About Affiliate Cost Optimization
Affiliate cost optimization is a capability for Product GMV Max campaigns that allows the system to include affiliate commission costs in its delivery logic. While standard optimization primarily focuses on the relationship between sales and ad spend, this feature considers the total cost - including both your ad spend and affiliate commissions - to help you achieve more sustainable returns.
By evaluating performance through a combined ROI lens, calculated as total sales divided by the sum of ad and affiliate costs, the system can better identify which creatives drive the most value for your business after all costs are accounted for. This means traffic may be allocated not only based on gross sales, but also on overall business efficiency.
Benefits
Help the system consider both creative performance and affiliate commission cost when allocating traffic.
Improve business efficiency by considering both ad spend and affiliate costs during delivery.
Give lower-commission or in-house creatives a better chance to receive traffic when they can deliver similar performance.
Availability
This feature is currently available to some advertisers using Product GMV Max campaigns in the United States and Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore). To use this capability, your account may need historical affiliate promotion data and a mix of both affiliate creatives and in-house creatives.
How it works
Allocate traffic
Affiliate cost optimization uses a new affiliate-inclusive ROI view: ROI (Ad + Affiliate Cost) = GMV / (Ad Cost + Affiliate Cost). The affiliate cost is estimated using your average affiliate commission rate for selected products over the past 14 days.
Because affiliate cost is now included in the denominator, the displayed ROI value may be lower than the original Ad ROI value. This does not mean actual campaign performance has become worse. It reflects that affiliate commission cost is now included in the optimization goal, giving the system a more complete cost view when allocating traffic across creatives.
Optimize affiliate cost efficiency
The system optimizes for ROI, not commission cost alone. Lower-commission creatives are preferred only when they are expected to deliver similar performance. Otherwise, higher-performing creatives may still receive more traffic, even if they have higher commission rates.
For example, if two creatives have similar GMV efficiency but one creator has a 20% commission rate while another has a 3% commission rate or is an in-house creative, the system is more likely to allocate traffic to the more cost-effective creative. However, if a high-commission creator drives significantly stronger GMV or overall returns, the system may still deliver traffic to it.
How to optimize for affiliate costs
Create a new campaign and select Product GMV Max as your campaign type.
Under Setup Mode, select GMV Max Pro.
Choose the products you want to promote. It may be helpful to select products that include both in-house creatives and affiliate creatives with different commission rates.
In the Target and budget section, select Ad + Affiliate ROI as your optimization objective.
Set your ROI Target. For best results, you can use the system-recommended value.
Set a Daily Budget that is sufficient to avoid limiting delivery.
After your campaign starts running, view performance in your reporting dashboard by selecting the Ad + Affiliate mode to review combined cost data.
For more information about commission settings, see About setting different affiliate commission rates for TikTok Shop Ads.
