Picture someone at 11:47 PM. Seven browser tabs open. Shopping cart abandoned three times. They're comparing the same wireless earbuds they've been researching since Tuesday. They found your gift guide four days ago.
They're going to buy those earbuds. Probably tonight. Possibly tomorrow. But almost certainly not from the link you provided.
And you? You’re going to get nothing. Let’s change that.
Here's a fun fact that surprised absolutely no one who's ever met a human being: people don't wait until December to start their holiday shopping.
TGM Research looked into this. Apparently 21% of shoppers start in October. Another 22% kick things off in early November. Then 19% more join the party by mid-November (now).
Do the math. That's 62% of shoppers already in motion before Black Friday even pretends to be a thing.
So when your traffic stats started climbing a few weeks ago and you thought, "Huh, that's odd", it wasn't odd. It was inevitable. Those aren't casual browsers.
They're people who have already:
They arrive at your site warmed up, caffeinated, and ready to make decisions.
Join our Retail program and monetize those decisions! They’re already happening on your pages.
Something fascinating happens during the holidays. People stop using the internet like rational beings.
McKinsey did one of those studies they do, and discovered that people now spend about 90% of their free time on digital activities. They're also more price-conscious, more comparison-obsessed, and significantly more indecisive than usual.
You know the pattern. You've done it yourself.
It's chaos.
Publishers watch their RPMs swing. Bloggers see pageviews spike on Monday and conversions finally trickle in on Thursday, and everyone's trying to figure out what's actually working and what's just noise.
This is where it gets annoying.
A reader finds your holiday guide. They leave your site. You influenced the purchasebut when they finally buy three days later?
You get absolutely nothing.
McKinsey confirms what we already suspected: holiday shoppers revisit products multiple times. They switch between retailers. They buy later. They buy elsewhere. They do everything except buy immediately through your affiliate link like a sensible person.
The traditional affiliate model was built on a fantasy that someone clicks, falls in love, and purchases within the same session.
They don't.
They wander. They compare. They return at 2 AM. They buy when a retailer suddenly decides to offer free shipping, or when their friend texts them a discount code, or when the shipping deadline creates just enough anxiety to force a decision.
And you? You did the work. You wrote the content. You created the intent.
But someone else collected the commission.
If you’re influencing the purchase, you deserve the commission. Nova helps make that happen. Join our Retail Program and capture the value your content creates.
So. Contextual affiliate technology.
Tools like Nova don’t behave like the usual “paste a link and pray someone buys within five minutes” affiliate setup. Nova looks at what is happening on your page in real time. What category the reader is researching. How far down the page they’ve scrolled. Whether they seem ready to leave. Whether the item is something people typically compare across retailers.
Then, at the moment when intent is real, Nova shows them the right offer.
That means the click that matters (the one that sets the affiliate cookie) happens when the reader is most likely to actually convert.
So even if the shopper returns later, switches retailers, or buys at 4 AM after finally giving up, there’s a much better chance that the link they use is yours.
And you finally get paid for the work you did!