Publisher vs Advertiser – How Do They Work Together?

Jamie Larson

Jan 5, 2026 — 8 min read

In your day-to-day activities online, you might have interacted with a shop now tag or clicked an affiliate link on a blog post. This is affiliate marketing in action with two players, advertisers and ad publishers, partnering. Understanding the importance and the dynamics of affiliate marketing, publisher vs advertiser helps businesses work smarter. Publishers vs advertisers are like peanut butter and jelly. They are totally different, right? Surprisingly, they are better together.

Each time my favourite tech blogger earned money from the review of a product, I would ask myself a question: Who paid him? Turns out the reason behind it is very simple. Whenever a sale is completed by using the blogger’s link in the ad, the brand (advertiser) will pay a commission to the blogger (publisher). This has become a 37+ billion industry across the globe. In this affiliate marketing beginner guide, I will explain who advertisers and publishers are in affiliate marketing, how they work with one another, and the struggles and gains for each of them in this performance-based game.

Who is an advertiser?

In affiliate marketing, the advertiser (merchant/brand) refers to the company that desires to sell a product or service. The offers and rules are made by advertisers. They determine what they are selling, how much they will pay as a commission per sale or lead, and how they will position their brand. An advertiser is a person who has a product to sell. They are dependent on publishers for marketing.

Picture a relatively small e-commerce company that offers eco-friendly backpacks. This store requires more customers, though it might not have a huge advertising budget. That is why they resort to affiliate promotion. They will engage with publishers who are going to advertise the backpacks. The advertiser offers backpack maker information, such as banner pictures or videos on the demo, and agrees to pay 10% whenever a backpack is sold through the publisher’s link. Whenever a publisher (e.g., a travel blogger) persuades a reader to click the link and purchase a backpack, the advertiser makes the commission payment agreed upon. It is one of the ways the brand can only pay for actual sales (performance-based), not just for ad impressions.

Big brands do this too. An example of this is sports businesses such as Under Armour and technology firms such as Samsung, which have affiliate programs operating on a network. Even the niche players are part of it.

The main features of advertisers.

Product owners: The individuals responsible for the development and sale of products or services.
Negotiate the conditions: They determine the commission (e.g. 5% or $20 per signup) and promotion policies.
Objective: To attract customers and drive sales for brand awareness.

Example

A good example is a clothing store that pays bloggers a percentage of every item of clothing sold, or a travel website that pays a commission after each hotel reservation.

In other words, advertisers are the demand side of affiliate marketing. They require sales or leads. They provide the offers, and they need users; therefore, they collaborate with publishers to drive targeted traffic to their products. Advertisers get tremendous returns by merely paying once a conversion occurs. Publift’s Affiliate Marketing Statistics of 2025 indicates that businesses earn an average of $6.50 for every $1 spent on affiliate marketing. This is why currently, even 81% of marketers have an affiliate program.

Who is a publisher?

Affiliate publishers are individuals who have audiences to market the products of advertisers online. A publisher promotes advertisers’ products by adding affiliate links to their content that they post on social media channels, hoping that their audience will click and purchase.

For example, let’s say Sarah runs a popular food blog. In writing a recipe for making homemade pizza, she can link to a particular pizza stone on Amazon using an affiliate link. In the instance the reader purchases that pizza stone, Sarah (the ad publisher example) receives a commission from Amazon. Sarah offered traffic only. In this case, she is the publisher, and the advertiser is Amazon (or the seller of the pizza stone on Amazon).

Publishers are of many categories.

Bloggers and content sites: This might be a review site, a how-to blog, or even a news site that includes affiliate links in its articles. For example, The Wirecutter (currently owned by The New York Times) uses affiliate links in its product reviews.
Social media influencers: Influencers usually post links or promo codes on their pages. The influencer earns money when the follower makes a purchase using the provided code or link.
Comparison or skim sites: These are sites that provide links, affiliate-wise and list products (such as electronics or travel deals) side by side.

AdButler’s 2021 blog post reports that what unites all publishers is that they are the owners of the space or audience, upon which ads or links are placed. They draw attention via SEO and social media followers, and then present the advertiser’s products in the space. The publishers receive a share of the sale or a specified amount for sending a buyer to the advertiser.

Publishers open up accounts on affiliate networks or with the programs of the advertisers, identify products that resonate with their audience, and proceed to generate content regarding those products. An example would be a tech YouTuber promoting a new device by including an affiliate link in the description.

The publishers fill the gap between the consumer and the advertiser by involving their audience. Advertisers deal with offers, while publishers provide attention and trust. Advertisers also attract customers that the publishers would not attract otherwise.

Publisher vs advertiser – key differences

This section provides a summary of the differences between publishers and advertisers. The difference between advertiser and publisher boils down to their core roles.

Role

Advertisers create the products or services and control the commission rates. Publishers, on the other hand, produce content and choose which offers to promote to their audience.

Goal

Advertisers aim to attract leads and maximize the return on their marketing spend. Publishers work to earn commissions from their content and traffic while also growing their audience and income.

How They Earn

Advertisers make money by selling their products or services directly. Publishers earn through commissions. Either a percentage of each sale or a fixed payment per action, when someone they refer completes a desired action.

