Affiliate partner performance across AvantLink & Impact
The Partners page shows every active affiliate in your program - from both AvantLink and Impact - in a single ranked table. Sort by any metric to understand who's driving revenue, who's driving new customers, and who's costing you commission without producing proportionate value.
Partner table columns
Each row in the partner table represents one affiliate publisher. Columns can be sorted by clicking the column header. The table defaults to sorting by Revenue (highest first) for the currently selected date range.
| Field | What it means |
|---|---|
| Partner | Affiliate publisher name as it appears in AvantLink or Impact. Includes the network badge (AvantLink / Impact). |
| Type | Publisher category: Content, Coupon, Aggregator, Social, Loyalty, or Email. Pulled from the network's classification. |
| Clicks | Total clicks this partner generated in the selected period. |
| CR | Conversion rate for this partner: their orders divided by their clicks. Compare against the program average to spot over- and under-performers. |
| Revenue | Affiliate-attributed revenue driven by this partner. |
| NTF Rate | Percentage of this partner's orders from first-time buyers. High NTF = genuine new customer acquisition. |
| ROAS | Revenue ÷ Commission for this partner. How many dollars you earn per dollar of commission paid to them specifically. |
| Commission | Total commission earned by or accrued to this partner in the period. |
| Trend | Arrow indicator (↑ or ↓) comparing this period's revenue to the equivalent prior period. |
Filtering by network
If you're connected to both AvantLink and Impact, the partner table shows all publishers combined by default. Use the network filter buttons - AvantLink / Impact / All - to narrow the view. This is useful when you want to evaluate each program independently or share a network-specific report.
Partner types explained
Content affiliates
Bloggers, review sites, and editorial publications that write about your products. Content affiliates typically have lower click volume but higher conversion rates and NTF rates because their audiences are actively researching purchases. These are your highest-quality partners for new customer acquisition.
Coupon and cashback affiliates
Sites that aggregate discount codes and cashback offers. They drive volume but tend to have lower NTF rates because they attract existing customers looking for deals rather than new-to-brand shoppers. Watch their ROAS carefully - if commission is high and NTF rate is low, they may be earning commission on customers who were going to buy anyway.
Aggregators and comparison sites
Shopping portals and product comparison engines. Performance depends heavily on your product feed quality (see Product Feed) and pricing competitiveness. Aggregators on AvantLink often drive significant click volume with variable conversion.
Loyalty and rewards affiliates
Points programs and rewards platforms. Similar to coupon affiliates in that they attract existing customers - check NTF rate before investing in premium commission tiers.
Using partner data to optimize commissions
The combination of NTF Rate and ROAS is your most powerful commission optimization lever. A partner with high NTF and high ROAS earns more commission because they're genuinely worth more to you. A partner with low NTF and low ROAS is getting paid premium rates for orders that don't move the business forward - the Actions Inbox will flag this as a margin_underperformer action.
Partner Intelligence - AI profiles
Clicking any partner row expands their Partner Intelligence profile - an automatically generated AI analysis of who that partner actually is and what they're doing in your program. This is distinct from the Actions Inbox: the inbox tells you when to act, the profile tells you how by giving you full context before you reach out.
What's in each profile
| Field | What it means |
|---|---|
| Lifetime strip | Tenure, lifetime revenue, AOV proxy, and commission/ROAS since the partner joined - context the 30-day table view doesn't show. |
| Peer comparison | How this partner ranks within your program on NTF rate, repeat purchase rate, and return rate. Shown as percentile chips (e.g. 'Top 15% NTF rate'). |
| AI summary | A 4-6 sentence strategic paragraph written by Claude, updated automatically. Covers revenue trend diagnosis, customer quality signal, margin position, and a specific recommended next step. Tap 'Read full analysis' to expand. |
| 8-week sparkline | Weekly revenue bars for the last two months with peak and cumulative annotations - shows whether the current trend is a spike, a slide, or steady state. |
| Customer quality grid | NTF rate, NTF revenue share, repeat purchase rate (90-day window), and return rate - all sourced from your live Shopify order history, not the network. |
| Profitability grid | True profit per order (after COGS and commission), commission as a percentage of gross margin with colour coding, and ROAS. |
| Top products | The five products this partner most frequently drives sales of, with order counts - useful for landing page and creative decisions. |
Partner archetypes
Each partner is assigned one of four archetypes automatically based on their revenue trend and consistency. Archetypes drive which Actions Inbox alerts fire - a Declining partner triggers partner_decline, a Dormant one triggers dormant_partner, a Growing one can trigger rising_star.
