There is a pretty big learning curve when you are first introduced to affiliate marketing. Part of the learning curve is simply becoming familiar with all the terms used in affiliate marketing and online marketing in general.

So, we've compiled a list of terms and their definitions to help decrease the learning curve for you! Or, to at least be a resource that you can reference when you run into a term you are not sure of.

Our Affiliate Marketing Glossary is a living document. We are constantly updating it with new terms so make sure to check back often and comment below if there is a term you think is missing that we should add 😃

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301 redirect
A permanent redirect, the 301 is used to ensure that no traffic is lost even if when changing domains, moving websites, or consolidating traffic from multiple existing websites to go to the main active page. For redirecting to an https URL, the 301 redirect is the acceptable standard as well.

302 redirect
A temporary redirect, the 302 allows for redirecting to a different site where the suitable content is available temporarily, usually done when the old URL still has content but is under repair or is being updated. 302 is not the standard practice as it could possibly split traffic between two sites.

Above The Fold
Refers to the content and layout of the page that is immediately visible upon loading a website (without scrolling down); the term comes from when newspapers were folded when sold in new stands – making the most interesting piece of information stand out, hence encouraging passersby to purchase the newspaper.

Ad Exchange
A technology-driven and real-time platform that facilitates bidding for ads, connecting both demand-side platforms (DSP) and supply-side platforms (SSP). It automates the bidding for better efficiency and convenience.

Ad Network
Sometimes called traffic source, an advertising network serves as an intermediary between publishers who have ad space inventory, and advertisers who want to promote a specific product or service. They provide the platform and the program to automate the process of bidding for ad space and executing/displaying a winning ad.

There are different types of ad networks, and their difference rely mainly on the ad formats they serve. The following are the most common ad network types:
  • Native ad network
  • Display ads network (banner and text ads) network
  • Push notification ads
  • Contextual ad network (includes in-text ads)
  • PPV ad network (includes pops and domain redirects)
  • Social media network
  • Search ads network
  • Adults ad network
  • Mobile ad network
These networks also vary in their bidding model. Some use CPC, while others utilize CPM.

Advertiser
The entity paying to drive traffic to their landing pages. An advertiser can be any of the two:
  1. The owner of the product or service -- this is the entity (whether individual or company) who provides an offer and pays for conversions.
  2. The entity purchasing traffic from a paid source -- An affiliate can become an advertiser when joining traffic networks if his intention is to buy traffic.
Adware
A piece of software that is linked to and (usually) hidden within downloadable computer programs and applications, typically referred to as “spyware” as it tracks the activity of the user, and would then present ads based on such activity.

Affiliate Link
A link that is unique to the affiliate, which enables the CPA network and/or advertiser to identify the traffic brought in by the specific publisher or affiliate.

Affiliate Marketing Forum
An online forum that serves as a community for affiliates, traffic networks, CPA networks and other providers to connect, discuss, inquire, and share information relevant to affiliate marketing. One great example is affLIFT!

Affiliate Program
Also referred to as a partner or referral program, the affiliate program is the agreement between the advertiser and affiliate in which the advertiser agrees to buy or pay for leads from the affiliate. The leads can be measured in terms of clicks, form sign-ups, sales or more.

Alexa Rank
A platform that measures the popularity of a page or website, with Rank 1 being the highest-performing site in terms of traffic. It is usually used as a KPI or a benchmark for analyzing the effectiveness of a website’s digital marketing strategies.

Alt Text
Short for “alternative text”, this provides information on the image or page. It also takes the place of the image when the latter does not load.

Anchor Text
This is the text that is displayed for a clickable link. The most common example of this is the words “click here”.

API
This is short for Application Programming Interface. It is a set of protocols used to create specific applications and allow one program to communicate with another.

APK Offers
Short for Android Package Kit, this is the file format used when installing mobile applications on devices that use the Android Operating System.

Auto-Download Offers
As its name itself implies, these are offers that automatically download a file or a program to a user’s device once a page is opened or when a banner is clicked.

Backlink
Also known as an incoming link. This is when other websites make reference to the webpage in question by linking to it.

Banner Ad
An image-based display advertisement that can be clicked to bring the user to the offer page or landing page.

Black Hat SEO
This is a type of SEO practice that uses shady and unethical tactics to rank higher quickly in search engine results. Typically, the webpage does not help the user in any way and end up getting penalized when caught by search engines.

Blacklist
This is a list of websites that you don’t want your ads to be shown in. It can also be a list of sources that you don’t want your page to receive paid traffic from. This list is added within your campaigns from your paid traffic provider.

