Amazon Cut Affiliate Commissions Up to 50% for Some Publishers, Leaving Them Reeling

This story has been updated to include a revised statement from Amazon. Amazon has quietly restructured its Associates program over the past several months, slashing commission rates by as much as 50%, eliminating the milestone-based bonuses that rewarded high-performing publishers, and degrading the reporting tools that affiliates relied on to optimize their campaigns, according to seven publishers and partners with direct knowledge of the changes. The changes, which began rolling out in Asia-Pacific markets in late 2025 before landing in the U.S. around March 9, were never publicly announced. Publishers learned of them in individual conversations with their Amazon account managers and have spent the past two months absorbing the impact and weighing how aggressively to pivot to competing platforms. "We value our affiliate partnerships and provide highly competitive commissions—these changes affect a tiny fraction of associates," an Amazon spokesperson shared in a statement. "We continue offering bonuses and incentives as new revenue sources, and like any business, we periodically adjust commissions to meet customers' changing needs." The cuts have been steep. In categories where some publishers previously earned premium commissions as high as 10%, rates have been reset to as low as 4% or 5%, according to a person familiar with the matter who runs a large performance-marketing operation. Milestone-based incentive tiers, under which publishers could earn escalating commission rates by hitting sales thresholds, have been eliminated for most publishers, the person said. Year-over-year performance bonuses, a third revenue stream layered on top of base commissions, have also been gutted for some categories. One deal-site publisher said the company has revised its 2026 Amazon revenue forecast down by 50%. "Amazon halved the affiliate rates across the publisher ecosystem," said Recurrent Ventures chief executive Andrew Perlman. “Between Google's AI overviews collapsing organic traffic at the top of the funnel and Amazon paying less at the bottom, the business of converting organic search into affiliate revenue has become super challenging." The cuts have not been uniform, and the disparity has been one of the more confounding elements for publishers trying to make sense of the changes. Several publishers with longstanding editorial relationships with Amazon appear to have retained more favorable terms, while publishers running paid-media-driven affiliate businesses have absorbed the heaviest cuts. "Amazon leaned into cutting those with paid media," said one source familiar with the changes. "A lot of the really big publishers don't have that big of a paid business." Beyond the rate cuts, Amazon has significantly reduced the granularity of the reporting data it provides to affiliates. FOR Scoops, Sharp Analysis, and Insider Context By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy . You may opt-out anytime by clicking 'unsubscribe' from the newsletter or from your account. The company changed the threshold for tracking-ID-level reporting from one sale to four sales, meaning publishers can no longer see performance data on new campaigns until they have generated at least four conversions. SKU- and ASIN-level reporting has been removed in favor of category-only data, and access to certain premium APIs has been revoked, forcing affiliates back to manual portal pulls. "It used to be that you could tag an article or a paid campaign and know exactly what was sold from it," said one publisher. "Now you can't. That makes anything in the paid-media or lo-fi testing space basically impossible." Several publishers said they had been told that Amazon Associates leadership was operating under a directive to reduce program costs by 20%, with the rate cuts, reporting changes, and layoffs serving as mechanisms for hitting that target. One publisher said the directive was confirmed to them by an Amazon account manager who was subsequently laid off as part of broader cuts to the Associates team. Amazon laid off thousands of employees earlier this year, and multiple publishers said their account managers and senior contacts within the Associates team had been let go, with surviving team members absorbing several times their previous workload. The cuts have been concentrated in product development and client services, two publishers said, and have led to operational consequences including reporting bugs and delays that affiliates had not previously experienced. The changes have also coincided with a broader strategic reorientation at Amazon toward creators and influencers, who are increasingly seen as more incremental to Amazon's commerce ecosystem than traditional affiliate publishers. Some publishers have been exited from the program entirely, according to one source, on the grounds that they were "not strategic for the goals of the program." Publishers, for their part, have begun routing more of their commerce traffic to Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Wayfair, eBay and other retailers. Despite the immediate hardship, many publishers said that the forced diversification could be positive for their business in the long run. "Short-term bad, medium-term excellent," said one publisher. "Amazon forced us to diversify. That was probably overdue."

Ecommerce News

Amazon Cut Affiliate Commissions Up to 50% for Some Publishers, Leaving Them Reeling

Publishers are scrambling to reorient their commerce businesses after the tech giant also gut reporting tools

UNLOCK FULL ACCESS

Mark Stenberg

Media

OpenAI Wants ChatGPT Ads to Become a Permanent Line Item in Agency Media Plans

At AWNY and Jupiter Fest, Future of Content, Agentic Ads, Open Web Anxieties Steal the Show

AI Is Pushing Advertising Back Into the Physical World

How JPMorganChase Tapped Togethxr to Reach Women's Sports Fans Without League Rights

Dear Media and Amanda Hirsch Want Brands To Ditch the Script

Jupiter Festival Lined up Splashy Sponsors but Had a Soft Landing In Its First Year

OpenAI Is Piloting Brand Suitability Controls With DoubleVerify and IAS

TikTok Expands Its Off-Platform Ad Network to US Advertisers

Piers Morgan's Uncensored Launches Paid Tier to Own Its Audience Beyond YouTube