Affiliate marketing glossary

Fifty terms you will meet in program agreements, network dashboards and partner calls, defined in plain English.

A

Advertiser: The business that runs an affiliate program and pays commission. Also called the brand or merchant.
Affiliate: A person or company that promotes another business’s products in exchange for commission. Also called a publisher or partner.
Affiliate agreement: The contract that sets commission, payment terms, allowed promotion methods and disclosure rules. Read it before promoting.
Affiliate manager: The person at a brand or agency who recruits, supports and pays partners. A responsive one is worth a slightly lower rate.
Affiliate network: A platform that tracks sales, pays partners and gives brands access to its publishers, such as Awin, CJ or Impact.
Attribution: The rules that decide which partner gets credit for a sale when several were involved.
Attribution window: How long after a click a purchase still counts. See cookie window.
Average order value (AOV): Total revenue divided by number of orders. Percentage commissions scale with it.

Bounty: A fixed amount paid for each qualifying customer or signup, regardless of order size.
Brand bidding: Buying search ads on a brand’s name and sending the clicks through an affiliate link. Most programs prohibit it.

Cashback site: A publisher that shares part of its commission with shoppers. Useful for conversion, but often credited with sales other partners created.
Chargeback: A payment reversed by the customer’s bank. The related commission is usually reversed too.
Clawback: Recovering commission already paid when a sale is later refunded or found to be fraudulent.
Click-through rate (CTR): The share of readers who click a link: clicks divided by views.
Commission: What a partner earns for a qualifying action: a percentage, a fixed bounty or both.
Conversion rate: The share of clicks that become sales or signups.
Cookie: A small file in the browser that records which partner referred a visitor.
Cookie stuffing: Fraud that drops affiliate cookies on people who never clicked a link.
Cookie window: How long a referral stays valid after a click, from 24 hours to the life of the account.
Coupon site: A publisher that lists discount codes. Programs often set special rules or rates for them.
CPA (cost per action): Paying a fixed amount when a defined action happens, such as a sale or trial.
CPC (cost per click): Paying per click rather than per sale. Rare in affiliate marketing because it invites fraud.
CPL (cost per lead): Paying a fixed amount for each qualified signup or enquiry.
CPS (cost per sale): Paying commission only when a purchase is completed.

Deep link: An affiliate link to a specific product or page rather than the homepage. It usually converts better.
Disclosure: A clear statement telling readers you may earn from a recommendation. Required by the FTC and most programs.

EPC (earnings per click): Total commission divided by clicks. The fairest single number for comparing programs. Try the EPC calculator.

First-click attribution: Giving credit to the partner who introduced the customer, rather than the last one clicked.

Hybrid commission: A mix of models, such as a bounty for the first sale plus a smaller recurring percentage.

Incrementality: Whether a partner created a sale that wouldn’t otherwise have happened. Brands increasingly pay more for incremental partners.
In-house program: A program run on the brand’s own affiliate software instead of a network.

Last-click attribution: The industry default: the last affiliate clicked before purchase gets all the credit.
Lead: A potential customer who has shared contact details or requested information.
Lifetime commission: A recurring commission paid for as long as the referred customer keeps paying.
Link cloaking: Hiding a long affiliate URL behind a short, clean one on your own domain. It never replaces disclosure.
Locking period: The date after which pending commissions can no longer be changed and are approved for payment. See validation period.

Material connection: Any relationship that could affect how people view a recommendation, such as payment, free products or employment. It must be disclosed.
Merchant: Another word for the advertiser or brand.

Network fee: What a network charges a brand on top of commission, as a percentage of sale value or of commission, plus any monthly fee.

Override: A network’s cut calculated as a share of the commission a brand pays partners.

Payout threshold: The minimum balance you must reach before a program pays you.
Postback: Server-to-server tracking that reports a sale directly from the brand’s system to the platform, without relying on browser cookies.
Publisher: A site, creator or company that promotes products as an affiliate.

Recurring commission: Commission paid on every renewal of a subscription, for a set period or for life.
Referral program: A program that rewards customers for recommending a product to people they know, usually with credits or discounts rather than cash.
Revenue share: Commission as a percentage of the revenue a customer generates.
Reversal: A commission cancelled because the sale was returned, refunded, unpaid or invalid.
RPM: Revenue per thousand pageviews. Useful for comparing affiliate income with display ads.

Server-side tracking: Tracking that records clicks and sales on servers rather than in the browser, so privacy tools and blockers lose fewer sales.
SubID: An extra tag you add to an affiliate link to see which page, button or campaign produced a sale.
Sub-affiliate: A partner recruited by another partner, who may earn a share of their commissions in two-tier programs.

Tracking link: A link that carries your partner ID so the program can credit you.
Two-tier program: A program that also pays you a share of commissions earned by partners you referred.

UTM parameters: Tags added to a URL, such as utm_source and utm_campaign, that tell analytics tools where a visit came from. Build them with the link builder.

Validation period: The time a brand takes to confirm sales before approving commission, often 30 to 90 days.

Missing a term? Suggest one, and see the Academy for the concepts in context.