Performance PR and Affiliate Marketing: What’s the Difference?
This post is Part 1 of our two-part series on Performance PR and affiliate marketing. In this installment, we’re covering the basics: what each is and how they differ. In Part 2, we’ll explore how the two work together to create a powerful flywheel for brand growth.
We get a lot of questions about the difference between Performance PR and affiliate marketing. If you’re confused, you’re definitely not alone. Both live under the “affiliate” umbrella, but have different goals, strategies, and outcomes.
That’s why we’re breaking it down in a two-part series:
In this first post, we’ll cover the basics of what Performance PR is, what affiliate marketing is, and how they differ.
In the next post, we’ll dig into how the two are connected and why they’re most powerful when working together.
Let’s start with the fundamentals.
Performance PR: The Key to Unlock Media Coverage
TL;DR: Performance PR is PR first, but sales matter too. The revenue you generate for publishers encourages editorial promotion, increases your chances of repeat coverage, and shows other outlets your brand drives value.
Most top consumer media outlets these days require (or at least significantly prioritize) affiliate links to even consider covering a brand or product in gift guides, product round-ups, or reviews.
Why? As traditional advertising revenues declined, publishers needed a new way to make up for losses. Affiliate commissions enable them to get a percentage of the sales their content helps generate.
At the end of the day, it’s a win-win: Brands gain exposure to new, large, and aligned audiences in addition to the implied third-party endorsement of a trusted media entity. And publishers get a cut of any sales driven through their platform.
Key Takeaways:
Affiliate presence = entry ticket to media coverage. Without it, your product (or backlink) may be skipped over, or even worse, your competitor might snag your spot in gift guides, roundups, or “best of” lists.
The primary goal of Performance PR is media coverage. KPIs include placement volume and reach, competitive Share-of-Voice, backlinks, SEO + GEO value, and increased credibility and trust.
Sales generated from that coverage aren’t the primary goal, but they are important. If affiliate presence is your entry ticket to media coverage, strong conversion data is your VIP pass. As editors see that your content performs, it encourages repeat inclusion, and demonstrates to other outlets that featuring your brand delivers value. In other words, sales help keep the flywheel turning.
Affiliate Marketing: Always-On Sales Engine
TL;DR: Affiliate marketing is sales first, PR optional.
Now, let's flip the script. Affiliate marketing isn’t about landing in Food & Wine or Wirecutter. It’s about turning everyday publishers and creators into your round-the-clock sales team.
Affiliate marketing casts a wide net, leveraging the entire affiliate ecosystem: content creators, bloggers, coupon and cashback sites, loyalty programs, review platforms, and more.
It also requires always-on management: fine-tuning promotions, recruiting new affiliates, monitoring performance, adjusting commissions, preventing fraud, and running seasonal promotions.
The primary measure of success is sales, including conversions, average order value, and incremental revenue.
Why the Distinction Matters
In today’s GEO-first world, where over 95% of links cited by leading AI models come from non-paid sources, earned media is critical for discoverability (people can actually find you when they’re already looking), visibility (your brand shows up in high-authority, high-traffic spaces that machines and humans trust), and trust (third-party validation beats self-promotion every time).
If your goal is to generate revenue through partners, affiliate marketing is the way to go. A strong affiliate program creates consistent, measurable growth by turning your partners into an always-on sales channel. It’s scalable, trackable, and designed to continually optimize for performance.
That said, the real magic comes from marrying the two to create an integrated flywheel and a virtuous cycle that builds upon itself: One generates visibility and trust, and the other drives predictable, incremental sales. We’re dubbing this “The Visibility Engine,” and it’s the framework that every Dadacope strategy is built on.