| Field | What it means |
|---|---|
| Growing | Revenue is trending up meaningfully and the partner has been active across recent weeks. Consider a commission bump or early product access to lock in the relationship. |
| Declining | Revenue has dropped significantly vs. the prior period. May indicate creative fatigue, a content focus shift, or a competitive offer from another program. |
| Consistent | Active and stable across all recent weeks with no strong trend in either direction. The backbone of most programs - reliable but may respond well to a structured incentive. |
| Dormant | No conversion activity in 30+ days despite a prior track record. A re-engagement campaign with an exclusive incentive is the standard first move. |
Connection to the Actions Inbox
Partner Intelligence profiles and the Actions Inbox are two layers of the same analysis. The same engine assigns each partner an archetype and computes their quality metrics - those outputs directly feed the inbox action types. When you open a rising_star action, you're looking at the same profile data that triggered it: the archetype, the 8-week trend, the NTF rate. The profile gives you the full picture; the inbox gives you the prioritized prompt to act.
Related reading
The Partners page gives you the raw signal - the blog goes deeper on what to do with it. How to Identify Rising Star Affiliates explains the NTF rate, CR, and growth thresholds that flag a partner worth investing in early. How to Identify and Re-Engage Dormant Affiliates covers how to read the trend column as an early warning sign before a partner goes fully inactive.
Frequently asked questions
What is NTF rate and how do I use it to evaluate affiliate partners on AvantLink?
NTF (New to File) rate measures the percentage of an affiliate's driven orders that came from first-time buyers. On AvantLink, this is tracked at the transaction level. A partner with a 70%+ NTF rate is genuinely expanding your customer base - not just earning commission on customers who would have bought anyway. OptimizeAffiliate surfaces NTF rate per partner so you can identify which affiliates are your best new-customer acquisition channels and reward them accordingly.
How do I see partners from both AvantLink and Impact in one place?
The OptimizeAffiliate Partners page shows a unified partner table that includes affiliates from both networks. Each partner row shows which network they belong to (AvantLink or Impact), so you can filter by network or view all partners combined. This is one of the core advantages of OptimizeAffiliate over logging into each network separately.
What affiliate partner types does OptimizeAffiliate track?
Partner types in OptimizeAffiliate include: Content (bloggers, review sites, editorial), Coupon (cashback and discount sites), Aggregator (product comparison and shopping portals), Social (influencer and social media affiliates), Loyalty (points and rewards programs), and Email (newsletter affiliates). Type classification is pulled from AvantLink and Impact's own categorization of each publisher.
What is a Partner Intelligence profile?
Partner Intelligence is an automatically generated AI analysis for every partner in your program. Clicking a partner row expands their profile, which includes a behavioural archetype (Growing, Declining, Consistent, or Dormant), an 8-week revenue sparkline, a plain-English strategic summary written by Claude, a customer quality breakdown (NTF rate, repeat purchase rate, return rate), and a profitability grid (true profit per order, commission as a percentage of gross margin, ROAS). Profiles update automatically alongside the Actions Inbox run.
What do the partner archetypes mean?
Each partner is assigned one of four archetypes based on their recent behaviour. Growing: revenue is trending up meaningfully and the partner has been active in recent weeks. Declining: revenue is trending down significantly - the partner may need outreach or a commission adjustment. Consistent: active and stable across all recent weeks with no strong trend in either direction. Dormant: no conversion activity in 30+ days. Archetypes are recalculated automatically and drive which Actions Inbox alerts fire for that partner.
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