Is Affiliate Marketing Worth It?

In recent years, affiliate marketing has evolved into one of the most promising business strategies for mobile app promotion. But what exactly is affiliate marketing? Does it come with hidden pitfalls? Let’s break it down.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a process in which an advertiser pays affiliates a commission for driving customers or generating specific actions within an app. For instance, a registration, purchase, installation, or other targeted activity.

Is affiliate marketing effective?

Affiliate marketing is a highly efficient and low-risk model when the process is fully understood.

Pros of affiliate marketing

• Delegated traffic acquisition. User acquisition for mobile apps is completely outsourced to partners. This reduces brand’s workload and allows marketers to focus on the product.
• Convenient financial model. Payment is made on a CPA (Cost Per Action) basis, which means only for specific actions. This model allows for tight budget control.
• Transparent analytics. Affiliates use tools like AppsFlyer and Adjust to track conversions.

How Affiliate Marketing Works Step By Step

Affiliate marketing typically involves three parties: the advertiser (brand), the affiliate (intermediary), and the traffic seller. Let’s break down the responsibilities of each party.

Advertiser

The advertiser sets the requirements for partners. For example, a bank looking to promote its loan services via a mobile app defines the target geography, payment terms, KPIs, and budget.

Affiliate (Intermediary)

The intermediary is a specialized agency that acts as a link between the advertiser and traffic sources. The agency’s responsibilities include:

• Selecting reliable partners.
• Purchasing traffic.
• Optimizing campaigns.
• Ensuring quality control and preventing fraud.
• Performing analytics.

Traffic Seller

This category includes:

• Individual media buyers who purchase traffic on Meta, TikTok and sell it on a CPA basis.
• DSP/SSP advertising platforms.
• Click and install marketplaces where ready-made traffic can be bought at a set price.

Why isn’t it always profitable to work directly with traffic sources?

Direct collaboration requires building your own affiliate department: hiring specialists, training them, and continuously searching for partners. This is expensive, time-consuming, and demands in-house expertise. Moreover, much of the valuable knowledge in affiliate marketing comes from experience and personal connections rather than being publicly available.

How to Choose a Niche for Affiliate Marketing?

Selecting the right niche is the first step toward a successful start in affiliate marketing. It’s essential to consider three factors:

• Payouts — how much you can earn per lead.
• Work complexity — how easy or hard it is to buy traffic.
• Your experience and knowledge — the deeper your understanding, the higher the chances of achieving effective results.

Pick a niche where you already have expertise, understand the audience, and know the traffic sources.

Top affiliate niches

• iGaming. A large gray niche that includes sports betting and online casinos. Payouts are high, but the risk is significant. Meta and Google ad accounts can be blocked after ad moderation, so it’s advisable to set up multiple accounts and create dozens of cards to ensure gray-market ads run effectively.
• Finance. A white niche that includes banks, MFOs, loans, and crypto loans. The advantage is minimal risk of account blocks and fraud. The drawback is lower payouts than in gray niches.
• Crypto. This niche includes forex, cryptocurrency investments, and other financial products in the “gray” segment. Payouts are high, but acquiring traffic can be challenging, requiring work with alternative sources.
• E-commerce. This covers marketplaces and online shopping. Payouts are the lowest ($3–4), and traffic is easy to buy, making it ideal for beginners.
• Utilities. This includes VPN services, fitness trackers, apps, and other software products. Competition is high and payouts are low, so careful traffic quality control is necessary.

Affiliate Marketing Trends 2025

To stay ahead and effectively leverage growth opportunities, even minor shifts in the industry need to be monitored. Here are some challenges affiliates can face in 2025.

1. High Competition. Cognitive Market Research estimated the global affiliate marketing market at $18.5 billion in 2024, with a projected CAGR of 8% from 2024 to 2031.
2. Growth of OEM and CTV Traffic. An increasing number of advertisers are turning to OEM channels and Connected TV as promising sources for user acquisition.
3. Higher Spend. Despite the effectiveness of the CPA model, intense competition raises KPI requirements and leads to stricter payouts.
4. Fraud. Unfortunately, the number of fraudulent schemes continues to grow. By 2034, the global mobile fraud detection market is expected to reach approximately $102 billion. How to identify fraud and protect against it? Explored here.

Affiliate Marketing at Acquisition.mobi

Recognized as a trusted partner, we at Acquisition.mobi leverage extensive media buying expertise to deliver strategic, results-driven campaigns. Our affiliate team constantly analyzes and selects the best partners, focusing on traffic quality. We work with global platforms, provide transparent analytics, and clearly explain the process to our clients.

Acquisition.mobi works with premium traffic sources and selects optimal packages for any request: Paid Social Media, In-app, OEM. If you’re interested in becoming our partner, contact us at affiliate@acquisition.mobi.