AI is making affiliate businesses leaner. But at what cost?

The affiliate industry is changing fast, with companies restructuring and headcounts falling. AI is held up as both the reason and solution. The conversation focuses on what's saved, seldom on what's lost.

I've made these tough restructuring decisions myself, and I know the pressure and the reality that sometimes the business simply can't afford to keep everyone.

But I keep coming back to the same questions: Are we moving too fast, and what are we actually losing? Before any leader signs off on restructuring, it's worth asking what expertise or trust is at risk, how to measure what's lost, and whether we've built ways to recover vital knowledge or relationships if needed. These questions belong in the boardroom, not as an afterthought.

When trust is the product

Affiliate content is a trust business; we don't always talk about it that way, but it is. The person reading a casino review or comparing sportsbooks is making an actual decision with real money, and what they're looking for, even if they'd never say it out loud, is a human voice they can trust. Someone with a genuine opinion, someone who'd actually tell them if something wasn't worth their time.

When work can vanish overnight with a Google update, trust is what lasts. If AI-written content replaces human voices, will readers sense the difference? Will metrics hold only to slip later? No one really knows yet.

What the numbers actually say

In a prior restructuring, we cut 30% of the staff and removed management layers that had accumulated during growth. Crucially, we kept the human core content and relationships intact. That's very different from replacing people with AI and calling it progress.

Numbers in affiliation are stark: both Catena Media and Gambling.com Group have cut 25% of their workforce, with the latter making AI the backbone of operations and saving $13 million a year. Catena Media has reduced headcount by over 60%. Across industries, 56% of 2026 layoff announcements cite AI. Deutsche Bank calls this 'AI redundancy washing', as companies frame cuts as transformation, making it hard to tell who is truly adapting and who is just cutting costs.

When every cut gets framed as a transformation, it becomes genuinely hard to tell the companies that are evolving from the ones cutting costs and calling it a strategy. Some decisions may be right, but what's missing is: what expertise and value are being left, and is there a plan to recover them if needed?

The question nobody is asking

The market is already responding. Analysis of iGaming trends found a flood of low-quality AI content in 2025, which audiences noticed and gravitated toward work that felt real. The 2026 SOFTSWISS Trends Report shows brand trust now outweighs bonuses for player acquisition. The human element is becoming more valuable, just as we're removing it.

I read a story about how IKEA handled this. They replaced 8,500 customer service roles with AI, using it to manage routine customer inquiries and support tasks. Then, they moved every one of those people into a new interior design advisory service. That service went on to generate $1.4 billion in new revenue. Nobody lost their job. What IKEA got right wasn't just the automation; it was the question they asked alongside it: Now that AI is handling the routine work, what can our people actually do? The $1.4 billion came from asking that question.

Affiliate businesses could do the same with redirecting expertise and relationships rather than just cutting roles. Experienced writers could become quality leads or engagement specialists; affiliate managers could help shape new products or deepen partnerships. There's untapped value in redeploying talent, but most companies simply stop at the savings.

Research across 146 companies found it takes years, not months, for trust, morale and engagement to recover after layoffs. In this industry, that's not a soft problem. A disengaged team becomes a content problem, a content problem becomes a traffic problem, and a traffic problem becomes a revenue problem. By the time that shows up in the numbers, the people who could have turned it around are long gone.

So I keep coming back to what affiliate content will look like in two or three years if this keeps going. We'll have more volume, lower cost, faster output, but somewhere inside all of that, there will be fewer people who actually know this industry and care about it. Who writes something a reader might finish and think about afterwards? Are we building toward a version of affiliation where the content is everywhere and means nothing? Will we only find out when the readers stop coming back?

I've made these calls, and I understand why they happen. I'm just not sure the industry has been honest with itself about what it's giving up and whether the savings will look the same in three years as they do today.

So, before the next round of redundancies and the announcement goes out, it's worth asking: what exactly is the plan for what leaves with the people, and how will the industry thrive if it never gets that back? The future of affiliation may well depend on the answer.