Charge Back
In affiliate marketing terms, this is the refund of payment for leads or conversions that were proven to be either fraudulent or invalid. The payment given to the affiliate will be taken back and returned to the advertiser.

Click Fraud
This is when invalid clicks were generated through means of unethical practices in order to artificially inflate traffic and in turn increase earnings. These are fake clicks and usually lead to the banning of the affiliate from CPA networks.

Click ID
This is the code that helps identify the user that clicked on a link or allowed a page to load. The user’s information, such as his location, ISP, browser, device and more. It also provides essential details of the click such as when it occurred and which ad led to the action.

Click-Through
The process by which the user clicks on either a banner or a hyperlinked text and waited for the corresponding page to load.

Click-Through Rate
Also referred to as the CTR, this is the ratio of clicks that the ad gained compared to the impressions it received. This is a key performance metric that indicates whether or not the ad creative is effective.

To calculate this, just take the number of click-throughs, divide it by the number of impressions, and then multiply it by a hundred.

Cloaking
This is the process of hiding the actual page’s content and showing a different content that is acceptable to the viewer (such as search engines or reviewers from a traffic provider). Cloaking can also be used to hide information embedded in the tracking link.

Commission
This is the fee that an affiliate receives for promoting an offer, with the promotion resulting in a specific action, such as a lead or a conversion.

Content Farm
This is a website or a group of websites that contains a large amount of content that is usually of low quality. The purpose of such websites is to rank high and gain traffic from search engines in order to earn from various ads.

Contextual Links
This is a link found within an article. It usually contains keywords important to the page it is linking to.

Conversion
This is when the user performs the advertiser’s desired action. A lead, a purchase or a subscription can all be classified as a conversion.

Conversion Rate
This is a performance metric that determines what percentage of the ad impressions, clicks or page visits resulted in a conversion. To calculate this, just take the number of conversions, divide it by the number of impressions (or clicks or page views), and then multiply it by a hundred.

Cookies
This is a small file or a piece of data sent by the website the user is viewing to the device he is using. It can be stored locally or in the browser. This allows the website to record the user’s browsing activities on the site as well as other relevant information such as your device’s IP address and your language preference.

CPA (Cost per Acquisition)
Cost per Acquisition is the average cost incurred for every successful defined action. A defined action depends on the advertiser; it could be a lead (at the minimum is comprised of a name and an email address), a subscription (to a service or a free trial), or a purchase.

The CPA Rate can also be referred to as the amount the advertiser is willing to pay a publisher or an affiliate for every successful conversion.

CPC (Cost per Click)
This is simply the average cost the media buyer incurs for every click of his ad. This can also be referred to as the payment model that traffic providers use to bill their clients.

CPL (Cost per Lead)
This is the cost incurred for every successful form sign-up. In CPA networks, it can be referred to as the amount the advertiser is willing to pay an affiliate for every lead.

CPM (Cost per One Thousand Impressions)
Short for Cost per Mille, CPM is the cost incurred by the advertiser for every one thousand views of his ad. For publishers in an ad network, this is how much he earns for every ad space he has that received one thousand impressions.

CPS (Cost per Sale)
This is the cost incurred for every successful purchase. In CPA networks, it can be referred to as the amount the advertiser is willing to pay an affiliate for every user confirmed purchase.

CPV (Cost per View)
This is what you pay CPV networks every time your ad is viewed. This is typically used for pop ads and domain redirects.

Crawler
Short for Web Crawler, also called spiders, robots or spiderbots, is a program that crawls webpages to help search engines understand the content of the page. It also provides feedback on what websites the page link to (outgoing links), what websites link to the page (incoming links), what the content is about and more. These crawlers help search engines index (or de-index) a webpage.

Creative
This is the promotional material that the advertiser uses to attract viewers to click on their ad. Creatives vary depending on the ad format. An ad creative can be text-based, with an ad title and text (in case of search ads), a combination of ad text and image (in case of push notifications), while it can also be an image or a GIF (in case of a banner or display ad).

CSV File
Short for Comma Separated Values, a CSV file is a type of spreadsheet file that contains data and can be opened using Excel, OpenOffice, Google Sheets, and other spreadsheet programs.

Daily Budget
This is the amount you are willing to spend per day in a traffic network for a specific campaign, ad set or ad creative. Once this budget is used up, the ad or campaign will pause for the day and will restart again the following day.

