Affiliate marketing will drive an estimated $241 billion in U.S. ecommerce sales this year, according to EMARKETER . U.S. affiliate spending is rising 11.3%, ahead of ecommerce’s 6.7% growth.

The channel grew faster than brands could adapt.

As the opportunity expanded, brands spread the work across social, affiliate, paid media, public relations, and commerce. The result? Every team has its piece, but no one owns the outcome.

Few people have watched this divide develop as closely as Amber Venz Box, president and co-founder of LTK , the largest creator commerce platform, where creators drove $6 billion in sales and influenced another $18 billion last year. “It has become too large, too important, too operationally complex for all these disconnected workflows,” she said.

Target offers an early example of what a brand finds when it examines the complete program.

How Target Improved Its Creator Program With LTK

At LTKCon, LTK’s annual conference, Target’s Vice President of Media, Pat Burke, described the company’s new, more holistic approach to creator commerce.

“We were treating creators as this monolithic segment of people that all have the same needs, and that’s not true,” Burke said.

In May, Target reorganized its creator strategy around two programs.

Club Target serves everyday and emerging creators. Target Ambassadors, powered by LTK , lets established partners work inside the platform where they already run their businesses.

The Hidden Cost Of Running Affiliate Marketing in Silos

LTK creator Brittany Sjogren has spent a decade building her business, @ loverlygrey . Her audience is working women between 30 and 45 who want a trusted source for style and staples. Sjogren has one view of every brand she works with. Inside the brands, that same visibility can live across multiple teams

While under contract with a home goods brand, Sjogren posted about its blankets to build interest ahead of a planned sale. The brand’s social team mistook the post for organic enthusiasm and offered to send her the product for free. “I was already getting paid to talk about this,” she said. “But their social media team probably isn’t talking to their affiliate team.”

The company could not tell its own paid campaign from organic content.

“It’s still the wild west out here with different teams owning different pieces of Creator,” said Patricia Marangé, Head of Creator Commerce, WPP Media. “But with the increased investment and importance of the Creator, we are starting to see consolidation.” Marangé highlights that the real loss goes beyond any single campaign.

“If those different groups are all living campaign to campaign and you don’t have a creator commerce team paying ongoing attention to everything those creators are driving, you can miss the opportunity to identify and invest in the relationships that have the most long-term potential,” she said. “That’s money left on the table.”

Creators Run Their Own Paid Media And Measure ROI

Sjogren’s contracts often set ROI targets alongside a fixed number of posts. She regularly produces more than the contract requires, and the reason is craft rather than the bonus.

If she posts three stories and goes quiet, her audience may not respond to the recommendation. “It would come sort of out of left field,” she said. So she restyles the product and works it into other posts. According to Sjogren, a shopper typically needs seven exposures before buying.

That math also governs how she spends her own money. Sjogren buys media against content that is already performing and tracks it with LTK links. “We don’t use paid media to make bad content work,” she said. “We use it to help great content work harder.”

Brand Leaders Need Consistent Metrics To Manage Affiliate Marketing

Brands typically evaluate affiliate ROI on a four- to six-week window. That is a short read on a channel whose purchase cycle can span seven exposures. The measurement often changes with the function. Marangé spent 2026 in conversations with senior marketers absorbing newly realigned creator teams.

“The way a PR team talks about and measures their Creator efforts is totally different from how the Social team does it, which is different from the Creator Affiliate team, which is different from the flashy Influencer agency someone manages,” she said.

“Senior marketing leaders need to look at Creator apple-to-apples, and right now they’ve got a whole tropical fruit buffet to report alongside search, programmatic, linear, etc.” Patricia Marangé, Head of Creator Commerce, WPP Media

What LTK And Creator Commerce Platforms Can Forecast

At LTKCon, LTK introduced an agentic system that starts from a brand’s business objective, recommends a campaign and creator roster, forecasts returns and adjusts as performance data arrives.

“To understand creator commerce, you have to get really specific,” said LTK chief product and technology officer Ty Amell. “How does the creator work? How do they actually move audiences? How many posts does it take?”

LTK sets performance targets for both the creator and the brand. A creator sees their goals inside the platform, along with what exceeding them is worth. The brand and creator manage the campaign from one set of LTK analytics.

The technology can help make better decisions, but many brands still lack the people and structure to act on them.

Creator Commerce Needs Its Own Systems Integrators

Wayward, a partnerships marketing infrastructure company that predicts how creator and publisher partnerships will perform and directs spending toward the strongest, encountered that problem when it offered its platform as self-service software “Every single brand came to us and said, ‘This is great. We love the value proposition, but can you do it for us?’” founder Ali Marino said.

Wayward now runs it for them.

By expanding beyond software to operate the system for brands, Wayward previews where the industry is heading

Enterprise software solved a similar problem through systems integrators. These independent companies design, implement and operate technology across a company’s software, data, workflows and teams. Creator commerce has no equivalent yet. Platforms build services around their own technology. Agencies manage defined parts of the work. For now, brands must assemble that connective function themselves.

Marangé does not believe one reporting structure fits every organization. “What matters is that the function has enough seniority and connectivity across the business,” she said. “Otherwise, you risk creating another silo while trying to solve for silos.”

Marangé advises brands to start with an audit. “If we’re going with the Wild West analogy, invite everyone to the Saloon and put everything on the table,” she said. “What is everyone trying to do with their pocket of creators? Where are you duplicating efforts? And who actually owns the bigger picture?”

Target is already ahead of most brands, with ambitions to go much further. Burke wants the company to reach a point where creator commerce is no longer a separate program. Five years from now, he wants it to be part of Target’s go-to-market strategy.

Target is building creator commerce around how the business makes money. Too many brands are still debating where the work should sit.

The cost is no longer campaign inefficiency. It’s the inability to compete for a share of $241 billion in sales.