If you're still asking, "What is the advertiser and publisher difference?", the table below makes it clear.

Aspect	Publisher (Affiliate/ad publisher)	Advertiser (Merchant/affiliate advertiser)
Role	Owns or creates content/platform and shares it with the audience.	Owns product/service and promotion offers.
Goal	Make money by promoting products. Build audience/trust.	Sell products or gain leads; expand market reach.
Payment	Earns commission (e.g. Percentage of sale or fixed payout).	Pays affiliates a commission per sale/lead; profits from sales.
What they provide	High-quality traffic or audience engagement	Offers, discounts, creatives (ads, links) for the publisher.
Example	A YouTube review of gadgets, linking to a retailer.	An electronics brand running an affiliate campaign.

Publishers and advertisers need each other, as indicated in the table. Advertisers possess products, whereas publishers possess audiences, but they require products to advertise.

How publishers and advertisers work together

How do these two sides merge? That is where affiliate networks and platforms come in. An affiliate network (or platform) is fundamentally a matchmaker. It brings together numerous advertisers and publishers under the same roof, where it takes care of tracking and payments. Here's the typical workflow:

The network lists the offers of advertisers. The advertiser posts the product details.
The publishers sift through the offers on the network that suit their viewers. They apply for campaigns, and after authorization, they begin to insert those affiliate links in their content.
When a viewer performs the required action by clicking the affiliate link, the network tracks that conversion.
The network will pay the publisher the agreed commission and make sure that the advertiser receives their new customer data.

For example, let’s consider a brand selling casino gaming software. The advertiser visits networks such as Offer.One, Rakuten Advertising, CJ Affiliate (formerly Commission Junction), ShareASale or Impact, instead of searching for affiliate sites individually. A casino advertiser can sign up and list their games. Gambling bloggers or streamers (publishers) on the platform begin marketing those games. The platform can monitor all the sign-ups or downloads of games per publisher, meaning that the brand only pays for real players, and publishers know precisely how much they have made.

Benefits for advertisers

Advertisers who rely on affiliate programs experience the following perks.

Cost-effective promotion: You only pay for results. In case a publisher makes a sale, the affiliate receives a share. When nothing is selling, you do not pay for click-hops and impressions. Based on DemandSage data on affiliate marketing statistics, businesses see an average return of $12 for every $1 spent on affiliate marketing.
Greater reach and new audiences: Niche-experts or influential socialists may be affiliates. Creating partnerships with them exposes your product to the target audience that you would never have reached by using ads.
Credibility and trust: Customers have more confidence in the recommendations by bloggers or friends as compared to generic advertisements. Social proof comes from a respected content creator giving an endorsement to your product. This credible promotion is capable of promoting the brand as well as sales.
Scalability: Scaling your affiliate marketing campaigns is fast. A study by Forrester Consulting found that 81% of marketers report having affiliate programs, and many large companies work with hundreds or even thousands of affiliates.
Better SEO and content: A lot of publishers advertise products with the help of social content. This online user-generated content has the potential to assist in SEO and brand presence on the internet, hence generating free exposure.
Flexibility in the market: Affiliate marketing has emerged to be an important channel in most industries. According to the Demandsage 2025 affiliate marketing statistics, in the U.S., 16$ of all online orders are made via affiliate links.

Benefits for publishers

For a publisher, affiliate marketing is a revenue-generating method that is absolutely risk-free. Publishers experience the following benefits.

Monetizing content: Affiliate programs help publishers convert their focused audience into revenue.
Passive income: Good affiliate content will continue to generate revenue in the long run.
No need for physical products or inventory: As a publisher, you do not need to produce or deliver anything. The advertiser handles products and fulfilment.
Choice of products to advertise: As a publisher, you have a chance to experiment with various niches and find what the audience responds to.
High earnings potential: In a survey by Authority Hacker, about 15% of affiliate marketers report annual earnings between $80,000 and $1 million, while roughly 35% report making around $20,000 a year.

Challenges for both publishers and advertisers

There are no partnerships that do not experience problems, and affiliate marketing is not different.

Quality vs. quantity: Both advertisers and publishers desire quality. Advertisers require good traffic- actual potential customers and not fake clicks- and publishers require good offers that are of real interest to their audience. It is not an easy task to find the right matches.
Fraud and compliance: Fraudulent activities concern advertisers. Some affiliates generate cookie-stuffing or false leads. Publishers fear disclosing affiliate links.
Attribution and tracking issues: Cookies are becoming extinct due to the privacy laws and browser withdrawal, making tracking hard.
Payment and revenue variations: Publishers rely on payouts that may be delayed. Also, affiliate revenue is not always distributed evenly.
Competition and saturation: For the advertisers, the threat is market saturation. A large number of affiliates may over-sell or under-sell each other. For publishers, the market is very competitive. There can be thousands of blogs writing about the same trendy products.

Conclusion

The publisher-advertiser partnership drives the entire affiliate marketing ecosystem. The product and budget are introduced by advertisers, and the audience and trust are introduced by publishers. When the two align, they work out in the best scenario. Brands earn sales, creators earn income, and customers earn an opportunity to find products that suit them.

Affiliate networks take over the mundane tasks and leave you to do what you are good at. Networks such as the Offer.One helps publishers to create, and advertisers to scale.