Datafeed
This is a file that includes all products or offers under one advertiser. It includes relevant information such as offer name, number, description, CPA, accepted traffic, ad creatives and more.

Dayparting
These are the days of the week, or the hours of the day, that you want your ad to run on. This schedule can be set when creating your campaign in a traffic network. Your ad will only run on the specific time of the day and days of the week you choose.

Deep Linking
This is an advertising technique wherein you use a link that displays the exact page you want the viewer to see. This is effective for huge websites that have multiple products or services to offer, such as a hotel booking website or an eCommerce website.

Deep Link Generator
This is the tool used to generate an affiliate link based on the exact page the affiliate wants to promote.

Demand Side Platforms (DSP)
This is a platform that aggregates ad exchanges and traffic sources in one dashboard. It is called the Demand Side Platform as it caters to the needs of media buyers and advertisers, or the “demand-side” of the ad buying world.

Direct Billing Flow
This is a type of conversion flow wherein a conversion is recorded when the user pays for the offer or service by adding the charge to his phone bill or when he pays using his mobile phone’s prepaid credits.

Direct Buy
This is an ad-buying system wherein the media buyer is in direct contact with a publisher and purchases ad inventory in bulk. Instead of passing through a bidding system, the media buyer pays for the ad space at either a fixed CPM rate or a fixed schedule (with start and end dates).

Under such circumstances, the media buyer has no option of filtering low-quality traffic since he gets the entire bulk of impressions for his ad space of choice. However, this can be a cheaper option compared to purchasing traffic from an ad network.

Disclosure
This is a required text that needs to be placed on advertisers’ webpages to inform users and potential buyers/investors about how the information on the page may have a direct or indirect bias to influence users on their decision.

This means the affiliate needs to inform the user that he or she is getting paid a fee each time a user signs up or purchases through his link. This is a requirement by the US Federal Trade Commission.

COD
Short for Cash on Delivery, this is a payment method wherein the user will only pay (in cash) when the physical product is delivered to his doorstep.

Domain Authority
This is an SEO ranking score as predicted by Moz. It is an estimation of how well a website would do when it comes to search engine rankings, with a score that ranges from 1 to 100, the latter being the highest score.

The score is based on several factors or signals, including the number of domains linking to the page, and the number of ranking keywords within the website.

Domain Redirect
This is a form of PPV ad wherein the viewer accesses a parked domain; it could be because of domain name misspelling or the website no longer exists for that domain name. Instead of displaying a page error, the owner of the parked domain displays an ad.

Double Opt-In (DOI)
Otherwise known as Confirmed Opt-in, this is a two-step subscription procedure. The user needs to input his details in a form (which requires an email address), submit it, and then check his email to confirm the subscription. Only when the user has confirmed subscription will the lead be counted towards the affiliate.

This style of subscription is said to have better quality leads as compared to Single Opt-Ins.

Duplicate Content
These are exact blocks of content that appear in two or more webpages that Google deems to be “appreciably similar”.

Dynamic Tracking
This is a tracking style that changes dynamically based on the information that the click provides. Data is gathered based on the tracking tokens that ad networks automatically fill out. The tracking tokens vary and depend on the traffic network.

Earnings per Click (EPC)
This is the average rate that helps affiliates estimate their earnings (or potential earnings) at a glance. Although it is called “Earnings per Click”, in reality, it is earnings per one hundred clicks.

This is computed based on the total affiliate earnings for that offer/program, divided by the number of clicks the offer has received for a given period. The result is then multiplied by a hundred to come up with the average earnings per 100 clicks.

Fired Pixel
This is an industry-wide term which means a click or an impression has occurred, and that information on that specific ad view or click has been sent back to the affiliate’s tracker.

This may also mean that a conversion has occurred when the click generated a lead or a sale.

First Click
This is a program policy wherein the first affiliate who managed to place a cookie on a user’s browser or computer will be the one credited with the lead or sale. This is applicable only until the cookie expires and if the user has not yet deleted the cookie. Until then, cookies placed by subsequent affiliate links will not be considered for the conversion.

Flat Deal
Also known as Direct Buy or Flat Rate Advertising Deal, this allows a media buyer to purchase all incoming traffic from a website at a fixed fee.

Since all traffic is being purchased, the buyer cannot filter or separate high-quality traffic from low-quality ones. The only thing the buyer can control is the location of the ad space, as well as the start and end dates of the ad.

Frequency Capping

This is the number of times a unique user views (or clicks) an ad within a given period (i.e. an hour, a 12-hour period, or a 24-hour period). This helps prevent ad burn out.

