Rakuten Advertising announced Mirai, an AI‑driven conversational agent that lets advertisers create, configure, and optimize affiliate offers through natural‑language interaction, marking a notable shift toward autonomous campaign management in the ad‑tech ecosystem.
What Rakuten Advertising unveiled
On May 6, 2026, Rakuten Advertising introduced Mirai, a generative‑AI platform designed to streamline affiliate program operations. Unlike conventional affiliate tools that require manual setup of commission structures, tracking pixels, and promotional calendars, Mirai accepts plain‑English commands—such as “Set a 10 % commission for Black Friday sales on electronics”—and translates them into fully configured offers in real time. The service is built on proprietary large‑language models fine‑tuned on Rakuten’s extensive affiliate data, enabling the system to suggest optimal payout tiers based on historical performance and merchant objectives.
How Mirai works
Mirai operates on three pillars: strategic guidance, automated code generation, and contextual efficiency.
- Strategic guidance – The AI parses a marketer’s business goals and recommends commission models that balance profitability with partner incentives.
- Automated code generation – Mirai writes the backend configuration scripts that would normally require a developer, handling complex logic such as tiered payouts, time‑bound promotions, and conditional rules without human intervention.
- Contextual efficiency – By recognizing holidays, sales cycles, and brand‑specific calendars, the platform auto‑populates dates and targeting parameters, reducing the lag between planning and execution.
The conversational interface runs within Rakuten’s existing dashboard, allowing teams to stay within familiar workflows while offloading repetitive tasks to the AI.
Why the announcement matters
The affiliate space has long been hampered by friction: marketers must coordinate with networks, negotiate rates, and manually embed tracking links. Gartner predicts that by 2027, 40 % of B2B marketers will rely on AI to automate campaign setup, yet current solutions only address media buying, not affiliate orchestration. Mirai fills that gap, promising faster time‑to‑market and data‑driven pricing that could shrink the average campaign launch window from weeks to minutes.
From a compliance perspective, Mirai’s built‑in validation checks help ensure that offers adhere to privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA, a growing concern as affiliate data pipelines intersect with first‑party customer data.
Industry implications and competitive landscape
Mirai enters a crowded field of AI‑enhanced ad‑tech platforms. Google’s Performance Max and Amazon’s Attribution service already use machine learning to optimize spend, but they focus on paid media rather than partner‑driven affiliate models. Competitors like Impact and Partnerize have introduced automation APIs, yet they still require developers to write integration code. Mirai’s natural‑language layer differentiates it by lowering the technical barrier, potentially expanding affiliate program adoption among mid‑size enterprises that lack dedicated engineering resources.
However, the platform’s reliance on proprietary LLMs raises questions about model transparency and data ownership. Companies such as Adobe and Salesforce have begun offering “explainable AI” modules that audit decision logic; Mirai will need comparable safeguards to earn trust from risk‑averse marketers.
What it means for enterprise marketing teams
For large brands managing hundreds of affiliate relationships, Mirai could become a central hub for both strategic planning and tactical execution. Marketing operations can shift from manual spreadsheet management to AI‑guided decision making, freeing analysts to focus on high‑level performance insights. The platform’s real‑time optimization also aligns with the growing demand for agile, performance‑based spend—a trend highlighted in a recent Forster study that found 62 % of marketers plan to increase AI‑driven budget allocation within the next 12 months.
Enterprise teams will likely integrate Mirai with existing Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) and Data Management Platforms (DMPs) to enrich affiliate offers with first‑party data. By doing so, they can deliver more personalized incentives, improving conversion rates while maintaining compliance with evolving privacy standards.
Future outlook
Rakuten Advertising has signaled that Mirai’s roadmap includes extensions into partner recruitment, predictive performance modeling, and cross‑channel attribution. If executed, these capabilities could position Mirai as a full‑stack affiliate lifecycle manager, challenging the dominance of legacy networks that still rely on manual processes.
Market Landscape
The affiliate marketing sector generated roughly $12 billion in global spend in 2024, according to Statista, and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 10 % through 2028. AI adoption remains uneven: while 30 % of advertisers use machine learning for media buying, less than 15 % have automated affiliate workflows. Mirai’s launch could accelerate that adoption curve, especially among retailers and SaaS vendors that depend heavily on performance‑based partnerships.
Key market forces shaping the space include:
- Data privacy regulations – Stricter enforcement drives demand for AI that can embed compliance checks.
- Cross‑device attribution – Brands need unified measurement across web, mobile, CTV, and OTT to allocate affiliate spend accurately.
- Shift to first‑party data – As third‑party cookies wane, AI tools that can leverage proprietary audience insights become more valuable.
Top Insights
- Mirai’s natural‑language interface reduces affiliate campaign setup time from weeks to minutes, enabling faster response to market events.
- By auto‑generating backend code, Mirai lowers the technical threshold for mid‑size enterprises to run sophisticated affiliate programs.
- The platform’s strategic guidance aligns commission structures with merchant goals, potentially boosting partner ROI by up to 12 % (early pilot data).
- Mirai differentiates itself from AI‑enhanced media buying tools by focusing on the partner‑driven revenue stream, a largely untapped segment of ad‑tech.
- Integration with CDPs and DMPs will allow marketers to personalize affiliate offers while staying compliant with GDPR and CCPA.
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