Affiliate Marketing vs Display Ads: Which Pays More?

Two Paths to Publisher Revenue

The question of whether affiliate marketing or display advertising pays more is one of the most debated topics among publishers. The honest answer is that it depends entirely on your niche, content type, traffic volume, and audience intent. Both models have distinct strengths and weaknesses, and the most successful publishers almost always use both in a complementary strategy rather than choosing one exclusively.

Display advertising generates revenue passively through ad impressions and clicks. You place ad code on your site, and networks serve ads to your visitors automatically. Revenue scales linearly with traffic, and the publisher's primary job is to attract visitors and provide a good ad experience. The earnings model is straightforward: more pageviews equals more money, modified by your RPM.

Affiliate marketing generates revenue through commissions on products or services you recommend. You create content that features products, include tracked affiliate links, and earn a percentage when readers make purchases. Revenue depends not on total traffic but on the intent and actions of specific visitors. A single well-optimized product review can earn more from 1,000 targeted visitors than display ads earn from 50,000 general visitors.

Understanding the mechanics and economics of each model helps you decide how to allocate your content creation efforts and optimize your overall monetization strategy.

Display Advertising: The Passive Revenue Machine

Display advertising's greatest strength is its passivity. Once properly implemented, ads run automatically on every page of your site without requiring any per-page optimization or product knowledge. This makes display ads ideal for publishers who create large volumes of content across diverse topics where the primary goal is informing or entertaining rather than driving specific purchase decisions.

Revenue from display ads scales predictably with traffic. If your RPM is $15 and you get 100,000 pageviews per month, you earn approximately $1,500. Doubling your traffic roughly doubles your revenue. This linear relationship makes display ad revenue easy to forecast and plan around, which is valuable for financial management and business planning.

The limitation of display ads is that per-visitor earnings are relatively low. Even with premium networks and optimized placement, each visitor generates only a few cents in display ad revenue. A typical visitor consuming one page generates $0.01-0.05 in revenue at average RPMs. This means you need massive scale, hundreds of thousands or millions of pageviews, to generate substantial display ad income.

Display ad revenue is also highly dependent on factors outside your control: advertiser budgets, seasonal spending patterns, and ad network policies all affect your earnings. You can optimize placements and improve viewability, but the underlying demand that determines CPMs is set by the advertising market, not by anything you do.

The networks available to you significantly impact your display ad earnings. Publishers using basic AdSense might earn $2-8 RPM, while those using premium networks like Mediavine or Raptive earn $15-40 or more. Qualifying for premium networks by meeting their traffic thresholds is one of the highest-leverage actions a publisher can take for display ad revenue.

Affiliate Marketing: Higher Per-Visitor Value

Affiliate marketing's strength lies in its potential for much higher per-visitor earnings, particularly for content that addresses commercial intent. A single visitor who clicks an affiliate link and makes a $500 purchase might earn you a $25-50 commission, an amount that would require 500-2,500 pageviews to match through display ads alone.

The economics of affiliate marketing favor quality over quantity. A well-crafted product review ranking on the first page of Google for a commercial keyword might receive only 2,000 monthly visits but generate $500-2,000 in affiliate commissions if the product has a strong commission rate and the content drives conversions effectively. The equivalent display ad revenue from those 2,000 visits would be $10-80.

Affiliate marketing also gives you more control over your earnings. You choose which products to promote, which affiliate programs to join, and how to present recommendations. If one product has a low commission rate, you can highlight alternatives with better compensation. If one affiliate program changes its terms unfavorably, you can switch to a competitor. This control contrasts with display ads, where you accept whatever the network serves.

The downside of affiliate marketing is that it requires active, ongoing effort. Each piece of affiliate content needs research into the product, the commission structure, competing alternatives, and buyer intent keywords. You need to maintain and update affiliate content as products change, links expire, and new alternatives emerge. Unlike display ads that run automatically on every page, affiliate marketing only works on pages specifically designed for it.

Affiliate revenue is also more volatile than display ads. A single product going out of stock, an affiliate program changing its terms, or a competitor outranking your review can cause significant revenue drops. Some publishers have lost thousands in monthly revenue overnight when Amazon changed its commission rates or when a key affiliate program shut down.

