Working with affiliate networks is one of the most effective ways to increase brand awareness for your products and services, and up your conversions. Not only is affiliate marketing becoming a prime advertising concept, but marketers are taking advantage of the quick wins that affiliate networks guarantee.
Top Affiliate Networks
With the complex nature of affiliate marketing, and the various platforms and networks that can be found within the market, you want to partner with only the top affiliate marketing networks out there to grow your business quickly.
Several advertisers and merchants are jumping on the affiliate marketing wagon, so you may be wanting to find more opportunities in this field too.
This guide will help you understand the economics of affiliate networks, what makes them better than standalone platforms, and which networks you should work with to maximize your ROI.
What is an affiliate network?
An affiliate network is an established platform that connects publishers, aka the affiliate marketers or advertisers, with brands. These publishers can be any kind of content creator, from bloggers to social media influencers who are willing to promote your product and services on their channels.
The affiliate network will usually offer reporting features and a database of members, serving as the ‘middleman’, so that both parties offering programs can connect and find the most suitable publisher or brand to work with.
In essence, an affiliate network helps web and app publishers to monetize their inventory by providing a variety of options, as well as all of the necessary tools for running campaigns, such as tracking links and creatives.
For advertisers, affiliate network services and benefits include payment processing, ad tracking technology, ad campaign reporting tools, as well as access to a vast database of publishers.
Some publishers, known as ‘affiliates’ or ‘media buyers’ will create or buy traffic using advertising specifically to promote campaigns from a network, rather than just to monetize existing inventory.
There are also two characteristics that describe the concept of affiliate marketing that translate into a network, namely the types of offers and commissions. The most popular types are game offers, casino offers, app offers, dating offers and nutra offers. The most in-demand commission types are mobile CPA and CPI.
How do affiliate platforms work?
Think of affiliate platforms as a marketplace for affiliates and marketers who sign up to the site, agreeing to its terms and conditions. Brands can then partner with suitable advertisers, and publishers can choose sites or brands they want to promote.
Once the two parties agree to collaborate, the publisher receives a custom link that monitors how many users follow this link or make a purchase from their site or advert. They are then paid a commission for each click that results in a sale.
Affiliate networks allow publishers to find affiliate programs and have an overview of affiliate commission payouts, while facilitating the process of partnering with influencers and affiliates for brands.
Now, you may be asking yourself what the difference is between affiliate networks and programs, as these terms are being mentioned in similar contexts. An affiliate program is usually a single brand, with which creators can get discovered on an affiliate network. The affiliate network is therefore a database made up of several programs to choose from and join.
By signing up to an affiliate platform, publishers can access available products and begin making sales right the next minute. However, they are usually only in direct contact with the network and not with the sellers, giving networks the core purpose of streamlining and monitoring the process of the collaboration.
Why should you join an affiliate marketing network?
Before signing up to an affiliate network, you may want to know more about why affiliate marketing can be of advantage and important to the growth of your business. So, let’s talk numbers.
Recent trends show that affiliate marketing spending is expected to reach $8.2 billion by 2022, which would be up from 5.4 billion that was recorded in 2017. Moreover, 81% of advertisers and 84% of publishers have turned to affiliate marketing, driving the industry towards this evolving strategy, only to increase even further in the upcoming years.
With advertisers using affiliate networks as a serious marketing tool, over 80% of them are investing more than 10% of their budgets in affiliate platforms. And when looking into different industries, retail had the highest share of affiliate revenue of 44% in 2021, with telecommunication and media accounting for 25% in global affiliate income.
Top Affiliate Networks
What does this mean for marketers and influencers alike? More and better opportunities to secure sticky income online. But let’s dive into more concrete benefits of joining an affiliate network.
What are the benefits of working with an affiliate network?
Apart from several industries now turning to affiliate marketing and spending rates increasing rapidly by the year, there are many key benefits within the concept that can help grow your business.
The main advantage of joining an affiliate network is that it is already an established platform, so you don’t have to go on a hunt for influencers and get them to promote your mobile app. When you sign up to a network, you can locate the most suitable advertisers in the database, making it easier to collaborate with them.
Networks also only admit legitimate affiliates that need to pass certain criteria to join the platform. Therefore, you are less likely to partner with inactive publishers or those with low conversion rates.
In order to increase the chances of partnering with a suitable affiliate network, another benefit is that these platforms usually already have an existing reputation, meaning that you can research and read reviews surrounding the companies. This will make sure you find a network that aligns with the objectives of your business, ensuring long term success and steady revenue.
A final and important benefit of joining an affiliate network is that the platform will handle payments for you as well as provide insight into traffic and performance data through its many analytics and reporting tools. So, you can track your progress and adjust your campaign accordingly.
Top affiliate networks to partner with
When choosing the best affiliate network for your business, make sure to see the commission rates the platforms offer are at least around 5% of each sale. Moreover, the platform you choose to sign up to should connect you with affiliates that target the same audience as you do, or at least operate in the same field as your products and services.
Notice the approval requirements as well, as many credible networks have criteria for you to join their network, such as having an established website or a certain amount of traffic. So, make sure to carefully read through their terms and conditions before you sign up.
Keeping these points in mind, choosing to work with an affiliate network can be very beneficial to your mobile app, if you are looking to reach a wider audience and increase visibility for your services.
This list of the top affiliate networks focuses on the companies that significantly work with mobile and app related traffic and offers, be it as specialist mobile affiliate networks or as a general affiliate platform, with a sea of mobile-friendly affiliate programs.
The list of top affiliate networks
| Founded | Employees | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | 201-500 |
Add Value Media is a fast growing Online Marketing Agency dedicated to maximizing the success of advertisers and publishers. We are specialized in Desktop, Mobile, Native and Video Advertising. We offers Affiliates and Media Buyers access to the latest campaigns, direct and exclusive advertisers, dedicated account managers and timely payment terms with competitive payouts.
