Ultimately customers have to buy something at a price which covers the cost and leaves a profit for the seller. The best profit is always the winner.
No affiliate will send traffic to a site that doesn't make him a better profit per 1,000 surfers than other sites. Unless he's a fool.
Sponsors getting the most traffic will therefore be the ones converting and profiting best. So able to spend more on the affiliates and traffic.
Traffic is important, we just should never get carried away thinking it's king. Unless all we can do is drive traffic without thinking of where it's going. Today we see huge amounts of traffic consuming porn and ratios have never been so bad. Sites getting millions of surfers a day, with perhaps less than 1-10,000 buying. Surfers not clicks. Look at the price of Tube traffic, $4-5 per 1,000 clicks, maybe 1-10 clicking. That's 10,000 surfers = $4-5 3,000 surfers to get a $30 sale? 30,000 = $30
Play with the numbers until your blue in the face, the principal is the same. The value of traffic is slipping. If it is king, it's a broken bankrupt one.
Where is the smart money going?
https://gfy.com/showthread.php?t=1083009
Where do smart affiliates send their traffic? To sites that convert.
candyflip will tell us that's not true and he sends his traffic to sites that convert the worse.