The Guardian brings The Filter to the U.S. in affiliate commerce push

The Filter’s U.S. launch puts the publisher up against established competitors like The New York Times’ Wirecutter and New York Magazine’s The Strategist. The Guardian plans to differentiate itself by trying to turn its editorial values into a commerce advantage and lean hard into ethical consumption and sustainability, according to Nick Mokey, the newly appointed editor of Filter US. 

The Filter provides shopping recommendations, as well as tips on which products to avoid, and how to thrift, fix and repurpose items. The Filter US will focus on three main verticals at launch, including home (such as kitchen and bath), travel gear and wellness. The Filter US will expand to other verticals (as well as article types and styles) based on audience feedback, SEO data and insights from retail partners, Mokey noted.

“The starting point is looking at what’s been taking off on Filter UK, and then getting more data from what takes off in the US,” he said.

Since its launch last October, The Filter UK has driven 62 million page views and around eight million clicks to retailers, which has led to a “significant volume in sales,” according to Mokey. The Guardian declined to share specific sales figures. 

Publishers are doubling down on affiliate commerce businesses as traditional ad revenue streams have become less reliable, according to four e-commerce analysts who spoke with Digiday. (The IAB revised its 2025 U.S. ad spend forecast to 5.7% growth – down from its initial forecast of 7.3% – citing tariff concerns and broader economic headwinds.)

Meanwhile, the growth of generative AI shopping tools – such as Amazon’s Rufus and OpenAI’s ChatGPT – might provide an opportunity for publishers getting into this space, with people craving curated, personal product recommendations for certain, big-ticket items. Conde Nast, Hearst and The New York Times have already been tapped by Amazon for AI licensing of their lifestyle content to feed its shopping assistant Rufus.  Affiliate commerce revenue is scalable and performance-based and less dependent on the ad market, the e-commerce analysts said.

“The launch of dedicated product recommendation sites is publishers’ strategic defense and offensive against the foundational threat of LLMs and [Google’s] AI Overviews, which are actively disrupting organic discovery. It is no longer just an economic imperative to convert ad impressions to commerce revenue – it is a vital move to establish content citation authority,” said Erin Killian-Kristyniak, vp of global partnerships at affiliate marketing platform Partnerize. 

Other e-commerce execs said this strategy is one of survival for many publishers.

“Wirecutter and The Strategist showed that readers actually trust editorial voices when it comes to shopping decisions, and that trust converts. For big news outlets with millions of readers, it makes sense to turn part of that audience toward evergreen buying guides that keep generating traffic and sales long after a news story dies down,” said Phurba Sherpa, director of e-commerce at luxury watch retailer Wrist Aficionado. Publishers also get more audience insight data from commerce-focused verticals, which can help inform strategy in other areas, he noted.

But publishers have to be careful about wading into this space, Sherpa stressed. “The challenge is making sure the recommendations stay credible. If it looks like it’s all about commissions, readers will tune out. The ones who get this right will treat commerce as a real service to their audience, not just another revenue stream,” he said.

Mokey said The Filter’s first priority is serving The Guardian’s audience – even if that means passing on some of the most lucrative product categories. It’s a trade-off the team is willing to take, he said.

Like its competitors, The Filter will make money from affiliate links – through an arrangement with affiliate network Skimlinks, which has deals with a number of retailers.

“We don’t have to strike out individual relationships with hundreds and thousands of retailers. Everything goes [through] them,” Mokey said.

The Filter is launching with a slim full-time team of three, the same size as Filter UK. In addition to Mokey, The Filter US will have a photo editor, editorial coordinator and commissioning editor. 

The Filter’s sustainability commitment also means samples (gadgets, appliances, clothing) that are sent from manufacturers for editors to test will either be returned after testing or donated. 

The new vertical will rely on a network of contributors, tapping experts to test products. For example, one of The Filter US’s test articles looked at 17 different rice cookers. The team brought in Kiki Aranita, the owner of a Hawaiian restaurant, who cooks “thousands of pounds of rice,” to review them, Mokey said.

“We’re going to cover so many verticals, there’s no way we can have in-house experts on all of them,” Mokey said. The Filter US will publish 30-40 guides a month, he said.

Building a “layer of insulation”

Google algorithm changes over the past few years have caused headaches for publishers’ affiliate revenue strategies. With AI Overviews, users often get product suggestions directly from Google’s AI Summaries, bypassing the click-through to publishers entirely.

But despite all the gripes from publishers about Google referral traffic challenges this year, the share of traffic from Google search has grown for The Filter UK, though the Guardian declined to share by how much. Traffic from Google makes up more than 20% of the overall traffic to The Filter. 

Ultimately, most of The Filter’s traffic is coming from the Guardian’s own homepage, which represents about 60% of overall traffic to The Filter. This helps provide “a buffer” against Google referral changes, according to Mokey.

The Filter US is banking on a similar stream of direct traffic from the Guardian’s homepage as its UK edition. This gives The Filter a “layer of insulation,” against the volatility of search, Mokey said.

Mokey said affiliate commerce businesses can succeed during Google referral traffic challenges, if done the right way: leaning into personal, voicey and fun-to-read pieces.

“People want personal recommendations…. If you want to go buy a $5 iPhone cable [right now], I absolutely believe that someone would Google ‘iPhone cable,’ get the AI Overview, click the top result after any one paragraph and say, purchase done,” Mokey said. “However, for some other product categories… [such as] our best blenders, the top pick is $500. I don’t think most people will be satisfied with a two-paragraph summary before spending $500 on a kitchen appliance.”

That also means giving behind-the-scenes looks into the testing, like a smoothie blowing up in the test kitchen, Mokey said. A lot of that will live in The Filter US newsletter, which will go out weekly on Fridays, starting October 3.

“The human touch is not going away,” Mokey said. “We are absolutely going to do the testing to back that up, but we’re not going to fill the page with benchmarks and Excel spreadsheets. I don’t think that’s what most people want.”