Terms
Working in online advertising, you surely face tons of affiliate marketing terms and abbreviations.
Affiliate Marketing(CPA Marketing) - a type of marketing that is based on performance. In affiliate marketing, affiliates are paid for successfully promoting a product or a service.
For example, a person running a fashion blog can be an affiliate of a clothes company that wishes to advertise their product on that blog. The affiliate earns money each time they refer a visitor to the company’s landing page, i.e., when a blog visitor clicks on that company’s ad.
Affiliate Program - an arrangement in which the advertiser pays commissions to affiliates.
The commission model is usually based on actions performed by users. It usually involves lead generation, subscription to a service, etc. Advertiser uses a performance tracking software to track users’ actions and affiliates that have helped in that process. Many service providers run their own affiliate program, meaning that they buy traffic for themselves to increase their profit.
Affiliate Network(CPA Network) – acts as an intermediary between affiliates and advertisers.
Affiliate networks allow affiliates to easily find and participate in affiliate programs which are suitable for their inventory. Advertisers who offer affiliate programs work with affiliate networks to reach larger audiences, i.e. all affiliates participating in the affiliate network. Affiliate network is an organization that makes its profit on the difference between revenue from advertisers and costs which they have to pay to affiliates.
CPA(Cost per Actions) - May refer to cost per action and cost per acquisition. CPA is a payment model in which affiliates are paid for a specified action. An action can for instance be to generate a lead or a sale.
Affiliate Network Users:
Admin(Administrator, Admin, Owner) - administrator of the CPA network whom manage all process, attract affiliates and advertisers;
Affiliate manager(AM) – a person who communicates with affiliates. Affiliate managers often create offers and take care of maximizing performance of the affiliate program.
Affiliate(Partner, Webmaster, Pub, Publisher) - a person or organization that promotes offers. Affiliates are usually publishers (owners of web sites or mobile applications), media buyers, or ad networks. Affiliates are sometimes also called partners, publishers and external marketers.
Advertiser(Advert) - a person or organization that owns a business and offers services or products to customers. Advertisers are willing to pay affiliates for each new customer or lead they bring. It helps them promote their brand and acquire new customers.
Conversion - an event generated by an affiliate that an advertiser is willing to pay for.
This is usually a target action of the end user, defined by the advertiser. It can be a subscription to a service, lead generation, sale of a product, installation of a mobile application. Conversion is the final goal of advertising for which advertisers pay to affiliates.
Landing Page -
Offer Page – the final URL where the visitor will land after clicking the promotion link or banner;
This is usually a target action of the end user, defined by the advertiser. It can be a subscription to a service, lead generation, sale of a product, installation of a mobile application. Conversion is the final goal of advertising for which advertisers pay to affiliates.
Offer – A product or a service that an advertiser can promote in exchange for a commission, called payout. Offers can be found in affiliate networks.
Offers are created by advertisers and they usually contain all relevant information about the payout model and marketing prices. The alternative name for offer is campaign.
Lead – Any piece of user information that offer owners deem valuable. This may include email address, phone number, or credit card details.
Leadgen – A type of an offer where the main purpose is to collect leads. In reality, most offers are leadgen offers.
Traffic – a stream of visitors, either paid or organic. A place where you can get traffic from is called a traffic source.
Traffic source – A general term describing any place that you can get traffic from.
Vertical – An offer category. A subcategory of vertical is called a niche. There are plenty of various verticals, chief among which are dating, nutra, or sweepstakes. Affiliate networks usually specialize in one or few verticals.
Tier – A group of countries similar in terms of advertising techniques and payouts. The division is based on when a given country has been connected to the Internet.
Tier 1 countries are developed countries that were connected to the Internet first. They are familiar with many affiliate techniques and the market in that country is very saturated. However, offers in this Tier have the highest payouts
Tier 2 countries were connected to the Interned later. Competition is smaller, but still noticeable. And payouts are respectively lower.
Tier 3 countries are developing countries that got the Internet connection just recently. Offer payouts are the lowest, but competition is lower as well, and the sheer size of a market allows newbies to find niches.
EPC - Earnings per click is what you earn on average for each unique click sent. If you earn 1.000 and have 10.000 clicks, your EPC will be 0,1. Earnings ÷ number of unique clicks = EPC.
CPC - cost per click;
CR - Conversion rate is the percentage that completes a desired action out of the total number of clicks. If your tracking link has had 10.000 clicks and you have had 100 sales, your conversion rate is 1%.
Creative – advertisement, ad, or (in a more narrow sense) banner. There are many types of banner ads. Choosing the right type depends on the advertising channel, target audience and advertising message.
Click ID – A unique alphanumeric string that is used to identify a click. Traffic sources, trackers, and affiliate networks have their own click IDs to track concrete visits. Passing a click ID within a token is commonly used to authenticate a conversion within a tracker or a traffic source.
Pixel – This is how a tracking script is usually called. A pixel implemented on a landing page reports visits to this page, whereas a pixel implemented on an offer page reports conversions.
Cost models – Methods of paying for traffic. There are the following cost models:
CPA – Cost per action. This is when you pay for traffic only if a visitor undertook a certain action, usually a conversion.
CPC – Cost per click. This is when you pay for each click on your ad.
Revshare – This is when you pay a set fraction of your payout.
CTR – Click-through rate. The main indicator of your landing page’s performance. It describes a ratio of people that have clicked the CTA button vs the number of people that have visited the landing page.
CTA – Call to action. Usually a button that is placed on a landing page. It directs a visitor to an offer page. There can be one or more CTA buttons that lead to the same or different offers from one landing page.
Impression – A metric describing a single ad view;
Click -
Postback – A method of reporting conversions from an affiliate network to a tracker or traffic source that uses HTTP requests.
ROI – Return on Investment. How much you have earned vs the money you have spent.
If it’s positive, you are earning money;
If it’s negative, you are losing money.
It is calculated using the following formula: ROI (%) = (Total revenue ($) – Total cost ($) ) / Total cost ($) * 100%
GEO – A term describing geographical targeting details, such as tier, country, state, or city.
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