Part of the Festival of Partnerships
The world's first event built around AI and Partnership Marketing.
AI is reshaping partnerships, and the AIP Summit is where the industry works out what to do about it.
The buying journey is being automated. Search as we know it is fracturing. Publisher content is being ingested by models that don't click, don't convert and don't credit.
For an industry built on attribution, authority and partnership instinct, that should sound familiar – it’s the exact skillset we have spent two decades building.
We are all building workflows around tools that didn’t exist a year ago. And nobody in Europe has built a dedicated space to work out what this means, and what it’s worth, for the affiliate and partnerships industry, until now.
ADVISORY BOARD
Shaped with the people building what comes next.
Alex Springer
Director @ OpenAttribution.org
AI will reshape partnership marketing, but it makes the fundamentals more important, not less. The challenge is making sure trusted relationships, transparent attribution and fair reward still hold when discovery, recommendation and checkout happen inside AI-mediated journeys. That’s what the AIP Summit is here to work through.
James Bentley
Founder & CEO @ Numerical
The partnerships channel is at an inflection point. AI is revolutionising what works and how we work at unrelenting speed.
The AIP Summit is a vital moment for our industry to gather, learn and forge new opportunities.
01 / WHAT IS THE AIP SUMMIT?
A full day, built around a single urgent theme.
The AIP Summit is a full-day specialist summit sitting alongside PI LIVE Europe as part of the Festival of Partnerships in October 2026. It is the only event built entirely around the intersection of AI and partnership marketing.
Every session is grounded in the specific questions facing the partnerships industry right now — not just publishers navigating disruption, but brands building AI-powered partner recruitment, agencies advising clients on AI strategy, networks rethinking attribution, and technology providers building the tools the industry will run on next.
Every part of the partnerships ecosystem is being affected, and the AIP Summit is where those conversations happen in one room.
The main PI LIVE stages serve the breadth of the ecosystem. The AIP Summit goes deep on a single, urgent theme.
BOTH INCLUDED IN THE FESTIVAL OF PARTNERSHIPS PASS
02 / WHY WE'RE LAUNCHING THe SUMMIT
Matthew Wood
FOUNDER, HELLO PARTNER
I've spent the last 12 months watching AI move from future trend to live disruption. Yet the conversation is still fragmented, AI events rarely understand our industry, and industry events rarely go deep enough on AI.
The AIP Summit is a full-day specialist summit sitting alongside PI LIVE Europe. It is the only event built entirely around the intersection of AI and partnership marketing.
Every session is grounded in the specific questions facing the partnerships industry right now, not just publishers navigating disruption, but brands building AI-powered partner recruitment, agencies advising clients on AI strategy, networks rethinking attribution, and technology providers building the tools the industry will run on next.
Every part of the partnerships ecosystem is being affected. The AIP Summit is where those conversations happen in one room.
03 / WHY THIS, WHY NOW?
Agentic commerce is going live at scale before the industry has agreed how to measure, attribute or compensate for it. Search behaviour is changing faster than most businesses can adapt, with AI-powered search and answer engines reshaping discovery and publishers reporting significant declines in referral traffic as a result. Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) is emerging as a discipline in its own right, as brands and publishers race to stay visible in a world where AI summarises before it links.
But the same shift that creates pressure also creates opportunity. AI is making it possible to recruit and qualify partners at a scale that was previously impossible, programme automation is removing weeks of manual work, and new discovery surfaces are opening up that the affiliate model is well placed to serve, if the industry moves quickly enough to claim them.
67%
Profit collapse reported by one of Europe’s largest specialist publishers in H1 2026, as AI search cut organic audience 20% YoY.
Affiliate and e-commerce revenue fell 24% in the same period.
89%
Of shoppers still verify AI recommendations, before buying even as ChatGPT Instant Checkout and Google’s Universal Commerce Protocol go live at scale.
Trust is the unresolved variable in agentic commerce.
IAB, 2026
$3-5tn
Projected global commerce volume through agentic AI channels by 2030. For partnership marketers who move now, the opportunity is significant.
McKINSEY, 2025
The old model is under pressure, and affiliate marketing is at a reset moment. The new model is not yet settled. The window to shape what comes next is open now.
04 / WHAT TO EXPECT
Keynotes, panels and collaborative learning
A full day for those who are ready to go beyond the basics.
SAMPLE SESSIONS
The Agentic Shift: When AI Does the Buying
Amazon Rufus, Google AI Mode, ChatGPT Instant Checkout — autonomous agents are beginning to handle purchase decisions end to end. What that means for how consumers discover brands, how the affiliate model holds up, and where the commercial opportunities lie for those who get ahead of the shift.
Building an AI-Powered Partnership Programme
From partner recruitment automation to AI-driven incrementality modelling — what a genuinely AI-augmented programme looks like in practice. Which tools deliver real results, where the gains are biggest, and how teams are restructuring workflows. Built for programme managers who need to take something back to the business.
Who Gets Paid When AI Uses Your Content?
Publishers and affiliate content businesses are having their work ingested, summarised and served back without a click, a credit or a commission. The people building the standards — including the SPUR Coalition’s Content Telemetry standard — and what it means practically for affiliate publishers.
LLM Optimisation: Getting Found When Nobody's Clicking
With AI Overviews restructuring search discovery, how brands and publishers can optimise for AI-generated answers, which affiliate content models are proving most durable, and what the most resilient publisher strategies look like in an AI-first world.
Problem-focused roundtables
Alongside the main stage, small-group sessions go deeper on the specific AI and partnerships challenges your business is navigating right now. Structured around a single problem, capped at 25 seats, and designed to produce practical outputs you take back to your business the same day.
05 / NETWORKING
As valuable off-stage as it is on it.
Intentional networking and a hosted drinks reception at the close of the day bring delegates together with the wider Festival of Partnerships community.
As part of the Festival pass, AIP delegates also have full access to the PI LIVE campus across all three days.
16,500
meetings scheduled across the Festival of Partnerships
06 / WHO IS IT FOR?
Designed for two audiences.
FOR EXISTING PI LIVE DELEGATES
The venue to go deeper than the main stages allow.
Programme managers building an AI roadmap
Agency leaders advising on AI strategy
Network & platform teams building AI tooling
Performance marketers who need more than headlines
FOR THOSE NOT YET AT PI LIVE
A reason to come.
MarTech buyers at brands
AI product teams at networks & SaaS platforms
Digital leads at mid-market & enterprise retailers
Publisher & content leaders navigating the LLM transition
Whether AI is already changing how you work - or you know it's coming - this day is built for you.
08 / WHY SPONSOR THE AIP SUMMIT?
The only room in the industry built around AI and the partnerships channel.
If you want your brand in that room, start here.
Brands, partnership and agency leads, AI product teams and the publishers navigating LLM disruption - all in one place, all actively evaluating the tools and platforms your business builds. No general AI audience or thin same view panels. One focused day with the people who get it and are already buying.
07 / PART PI LIVE AND THE FESTIVAL OF PARTNERSHIPS
The AIP Summit sits alongside the Influencer and Commerce Summit as one of two dedicated summits within the Festival of Partnerships – 19 to 21 October 2026, at Old Billingsgate and The Steel Yard, London. Both are included in the PI LIVE Festival pass and carry their own branding, programming and delegate experience.
MORE DETAILS ON THE PROGRAMME AND SPEAKERS COMING SOON