TLDR

If you’re running an affiliate and creator program for your ecommerce brand, chances are you’re doing it across multiple tools, multiple dashboards, and multiple channels that don’t talk to each other.

One platform for your Amazon affiliate program. Another for DTC influencer partnerships. Maybe a third for publisher relationships. Each with its own reporting, its own partner network, and its own commission structures.

This fragmentation isn’t just inconvenient. It’s expensive, it’s time-consuming, and it’s a reflection of an industry that hasn’t evolved as fast as the market it serves.

Creator and affiliate marketing have converged into a single discipline. The brands and agencies that recognize this shift and act on it are going to have a meaningful advantage over those still stitching together disconnected programs across channels.

The consumer path to purchase has changed

The convergence of creator and affiliate marketing is a direct response to how consumers discover and purchase products today.

Levanta’s consumer research shows that 87% of consumers discover products through creator content, editorial recommendations, and social platforms before making a purchase on a marketplace or storefront. Short-form video leads the way, with 53% of consumers citing it as a primary discovery channel, followed by YouTube at 36%.

Trust plays a central role in this shift. Consumer reviews remain the most trusted source of product information at 93%, followed closely by editorial content at 91% and YouTube reviews at 86%. Even AI-powered recommendations, which are growing rapidly as a discovery channel, sit at 82% trust. Consumers are using AI tools to research products faster, but they’re validating those recommendations through creator and publisher content before making a purchase decision.

What this means for brands is significant. The content that creators and publishers produce isn’t just driving direct sales. It’s also feeding the AI discovery engines that consumers are increasingly turning to for product recommendations. Brands investing in high-quality creator partnerships today are building a compounding advantage across both human-driven and AI-driven discovery.

Perhaps most telling: close to 90% of all sales generated through Levanta’s platform come from new-to-brand customers. When your partner ecosystem is oriented around creators and high-authority publishers the quality and incrementality of the revenue changes fundamentally.

Why legacy platforms aren’t built for this moment

The four most widely used affiliate platforms were built over 15 years ago. They were designed for a different market: one dominated by coupon sites and cashback portals. These platforms work, but they’re expensive, labor-intensive, and they weren’t designed for the creator economy.

On the other side, creator platforms offer discovery and outreach tools but lack the performance measurement and attribution infrastructure that brands and agencies require. You can negotiate a flat-fee sponsorship, but connecting that investment to actual sales across channels is often guesswork.

The result is a fragmented stack. Brands are running one tool for Amazon affiliates, another for DTC influencer partnerships, and a third for publishers. Each with its own reporting, its own partner network, and its own limitations. For teams already under pressure from rising PPC costs and tightening margins due to tariffs, this fragmentation is expensive.

The market needs an affiliate and creator platform for ecommerce that brings both disciplines together, across every channel, in one place. That’s what we’ve built.

Levanta now supports Shopify: one platform for every channel

Today, we’re announcing that Levanta officially supports Shopify alongside Amazon and Walmart. This makes Levanta the first affiliate and creator platform for ecommerce brands to manage their entire creator and affiliate program across DTC and marketplaces from a single platform.

With this launch, brands and agencies can now:

For brands already on Levanta, connecting a Shopify store is a one-click integration available today.

For brands not yet using Levanta, this is an opportunity to consolidate your affiliate and creator programs into a single platform and stop paying for three tools to do one job.

If you are an agency who manages affiliate or creator programs on behalf of your clients, this launch changes the economics of how you operate.

Instead of onboarding each client onto separate tools for each channel, you can manage their entire creator and affiliate program from Levanta. One platform to onboard clients onto. One set of workflows. One place to measure what’s working across every channel your clients sell on.

As Emma Phelps, Senior Affiliate Marketing Manager at Pattern, put it: “When brands can see how their creator and affiliate programs perform across DTC and marketplaces, they stop guessing and start making smarter investment decisions.”

For agencies, that visibility translates directly into better client retention and more efficient program management.

The bigger picture

This launch is about building the infrastructure for where the affiliate and creator marketing industry is heading.

Brands are selling across more channels than ever. AI is reshaping how consumers discover products. And the tools the industry has relied on for the past two decades weren’t built for any of this.

We believe the brands and agencies that consolidate their programs into a unified affiliate and creator platform for ecommerce, one that works across every channel, will outperform those still managing fragmented stacks.

Paid Placements was the first step. Shopify is the next. And we’re just getting started.

Key Takeaways

Ready to get started?

Already using Levanta? Connect your Shopify store today.

Not using Levanta yet? Request a demo and see what a unified creator and affiliate program looks like.

FAQ

What is an affiliate and creator platform for ecommerce?

An affiliate and creator platform for ecommerce is a software solution that enables brands to manage both their affiliate partnerships and creator relationships from a single platform. Rather than using separate tools for affiliate programs and creator collaborations, a unified platform combines discovery, recruitment, product seeding, performance tracking, payments, and reporting into one system.

Can I run my Shopify affiliate program and Amazon affiliate program from the same platform?

Yes. Levanta is the first platform to support creator and affiliate programs across Shopify, Amazon, and Walmart from a single platform. Brands can manage partners, track performance, and handle payments across all three channels without needing separate tools for each.

How is Levanta different from legacy affiliate platforms?

Legacy affiliate platforms were built primarily for traditional affiliate workflows like coupon sites and cashback publishers. Levanta is purpose-built for modern creator and affiliate marketing. It combines creator discovery, product seeding, paid collaborations, social listening, and affiliate performance tracking in one platform, with native integrations across Shopify, Amazon, and Walmart.

Is Levanta free for creators?

Yes. Levanta is free for creators and takes no cut of their commissions. This means more of a brand’s investment goes directly to the partners producing content and driving results.

How does creator content affect AI-powered product discovery?

AI-powered search and recommendation engines pull from high-quality content across the web when surfacing product recommendations. Creator reviews, publisher articles, and editorial content are increasingly factored into these AI-generated results. Brands with strong creator content are more likely to appear in AI-driven product discovery, creating a compounding advantage beyond direct sales.