The risk that an affiliate program's revenue is disproportionately dependent on a small number of publishers, making total revenue highly sensitive to changes in any single publisher's activity. Measured as: top 3 publisher GMV share (percentage of total affiliate GMV generated by the program's 3 highest-performing publishers). Healthy concentration benchmark: top 3 publishers under 40% of total GMV; top 10 publishers under 70%. High concentration risk signals: a single publisher generating over 20% of total affiliate GMV; losing that publisher would reduce total program revenue by 20%+ — often a material business impact. Mitigation strategies: publisher recruitment focus on growing the Tier 2 pipeline rather than deepening investment in existing Tier 1 publishers; creating dependency risk (where one publisher is so dominant that their departure constitutes an emergency) is a program management failure. Review concentration risk quarterly alongside other program health metrics.
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