GEO Targeting
This is a targeting option that allows the affiliate to purchase only traffic coming from a specific geographic location, such as a region, country, state or even city. An ad network is able to filter this based on the IP address of the user.

Hit
This is the number of file requests each webpage makes on a server. If a webpage contains one image and one graphic, that page makes three hits when it loads completely: one for the page, one for the graphic file and one for the image. However, this term is sometimes incorrectly used to refer to one pageview.

HTML
Short for Hyper Text Markup Language, HTML is a markup language that uses a combination of symbols and codes to create pages that can be displayed in a browser. When published live, these become available on the World Wide Web.

Hyperlink
This is an item on a webpage that contains a link that directs the user to a different part of the page or a different website altogether. The hyperlinked item can be a word, a series of words, or an image, and is often highlighted to emphasize that clicking on it will lead you somewhere else.

Impression
This refers to the numerous times an ad is displayed. In pop-ads, one “pop” of a webpage is counted as an impression.

In display and text-link ads, an impression is counted whether or not the ad is in the viewable range. A viewable impression, on the other hand, is counted when at least 50% of the ad appears in the viewable range for at least a second.

In-House
There are multiple meanings associated with this term, but in general, it means “from within”. Here are some instances where the term In-House is most commonly used:
  • In-House Affiliate Program - This is when a company or advertiser wants to run their own affiliate program instead of working with agencies or using affiliate networks.
  • In-House Tracking Platform - This is when an advertiser, an affiliate network, or a traffic network uses a tracking system that is built exclusively for them.
  • In-House Fraud Preventions System - This is when a traffic network uses its own proprietary system to track and prevent bots.
Inbound Link
Also known as a Backlink, an Inbound Link is one that is used to drive traffic towards your website from an external page. This type of link is one of search engines’ positive signals which helps increase your webpage’s rankings in search results.

Incentive Traffic
This is a type of traffic wherein the user receives a reward for completing a certain action, which in turn results in a conversion for the affiliate. Rewards can come in the form of discounts, money, free items, points and more.

Index or Indexing
This is when a webpage is discovered by search engine crawlers and become part of that search engine’s database. A search engine’s index is a compilation of all websites and pages in their database. Once a website has been indexed, it has the potential to appear in a search query.

Incentivized Offers
These are offers that can be run on incentivized traffic.

Index
Index or search engine index is essentially a database of webpages that search engines collect. This is where they base their search results and is regularly updated by search engine crawlers.

Indie Program
This is short for Independent Affiliate Program, which means a business or merchant will be running his own affiliate program instead of working with an affiliate network.

Internal Linking
This is an SEO technique wherein a webpage has links directing to other pages within the same website. It is said that internal linking helps improve a specific webpage’s ranking in search engines.

Interstitial Ads
This is a type of ad that covers the entire screen of the webpage or the app. It appears before the target page opens up.

JV
Short for Joint Venture, JV is an agreement between two parties to act upon a single venture. An example of a JV partnership is when one party is the product creator, while the other party is the promoter. Usually, the promoter gets a portion of the earnings gained through his own marketing efforts.

The difference between being a JV partner and being an affiliate is that JV Partners can discuss directly with the product creator or merchant. This means the merchant can offer the JV partner improved deals for better quality sales and bigger volume. This improved deal is not just in terms of payout, but also in other aspects, such as cross-promotions, payments on second-tier commissions, and more.

Keyword
This is the term or phrase that users utilize to search for anything on the internet. This can also be the term focused on by SEO experts to drive organic traffic to their website.

Keyword Density
This is the percentage of times a term or keyword phrase was mentioned in a text, in comparison to the text’s number of words. For example, if a text has 100 words and the keyword appears five times, then the keyword density would be 5%.

Keyword Research
This is the technique that search engine experts use when finding terms to base their content on to increase their website’s search engine rankings.

Last Click
This means the most recent affiliate link that led to a conversion will be credited for that conversion, even when other affiliate links drove the same user to the same offer in the past.

Lead
This is a type of conversion wherein the user only needs to submit specific information for the conversion to be considered. Businesses use such leads to get in touch with potential customers.

Lifetime Value
This is a merchant’s prediction of how much the business will gain from one customer in his entire lifetime. This helps the merchant estimate how much the customer is worth to them, allowing them to give a portion of this worth to the affiliate in order for them to gain more customers.

Link Building
This is the process of creating a network of links pointing to your website. It is said to help improve a website’s search engine ranking, and includes both internal and external links.

