I don't think that the 20 times lower PPC on affiliate links vs Google Ads is due to market forces. From the numbers I see, Google Ads are paid roughly "correc

I don't think that the 20 times lower PPC on affiliate links vs Google Ads is due to market forces. From the numbers I see, Google Ads are paid roughly "correctly". The ad spent per new customer is somewhere around the lifetime value of the customer. At least in competitive verticals. But for affiliate links, it is about 20 times lower. Your argument that market forces should drive the affiliate market towards the same equilibrium is exactly my question. Why doesn't it do that? Visit some random website about some random product. You don't see a variety of affiliate advertisers. You almost always only see Amazon. The cases where there are more than just Amazon links, it is often just to justify the site as a "price comparison" site. But reality is that even on those sites, the vast majority of revenue comes from Amazon.