The ongoing process of identifying, approaching, and onboarding new publishers to grow an affiliate program's reach, typically targeting content sites, influencers, or technology partners relevant to the advertiser's category. Recruitment can be run in-house or outsourced to an affiliate agency.
An affiliate agency identifies 40 home-improvement blogs that already review competitor products, then reaches out individually offering a starter commission rate to bring them into a new hardware retailer's program.
Strong recruitment targets already have an engaged audience that overlaps with the advertiser's category, ideally shown by existing coverage of competitor or adjacent products. Relevance and audience trust generally matter more than raw traffic volume, since a smaller, well-matched audience often converts better than a large, unrelated one.
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