Affiliate Marketing Glossary

It is easy for a beginner in affiliate marketing to get confused among dozens of terms and thematic slang. What is a cloaking service? What is a deep link for? Our Affiliate Marketing Glossary will help everyone understand this. Save, don’t lose, use tips and run traffic only in plus.

A

Account ( acc ) is a profile usually used to launch advertising campaigns.

Antidetect browser is a program that allows you to anonymously access the network.

Approve is the percentage of leads that the affiliate program approved of all leads given by the affiliate.

AdWords is an online advertising platform that places advertisements on Google partner sites ( Google Adwords).

Affiliate Program is an arrangement through which the advertiser pays a fee to an affiliate for the action of generating clicks, sales or leads from links located on that affiliate’s website. These can also be known as partner, associate, revenue sharing or referral programs.

B

Bump is an extra sum of money added for one lead.

Banner is the form of online advertising embedded on a web page ( sometimes with text ).

Billing is an invoice in the account of an advertising platform.

Blacklist is a database with low-quality advertising platforms, which are added to the list so as not to show ads on them.

Bot is a script, a program that performs a function.

C

Conversion rate is the percentage that completes a desired action out of the total number of clicks.

Cost per order is the traditional payment model for affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is performance-based, and the advertiser pays a given commission per order to which an affiliate contributes.

Click is an act of selecting an object ( advertisement, picture, link, etc. ).

Commission is an affiliate commission is a fee you get when you successfully promote products from other people. In order to do this you need a special affiliate link. This link can be obtained by registering with an affiliate network.

Cookies are left behind when someone browses to a certain website. They store information about that person on the webpage, such as their site preferences and buying habits.

Cloaking service is a program that distributes traffic and replaces landing pages depending on the visitor’s data.

D

Deep links are a type of link that sends users directly to an app instead of a website or a store. They are used to send users straight to specific in-app locations, saving users time and energy.

Doorways are sites or pages created to rank for specific, similar search queries

Domain is the location of a website.

Dashboard is a visual display of all of your data. While it can be used in all kinds of different ways, its primary intention is to provide information at a glance, such as KPIs.

E

Engagement rate is a social media marketing metric that measures the amount of interaction a piece of content (or a campaign, or a whole account) gets compared to reach or followers, or audience size.

Earnings per click (EPC) is an affiliate marketing term that refers to the average amount of money you earn each time someone clicks one of your affiliate links.

Email Affiliates have access to vast amounts of consumer demographic data and are able to segment their databases to run highly targeted campaigns.

E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the buying and selling of goods and services, or the transmitting of funds or data, over an electronic network, primarily the internet.

F

First-party cookies are directly stored by the website (or domain) you visit. These cookies allow website owners to collect analytics data, remember language settings, and perform other useful functions that provide a good user experience.

Fraud is the practice of fraudulently representing online advertisement impressions, clicks, conversions, or data events in order to generate revenue. Fraud in digital advertising is a subset of invalid traffic.

Fulfillment covers the complete process from when a sale takes place all the way through delivery to your customer.

G

Geotargeting is a way for advertisers to specify the location they want their ads to show.

Gap Analysis is an essential tool for ensuring that the relationships you build with a publisher benefit all your clients.

Grey hat SEO is a middle way between white hat SEO and black hat SEO. It is riskier than white hat SEO, but not blatantly bad as black hat SEO.

GDPR is an EU law for ‘General Data Protection Regulation covering email marketing.

H

Hit is a single request from a unique item on a web server. Imagine you were to load a page with 3 graphics – that would actually count as 4 ‘ hits ‘, one for the page plus one for each of the graphics.

HTML is an acronym that stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. This language is normally used to structure multimedia and text documents, usually online. It’s also utilized to set up hypertext links among documents on either different pages or the same page.

Homepage is a landing page that acts as the calling or “face” to a website.

Hyperlink, or simply a link, is a digital reference to data that the user can follow or be guided by clicking or tapping.

I

Impression is the number of times when a banner, text, link or other promotional material is shown to the web page visitor.

In-house is the advertisers who manage their affiliate program by themselves using affiliate software instead of an affiliate network.

Inbound Link or Backlink is a link from a website out of your website.

Incentivized Affiliates are where website traffic is bequeathed with incentives to complete a set action that ultimately results in the affiliate earning a commission. The incentives can vary. In fact, it could be a prize, discounts, money, or even free subscriptions.

Internal Linking is hyperlinks that target the same domain as the domain in which the link exists ( the source ). An internal link points to another page on the exact same site.

