The 2025–2026 Australian financial year (FY2026 or FY25-26) has officially ended. If you manage an affiliate program, now is a good time to review your FY2026 performance and benchmark your results against similar brands.
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With Benchmarking Insights in Nexus Pro, Commission Factory advertisers and agencies can compare their affiliate program performance against similar brands on the Commission Factory platform. This helps you understand where your program performed well, how it compares to your vertical, and where to focus your planning for FY2027.
What is Nexus Pro?
Nexus Pro is the advanced version of Nexus, Commission Factory’s built-in AI assistant. Nexus helps you ask questions about the platform, strategy, and affiliate marketing. Nexus Pro goes further by connecting those questions to account data, Dynamic Reporting datasets, and Benchmarking Insights.
Today, Nexus Pro includes two core capabilities: Dynamic Reporting and Benchmarking Insights.
Dynamic Reporting helps advertisers, agencies, and affiliates analyse performance data in plain language. Benchmarking Insights helps advertisers and agencies compare affiliate program performance against similar brands on the Commission Factory platform.
For FY2026 reviews, Benchmarking Insights is the key Nexus Pro capability. It helps you compare your affiliate program across metrics such as ROAS, AOV, conversion rate, commission rate, active affiliates, and new customer acquisition, giving you clearer context for FY2027 planning.
What does the end of FY2026 mean for your affiliate program?
The end of FY2026 is a useful time to benchmark your affiliate program and set a baseline for the year ahead.
Reviewing your own results shows what happened in your program. Benchmarking gives you more context by showing how your performance compares with similar brands in your vertical.
This can help you assess your FY2026 results, measure performance against the market, and support better planning for FY2027.
What can you benchmark with Nexus Pro?
Nexus Pro’s Benchmarking Insights feature lets you compare your affiliate program across six key performance metrics.
|
Metric |
Description |
|
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) |
Shows the revenue generated for every dollar spent through your affiliate program. |
|
AOV (Average Order Value) |
Shows your average order value from affiliate-driven transactions. |
|
Conversion Rate |
Shows how effectively affiliate traffic converts into sales. |
|
Commission Rate |
Shows how your commission settings compare with similar brands. |
|
Active Affiliates |
Shows how many affiliates actively drove performance during the selected period. |
|
New Customer Acquisition |
Shows how your affiliate program contributed to acquiring new customers. |
For each metric, Nexus Pro returns:
- Your result
- The vertical benchmark
- The percentage difference
- A short explanation of what the comparison means
This gives you a consistent way to assess your affiliate marketing performance against similar brands on the Commission Factory platform.
How do you run an FY2026 benchmark report?
You can generate an FY2026 benchmark report in three steps.
- Copy the benchmark prompt below.
- Paste it into Nexus Pro.
- Review your benchmark report.
Use this prompt to run your FY2026 benchmark report:
How did my affiliate program perform during FY26 compared to similar brands in my vertical?
Benchmark my results against the vertical across:
ROAS, AOV, Conversion Rate, Commission Rate, Active Affiliates, and New Customer Acquisition.
For each metric provide:
- My result
- Vertical benchmark
- Difference (%)
- What it means
Then provide:
1. Strongest metric based on business impact
2. Weakest metric based on business impact
3. One-sentence overall summary
Do not omit metrics, provide recommendations, or speculate on causes. Only return the six metrics listed above. If the number of comparable brands in my vertical is small, note this before presenting results. Keep the response concise and focused on benchmarking.
Nexus Pro will generate a benchmark report covering all six metrics. It'll also identify your strongest and weakest areas based on business impact and provide a short overall summary.
What if your vertical has only a few comparable brands?
If your vertical has only a few comparable brands, the Benchmarking Insights feature may give you a limited comparison group.
In that case, use the benchmark as directional context rather than a complete performance view. You can also compare your FY2026 results against your own previous-year performance to understand how your program has changed over time.
If your program recently launched and you don’t have previous-year data, use your first available reporting period as a baseline. For example, compare your first 30, 60, or 90 days with later performance periods as more data becomes available.
Once you’ve reviewed your benchmark, keep exploring your results with Nexus Pro. Our Benchmarking Sheets include 10 ready-to-use prompts for advertisers and agencies to help you dig deeper into your performance, compare trends, and uncover additional insights.
Is benchmarking different from standard affiliate reporting?
Yes, standard affiliate reporting shows your program’s own performance over a selected period. Benchmarking compares your results with similar brands on the Commission Factory platform. This helps you understand whether your performance is strong, weak, or in line with your vertical.
Both views are useful. Your own reporting shows movement over time. Benchmarking shows how your program compares with the market.
Can agencies benchmark client programs?
Yes, agencies can use the same Benchmarking Insights feature to benchmark client programs.
The process is the same. Adjust the prompt to ask how your client’s affiliate program performed against similar brands in their vertical.
This can support end-of-financial-year reviews, client reporting, planning sessions, and account prioritisation across multiple programs.
Redman Agency uses Nexus Pro as part of its affiliate audit process. Laura Redman, Co-Founder of Redman Agency, shared:
“We use Nexus Pro as part of our affiliate audit process to quickly identify opportunities, gaps, and areas requiring attention within a program. It provides valuable insights across partner mix, commission structures and recruitment opportunities, helping us benchmark performance and uncover optimisation opportunities.”
This is where Nexus Pro becomes practical. It gives agencies a faster way to move from reporting what happened to identifying what needs attention next.
What should you do with the results?
Use your benchmark results to decide what to improve first, then benchmark again to measure the impact of your changes.
Start by reviewing your strongest and weakest metrics. Then compare those results with your program’s performance over time. This helps you understand where your program stands today and whether performance is moving in the right direction.
Benchmarking is most useful when you review it regularly. As new data becomes available, you can track how your performance changes and measure the impact of your decisions throughout FY2027.
Frequently asked questions (FAQs):
1. Can I benchmark a custom date range in Nexus Pro?
Yes, you can ask Nexus Pro to benchmark a selected period, such as FY2026, a quarter, or another reporting window available in your account.
2. Does Nexus Pro compare my program with all advertisers?
No, Nexus Pro's Benchmarking Insights feature only compares your performance with similar brands within your vertical on the Commission Factory platform.
3. What should I do after reviewing benchmark results?
After reviewing your benchmark results, use them to prioritise where to focus your affiliate program next.
Your benchmark report highlights how your program compares with similar brands across six key metrics. Use those insights to identify your biggest opportunities for growth, then build a plan to improve performance throughout FY27.
If you don’t have the time, resources, or in-house expertise to turn those insights into action, our team can help. Explore our service plans to see how we can help you recruit more affiliates, optimise your program, and drive long-term growth.
4. Can agencies use Benchmarking Insights for client reviews?
Yes, agencies can use the Benchmarking Insights feature to prepare client performance reviews, compare client programs with similar brands, and support planning conversations.
5. Why should I benchmark affiliate performance after FY2026?
Benchmarking after FY2026 helps you create a clear performance baseline for FY2027. It shows how your affiliate program compares with similar brands and helps you focus your planning on the metrics that matter most.
Commission Factory is not only the Asia-Pacific region's largest affiliate platform, working with more than 900 of the world's biggest brands, it is also a performance marketing platform that allows affiliates, partners, and content creators to earn money and online businesses to increase sales.
Get started with Commission Factory and see how brands and partners grow their affiliate marketing strategies.