We Add Value to the performance marketing, let’s talk!
Key features:
- Payments and ontime
- High converting offers
- High payouts
- Direct & Exclusive offers
- Dedicated Account Manager
- CPI/ CPA/CPC/CPM offers
| Founded | Employees | Revenues | Social | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 | 900+ | $5.5B | 6k+ |
| Founded | Employees | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 51-100 |
AdsEmpire is a reliable Affiliate network with exclusive dating offers and in-house Smartlink solution with global GEO coverage focusing on Tier1 countries. Some significant benefits and advanced features which are a must-try for the affiliates: Huge number of Dating Exclusive offers CPL (SOI, DOI), PPS, and RevShare payout models Highest payouts on the market and great EPC Experienced team of affiliate managers with deep expertise in dating CPA offers and Smartlink, possibility to run both at the same time Advanced Smartlink Technology to monetize 100% of your traffiс Fast LP optimization Worldwide availability (over 50 countries are supported!) with a focus on Tier1 and Europe Weekly/Monthly payouts from $250 without hold The most comfortable payment methods: Wire, Paypal, Paxum, Bitcoin, Paysera, Genome Referral program 5% In 2021 AdsEmpire was awarded as Best Marketing Solution Provider Of The Year by AGS 2021 and shortlisted as Affiliate network of the year at IPMA.
Learn more about AdsEmpireAffiliateFuture
Provides advertisers with an effective marketing solution through its affiliate network and tools.
Affilight is a mobile affiliate network from the Northern Europe allowing webmasters, app developers and media-buyers to monetize their mobile traffic by the market’s highest standards.
Wide range of CPA, CPC, CPM offers via popup, iframe, direct link etc. is available. We provide RTB as well.
According to our practice you’ll be able to add up to 20% revenue comparing to the current website earnings in average!
Key features:
- Perfect fit for mobile apps and games
- A perfect solution for websites with a high % of mobile traffic
- Flexible pricing models
- Global coverage
- Referral program
- Unrivaled support
- Carefully selected offers
| Employees | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10-50 |
Amazon Associates is an affiliate program run by Amazon Inc. It offers affiliates the biggest choice of goods to sell and earn up to 10% commissions with. Affiliates registration process doesn’t require a third-party approval and allows affiliates to register quickly and choose from millions of goods that Amazon offers and start selling. To start selling any particular product Amazon affiliate platform generates a tracking link for that specific page, that can even be shortened for convenience.
Key features:
- top brand support
- flexible commissions structure
- Influencer Page system to let social media influencers generate high revenue
AWIN is an affiliate marketing network with a mission to connect advertisers and affiliates of all sizes. With AWIN publishers get a chance to promote products from the top brands and leverage their established brand awareness and trust. Part of the Axel Springer and United Internet Groups, Awin is a global affiliate network.
Key Features:
- operates from 15 offices worldwide
- has 1,000 employees
- partners with 100,000 contributing publishers
- works with 13,000 advertisers
- operates in 180 countries around the globe
- covers the retail, telecommunications, travel and finance verticals
- generates £12 billion in revenue for its advertisers and £540 million for its publishers in the last financial year.
| Founded | Employees | Traffic | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | 51-200 | https://partners.blackbull.com/en/ |
BlackBull Partners is the referral program of the award-winning, FMA-regulated New Zealand multi-asset broker, BlackBull Markets. We offer a range of over 26,000 tradable assets to retail investors, across multiple account types and the industry-leading trading platforms MT4, MT5, TradingView, and our own platforms BlackBull Trade and BlackBull Social.
Learn more about Blackbull Markets
Brokerbabe.com is a Swiss Performance network that covers 194 GEOs with 3G and WIFI solutions. We are specialized in Dating, VOD and Liveentertainment.
Key features:
- We accept all kinds of mobile traffic: Vyber, Facebook, Incent, Mailing
- Dedicated account manager from the first click
- Own products, exclusive offers and the best local advertisers around the globe
- 1 link converts the world
- 5% Referral program
| Founded | Employees | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 101-200 |
| Founded | Employees | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 500-1001 |
Chilli Partners is an international affiliate program with exclusive HeySpin and DuxCasino casino offers.
The affiliate program works on CPA and RevShare with many international GEOs, popular among gambling users; accepts all traffic sources, including Facebook; provides applications for the traffic, weekly payments for TOP partners; provides turnover and cards for replenishing an advertising account on Facebook, if the partner needs them.
Key features
- Exclusive offers directly from the advertiser
- Weekly payments: Special terms and payments once per week for trusted partners
- Ready-made funnels: localized in-house funnels, tested creatives and landing pages, custom apps
- No negative carryover
- 24/7 Support
- No middlemen
- Powerful and intuitive in-depth analytics
- Expertise and guidance
- Flexible Commission plans: up to 50% lifetime Revenue share or a set CPA rate
ClickDealer
The only way to succeed in affiliate marketing is to partner with the best!
| Founded | Employees | Social | Traffic | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 51-200 | 10k+ | 500k+ |
ClickDealer, a GDM Group company, provides performance marketing solutions for publishers, advertisers, and agencies worldwide. The company offers a comprehensive range of advertising services to fit any specific set of KPIs for its clients.
The company has been in the performance marketing business since 2012, amassing partnerships with over 2000 advertisers across 12 main verticals which include lucrative directions like Dating, E-commerce & Retail, Health & Beauty, Mobile Utilities and more.
Key features:
- Mobile platforms: Android, OS
- Campaign types: CPA, CPC, CPL, CPS
- Offer Types: Dating, Ecommerce, Games, Software, Sweepstakes, Travel