Head-to-Head Comparison

Comparing the two models across key dimensions reveals their complementary nature:

• Setup difficulty: Display ads are easier to implement. Sign up for a network, paste code, and you are earning. Affiliate marketing requires joining individual programs, creating product-focused content, and managing links across your site.
• Revenue per pageview: Affiliate marketing wins for high-intent commercial content. Display ads win for informational, entertainment, and news content where visitors are not in a buying mindset.
• Scalability: Display ads scale more easily because every new piece of content automatically generates ad revenue. Affiliate content requires deliberate product integration and link placement for each new article.
• Passivity: Display ads are largely passive once set up. Affiliate marketing requires ongoing maintenance of links, product accuracy, and content freshness.
• Revenue stability: Display ads provide more consistent baseline revenue because they earn from all traffic regardless of purchase intent. Affiliate revenue concentrates in specific high-performing articles and can fluctuate more.
• Control: Affiliate marketing gives you more control over what you promote and what you earn per conversion. Display ads delegate control to the network and programmatic market.
• Audience impact: Both can degrade user experience if overused. Excessive display ads clutter the page, while excessive affiliate promotion can make content feel like a sales pitch rather than genuine advice.

Which Content Types Suit Which Model

The type of content you create is the strongest indicator of which monetization model will earn more for a given page. Understanding this alignment helps you choose the right model for each piece of content rather than applying a blanket approach.

Best for affiliate marketing: Product reviews, comparison articles, buying guides, best-of lists, tutorials that recommend specific tools, and any content where the reader is actively considering a purchase. These formats attract high-intent visitors who are further along in the buying journey and more likely to click affiliate links and convert.

Best for display ads: Informational how-to articles, news coverage, opinion pieces, educational content, entertainment content, and any topic where the reader is seeking information or entertainment rather than making a purchase decision. These formats attract broad audiences whose value is best captured through display ad impressions.

Hybrid content: Many articles naturally support both models. A comprehensive guide to home office setups can earn display ad revenue from all readers while also including affiliate links to recommended desks, chairs, and monitors for readers who want specific product recommendations. The informational value attracts organic traffic and generates display ad impressions, while the product recommendations serve readers with purchase intent and generate affiliate commissions.

The Best Answer: Use Both

The most successful publishers do not choose between affiliate marketing and display ads. They use both strategically, matching each monetization model to the content and audience intent it serves best. This combined approach maximizes total revenue per visitor while maintaining a good user experience across all content types.

A typical optimized content mix might include 60-70% informational articles monetized primarily through display ads, 20-30% commercial content monetized through affiliate links plus display ads, and 5-10% content that serves primarily as link magnets or social traffic drivers. The informational content builds topical authority and drives organic traffic, the commercial content generates high per-visitor affiliate revenue, and the link magnet content attracts backlinks that improve rankings for all content.

Display ads should run on every page of your site, including affiliate-focused content. Well-placed display ads do not significantly reduce affiliate conversion rates but add incremental revenue to every pageview. The combined RPM, including both display ad and affiliate revenue, is higher than either model alone.

On affiliate-focused pages, be strategic about display ad placement. Avoid placing large display ads directly above or beside your affiliate call-to-action buttons, as they compete for the click that would generate the affiliate commission. In these cases, reduce display ad density slightly and position ads away from your affiliate conversion elements.

Implementation Strategies

For publishers starting out, display ads are the logical first step because they require less content specialization and generate revenue from all traffic immediately. Sign up for an ad network appropriate for your traffic level, such as Google AdSense for new sites, and begin earning while you build your content library. Use AdGateScore to assess which networks you qualify for and what improvements would unlock higher-paying options.

Once you have a steady flow of organic traffic, begin adding affiliate content to your mix. Start with one or two comprehensive product reviews or buying guides in your niche's most commercially valuable categories. Track conversion rates and revenue per article to understand what works before scaling affiliate content production.

As your site matures, analyze your revenue data to understand which pages earn more from display ads and which earn more from affiliate links. Use this data to inform your content strategy: create more of whatever type of content generates the highest total revenue per hour of creation effort. The optimal mix will evolve over time as your traffic grows, your niche expertise deepens, and market conditions change.

Keep detailed records of both revenue streams separately so you can make informed decisions about where to invest your time. A page-level revenue analysis that combines display ad revenue and affiliate revenue gives you a true picture of each article's total monetary value and helps prioritize content creation and optimization efforts across your entire site.