Affiliate Marketing Glossary
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This glossary gathers the affiliate marketing vocabulary you will come across inside Affilae and in your day to day exchanges with partners. Entries are listed in alphabetical order.
When a term matches an Affilae feature, a link takes you to the detailed documentation.
A
Advertiser (also merchant, brand): the business that sells products or services and opens an affiliate program to have them promoted. It is the party that pays the commissions.
Advertising banner: a static or animated creative made available to affiliates so they can promote an offer on their own site.
Affiliate (also publisher, editor): an individual or company that promotes an advertiser’s products or services in return for a commission.
Affiliate group: a set of publishers gathered together so they share the same commission rules.
Affiliate platform: the technology that connects advertisers and affiliates, tracks activity, and handles the calculation and payment of commissions. Affilae is one.
Affiliate program: the setup an advertiser opens on a platform, with its commission rules, its creatives and its partnerships.
Attribution: the logic that decides which affiliate is credited for a conversion. Affilae offers three models, described under F, L and S. The model used by a program is shown in the top left corner of its Marketplace listing.
B
Black-label affiliation: products or services are marketed strictly under the advertiser’s brand, with no adaptation.
Bonus payout (HDR): a temporary increase in an affiliate’s commission rate, over a period agreed in advance.
C
C2S (client to server): a tracking method where the visitor’s browser sends the conversion to Affilae, through a script placed on the order confirmation page.
Capping: a ceiling set by the advertiser on a partner’s or a group’s activity, in clicks, conversions, revenue or commissions. Once the ceiling is reached, conversions are still recorded but no longer earn a commission.
Click: a visit sent by an affiliate through a tracking link. A click is only counted if it passes the program filters, in particular an accepted partnership and an IP address that is not blacklisted.
Commission: the payment an affiliate earns for every validated sale, lead or other agreed action.
Commission rules: the conditions that determine how much a commission is worth, for example new versus returning customers, or product category.
Conversion: the expected action a visitor completes after a click, such as a purchase, a sign-up or a quote request. It is what triggers the commission.
Conversion funnel: the sequence of steps a visitor goes through before converting. Several affiliates can appear along the way, which is why the attribution model matters.
CPA (cost per action): a remuneration model where the affiliate earns a fixed amount or a percentage of the basket for every validated sale.
CPC (cost per click): a remuneration model where the affiliate earns an amount for every valid click, whatever the sales generated.
CPL (cost per lead): a remuneration model where the affiliate earns an amount for every qualified contact generated, such as a sign-up or a completed form.
CTR (click-through rate): the percentage of people exposed to a message, an e-mail or an ad who clicked a link inside it.
D
Deep link: a link that sends traffic to a specific page of the advertiser’s site instead of its home page, to make the promotion more relevant.
E
EPC (earnings per click): the average commission generated per click, that is commissions divided by clicks. On a Marketplace program listing, it shows how much a click is worth on average to the program’s publishers.
F
Feature placement (MEA): a dedicated promotion of a product, a service or an offer to a publisher’s audience.
First-click attribution: the affiliate whose link was clicked first receives the whole commission, even if other affiliates contributed afterwards.
Fixed fee (FF): an amount paid to a publisher for a placement or an operation, whatever the sales generated. Also called paid.
G
Grey-label affiliation: products or services are marketed under the advertiser’s brand, with some adaptations (visuals, wording, offer).
I
Impressions: the number of times an advertising banner is displayed.
Insertion order (IO): a contract authorising a publisher to feature an advertiser in a given piece of content, most often an e-mailing or a media buy.
L
Last-click attribution: the affiliate whose link generated the very last click before the conversion receives the whole commission.
Lead: a qualified contact generated by an affiliate, such as a sign-up, a completed form or a quote request. It is the unit paid for in a CPL model.
Link cloaking: masking a raw affiliate link to make it more readable, or to deter commission theft.
M
Marketplace: the Affilae showcase where advertisers present their program and where publishers look for partnerships to join.
O
Open rate: the percentage of delivered e-mails that were opened by their recipients. It measures how engaged a contact base is.
Overcap: the label carried by clicks and conversions generated beyond a capping that has been reached. They stay visible in your statistics but no longer earn a commission.
P
Partnership: the relationship between an advertiser and a publisher inside a program. It must be accepted before clicks and conversions are recorded.
Postback (S2S, server to server): a tracking method where the advertiser’s server sends the conversion straight to Affilae, without going through the visitor’s browser.
PPC (pay per click): buying paid advertising on a click basis, for example on Google Ads. Some publishers use it to drive traffic to their affiliate links.
Product feed: a file supplied by the advertiser that lists its catalogue (name, price, image, link) and lets affiliates display its products.
Proof (BAT): the creative preview the advertiser must approve before the content is published, most often an e-mailing.
R
Revenue (turnover): the total value of the sales your affiliates generated over a given period, before commissions are deducted.
ROI (return on investment): the ratio between the revenue generated and the costs incurred. It measures how profitable an affiliate campaign is.
S
Session duration: the time window during which several clicks from the same visitor on the same link are counted only once. It is 30 minutes by default on Affilae.
Share attribution: every affiliate involved in the conversion funnel receives a share of the commission.
SubID: a free parameter the publisher adds to a tracking link in order to identify the exact source of a click, such as a newsletter, a page or a campaign.
T
Tracking: all the mechanisms that record clicks and conversions, then tie them to the right affiliate so commissions can be attributed.
Tracking cookie: a small text file dropped on the visitor’s browser after a click on an affiliate link. It links the visitor’s actions to the correct affiliate.
Tracking link (also affiliate link): the unique link assigned to an affiliate. It identifies both the affiliate and the program, which is how clicks and conversions get attributed.
V
Voucher code: a discount code assigned to an affiliate, which credits a sale to that affiliate even when the buyer did not click the affiliate’s link.
W
White-label affiliation: products or services are marketed under the affiliate’s own brand rather than the advertiser’s.