I propose a two part solution to address the need-gap for a single referral system,
- Every large affiliate marketing company today touts itself as single referral system for all products and services, If that's true this problem wouldn't exist; So IMO the first thing to do would be to create a open-source non-profit public referral aggregator i.e. Say a Wikipedia for advertisers to pledge their referral fees for promoting their product or service. The publishers register with this non-profit.
- The said non-profit tracks the referrals from the publishers using ref, utm_source tags at the advertiser end(integration needed) without the publisher having to sign-up with each advertiser individually or even having to use a separate referral link.
The non-profit can stay float using donation from both the advertisers and the publishers as it addresses the problems with current affiliate marketing system.