DEFINITION of 'Affiliate Marketing' Affiliate marketing is an advertising model where a company pays compensation to third party publishers to generate traffic or leads to the company’s products and services. The third party publishers are referred to as affiliates and the commission fee incentivizes them to find ways to promote the company. Affiliate marketing has increased in prominence with the Internet age. Amazon popularized the practice by creating an affiliate marketing program where websites and bloggers put links to the Amazon page for a product being reviewed or discussed in order to receive advertising fees when a purchase is made. In this sense, affiliate marketing is essentially a pay for performance marketing program where the act of selling a consumer on a product is outsourced across a potentially vast network. BREAKING DOWN 'Affiliate Marketing' Affiliate marketing predates the Internet, but it is the world of digital marketing, analytics,