K

Keywords are words or phrases that people type into a search engine to obtain relevant results. In affiliate marketing, keywords can be used to search for a specific brand or category on affiliate sites.

Keyword links are links that contain keywords. These are generally used by Google and other search marketing companies. Publishers pay search marketing companies to promote keywords on their sites. Each time a user clicks on the link, the publisher must pay the promoter a set fee agreed upon beforehand.

Keyword density is the percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page compared to the total number of words on the page.

Keyword research is the process of finding and analyzing search terms that people enter into search engines with the goal of using that data for a specific purpose, often for search engine optimization ( SEO ) or general marketing.

L

Landing Page is a specific URL to target an affiliate campaign to. Usually simpler than a home page and designed to convert to a single action – crucial in ensuring affiliates see conversions and sales from their traffic.

Last click is an attribution of all commissions to the affiliate who had the last click before the transaction occurred. Unfortunately still the default on programs, which leads to the disproportionate performance of cashback and coupon affiliates.

Lead is any piece of user information that offer owners deem valuable. This may include email address, phone number, or credit card details.

Leadgen is a type of offer where the main purpose is to collect leads. In reality, most offers are leadgen offers.

Lander/Landing page is any web page that goes between an ad and an offer. Its purpose is to provide additional product information, and convince a visitor to purchase or present alternative offers.

M

Manual Approval is a procedure used to take a single affiliate member into a program. Every affiliate has to go through validating and, if necessary, approving a referral claim.

Maximum budget is the maximum value of money, that is allowed to spend on a certain campaign.

Mobile affiliate marketing is essentially affiliate marketing, but for mobile phones, and mobile internet.

Mobile billing, also known as mobile carrier billing, is an alternative payment method that allows customers to pay for purchases directly on their phone bills rather than making payments with a more traditional payment method like credit or debit card, bank transfer, or cash.

Meta description is an HTML element that provides a brief summary of a web page.

N

Native advertising is a form of advertising, usually in online media but also in printed media, which in form and function resembles an ordinary item on the platform in which it appears. In several cases, it appears as either an article or a video created by an advertiser with the specific intention of promoting a product.

Nutra is actually an abbreviation for nutraceuticals or nutritional supplements. These are not prescription drugs and medicine, but supplements and products with added health benefits. For example, dietary and beauty supplements or food additives.

Niche is a specific industry service, or product that an affiliate promotes and works with. A niche can be anything, like gadgets, kitchen utensils, or online courses. A niche is specific, so the affiliate can focus all their efforts on a certain industry, product, or service.

O

Offer is a promotion that the brand shares with its affiliate partners to promote

Offer URL is the landing page URL where a visitor will arrive after clicking the offer link. Landing pages are designed specifically to convert to sales.

Off-page optimization is about factors that have an effect on your site or web page listing on organic search results. These factors are off-site since they’re not controlled by either you or the coding on your page.

Outbound links are links that point from your website to another. They are often used within the content to add more context and to link a reader to another source that will add additional and important information to the topic at hand.

P

Paid placements are traditionally one-off opportunities that allow brands to gain premium onsite exposure with a publisher partner.

Payment threshold is the minimum amount of confirmed commission you will need to earn before a payment can be transferred.

Postback URL is a URL that is created by a conversion-tracking platform. This URL is then accessed by an affiliate network when a conversion takes place.

Push notifications are clickable pop-up messages that appear on your users’ browsers irrespective of the device they’re using or the browser they’re on.

Pixel tracking (also called 1×1 pixel or a pixel tag) is a graphic with dimensions of 1×1 pixels that is loaded when a user visits a webpage or opens an email.

R

Recruiting is an act of engaging with new publishers to add to an affiliate program.

Referral fee is a commission paid to the person or entity that facilitated a deal by linking up a potential customer with an opportunity.

Return on investment (ROI) is calculated by dividing the profit earned on an investment by the cost of that investment.

Redicted tracking is a method of tracking that relies on redirects through a tracking domain to correctly record visit data.

S

S2S tracking is the method of tracking conversions through your server rather than using pixel-based tracking through your browser.

Search affiliates are partners that specialize in PPC (pa0Per-Click) advertising.

Sub-network is usually running short-term lead-gen campaigns for specific offers.

T

Technology Affiliates are eCommerce tools paid on a performance basis. Brands can choose to partner with a variety of different types of technology affiliates, including basket abandonment, retargeting, and basket and product suggestions.

Tracking is an act of following a unique user from a referring affiliate through to an advertiser, usually through to a successful sale or action. Can be via a tracking pixel or S2S tracking – discuss this with your network.

