The news: Wirecutter is looking beyond affiliate commissions to earn revenues as AI chips away at traditional search traffic without abandoning its product recommendations—showing that hope remains for affiliate marketing in the AI search era.

• Wirecutter is exploring new ways to distribute its product recommendations through podcasts, YouTube videos, and shows like “Wirecutter Recommends.”
• Digiday notes that Wirecutter now offers advertisers “hybrid deals,” campaigns that cover licensing, digital advertising, brand partnerships, and affiliate; these deals have grown more than 300% YoY.
• Wirecutter is emphasizing its human expertise. The publisher now has more than 175 journalists, up from 115 in 2022, as it is “increasingly focusing on differentiation from LLMs,” according to deputy publisher of Wirecutter Cliff Levy.

Wirecutter isn’t the only company feeling pressure to adapt. CNN, Axios, Forbes, and other publications recently struck an AI partnership with Google to earn revenues when their content is used to power AI-generated news summaries and personalized audio briefings as they navigate the threat AI poses to referral traffic.

Zooming out: AI search is changing the economics of product recommendation sites like Wirecutter, which rely on search traffic to drive affiliate sales.

• September 2026 data from Advanced Web Ranking found that the top organic result for commercial-intent Google searches had an average clickthrough rate (CTR) of 11.91%, compared with 3.51% when an AI Overview was triggered.
• 2025 Seer Interactive research found that AI Overviews contributed to paid link CTRs falling from 13% to 6%.
• In some cases, AI Overviews were associated with 58% lower CTRs for the top-ranking organic result compared with those without an AI Overview, per Ahrefs.
• Between June 2025 and June 2026, publisher referral traffic from Google for small publishers declined nearly 60% YoY. Declines were consistent for large publishers (-43%) and medium publishers (-39.9%), per Chartbeat.
• And the issue is likely to get worse as AI Overviews show up in more search results: 43% of Google searches worldwide showed an AI Overview in May 2026, up from just 16% in January 2025, per Similarweb.

Together, these findings illustrate the growing pressure on publishers to diversify revenues as AI-generated answers reduce clicks to traditional search results, threatening a key source of affiliate sales for Wirecutter and referral traffic for publishers like CNN.

Recommendations for affiliate marketers and publishers: Combating AI-driven declines in referral traffic and CTRs requires new ways to reach consumers and monetize product recommendations.

• Publishers should diversify traffic sources. Turning to alternative channels like Reddit can help reduce reliance on organic search by reaching consumers in communities where they seek product recommendations. Other strategies, like investing in long-term creator partnerships, can help generate CTRs and build consumer trust as traditional traffic sources face pressure.
• Extend trusted recommendations across digital formats. Publishers like Wirecutter can repurpose their product testing into video and podcasts to reach consumers in more places and create additional opportunities to monetize recommendations.

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