Global
Independent industry ranking 2026–2027 edition

Who movesthe global affiliatemarketing industry?

The 50 people with the greatest current ability to shape traffic, economics, infrastructure, distribution and deal flow across global affiliate marketing.

NOT A POPULARITY CONTEST. NOT A LINKEDIN FOLLOWER LIST. AFFILIATEPOWER50 MAPS WHERE CONTROL, CAPITAL, TRAFFIC AND INDUSTRY ACCESS ACTUALLY SIT.
50
People ranked
7
Power dimensions
Global
Not US-centric
2026 – 2027
Current influence

The people closest to the control points.

The top of the list is dominated by people who can change acquisition economics, platform access, affiliate infrastructure or the flow of industry relationships at enormous scale.

01
Mark Zuckerberg
Meta

Founder, chairman and CEO of Meta. Meta’s Family of Apps reaches about 3.60 billion daily active people. Facebook and Instagram remain core paid-acquisition channels, so changes to targeting, auction mechanics, attribution, algorithms, policy or enforcement can reshape affiliate economics globally.

02
Nick Fox
Google

Leads Google’s Knowledge & Information organization across Search, Ads, Geo and Commerce. Google generated about $294.7 billion in advertising revenue in 2025, including roughly $224.5 billion from Search & other. His organization directly influences both paid and organic discovery economics.

03
Shou Zi Chew
TikTok

CEO of TikTok. TikTok has more than 200 million monthly users in Europe, while TikTok Shop generated more than $500 million in U.S. sales across four days around Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2025. Product, recommendation and commerce decisions increasingly affect affiliate and creator-led acquisition.

04

Co-founder and CEO of Affiliate World Conferences. Its largest editions bring together 7,000+ attendees, 300+ exhibitors, 170+ affiliate networks, 120+ advertisers and 40+ traffic sources from 110+ countries, concentrating global deal flow, visibility, relationships and industry attention.

05
David Yovanno
impact.com

CEO of impact.com. The company reports 2 million+ partnerships and more than $110 billion in annual GMV flowing through its ecosystem. Its infrastructure spans partner discovery, contracting, tracking, attribution and payments for major brands and publishers.

06
Adam Ross
Awin

CEO of Awin. Awin reports roughly 1 million publishers, 30,000 advertisers and around 1,400 employees globally, with approximately $19 billion in advertiser revenue and $1.4 billion in publisher revenue generated through its network.

07
Kelly Householder
ClickBank

CEO of ClickBank. The marketplace reports 100,000+ active affiliates and more than $7.3 billion paid to affiliates and sellers. Its offer economics, commissions, approvals and payouts directly influence where large volumes of direct-response traffic flow.

08
Santi Pierini
CJ

CEO of CJ. The network handles more than $1.8 billion in annual publisher payouts and around 4.8 million advertiser-publisher relationships each year, giving it major influence over enterprise affiliate access, attribution, commissions and program structure.

09

CEO of Rakuten Advertising. The company reports access to 1.2 billion+ consumers and more than 200 million transactions, giving its network substantial leverage across premium ecommerce, loyalty and global performance partnerships.

10
Adam Singolda
Taboola

Founder and CEO of Taboola. Taboola reaches 600 million+ daily active users through roughly 9,000 publisher partners and serves 15,000+ advertisers. That open-web distribution makes it one of the largest scalable acquisition channels outside the biggest walled gardens.

Power is the ability to change outcomes for everyone else.
AffiliatePower50 editorial principle

Seven levers of industry power.

The central question is: if this person changed strategy tomorrow, how much would affiliate traffic, revenue, offers, distribution, technology, relationships or deal flow actually change?

Current influence is weighted above historical importance. Platform scale matters, but so does direct relevance to affiliate economics.

  1. 22%Traffic & distribution control
  2. 22%Affiliate-specific economic scale
  3. 20%Structural ecosystem control
  4. 15%Operator scale & credibility
  5. 10%Global / cross-vertical reach
  6. 7%Industry centrality & deal flow
  7. 4%Public authority

The full power map.

Traffic owners, networks, infrastructure companies, publishers, major operators, lead-gen platforms and regional power brokers.

