Chief Marketing Officer / Marketing Consultant at maksymzakharko.com
Answered 7 months ago
Hi, I am Maksym zakharko, in digital marketing from 2015, expert in media buying, user acquisition, and team leadership. Published author, industry speaker, podcaster and judge. 161+ certifications, MBA, and 10+ years in digital marketing, more information about me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maksymzakharko/ https://maksymzakharko.com https://maksymzakharko.com/certifications/ My answer: Speaking from experience—working in an agency by day and running a few affiliate side projects—I'd recommend investing in AI content creation tools, especially ones that can support SEO content if used smartly. Why? Because content is still king in affiliate marketing. Whether you're driving traffic through SEO, social, or paid channels, you need a lot of content to test different angles, formats, and audiences. And doing that manually is slow, expensive, and exhausting. With tools like ChatGPT (for blog posts, ad copy, reviews), Midjourney (for eye-catching visuals or AI UGC), Heygen (AI video presenters), and ElevenLabs (for realistic voiceovers), you can produce high-quality, on-brand content at scale—something that's nearly impossible without help when you're just starting out. From my perspective, if you're a solo creator or just starting your affiliate journey, the fastest path to success is to create content on steroids. Just make sure to layer in some SEO logic—targeting the right search terms, building clusters, and linking wisely—and you'll start to see traction without breaking your budget.
1. Biggest shift AI has brought to affiliate marketing? AI shifted affiliate from traffic arbitrage to answer arbitrage. With AI Overviews (AIO) delivering direct answers and only 1% of users clicking citations (Pew Research Study), brands must shape the narrative upstream—getting mentioned in the high-authority reviews and retailer pages that AIO pulls from. At Rubix, we use Performance PR to embed key proof points and structured data into those sources. As affiliate spend grows to $13.2B by 2026 and creator affiliate revenue doubles, smart brands must invest in content that drives branded search—even when attribution is messy. 2. One AI tool category for a new affiliate creator? Start with SEO/research + entity analysis. With fewer users clicking (8% vs. 15%, Pew), shaping the answer matters more than ranking under it. Tools like Surfer SEO or AHrefs help map the SERP (including the YouTube SERP), surface key attributes AIO favors ("BPA-free," "quiet motor"), and guide high-authority content. AI writing tools come later—human trust and perspective still win. 4. Example where AI lifted CTR/CVR? For a kitchen appliance brand, AI helped us extract key themes from top review pages, which we used to co-create product tables with partners and update on-site content. We set up n8n alerts to stay ahead of changes. Result: +35% CTR, +22% CVR, and +18% branded search from better AIO presence. 5. Where do you use AI at Rubix? * Content briefs to speed partner drafts * n8n alerts for link/schema issues * Personalized affiliate pages and offer codes * Whitelisted ad variants * AI-assisted partner outreach (+20% response rate) * AIO and branded search monitoring 6. Breakout capability + skills to stay ahead? AIO answer-graph tracking will soon show what sources models pull from—and how to influence them. Skills to stay ahead: entity SEO, editorial rigor, publisher relationships, automation fluency, and attribution creativity. Creator/Influencer affiliate is no longer just coupons—it's Performance PR shaping AI answers and lifting branded search. In a low-click world, brands need content that gets cited, not just ranked. It is ironic because attribution has never looked worse, with many of these blogs being hit significantly with Google SERP updates; it is their content that is feeding AI answers.
1. The pace is an entirely different thing with AI. The affiliate marketing that has been experienced in the past was characterized by the appropriate wording of the keywords and the perspiration to come up with the contents. It has now turned out to be the question of how fast the testings, adapting and iterating has to happen. I would be able to achieve what normally takes days within an hour using my AI as it would enable me to make copy, design images and A/B tests. What changed most? Accuracy on a large scale. You no longer have to be guessing on what works but you just train on using models on how it has worked in the past to give you a clue of what and before it has been launched. Five years ago, this is what will not be possible do to 2. In case he/she is a new one and can only afford to purchase one form of AI then I would recommend him/ her to purchase analytics i.e. predictive or customer segmentation. Ad and content blast is going into the dark until it can have a visibility. I have heard of campaigns that bleed the budget because all that the designers were interested in was with regards to the final product yet this was done blindly. We are aware of the fact that systematic Doing is not by chance and we should know who and when clicks and why. 3. In the domain of compliance, this is where the lure of being able to take a short cut is destroyed by the fact that an AI can develop contents at a pace that is so fast but failure to disclose FTC or give false information of deals will be the killer of a company. Any other aspect is incorporated in the formative stages and I also incorporate reminders on compliance as a part of it. We suppress prompts so as to include the disclaimers that is required and we even put the results on audit scripts that mentions anything that is out of brand tones or disclosures that have not been done. Not only that it will help you in self defence in a law court, but it builds trust. I have witnessed defeated campaigns that are based on the line that is too good to be true no matter whether it is a national car deal or in a good faith. There is no longer any choice of getting that balance right anymore, it is a sieve between you and sustainable growth.
