Affiliate Roundup: Publicis Acquisition, Booking.com Affiliate Cuts, and Google’s Cookie Reversal Impact Marketing

This week in FMTC’s Affiliate Roundup: Publicis Groupe acquired Captiv8 for $150 million to boost influencer marketing and social commerce. Booking.com will end partnerships with thousands of smaller travel bloggers by June 20, 2025, forcing them to find new revenue. Google paused its plan to remove third-party cookies in Chrome, allowing users to choose, drawing mixed reactions from advertisers.

• Publicis Groupe acquired Captiv8 for $150 million to boost its influencer marketing and social commerce capabilities.

• Booking.com is ending affiliate partnerships with thousands of travel bloggers effective June 20, 2025, impacting smaller affiliates while maintaining relationships with higher-earning partners, forcing creators to find alternative revenue streams.

• Google has reversed its decision to phase out third-party cookies in Chrome, opting instead to allow users to choose whether to accept them, a move that has been met with mixed reactions from the advertising industry and regulators.

• Awin’s Publisher Recommendations tool uses AI to suggest up to 25 tailored affiliate partners daily, helping advertisers find high-converting publishers more efficiently.

• In People vs Algorithms‘ episode “From Pages to Protocols” (May 23, 2025), the hosts discuss how AI and new protocols are reshaping the web by replacing traditional pages with machine-readable interfaces.

The post Affiliate Roundup: Publicis Acquisition, Booking.com Affiliate Cuts, and Google’s Cookie Reversal Impact Marketing appeared first on FMTC.