Link Juice
This is the equity that a powerful website delivers to another website that it is linking to. Search engines see this as a sign that the high-ranking website trusts the specific website they are linking to, which essentially helps the latter get better rankings.

Loyalty Affiliates
These are affiliates who create apps and websites that give out loyalty points or cashback based on the commission the affiliate receives. Essentially, these affiliates send incentivized traffic to the offer.

An example would be when an affiliate who receives a 15% commission for purchases offers a 5% cashback to the customer.

LSI Keyword
LSI Keyword is short for Latent Semantic Indexing Keyword, which is defined as terms related to your primary keyword. These are keywords that search engines look for in a body of text to ensure that the content is precisely what a user is searching for when the page is displayed in the search results. This is utilized when optimizing content for search engines.

Manual Approval
As its name implies, this means that the submission needs to go through human verification and approval first. This applies to several instances, such as:
  • When signing up in an affiliate network;
  • When applying for an offer;
  • When submitting ad creatives (such as banners and landing pages) to ensure compliance with the offer’s requirements.
The submission can either be rejected or approved.

Maximum Budget
This is the maximum amount you would be willing to spend for a given time period for a specific campaign, ad set or creative.

It could be a lifetime maximum budget, which is the entire amount you are willing to spend, by which case the campaign will stop running once reached. Or it could be a maximum daily budget, which is the amount you are willing to spend for any given day.

Merchant
Also called an advertiser, this is the business or company that provides the offers and pays affiliates for conversions.

Meta Description
This is an HTML or XHTML attribute which gives a short background of the page’s content. It typically ranges from 50 to 160 characters and is displayed below the page title in search results.

Meta Tags
These are snippets of information regarding the webpage’s content. This can include the (meta) description, author name, date published, keywords, and more. This information may be hidden in the actual page but can be displayed during a search engine query.

Meta Title
This is the page’s title as you want it to appear in links or search results. It can be the content’s title, but it can also include other details such as the category, website name and more.

Mobile Affiliates
These are affiliates who focus on traffic coming from mobile phones and tablets.

Mobile Carrier Billing
Also referred to as mobile billing, this is a payment method wherein the user opts for his purchases or subscriptions to be charged to his postpaid bill, instead of using credit cards and other payment options.

There are two major types of Mobile Carrier Billing, and these are SMS Billing and Direct Carrier Billing.

This can also be considered as a type of conversion flow wherein a conversion is recorded when the user pays for a service or offer through Mobile Carrier Billing.

Niche Marketing
This is a marketing strategy wherein an affiliate focuses on a specific market segment.

Off-Page SEO
This is an SEO technique wherein optimization is done outside of the webpage but still with the goal of improving the page’s ranking. This includes link building, social media promotions and more.

Offer
These are the products, services and other marketing-related materials that merchants want affiliates to promote. Each offer has a specific objective and conversion flow, that when achieved, corresponds to payment to the affiliate responsible for the conversion.

On-Page SEO
This is another SEO technique wherein the optimization is done on the webpage’s content and HTML source code to improve search engine rankings. This includes adjusting the keyword density, including LSI keywords, adding meta descriptions, adding related images, improving page speed and more.

Opt-In Email
The email sent to a user to confirm that he is willing to be added to a mailing list. This is the second part of the Double Opt-in flow.

Outbound Link
This is a link directed outside of a website.

Page Authority
This is the ranking devised by Moz to determine how well a particular webpage will rank in search engines. They use a 1 to 100 scale, wherein 1 is the lowest score and 100 is the highest.

PageRank
This is used by Google to rank pages in search results. The ranking is based on the page content’s relevance to the search term, the number of links linking to the page, the quality of these links, and more. The algorithm is not revealed by Google and it changes every few months.

Paid Search
This is a paid traffic source wherein the ad appears along with the results of a search engine query based on the keyword utilized for the search. It works on a Pay Per Click model, which means the advertiser (in this case, the affiliate or media buyer using paid search) will only pay when someone clicks on his ad.

Pay Bump
This happens when an affiliate is given a better rate for an offer after providing high-quality conversions in high volume.

Payment Threshold
This is the minimum amount of commissions an affiliate must earn within one affiliate network or indie program before they agree to release the payment to the affiliate.

