. Ask for these in writing, because they move margin faster than any feature.

Put the same questions to every shortlisted vendor — a network such as Awin or Tradedoubler, a tracking tool such as Affise or Voluum, or a managed service running the programme for you.

Run the exercise with the people who will live with the choice: paid search, CRM, finance and whoever owns the product feed. A comparison built inside a single team tends to over-weight the criterion that team owns.

Keep the criteria stable once demos begin. If something new is added, re-score every candidate rather than only the vendor who raised it.

Weightings need sign-off from the budget owner, or the comparison gets challenged on price alone. Our guide to affiliate marketing reviews and comparison methods explains how to document that sign-off, so the audit trail survives a change of marketing lead.

The Chartered Institute of Marketing runs strategy and planning training courses covering objective setting and option appraisal, which helps teams new to vendor assessment.

Which product categories should sit in the comparison?

Group candidates into three buckets and score them separately, because a network, a tracking platform and a managed service are not substitutes. On the network side, UK advertisers most commonly weigh Awin, CJ Affiliate, Rakuten Advertising, Tradedoubler and Webgains against each other.

Tracking and attribution is its own bucket. Partnership platforms that sell tracking directly, such as Impact and Partnerize, compete there with dedicated tracking tools such as Affise, Voluum and Trackonomics. A managed service — an agency or an outsourced programme team — is the third bucket, and it should be scored on the same criteria as the platforms it would run.

Grocery and price-led promotions need their own criterion. Publishers often display prices pulled from product feeds, so ask each candidate to show how feed errors are caught and corrected. The Competition and Markets Authority expects price marking to be accurate, as set out in the price marking compliance poster for grocery stores, and local authority trading standards enforce the price marking rules.

Ask each candidate to state what it does not do. Gaps matter more than feature lists, because a tracking platform without publisher supply still needs a network, and a network that resells tracking may CAP the reporting you can see.

Where does data protection fit in the scoring?

Any platform that profiles users, builds segments or automates bidding needs a data protection question in the comparison: how do consent signals flow from your site to the platform and on to publishers?

Consent and profiling in affiliate tracking are governed by the UK GDPR and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, and the Information Commissioner's Office has published guidance on artificial intelligence and data protection covering lawful bases, transparency and automated decision-making. Ask whether a candidate accepts consent signals passed through IAB Europe's Transparency & Consent Framework, because that is how consent usually travels from your site to the platform and on to publishers. Score each vendor on how clearly it answers those points in writing.

Keep the answers in a single document rather than scattered email threads. Retention periods, sub-processors and the lawful basis for profiling belong together, so a reviewer can find them later.

Give compliance a pass or fail gate as well as a score, because a platform that fails it cannot win on price. Put the same written questions on consent and reporting to every candidate; our affiliate marketing providers in England page looks at how vendors answer them.

How should you score and present the result?

Score each criterion from one to five, multiply by the weighting, and total. Keep the arithmetic visible so a reviewer can trace any number back to its source.

Build the scorecard in a shared spreadsheet — Google Sheets or Excel both work — with one row per criterion and one column per candidate. Keep an evidence column beside every score, so a reviewer can trace a four or a five back to the demo screen, sandbox test or written vendor answer that justified it.

Attach evidence to every score above four. A demo screenshot, a sandbox test or a written vendor answer counts. A claim made verbally on a call does not.

Set a minimum score for any criterion you treat as essential. A high total that fails one of those is not a win.

Present a short recommendation with three parts: the winning option, the runner-up as fallback, and the conditions that would change the decision. That last part makes the comparison reusable next year.

Common questions

How many products should a comparison include?

Three to five is workable. Fewer than three gives no real choice, and more than five dilutes the scoring until differences stop being meaningful.

Should price be a criterion or a gate?

Treat an unaffordable platform as a gate and score price within the affordable range. Mixing the two lets a cheap but unsuitable tool win on arithmetic alone.

Who should sign off the comparison?

The budget owner, plus whoever handles data protection or finance if the platform touches personal data or margin. Get signatures before negotiation starts.

How often should the comparison be refreshed?

Annually, or sooner if commission structures, tracking rules or your channel mix change materially. Diarise it rather than waiting for a renewal notice.