Why Endorsement Marketing Is Often Under-Measured—and What to Do About It

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The endorsement growth system: key points

• Endorsement isn’t a channel, but a system that can travel across channels (affiliate, podcasts, creators, radio, YouTube, and more).
• To get the most out of endorsement, treat it as a program that supports owned + earned + paid, not a siloed performance channel.
• For authentic endorsements, don’t seek to fully control what creators/hosts say. Instead, give them guardrails: tight do’s/don’ts while leaving room for them to speak like humans.
• In the GEO world, endorsement content becomes third-party corroboration—a vital asset for trust and visibility.
• Simplistic attribution doesn’t work to properly measure endorsement; you need several overlapping and “redundant” methods.

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Endorsement is not a channel, but a system

Most teams talk about endorsement marketing like it’s a singular tactic:

• Affiliate
• Influencer
• Podcasts

But in this webinar, our own Amy Scanlon (GM, Affiliate Practice) and Krystina Rubino (GM, Offline Practice) reveal a different (and more exciting) truth:

Endorsement is not a channel, but a whole system.

It can show up in nearly any medium, at multiple points in the buyer journey, and increasingly, across the AI discovery layer too.

"I like to refer to affiliate as a program versus a channel because we can add value at owned, earned, and paid.” — Amy Scanlon, GM, Affiliate Practice, Right Side Up

Treat it like a channel, and frustrations will arise, from last-click debates to impatience to prove its value. Instead, manage it like a program, with cross-functional goals and multiple measurement methods—that is how you’ll get the most out of it.

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Watch the webinar in full

Want the whole conversation on Mastering Endorsement Marketing: From Readiness to ROI (including the candid “what goes wrong” bits)? Watch the full webinar, featuring Amy Scanlon (GM, Affiliate Practice) and Krystina Rubino (GM, Offline Practice).

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Why endorsement got a bigger seat at the growth table

Buyers trust people more than brands (and act like it)

The “why now” is simple: consumer behavior ain’t what it used to be.

Buyers now discover, evaluate, and make decisions through trusted voices, not just brand claims.

That’s true whether the “voice” is:

• a podcast host,
• a creator,
• a publisher,
• a community expert,
• or a partner they’ve followed for years.

And the data backs up why this matters for modern growth teams. Nielsen reports podcast ads drive ~10-point lift in awareness on average, and 64% of exposed listeners feel the brand is a “good fit.” 

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That’s endorsement doing what it does best: moving the hard-to-move metrics.

Endorsement also fuels AI visibility via third-party corroboration

Here’s the 2026 twist: endorsement can move humans and AI bots through the funnel.

“Through third-party content syndication, contextual creators can tell LLMs: yes, the brand is who they say they are.” — Amy Scanlon, GM, Affiliate Practice

As Amy put it, third-party content syndication creates an “army” of contextual validation that reinforces:

• who you are,
• what you offer,
• and why you’re credible.

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That matters more as AI answers cannibalize traditional clicks: data shows that position #1 CTR drops ~34.5% when Google AI Overviews appear.

If fewer prospects click your perfectly optimized page, the sources that AI models cite and learn from carry more weight. Endorsement content becomes part of that ecosystem.

Affiliate creates value across owned, earned, and paid

If there’s one point you need to take away from this article and webinar, it’s this:

Affiliate, when done well, isn’t just “pay-for-performance conversions.” It can create value across:

• Owned (UGC you can repurpose, landing-page learnings, messaging)
• Earned (mentions, reviews, citations, credibility)
• Paid (creative assets, amplification, partner-powered reach)

So when it sits exclusively inside performance marketing, it often gets judged on the wrong metrics, and can become easy to undervalue (or even dismiss). 

Instead, think of affiliate as a way to fill funnel gaps: it should complement your core channels, not compete with them.

Authentic fit > absolutist claims

As a marketer, you can probably sniff out “marketing speak” from a mile away. But so can customers nowadays.

This is why endorsement marketing has to feel real, and why “brand-written endorsement lines” often backfire.

A few things senior teams should remember:

• People have a strong “marketing BS” meter that’s only getting stronger.
• Hosts/creators have that meter too.
• If every partner says the exact same “endorsement” line, it starts to sound manufactured—fast.

“Please do not write an endorsement in your copy… If your endorsement line sounds the same from every partner, it’s going to ring false.” — Krystina Rubino, GM, Offline Practice, Right Side Up

So how do you get past that meter? Avoid phony claims, for one. But more specifically, implement this basic operating model for all partners:

1. Tight onboarding
2. Clear do’s and don’ts (legal + brand protection)
3. Room for the partner to sound like themselves

That balance also protects you operationally, because in many endorsement-first channels, you won’t preview every ad before it goes live.

Seeding isn’t optional if you want real endorsements

One of the most tactical (and most ignored) points: give partners the product.

If you want someone to credibly explain value, don’t force them to guess. Seeding improves authenticity and often leads to “free” value beyond the paid placement (extra mentions, organic sharing, longer-term affinity).

You need overlapping methods (because every model has its flaws)

If you’re leading growth, you’ve heard it a hundred times: “How do we scale brand search?” 

And you’ve probably thought: “By not giving it all the credit for everything.”

Endorsement breaks simplistic attribution for two reasons:

• Affiliate can be noisy on last-touch since it spans surfaces, devices, and intent levels.
• Audio/podcasts can be silent on last-touch (no click = no trail).

Our recommendation is what mature teams already do in other hard-to-measure channels:

Build “redundant” measurement on purpose

All forms of attribution have some sorts of blind spots, so use more than one lens, including:

• First-party / server-side tracking
• Platform-level + internal analytics
• Lift studies / brand trackers (lighter-weight is fine)
• MMM/MTA where appropriate
• Survey-based attribution for directional insight

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Related guide

Our complete guide to experimentation teaches you why so many companies get experimentation and attribution wrong—and what to do about it.

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And critically: align internally so you’re not paying partners using one truth while evaluating them with another.

3 easy steps to apply to start your endorsement system in 2026

To summarize, if you want endorsement to work like a system and not just a side project, three moves help immediately:

1. Clearly define “endorsement” internally: Affiliate vs influencer vs creator vs podcast—clarify what you mean, what you want, and what success looks like.
   
2. Fund it like a true long-term program: Relationship channels scale with patience and consistency.
   
3. Measure it like a portfolio: Set expectations on time horizons and don’t let last-click dictate strategy.

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Ready to build an incremental endorsement growth system?

If your team is ready to stop treating endorsement like a weird corner of the media mix, Right Side Up can help. We support everything from affiliate program design to endorsement-first offline/podcast strategy, measurement frameworks, partner recruitment, and operational tooling.

Reach out today to build a program that compounds!

(And if you haven’t yet: watch the webinar in full to get the complete “readiness to ROI” playbook from Amy and Krystina.)

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