Payout
Payout refers to the amount the affiliate will receive once a conversion is confirmed. There are a few types of payouts available, some of which are:
  • Fixed payout - this is the most common form, wherein the affiliate is paid a fixed price per conversion, regardless if there is any upsell occurring within the conversion flow.
  • Percentage - this means the affiliate will earn a portion of the transaction. It can also be referred to as Revenue Share.
  • Recurring commissions - this is a continuous type of commission wherein the affiliate receives commissions regularly while the user is still subscribed to the merchant’s services.
Pixel
A “pixel firing” is a common term in internet marketing (including affiliate marketing). It simply means a 1x1 pixel loads on a page, eventually allowing the pixel to gather information. Each page load is assigned a click ID, and all corresponding information and actions within that page are transmitted back to the tracking system.

Pin Submit
This is a mobile payment model wherein the affiliate gets paid when the user opts-in to the offer and confirms the opt-in by submitting the pin sent to his mobile number via SMS.

Plug-in
This refers to the component used to add features or improve the functionality of a certain program. It cannot function independently and must be used in conjunction with the program.

Pop-up or Pop-under
This is a form of PPV ad wherein a full-page ad is displayed in a separate tab or browser. It opens up with a trigger event such as clicking on a link.

It is called pop-up if the window opens on top of the main browser window, or the view switches to a new tab containing the ad. On the other hand, it is called pop-under if it opens up beneath the main window. The user will be able to see the full-page ad once he closes his main browser window.

Portal
A portal refers to a page or a website used as a point of entry to any platform, program or resource.

Postback URL Tracking
Also called Server to Server Tracking (S2S Tracking), this is a tracking method used to monitor conversions. The Postback URL is used to connect a tracker and an affiliate network. Every time a conversion occurs, the affiliate network will be able to pass that information to the tracker, while the tracker interprets that information by associating it with a click ID.

PPC
Short for Pay Per Click, PPC is a marketing model wherein the advertiser or media buyer pays only when someone clicks on his link.

PPC Affiliate Marketing
This is a type of affiliate marketing wherein the affiliate gets paid by an advertiser every time someone clicks on his affiliate link.

PPCall
Short for Pay Per Call, this is an advertising model wherein the merchant pays the affiliate for every call made to the merchant’s platforms through the affiliate’s own link or specialized number.

Most PPCall offers have pre-qualifications in place, such as a minimum call duration or a minimum amount of information gathered from the customer.

PPL
Short for Pay Per Lead, PPL is a marketing model wherein the advertiser pays the publisher for every confirmed lead.

PPS
Short for Pay Per Sale, PPS is a typical marketing model wherein the affiliate gets paid every time a sale is made through his efforts. It can be a fixed price or a percentage of the sale.

PPV
Short for Pay Per View, this is a payment model wherein the advertiser pays for each impression or view his ad receives.

Prelander
This is a pre-landing page (also called just landing page, at times) which helps warms customers up to increase the possibility of a conversion.

Premium Targeting
There are two ways to define premium targeting, and these are:
  1. Premium display targeting - these are the prime banner ad spots on a website which gets the best quality traffic.
  2. Premium traffic targeting - these are the best quality traffic as targeted based on demographics, behaviors, geo-location and even interests.
Prelander
This is a type of landing page that is shown before the actual offer page. It is used to warm up the viewers to increase the chances of that viewer converting on the offer by signing up, subscribing, purchasing, or doing any other action that the advertiser deems important.

Product Link
This is an affiliate link that is specific to products. This link is typically utilized in businesses that are selling multiple products or services. Product links are usually deep links to make sure the viewer lands on the specific product page he is interested in.

Profit
This is the total amount of affiliate earnings. It is computed by deducting the total cost from the total revenue generated.

Publisher
The publisher is the individual or the entity that does the promotion in exchange for a payment. In an affiliate or CPA network, the publisher is the affiliate. However, in a traffic or ad network, the publisher is the entity that provides the traffic, such as a website.

Raw Clicks
The number of clicks the link receives. It doesn’t matter if it comes from the same source or the same user; it will be included in the count.

Reciprocal Links
This is when websites agree to add an outgoing link for each other’s website in a reciprocating manner.

Redirect or Redirection
This is when a URL loads a different URL and forwards the traffic to that page. Three common types of redirects are 301 redirects, 302 redirects, and meta refresh.

Referring Domain
This is the domain that contains the link that is directed towards your website. In essence, the referring domain gives you backlinks.

Referring URL
If the referring domain just includes the domain name of the source, the referring URL indicates the full link.

Remnant Traffic
Also called Remnant Inventory, this is the excess supply of traffic that no other advertiser is interested in purchasing as it may yield low conversions. Because there is a low demand for this traffic, it is being offered at a discounted price.