#PersonCompanyWhy they matter
11
Alex Vasekin
CEO of AdTech Holding, whose portfolio includes PropellerAds. PropellerAds reports more than 2 billion monthly active users, giving the group substantial reach among performance advertisers and international direct-response media buyers.
12
Vidhya Srinivasan
VP/GM of Ads & Commerce at Google. She helps shape products inside a Google advertising business that generated about $294.7 billion in 2025, including automated bidding, merchant feeds, AI advertising, attribution and commerce surfaces used by performance marketers worldwide.
13
Ivan Doruda
CEO of MGID. MGID reports 850 million+ monthly unique users, 32,000+ content sites and more than 185 billion content recommendations per month, making it a major global native and performance traffic source.
14
Sven Platte
Founder and CEO of Digistore24. The company reports serving 2 million digital entrepreneurs across 180 countries and processing roughly $3 billion in total sales, with a marketplace deeply integrated into affiliate-driven digital product distribution.
15
Robin Duan
Founder and CEO of Mobvista. Mobvista reported roughly $2.05 billion in 2025 revenue, with Mintegral contributing about $1.96 billion. Hurun’s 2026 list estimates Duan’s wealth at roughly US$1 billion, reflecting the scale of the mobile advertising business he controls.
16
Daniel Tran
Founder of YCORN Global and SeamX. His group disclosed $133 million of Meta spend in a recent 30-day period across 329 active clients, implying more than $1.5 billion of annual Meta spend at that run-rate; it has also reported a $5 million spend day and roughly 128 staff.
17
Taras Kiseliuk
CEO of ClickDealer. The network reports around 10,000 active publishers, 1,000+ clients, 40 billion monthly impressions and activity across 180 GEOs, giving it substantial reach in performance marketing worldwide.
18
Anton Brovkin
CEO of Adsterra. The platform reports 45,000+ direct publishers, 16,000 advertisers, more than 36 billion monthly ad views and coverage across 248 GEOs, making it a major performance traffic marketplace.
19
Tim Ram
CEO of TrafficStars. The platform reports more than 10 billion ad impressions per day across 200+ countries, with particular importance in iGaming and other high-volume direct-response verticals.
20
Andrius Valatka
CEO of Orbio World. The group reported roughly €264.9 million in 2025 revenue and €15.3 million in net profit, with about 8.5 million customers across 131 countries. Its scale makes it a major direct-response ecommerce operator.
21
Adam Foroughi
Co-founder and CEO of AppLovin. Advertisers spend more than $11 billion annually through its platform, while its MAX monetization stack reaches around 1 billion daily active users, giving AppLovin major influence over mobile performance acquisition economics.
22
Matt McEvoy
CEO of MaxBounty. The long-running CPA network offers roughly 2,000+ active CPA campaigns, maintaining a large marketplace where affiliate traffic, advertiser demand and payout economics meet.
23
Henry Chan
Co-founder and CEO of ShopBack. ShopBack reports 20 million+ active annual users, around $5.5 billion in annual GMV, 20,000+ merchant partners and more than $900 million in cashback paid, making it a major APAC commerce and affiliate distribution platform.
24
Peter Zou
Founder and CEO of eclicktech / Yeahmobi. Yeahmobi reports 5,000+ advertisers, reach across 200+ countries and regions and access to more than 7 billion devices, giving the group major cross-border mobile performance reach.
25
Ikkjin Ahn
Co-founder and CEO of Moloco. Moloco Ads reports more than 2 billion daily active users across 2.8 million+ apps; 45 of the top 50 highest-grossing mobile app publishers advertised with Moloco in 2025, and more than 90% of spend is optimized to deeper-funnel CPA or ROAS goals.
26
Shrey Kapoor
Leads Google’s affiliate partnership relationships with professional affiliates and media buyers. His role gives the affiliate industry a direct operating bridge into Google on policy, product, account access and performance-marketing issues.
27
Topher Grant
Founder and CEO of GiddyUp. The company reports more than $2 billion in product sales, 10 million+ customers, 300+ brands and more than $435 million in commissions paid to performance partners.
28
Frank Jiang
General Manager of MediaGo, Baidu Global’s advertising platform. MediaGo reports more than 30 billion monthly ad impressions and over 500,000 ad requests per second; its recommendation technology has also been described as operating at billion-parameter scale.
29
Alan Gu
Founder and CEO of PartnerBoost. The platform reports 15,000+ brands, 100,000+ affiliates and creators and a 400+ person service organization, making it a major bridge between Chinese brands and global affiliate distribution.
30
Adam Young
Founder and CEO of Ringba. Ringba is core pay-per-call infrastructure used by major buyers, networks and publishers, and the company says billions of dollars have been paid through its wider ecosystem.
31
Rohit Ajmani
Founder of Idea Clan and a major direct-response affiliate operator. He has reported more than $25 million in ClickBank commissions since February 2026, including a $1 million commission day, with roughly 250 staff and more than $100 million in historical managed ad spend.
