Key stat: At $184, the mattress industry's cost per action towers roughly 9x above the next-priciest category, home & garden at $20, according to a March report from impact.com.

Beyond the chart:

• Rising costs don't have to be the whole story. On Meta, partnership ads that turn creator content into paid placements deliver 19% lower CPAs and 13% higher click-through rates than standard formats, according to Meta's own data.
• Loyalty pays, too. Sticking with the same YouTube creator across multiple posts, rather than one-off placements, nearly doubles affiliate link click-through rates, according to Agentio.

Use this chart: Drop this into a partnership or affiliate budget review to benchmark your category's cost per action against the field. Use it to show leadership why big-ticket verticals like mattresses justify steep acquisition costs, and to set realistic CPA targets before you lock in performance goals for the year.

Related EMARKETER reports:

• Affiliate Marketing 2025 (EMARKETER subscription required)
• What Brands Need to Know About TikTok Shop in 2026 (EMARKETER subscription required)

Methodology: Data is from the North American retail campaigns from January 1 – December 31, 2025, and January 1 – March 31, 2026. Only consistently active “same-store campaigns” were included, while high-revenue “whales” were excluded to prevent bias. All data is anonymized, aggregated, and privacy-compliant.