Tracking URL is the URL of a website with a specific code attached to it. All visitors that arrive at the website will be tracked through this code.

Traffic is the number of visits and visitors a site gets.

U

Unique user i.e. unique visitor on a website is a user counted only once no matter how many times they visit the site over a set period of time.

Universal basket is more used by Meta publishers in travel, to allow consumers to buy multiple product categories in a single transaction

URL is a unique identifier used to locate a resource on the Internet. It is also referred to as a web address. URLs consist of multiple parts – including a protocol and domain name – that tell a web browser how and where to retrieve a resource.

Unique clicks are the total number of subscribers that have clicked on any link in your campaign.

W

Web host is a business that basically provides storage and services needed to serve website files and pages.

Webmasters are those who manage the content and organization of a website. They’ll also be responsible for the technical programs and aspects of a site.

White Hat SEO is the opposite of Black Hat SEO. It refers to any method that improves search performance on a search engine results page (SERP). People who use these approved methods are obviously never going to risk being banned since they respect the search engine’s terms of service.

X

XML is an Extensible Markup Language. It’s used to brand documents with a standardized format that can be read by an app that’s compatible with XML. This language can be used on HTML pages.

Y

Youtube affiliates are publishers often creating content around product unboxing, reviewing, or comparing. Some Influencers are also creating live content in fashion, travel, or other sectors around which products are promoted – usually in the section below the play screen.

Abbreviations

API (Application Programming Interface) – application programming interface/application programming interface. With the help of API, webmasters can transfer orders from their own landing pages to affiliates.

BL – blacklist is a database with low-quality advertising platforms, which are added to the list so as not to show ads on them.

WL – whitelist is a list of traffic sources that bring the most conversions at the best price within one campaign.

CC –  call center, a place to process calls.

ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) – quantifies the amount of revenue generated on average from each customer.

ARPPU (Average revenue per paying user) – measurement that app marketers use to figure out how much revenue is generated by paying users and players, on average, over a certain time period.

CPA (Cost Per Action) – pricing model in which marketers pay ad networks or media sources when a user takes a particular action (such as completing a purchase or registration) inside of an app, after engagement with an ad.

CPC (cost per click) is a metric that determines how much advertisers pay for the ads they place on websites or social media, based on the number of clicks the ad receives.

CPI (Cost Per Install) – cost model for user acquisition (UA) campaigns, and is defined as the fixed rate an advertiser pays to an ad network once an app is installed.

CPL (Cost Per Lead) – marketing metric denoting the amount spent to obtain a lead in a digital marketing campaign or channel. This enables advertisers to understand how effective their campaigns are at generating leads in a given stream.

CPM (Cost Per Mille) – pricing model used in digital advertising, where advertisers pay the publisher a fixed price for 1,000 impressions of their ad — “mille” being Latin for “thousand”.

CPS (Cost Per Sale) – also known as the pay per sale, is a metric used by advertising teams to determine the amount of money paid for every sale generated by a specific advertisement.

CR (Conversion Rate) –  a percentage value and is calculated by dividing the number of successful conversions (purchases, downloads, registrations, etc.) by the total number of all potential conversions.

CTA (Call To Action) – prompt on a website that tells the user to take some specified action. A call to action is typically written as a command or action phrase, such as ‘Sign Up’ or ‘Buy Now’ and generally takes the form of a button or hyperlink

CTR (Click Through Rate) – number of clicks that your ad receives divided by the number of times your ad is shown: clicks ÷ impressions = CTR. For example, if you had 5 clicks and 100 impressions, then your CTR would be 5%.

EPC (Earn Per Click) – an affiliate marketing term that refers to the average amount of money you earn each time someone clicks one of your affiliate links.

PPC (Pay Per Click) –  type of internet marketing which involves advertisers paying a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. 

PPL (Pay Per Lead) – marketing agreement where you pay partners for each successful lead they provide you with. 

PPV (Pay Per View) – a pay-per-view advertising model. The unit of payment is one impression.

ROI (Return Of Investment) – calculated by dividing the profit earned on an investment by the cost of that investment. For instance, an investment with a profit of $100 and a cost of $100 would have an ROI of 1, or 100% when expressed as a percentage.

TDS (Traffic Direction System) – traffic distribution system. It helps to quickly change the direction of traffic, divide traffic by region, etc., and collect detailed statistics. It is considered one of the most necessary tools for webmasters

VPK (Visits per keyword) – indicator that determines the number of visitors who found a website using a specific word in a search.