AI Affiliate 2025-10-02

The tools and tactics that turn AI potential into affiliate profits. Brought to you by the mThink Blue Book team (the 2025 Blue Book survey is now open)

Hey folks, welcome back to AI Affiliate, where we decode the tech that's actually making affiliate marketers money. This week: MCP finally makes sense, lead-gen platforms get acquired, and we test a video tool that might be too smart for its own good. Let's dive in.

YouTube just pulled a flex that should make every affiliate marketer pay attention. According to Search Engine Land, YouTube is cited in AI search results 200x more than any other site. That means when folks ask AI-powered engines like Google’s Overviews for answers, the bots are grabbing receipts straight from YouTube videos. Meanwhile, Search Engine Journal reports that Google’s AI Overviews overlap with 54% of organic results, siphoning traffic that used to go to blogs and publishers. Translation: clicks are moving away from written content and toward video-backed AI snippets.

The plot twist: publishers are taking a hit. SEJ says some sites saw click-through rates tank by up to 89% after AI Overviews went live. That’s not just a dip, that’s like finding out your avocado toast habit costs a down payment on a house.

So where’s the money angle? Video content is suddenly the star of AI-powered search. If YouTube is the citation king, then creators who produce smart, keyword-rich video content have a shortcut to becoming the “source of truth” AI bots surface. Affiliates who’ve been dragging their feet on video should see this as a flashing neon sign.

Why this matters for affiliates:

Speaking of… if YouTube is the new homepage of AI-driven search, how long before TikTok starts eating its lunch?

Most affiliates bleed ROI on landing pages without even realizing it. This prompt acts like a CRO consultant in your pocket, showing you where your page loses clicks and handing back rewrites designed to convert.

Pro-Tip: Paste in your actual audience persona (like “25-year-old sneakerhead scrolling TikTok at midnight”) instead of a generic one. The AI’s rewrites will hit way closer to home and feel more persuasive.

You’ve got a podcast, webinar, or long video, but turning it into engaging short clips for TikTok or Reels is time-consuming.

AI Solution:

AI-powered video editors like OpusClip, Descript, and Pictory automate the process, extracting key moments, adding captions, and formatting for various platforms—all in minutes.

Recommended Tools:

Zebracat transforms text and audio into videos faster than you can say "TikTok algorithm change." It's built for folks churning out social content at industrial scale, with AI avatars, voice synthesis, and automated editing that actually works. But here's the catch: this Ferrari of video tools might be wasted on your neighborhood grocery run.

The platform shines when you're batch-producing 50+ videos weekly. Feed it blog posts, and it spits out polished TikToks complete with trending music and effects. The AI avatars look surprisingly human (no uncanny valley vibes), and the voice cloning had us doing double-takes.

But the learning curve? Steeper than your January credit card bill. Small teams spent more time configuring workflows than creating content. Plus, at $35-$249 monthly, you're paying enterprise prices for features solo marketers won't touch.

Perfect for agencies managing multiple accounts. Overkill for creators just starting their affiliate journey. Try Canva or InVideo first.

Remember when MCP was just Anthropic's weird little project? Well, plot twist: Sundar Pichai just announced Gemini's adopting it, and OpenAI's already on board. For affiliate marketers, this means your AI tools are about to get scary good at actually running campaigns, not just talking about them. We're talking real-time data access across your entire stack. Speaking of stacks getting smarter...

Praxis just acquired WealthHawk, and folks, this isn't your typical boring M&A news. They're combining AI-powered financial lead generation with enterprise distribution networks. Translation: automated lead scoring and routing that actually works. But here's where it gets interesting...

Accenture's laying off 11,000 employees to "reskill for AI." That's basically a small city worth of consultants getting the boot. They're betting everything on AI transformation services, which means affiliate marketers better level up fast or risk becoming part of the next "reskilling" wave.

The connecting thread? Whether it's protocols, platforms, or people, everyone's racing to either adopt AI or get replaced by it.

Please tell us what you think, what you want to see or if you just want to ask us a question. Get in touch

That's a wrap on today's essential AI affiliate intel. For those who want to dig deeper, we're testing a bonus section called The Explainer. Feel free to bookmark for later or skip entirely.

Look, I know Model Context Protocol sounds like something from a sci-fi movie. Here's the deal: it's basically a universal translator that lets AI actually DO things in your marketing tools instead of just talking about them.

We've all been there. You ask ChatGPT for help with your email campaign, and it gives you great advice. But then you have to manually copy everything into Mailchimp, update your spreadsheets, and check your analytics separately. It's exhausting.

Think of MCP like giving your AI assistant the keys to your marketing stack. It's like the difference between having a really smart friend who gives you advice over the phone versus having that friend actually come over and help you reorganize your entire house.

Before MCP, AI could only suggest things. Now it can actually connect to your Gmail, pull data from your campaigns, update your spreadsheets, and even send emails for you. All through simple conversation.

The magic happens because MCP creates a standard "language" that both AI and your tools understand. It's like how USB-C finally let us charge everything with one cable. Remember that nightmare of different chargers for everything? MCP solves that same problem for AI and marketing tools.

Here's where we affiliate marketers win big. You can tell Claude or ChatGPT something like "Check my Mailchimp open rates from last week and draft three new subject lines based on what worked." And it actually does it. No copying, no pasting, no switching tabs.

Want to analyze which affiliate links are converting? Your AI can pull that data directly. Need to update campaign budgets based on performance? It happens automatically.

The best part? The mainstream MCPs like Gmail and Mailchimp are actually pretty simple to set up. We're not talking about coding here. It's more like connecting apps in Zapier, just with a bit more initial setup.

Honestly, start with Gmail MCP if you're nervous. It's the training wheels of MCP, and it works with all the big AI players: ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. Once you see your AI actually reading and organizing your emails, you'll get why this matters.

Then try Mailchimp MCP. These mainstream tools have made their setups fairly straightforward because they want you using them.

The bottom line: MCPs turn AI from a smart advisor into an actual assistant who can access and work with your real marketing data. We're all still figuring out the best ways to use this, but the basics aren't as scary as they sound.