
After helping build an affiliate network sold to AOL, Malcolm Cowley started again with a different proposition: give brands the tools to run their own relationships. The idea became Partnerize.

For nearly two decades, Maura Smith has argued that affiliate marketing belongs in the boardroom, not the basement. Now AI is erasing the click, and her campaign to measure influence instead of habit looks less like a niche crusade and more like a map of what comes next.