Partner insights from PartnerCentric
As consumer shopping journeys become increasingly fragmented across social platforms, search and AI discovery tools, e-commerce brands that rely on siloed channel models may struggle to understand which partners are driving performance.
Traditional affiliate programs, long a mainstay for beauty and fashion brands, operate in silos, where last-click attribution rewards demand-harvesting partners at checkout, rather than the creators and publishers who initiated customer intent. Up to 30%–50% of affiliate spend is misattributed, as unmanaged coupon sites and deal stacks clip revenue already earned.
By eliminating spend leakage and unifying affiliate, creator and loyalty channels into a single performance engine, brands can achieve sustainable, incremental growth.
“The shopping journey used to be a funnel, and now it’s closer to a dot,” said Amanda Quadrini, director of client strategy at PartnerCentric. “Last click just pays whoever is standing at the register, so these data-savvy teams end up optimizing a number that doesn’t reflect what’s actually driving the sale.”
Optimizing for AI discovery and proving business impact
Shopper behavior is rapidly shifting toward AI discovery engines, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini, which are becoming an increasingly important first screen for product research. PartnerCentric refers to this approach as AI discovery optimization, or ADO: strengthening the credible content and authority signals that help a brand appear in AI-assisted product research, then connecting that visibility to measurable partner performance. Understanding how a consumer journey starts, rather than how it ends, allows brands to transform their budgets and move away from unmanaged sites and deal stacks that are monetizing already-earned demand.
Many shoppers arrive at brand pages with pre-formed purchase decisions based on LLM summaries drawn from Reddit, review sites and creator video content. Meanwhile, last-click attribution rewards the channel that showed up last, and keeps affiliate, creator and influencer efforts in separate silos, even as they work together.
To feed these AI search environments, brands are structuring crisp proof points and optimizing for partner-owned audiences. Upgrading measurement beyond last-click attribution identifies where spend isn’t driving performance, letting teams reallocate budget and provide the capital needed to seed authoritative AI discovery sources. For instance, PartnerCentric’s patented FUSE technology and FUSE Precision tool allow brands to recover commissions for sales that were not driven from the affiliate channel, flagged by characteristics such as a click in less than three seconds.
“We run a FUSE audit before we build any strategy, and a lot of commissions are recoverable from day one,” Quadrini said. She said the recovered budget can support creator partnerships and AI discovery.
“Most brands have three agencies, three budgets and three reports,” she said. Influencer, affiliate and AI discovery are often measured separately, but a shared scorecard can show how each partner contributes.
Quadrini also recommends involving agencies early in annual planning, setting a baseline budget and a testing pool, and agreeing on checkpoints to reallocate spend.
How Musely scaled its affiliate program and unlocked dramatic growth
In one case, prescription skincare brand Musely had high-performing custom products and aggressive revenue targets that called for a partner program built to scale. According to Quadrini, Musely’s affiliate program had previously focused on the bottom of the funnel, capturing demand rather than generating it.
PartnerCentric built Musely’s affiliate program around baseline efficiency partners, high-volume parallel testing and card-linked offers. “No one is impulse buying a prescription,” Quadrini said. “We’re gearing our strategy toward education and looking at partners that convert really well in that space.” The mix emphasized content pairing clinical credibility with real patient stories and before-and-after proof.
Quadrini said PartnerCentric’s tracking found sources such as Healthline and Everyday Health cited in LLM responses to skincare prompts for Musely. The brand uses creator UGC in paid campaigns, with PartnerCentric recruiting creators for contextual authority rather than follower count.
The affiliate program delivered more than 1,200% revenue growth, with monthly revenue scaling from five to seven figures. One card-linked offer generated a 14x ROAS.
“Partnerships are the most efficient channel we have right now,” said Jack Jia, CEO at Musely. “We’re not just diversifying. We’re moving away from the channels that have lost their grip on the market.”
For brands, the opportunity is to connect trusted content with partnership measurement so discovery can translate into revenue.
“If you’re not showing up in AI results, you’re invisible,” said Quadrini.
Partner insights from PartnerCentric
