The Future of Amazon Growth is External: Anna Gomez on Why Top Brands Are Shifting Ad Spend to Affiliate Partnerships

Native Pay-Per-Click (PPC) on Amazon has become a battleground, with brands constantly bidding for visibility. As more advertisers crowd the same ad space, costs rise and standing out seems impossible.

That pressure is pushing brands to rethink how they grow. 

Instead of relying solely on Amazon ads, brands are moving upstream. Savvy teams are capturing new audiences off-Amazon via publisher partnerships.

Of course, doing all of this manually is a grind. Affiliate outreach is notoriously time-consuming and endless spreadsheet tracking makes the process impossible to scale.

In this Masterclass, we spoke with Anna Gomez from PartnerBoost, an AI-powered affiliate marketing platform built specifically for Amazon sellers. She breaks down the blueprint to put publisher recruitment on autopilot, eliminate upfront risk using performance-based deals, and leverage Amazon’s cash-back bonuses to turn off-Amazon traffic into predictable revenue.

The Strategic Shift: Demand Generation vs. Demand Capture

Most Amazon advertising begins and ends with sponsored search. But when you only rely on Amazon's internal ad tools, you’re exclusively targeting shoppers already at the finish line. 

The problem is that every one of your competitors is crowded around that exact same finish line. 

Anna explains why an exclusive  focus on internal traffic can quickly become challenging: 

Relying strictly on keyword bidding keeps you stuck fighting over the exact same group of shoppers as everyone else. That’s why many brands are exploring a more balanced approach that combines on-platform ads with off-platform affiliate partnerships to reach new audiences earlier in the journey, before they ever search on Amazon.

Partnering with publishers and creators means you reach shoppers long before they ever open an Amazon search bar. You showcase your brand while people are naturally consuming media off-platform, and once they click through, Amazon handles the rest. Shoppers already trust Amazon's shipping speed and return policy, removing the friction from buying from a new brand. 

That said, driving external traffic only works if the math makes sense for your business. 

If you’re worried about affiliate commissions eating into your margins, that is where Amazon's own subsidy programs come in to protect your profits. 

Funding the Move: How Amazon Pays You to Drive External Traffic

Amazon actually wants you to drive off-platform traffic. In fact, they’ll pay you to do it.

Through the Amazon Attribution Program, eligible brands can tap into the Brand Referral Bonus (BRB), which hands you up to 10% back on qualified sales generated from external traffic. 

Trying to claim and track this bonus by hand is an uphill battle. However, tools like PartnerBoost automate the tracking process so you can use that extra cash to scale your partnerships safely. 

Once you put those tracking logistics on autopilot, that financial cushion opens up three massive advantages for your brand:

• Pass Along the Bonus: Use Amazon's 10% kickback to fund your partnership offers. You can offer highly competitive payouts to your affiliates while securing your profits.
• Eliminate Upfront Risk: With traditional search ads, you pay for clicks whether people buy anything or not. Here, you only pay your partners after an actual sale happens.
• Win Over Premium Partners: Top-tier creators and large publishers usually ignore low-paying affiliate programs. Boosting your rates with Amazon's subsidy makes your brand instantly attractive to the best talent.

Pocketing a 10% bonus completely changes the math on external traffic, but you can’t scale a massive network if your team is still managing everything by hand.

Why Your Team Shouldn't Hand-Pick Every Affiliate Partner

Manually vetting publishers, building tracking links, and processing monthly affiliate checks is a massive time-suck. PartnerBoost works with over 2,600 brands worldwide, and almost all of them hit a wall when relying on manual labor. Anna explains that scaling requires stepping away from the daily grind:

The fix is simple. You have to automate your partner recruitment and your payment structures so your team can focus on growth instead of paperwork.

Smart Partner Matching with AI

Instead of spending days digging through Instagram or Google to find partners, you can let data do the heavy lifting. 

PartnerBoost uses a matching system that looks at your specific product categories, your average order value, and the regions you sell in. The platform gives every potential publisher an AI match score percentage to show how well they fit your brand. 

For example, if a publisher expects a 50% commission but your margins only allow for 5%, the system flags it so you don’t waste your time pitching them.

Custom Payout Rules

Once partners are onboarded, a healthy affiliate program requires flexible payouts. 

Not all traffic is identical. A detailed product review by a creator serves a totally different purpose than a quick post on a deal site. 

Anna explains why this level of customization is crucial for your margins and performance:

Instead of offering a flat rate across your entire catalog, tools like PartnerBoost allow you to build custom rules: 

• ASIN-Specific Bonuses: You can temporarily raise commission rates on specific products to get publishers talking about a new product launch or to quickly clear stock.
  
  
• Publisher Grouping: You can create private payment structures, giving high-quality content creators a higher rate for detailed product education. You can also give deal sites a different rate paired with exclusive discounts to drive immediate sales volume.

When you use a tool like PartnerBoost to automate tracking and payments, your external traffic can finally scale. That steady influx of off-platform shoppers builds consistent sales momentum, which directly improves your organic ranking inside the Amazon marketplace.

The Amazon Flywheel: How Outside Traffic Boosts Inside Rankings

The real beauty of off-platform partnerships is how they impact your visibility within Amazon.

When you consistently drive outside traffic to your listings, you feed the algorithm exactly what it wants to see. Anna explains that this steady stream of orders sets off a circular momentum that pushes your brand to the top:

This steady stream of orders sets off a powerful flywheel effect:

• Fresh Shoppers Arrive: High-quality publishers guide interested buyers straight to your product pages.
• Sales Velocity Spikes: That steady influx of orders builds immediate sales momentum for your listings.
• Organic Rankings Climb: Amazon rewards this outside momentum by pushing your products higher up on its search result pages.
• Free Traffic Multiplies: Standing at the top of the search list allows you to capture everyday Amazon shoppers automatically without spending more on PPC ads.

This algorithmic lift creates a reliable path to earn free visibility on Amazon while keeping your overall advertising costs down. 

This organic footprint is more important than ever now that Amazon has phased out its Rufus assistant in favor of AI features like Alexa for shopping and "Hear the Highlights," both which lean heavily on trusted off-platform creator content to recommend products.

Where the Software Ends and Real Growth Begins

Rising PPC costs make external traffic essential, and platforms like PartnerBoost provide the operational infrastructure to scale it. Of course, software alone can’t build your network:

Spamming creators with automated emails will not build a successful program. This is exactly why successful marketing teams look for a balance. They let tools such as PartnerBoost automate the tracking and payments so that their managers can focus on the human side of the business. That means building real, long-term collaboration with high-quality publishers.

‍