impact.com, the world’s leading commerce partnership management platform, announced its strong performance during the first quarter of 2025, driven by growing recognition across the advertising industry that partner-led marketing is an essential part of a holistic marketing strategy for brands who want to connect authentically with their audience and drive revenue.

During the quarter, impact.com invested in several product updates, released industry-leading research, and welcomed more than 700 clients to its customer portfolio, including New Balance, Ocado Retail, and Monzo, and now serves more than 4,500 of the world’s leading brands globally. 

At a time when marketing budgets are tighter than ever, marketers are under pressure to prove their value and deliver campaigns efficiently and effectively. This comes at a time when today’s consumers are not just distrustful of traditional ads, they’re disinterested. Research shows that only 2% of consumers consider traditional ads important. They’re taking matters into their own hands by seeking out reviews and recommendations from other people and doing their research before purchasing. The global creator market alone is expected to reach over USD$32bn (£23.8bn) this year as the industry turns to partner-led marketing.

"Partner-led marketing is rapidly overtaking traditional advertising as brands shift their focus toward collaborations that deliver authenticity and trust at scale," said impact.com CEO David A. Yovanno. "Today’s consumers don’t respond to ads—they actively seek out recommendations, reviews, and content from sources they trust. Increasingly, that trusted voice isn’t the brand itself. This shift in behaviour is driving brands to invest in partnerships with creators, publishers, and other advocates who can influence purchase decisions more credibly. For brands, partnerships are no longer a nice-to-have—they’re fast becoming a core growth driver and competitive differentiator."

In April, Best Buy announced the launch of the new Best Buy Storefronts, powered by impact.com, demonstrating how brands are expanding their influencer strategy in innovative ways. These Storefronts allow customers to shop from their favourite creators and influencers. 

impact.com’s products define its success, and in Q1 the company launched a range of innovations across its Creator, Advocate, and Performance products, designed to make partnership management more seamless and effective for brands, creators, and affiliates.

Within Creator, product gifting is now faster and more intuitive—brands can select entire products, including all variants, in one step, while creators can easily choose the right fit. Advocate introduced cash rewards, giving marketers a powerful new way to motivate referrals with a flexible incentive that’s easy to set up and manage. Performance users gained new tools to optimise and protect their affiliate programmes, including automated partner re-engagement workflows and an event risk reporting suite to identify and eliminate suspicious traffic in real time.

Additional highlights from the quarter include:

• Announced the return of its Partnerships Experience event (iPX), taking place on the 25th of June at The Science Museum, London. The event will feature special guest Nathalie Nahai, author of Business Unusual, a study of values, uncertainty and the psychology of brand resilience.
• Expanded senior leadership team by promoting Justin Morrison to the position of chief revenue Officer. Justin was previously impact.com’s senior vice president of sales.
• Launched the sixth season of The Partnership Economy podcast, which has now reached over 350,000 downloads. Also wrapped season one of the Publisher’s Playbook podcast, covering important topics affecting publishers today.

• Recognised with a number of leading industry awards for contribution to the partnership economy. These included wins at the 2025 Performance Marketing Awards, G2’s Best Software Awards and the Partnership Economy Podcast received a Gold award at the AVA Digital Awards. 
• Released research, including the customer journey: data-driven insights on the modern path to purchase, and revealing true partner value: A new framework for affiliate incrementality. 

More information on the company’s momentum can be found at impact.com.

Impact.com

The leading global partnership management platform, impact.com transforms the way enterprises manage and optimise all types of partnerships—including affiliates, influencers and commerce content publishers. The company’s purpose-built platform he...

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