2. If a new affiliate creator had a budget for only one AI tool, which category (content creation, SEO, ad optimization, analytics) would you recommend? And why? I would definitely recommend "Analytics" - Why? In 2025, tracking online activity has become stricter and platforms frequently change their rules, making it costly to guess. One intelligent analytics tool can show you which posts and products actually lead to sales on platforms like Amazon, TikTok or your own website. This information will help you produce more of what works, eliminate what doesn't and most importantly, avoid wasting time and budget. While there are many creative apps nowadays available - often for free - clear answers are hard to find.
The AI has transformed the affiliate marketing business with the capability to offer hyper personalized content and recommendations. Predictive analytics will streamline campaigns to the right audience and time. Automation makes work such as performance tracking and reporting easier to accomplish saving time and resources. The decisions are made using data-driven insights and improve ROI and efficiencies. It is through continuous learning that strategies are changing in response to the market trends. New affiliate creators will have the highest potential to realize value with content creation tools. Quality, interesting content attracts traffic and builds trust to the audiences. There should be regular posting on blogs, social media, and emails to build a strong internet presence. The investment here is maximising reach and laying down the foundation on which the growth is made in the future. Other categories may be scaled as the revenue grows. The process of achieving a balance between content produced by AI and following the law begins by embedding concrete guidance into the creation process. Disclosures made by FTC should be highlighted in every promotional document to make it transparent. The AI tools should have brand guidelines to be able to provide consistency and genuineness. Periodic content auditing enables one to be in line with platform rules and prevent account sanctions. The synergy between the results of the AI and human governance will make both innovation and resistance to the rules maintained. AI-powered dynamic content personalization was leading to a great surge in conversion rates. The personalization based on user traits in terms of product recommendations made the experience more interesting. Predictive analytics were used to select the high performing keywords, to optimize placements and copy of the ads. The strategies were polished as a result of real-time A/B testing, and maximum effect was achieved. AI is helpful in the process of content generation with results being produced frequently and in high quality and addressing the needs of the audience. Automation of workflow can be used to automate repetitive tasks, to allow more time to be focused on strategy and growth. Personalization tools will improve the engagement factor to drive recommendations as well as dynamic emails. Keywords that help optimize the ROI of ad campaigns and the placement of audiences can be created by AI-powered keyword optimization and segmentation.
The most significant change is the removal of the manual guesswork of aligning content to buyer intent that AI achieves. Rather than using blanket keyword approaches or fixed banners, affiliates are using AI to make real-time behavioral analysis and automatically display the appropriate product or offer. It has made campaigns easier to scale and much more responsive to user trends.
1. Completely changing SEO and how Google ranks articles and blog posts. Most bloggers are now competing with sites that generate AI blogs in seconds, and unfortunately, many are outranking real human-made sites due to mass blog content generation. Google's algorithm is still confused about how to rank these articles exactly, since some articles are meeting completely unaddressed topics, especially when these sites target hyperspecific keywords and key phrases. 3. By aggressively modifying and humanizing the drafted AI content to meet the standards that are required. The reason affiliate marketers must prioritise humanizing AI text-based content is to avoid getting flagged by algorithms, which will cause penalties in organic traffic results. A major point of resistance is all the algorithms now that can easily detect AI content, and how advanced they have become. And most AI text humanizing tools are terrible and result in content that is incomprehensible. 5. Mainly for content generation. Most of the time, I personally use video and audio generation tools as well as text-based content generation for titles, headlines, and body text. Some businesses are even using it aggressively for SEO. I've seen lots of my competitors pump out a lot of AI-generated blog posts and try their best to humanize the text. They usually write mainly commercial blog posts instead of informational ones. Especially when it comes to product listicle blogs where these sites rank 10 products of a certain niche and leave their referral under each product and structure the rank of the products based on the highest commission they would receive. I've seen some sites pump 100s of blog posts like these in just a few months. 6. Video quality generated by AI is now almost unprecedented in the sense that most people can't really tell the difference between it and real videos. I've personally seen a lot of people use these hyper-realistic styles to create fake selfie video testimonials along with realistic voiceover narrations. Obviously, there is a lot of room for abuse, and marketers just need to stay creative to stay ahead. I've also seen some businesses use SUNO AI to generate music for their business. These songs are really catchy, but are ads for their product or services as well.