Revenue
This is the total earnings you get for promoting an offer, regardless of whether your marketing efforts are profitable or not.

Robots.txt
This is a plain text file added by webmasters to the root directory of their sites in order to provide instructions to crawlers. It contains rules of what robot crawlers are allowed to access or not.

ROI
Short for Return on Investment, this is a key performance indicator when running any marketing campaign. The ROI is shown in percentage and is computed by deducting the cost from the revenue to get the profit. This profit is then divided by the cost. The result is multiplied by a hundred to get the ROI percentage.

Run of Network
Also called RON, this is a type of traffic targeting wherein you accept virtually all traffic from the ad provider, whatever the category it falls under (although sometimes, advertisers have the option to exclude adult traffic). This is usually cheaper than most types of traffic.

Root Domain
This is the index page or the base name of a website. It is the main structure that holds subdomains.

RTB
Short for Real-Time Bidding, RTB is a form of advertising technology wherein the advertiser’s bid is placed in a live auction the moment an advertising spot opens up (like when a page with ad spaces load).

Search affiliates
These are affiliates that use PPC paid search to drive traffic to their landing pages.

Search Engine Optimization
Often called SEO, Search Engine Optimization is a combination of techniques utilized to improve search engine rankings. The better the rankings, the more organic traffic the website will receive. There are two major parts to SEO, and these are Off-Page SEO and On-Page SEO.

Search Engine
This is a browser application whose main purpose is to find the best results on the internet for a given query. The results could be in the form of text, images, or videos.

Search Term
This is the word or combination of words that is used to find a particular topic online. This term is used in search engines.

Segment
A segment is a division of the market specific to a particular demographic. This is used to target users falling under a specific set of filters. For instance, a segment can be narrowed down based on country, device, operating system, browser, and carrier.

SEO affiliates
These are affiliates who focus on using SEO as a way to drive traffic to their websites or landing pages.

SERP
Short for Search Engine Results Page, this is the page that displays the results of a search engine query.

Single Offer
This is simply one offer for a particular link. Instead of having multiple rotating offers for one link, the link directs to just one offer or one product page.

Single Opt-in
This is the simplest form of lead conversions wherein the user only needs to sign-up with no confirmation necessary.

Site Map
This is an organized list of website contents. This helps users easily navigate through a website to find specific entries like posts and media files.

Smartlink
This is a link that can accept multiple types of traffic. The link creator’s technology then analyzes the incoming traffic and sends the viewer to an offer that has the best chances of converting.

SMS Billing
This is a mobile conversion flow wherein the conversion is counted when the user inputs his mobile number on the offer page. There are multiple kinds of SMS Billing Flows, and these are:
  • MO SMS - short for Mobile Originated, the conversion is confirmed when the user uses his phone to send a code to a specified number.
  • MT SMS - short for Mobile Terminated, the conversion is confirmed when the user inputs his phone number and then confirms it by keying-in the code he receives on his mobile phone.
  • Handshake MT - this is another version of the MT SMS wherein instead of receiving and placing the code on the landing page, the user only needs to reply to a message sent to him.
  • MSISDN Forwarding - also called WAP billing.
Social Marketers
These are marketers whose strategy focuses on connecting and engaging with potential customers using social media networks.

SOI
SOI is short for Single Opt-In, which is one of the simplest conversion models. The user only needs to submit his email address, and the conversion will be counted.

Spiders
These are crawlers used to infiltrate your website and data, leading to spamming you and even causing you more online harm.

Split Testing
This is the strategy marketers use to test which ad creative, landing page and offer converts best.

Spot
These are advertising spaces. On TV and radio, it’s ten to 60 seconds of air time. On websites, it’s above the fold, on the sidebar, between the content and more.

Subdomain
This is a domain that is just a section of a primary domain. This can be used to create a complementary website, a redirect link, a landing page, or more.

Super Affiliates
These are the top affiliates in the industry. They are said to be the ones gathering the biggest percentage of conversions and earnings in affiliate programs.

Supply-Side Platforms (SSP)
This is a platform that makes it easier for publishers to manage their ad spaces and effectively sell their ad inventory. Supply-side platforms use automated systems programmed to help publishers earn the most from their websites.

Sweepstakes
This is a lead generation strategy wherein prizes are being raffled away in order to entice users to sign up.

Targeted Marketing
This is a strategy wherein a marketing campaign is developed for a specific market segment to improve the chances of the audience responding as desired.