32
Andra Ionescu
Founder and CEO of MaxWeb. The network reports more than 40,000 active affiliates and 300+ CPA offers, giving it significant influence in health, ecommerce and direct-response affiliate traffic.
33
Sam Darawish
Co-founder and CEO of Everflow. The company reported about $4.3 billion in partner-tracked revenue in 2025, more than $30 million in ARR and 1,200+ brands, spanning partner management, attribution, payments and marketplace infrastructure.
34
Todd Stearn
Founder and CEO of The Aragon Company. Its ecosystem has handled more than 15 million paid calls; Premium reported 2 million conversions in 2025 and more than $36 million paid to affiliates over three years.
35
Aleksey Shmonov
Founder and CEO of Marketcall. The pay-per-call platform reports 119,000 active affiliates, 18.2 million calls, more than $277 million in affiliate earnings and activity across 165 countries.
36
Matt Gilbert
CEO of Partnerize. The platform reports 1,800+ clients, more than $15 billion in transactions, 750,000+ partners and 250,000 influencers, giving it significant enterprise partnership infrastructure scale.
37
Mahmoud Fathy
Founder and CEO of ArabyAds, including Boostiny. Boostiny reports 300+ brands, 5,000+ premium supply partners and more than 18 million transactions, making the group a major performance and affiliate platform across MENA.
38
Jimmy How
Founder and CEO of Involve Asia. The company reports more than $1 billion in transactions and 700,000+ publishers, making it one of Southeast Asia’s largest affiliate and creator commerce networks.
39
Zane McIntyre
Co-founder and CEO of Commission Factory. The network reports 50,000+ affiliates, 600+ advertisers and more than AU$50 million in sales per month, giving it major influence in Australia and APAC performance partnerships.
40
Parul Mehta Bhargava
Co-founder and CEO of vCommission. The network reports more than 100,000 affiliates and operates across India, Singapore, the UAE, the UK and the U.S., making it a major South Asian affiliate distribution platform.
41
Jesper Søgaard
Co-founder and co-CEO of Better Collective. The group generated roughly €337 million in 2025 revenue and reaches around 112 million monthly unique users, making it one of the world’s largest performance-driven sports and betting publishers.
42
Rostyslav Potapenko
Founder of LEGENDS. The company reports more than 700 specialists across performance marketing, gaming, betting and finance, while Potapenko has said its Telegram channels collectively reach more than 7 million followers.
43
Mona Li
Founder of BeesAds. She reports more than $100 million in cumulative advertising spend across Google, Meta and programmatic channels, giving her substantial operating scale in cross-border direct-response media buying.
44
David Kostman
CEO of Teads. Following the combination of Outbrain and Teads, the group generated roughly $1.3 billion in 2025 revenue and operates across 10,000+ publisher properties and 20,000 advertisers.
45
Leon Zhong
A senior leader at Pangle, ByteDance’s mobile advertising network. Pangle reports integration with roughly 380,000+ apps, giving it major mobile traffic and monetization reach, particularly across APAC and emerging markets.
46
Muhammad Umar
Founder of Digitas Finance. The firm reports more than $25 million in tax savings for digital marketers and says it works with five of the world’s top ten affiliate marketers, giving it an unusually central financial-services role in the operator ecosystem.
47
Alex Fedotoff
Ecommerce operator, advertiser and educator. He reports generating more than $200 million in ecommerce sales and spending more than $50 million of his own capital on advertising, with public biographies commonly citing $100 million+ in commercial scale.
48
Jason Akatiff
Founder of A4D and a longtime superaffiliate and network operator. A4D has historically reported more than 2,000 merchants and 12,000 media-buying affiliates, giving Akatiff durable influence across direct-response offers and traffic.
49
Maor Benaim
Veteran media buyer and founder of The Wolf Marketing. He has reported more than $220 million in annual advertising spend, making him one of the highest-scale independent paid-acquisition operators associated with the affiliate industry.
50
Carmen Muley
Founder of Paragon Social Commerce and an eight-figure TikTok Shop and social-commerce operator. Her business sits at the intersection of paid social, creator distribution, ecommerce and affiliate-style performance compensation.

Independent by design.

AffiliatePower50 is an annual editorial ranking of the individuals with the greatest ability to affect the global affiliate economy. It combines upstream platform power, affiliate infrastructure, traffic ownership, advertiser demand, publisher scale and hands-on operator influence.

It is intended to be useful to people who actually work in performance marketing: affiliates, media buyers, advertisers, networks, traffic platforms, publishers and technology companies.

Data points are based on public company information, public filings, executive profiles and operator disclosures. Private-company figures may be self-reported.