OpenAI has just taken a step that could change the way people shop forever: customers can now buy products directly within ChatGPT. What was once a tool for research, recommendations, and discovery has officially become a point of purchase.
On its own, this sounds like an incremental feature update. In reality, it’s a seismic shift that redefines how consumers interact with brands, how they make buying decisions, and ultimately how affiliate marketing operates.
The challenge: The reality of no-click in an AI-driven shopping environment makes traditional attribution models obsolete. Brands must rethink how they measure performance, moving beyond last-click and investing in relationships that reward affiliates for their true influence and contribution, not just the transaction point.
The opportunity: To embrace affiliates not as peripheral players but as strategic partners who hold the keys to discoverability, trust, and conversion in this new landscape.
This could be the most significant opportunity for affiliate marketing in a decade. The question isn’t whether AI commerce is coming – it’s how fast you’ll adapt to make sure your brand is front and centre when it does.
Let’s be clear: in the world of LLM-driven shopping, affiliates aren’t at risk of being cut out – they’re at risk of becoming the single most important player in the funnel.
Here’s why:
Affiliate marketing has always been about trust and relevance. In this new landscape, those qualities move from being a differentiator to being the foundation of commerce itself.
Brands cannot sit this one out. If ChatGPT becomes the “front door” to commerce, discoverability will no longer be about whether your ad budget outpaces a competitor’s – it will be about whether your product surfaces when the consumer asks a question.
That means:
Put simply: if you’re not already leaning into affiliate partnerships as a strategic channel, you’re behind.
Of course, this shift won’t come without growing pains:
Bottom line: These challenges don’t reduce the need for affiliates, they make them more critical. Without credible third-party content, AI shopping risks collapsing under its own weight.
Affiliate marketing has gone through many evolutions – from the days of cashback and couponing to the rise of influencer partnerships and content publishers. Each shift has tested the industry and forced it to adapt.
But the rise of AI-powered commerce is different. This isn’t just a new channel or a new tactic. It’s a wholesale change in the way consumers discover, consider, and buy.
If ChatGPT and other LLMs become the default starting point for shopping, then affiliates aren’t just one piece of the puzzle – they’re the backbone of the entire system. Brands that don’t recognize this risk being invisible at the very moment of consumer intent.
And it’s already happening fast. Just hours after OpenAI’s announcement, PayPal unveiled new capabilities in PayPal Honey designed to bridge the gap between AI-powered product discovery and the actual moment of purchase. By surfacing real-time pricing, merchant comparisons, and exclusive offers directly into AI-driven conversations, PayPal is proving that the age of AI commerce isn’t a future concept – it’s already here.
For affiliate marketing, the implications are enormous.
Don’t get left behind. How are you going to get discovered in the LLM era of commerce?