Text Link
This is a piece of text that is hyperlinked and directs to an advertiser’s website or landing page when clicked.

Tokens
Also known as macros, variables, UTM parameters, and more. Tracking tokens are variables that are dynamically generated and are used to obtain and fire back information on each click or view. This allows advertisers to monitor the performance of an offer or campaign on a specific audience segment.

Top-level domain
Also called TLD, this is the highest level of the internet’s domain naming convention. This is the one that comes after the domain name’s last dot. For example, in www.afflift.com, the TLD is com.

Tracking Method
This is the kind of tracking system that affiliate networks/programs use to monitor conversions.

There are several tracking methods available, namely:
  1. Browser cookie tracking - a webpage leaves a cookie on the user’s computer which records and fires back information to the tracker (such as the user’s browsing activity).
  2. HTML5 cookie tracking - similar to the previous tracking method, except that this one requires a browser to be open for information to be sent back to the tracker.
  3. Flash cookie tracking - this uses Adobe Flash to leave cookies on the user’s computer. This cannot be easily removed by a simple cleanup operation. A flash cookie is also known as an LSO or local shared object.
  4. IP Address tracking - this method allows you to monitor the user’s activity based on this IP.
Tracking Platform
These are used by affiliates to monitor their campaigns’ performance. A typical tracking platform can be integrated with traffic providers and affiliate networks in order to become the one-stop-shop to check the progress of all campaigns.

Within tracking platforms, the traffic data can be filtered in multiple ways and the conversions can be examined.

Tracking Software
This is the program utilized to monitor your advertising campaigns.

Tracking URL
This is a URL that includes variables that capture a visitor’s information.

Traffic
This is the inflow of visitors to a page.

Unique Clicks
This is the number of unique users that visited the page by clicking on an ad. This is different from Total or Raw Clicks as this counts the number of users and not the number of clicks.

For instance, one person clicked on a text ad 20 times. While there are 20 Raw Clicks, there is only 1 Unique Click.

Unique User
This is a user that landed on a webpage for the first time based on a given time frame (first time to visit the webpage within a day, a week, or based on the cookie duration).

Unique Views
This is the number of unique users that viewed your ad without any clicking action.

URL
This is short for Uniform Resource Locator, which is commonly known as a web address. This is basically a link that a web page resolves to. It is displayed in a browser’s address bar.

Viral Marketing
This is a marketing technique employed in social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. The term “viral” means the content (either text, link, image, or video post) has gained popularity throughout the platform by means of sharing.

To succeed in this technique, the content must be interesting, shocking, or entertaining to prompt the viewer to share it so that others within their circle will also get to see it.

Video Marketing
This is a marketing technique that uses video as content. It is one of the fastest-growing marketing tactics nowadays, especially since more and more users prefer watching videos over reading texts.

The best platforms for this type of marketing are Youtube, Facebook, and Instagram.

Vertical
This refers to the products or offers which aim to provide solutions or services to a targeted demographic. The target audience is a well-defined segment of the market. In affiliate marketing, it can sometimes be referred to as a niche or a subcategory.

To better illustrate, here is an example:
Category: Dating
Vertical: BBW Dating

Verified Opt-in
Another term for Double Opt-in.

Visitor
This is a user who landed on your page.

View Through
This is when an ad completely loads on a page but has been ignored by the viewer.

Vlog
This is a shortened form of video log or video blog, which are blogs whose main content is in video format, although sometimes supported with text and images.

WAP Billing
Short for Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) Billing, this type of mobile billing allows users to pay for a purchase or subscription with a simple click within a WAP browser. Once the button is clicked, a message is sent to the mobile network. In turn, the subscriber’s network will charge the user’s prepaid or postpaid account.

Webpage
A single page that is a part of a much larger site. It can be a landing page, a blog page, a homepage, or any other part of a website.

Web-based
Sometimes called browser-based, this refers to a tool, program, or application that can be accessed and used through a browser.

Web Host
A service that provides cloud storage space, allowing users to create and serve websites, store cloud-based applications, and more.

Webmaster
This is the person responsible for managing and organizing the content of a website.

White Hat
These are marketing practices that are considered to be safe and acceptable.

White Label
This is a product that is sold without any branding or labeling. This allows other companies to slap their own brand or label to the product, effectively making it their own.

Whitelist
This is the list of keywords, sources, targets, domain names, etc. that you want to receive traffic from. Typically, it is a list that advertisers have compiled based on previously-run campaigns and have been deemed high-quality sources that often lead to conversions.