Hello, community! Do you often encounter unknown terms when working with Affiliate Marketing? There’s no need to feel embarrassed about it. Sometimes, processes that are quite clear to us have very unusual names, such as cloaking, caps, and so on. That’s why we present to you our own comprehensive affiliate marketer’s dictionary!

We also recommend checking out our other articles, including this one – Hold in Affiliate Marketing. It also touches on a topic that may not be well known or understood by everyone. Let’s become more professional together!

Terms and Concepts in Affiliate Marketing

What exactly is Affiliate Marketing terminology? Mostly, there are no complicated words for those who understand English well, as most of the terms are Anglicisms, abbreviations, and shortened Anglicisms.

Our dictionary will be useful not only for beginners but also for experienced Affiliate. It’s like a note you can occasionally refer to refresh your memory. Well, let’s move on to the terms.

We’ll divide the terms into separate sections for your convenience and to segment them so that you can distinguish between mandatory and optional words and their interpretations.

Basic Terms in Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate program (PP, affiliate network, CPA network) – it has many names, but in general, it’s an organization that facilitates communication between the advertiser and Affiliate, webmasters. The advantage of working with an affiliate program is the large number of offers from different verticals, unlike working directly with a specific advertiser, where the variety is limited.

Offer – a kind of agreement between the advertiser and the Affiliate, centered around a specific product or service, alongside a list of conditions under which the latter will receive a reward. The offer also specifies which traffic the advertiser pays for: from which country, from which device, source, etc.

Advertiser (or ad) – the person who pays money to the Affiliate. Namely – the advertiser, the client. Conditions can be anything: from a simple registration that occurred through your referral link to the sale of traffic for a particular product/service. If the webmaster directs traffic to themselves, they also act as an advertiser.

Affiliate Marketing – the process of buying and then selling traffic. Or the process of converting traffic from one business model to another: from CPC to CPA, for example. When we buy clicks and direct them to a product offer with approval for sale – that’s Affiliate Marketing. Today, Affiliate Marketing also encompasses a set of approaches and mechanisms: from setting up an advertising campaign to analyzing competitors’ work, etc.

Affiliate – a person engaged in Affiliate Marketing: buys traffic and sells it, sets up advertising campaigns, creates sales chains, analyzes.

Webmaster – the owner of an internet resource that has its own traffic. Do not confuse Affiliate and webmasters. An Affiliate must be able to do the same work as a webmaster, but may not have their own internet resource.

Vertical – in other words, a certain niche. More scientifically, it’s a group of offers that are combined into a separate category with its own specifics. Verticals may have certain characteristic features, such as the target action. For example, gambling and betting (gambling, sports betting) typically use RevShare – when the advertiser shares a portion of the profit obtained from your lead. In the dating vertical – CPL is relevant, payment for the lead creating a profile. There are many examples.

Creative – advertising material or promo material. Its task is to attract the potential client’s attention to the offer. Creatives include banners, advertising videos or animations, showcases, landing pages, etc. Anything that can sell its appearance.

Fraud – low-quality traffic for which not only is money not paid, but one can also be banned and fined.

Traffic – the flow of users or their certain number that followed a link, visited a site directly, etc.

Existing Verticals in Affiliate Marketing

It’s important to know which verticals you’ll be working with because some names don’t provide enough information for you to choose a comfortable niche for yourself.

Adult – these are “adult” offers, marked 18+. This category includes, for example, adult websites or webcam projects. There’s also a subcategory of adult dating, which are dating sites where people look for a partner for sex.

Dating – advertising offers from dating sites or thematic services. Dating can be mainstream – for finding heterosexual partners for long-term relationships, adult – for finding a partner for sex, as well as separate categories for gays, lesbians, trans people.

Betting – this vertical includes bookmakers, as well as forecasts: both services and individual forecasters who can also pay you for traffic.

Gambling – affiliate programs from online casinos. Payment is in the form of a percentage of the losses incurred by the lead, or for reaching the status of an active player: they must make a certain number of deposits, bets.

Gaming – game offers that promote games or similar software. Games can be both mobile and desktop. Payment is made either for installation or for certain achievements within the game, or for deposits.

iGaming – a broader vertical where most game offers are presented, including online casinos,

Install – a type of target action, as well as a separate vertical, where the main focus is on the download and installation of an app or game from the advertiser by the lead. Essentially, it comes from the English verb “to install”.

Goods (physical products) – offers within which you need to direct traffic to a specific product, almost any. The goods vertical has many subcategories, such as home products or jewelry.

Legal offers – selling legal services. The advertiser can be either an individual lawyer or a whole legal firm.

Financial offers – a large niche that includes offers from full-fledged banks and from individual financial organizations (microfinance institutions). The most popular are microloan offers. But there are other propositions: from opening an account or card in a bank to arranging a mortgage by the client.

Crypto – crypto is often related to financial offers, but this is a big mistake. Because here the target actions are different, and so are the approaches. The crypto vertical is all about cryptocurrency: from buying/selling it to informational courses on investing in crypto. All this is one vertical.

Infoproducts – in this vertical, you need to promote online courses from individual bloggers and various online schools. The form of payment is usually RevShare. You’ll earn the most from leads genuinely interested in self-development who continually renew their subscription to courses (if the advertiser offers such).

Essay – offers from the education niche. Unlike online courses, this promotes either ready-made works (coursework, theses, etc.) or services that do this work for money. This vertical is seasonal, and it converts best in the foreign market.

Pharma – a vertical where various medicinal products for various diseases are presented. One of the riskiest niches.

Nutra – here, biologically active supplements for weight loss, hair growth, or penis enlargement are presented, if we’re talking about adult nutra, which is a subtype of regular nutra.

Sweepstakes (sweeps) – a category promoting various online raffles.

WAP click – a model of monetizing mobile traffic, as well as a separate vertical. The conversion is the subscription of the user to a service from the mobile operator, happening according to the vertical name – in one click.

Payment Models

Just as important as verticals are the payment models under which the advertiser settles accounts with the Affiliate.

CPA – Cost-Per-Action, payment for performing a specific action: from ordering a product by the lead to leveling up a character in an online game to a certain level – it all depends on the offer.

CPS – Cost-Per-Sale, payment specifically for the sale of a service or product. Here, the aspect of potential actions is much narrower than in CPA, but the rates (rewards) are sometimes even higher.

CPL – Cost-Per-Lead, payment for the user filling out a form or registering on a site. One of the variations of this payment model is SOI, with the only difference being that for SOI, confirmation of registration by the lead is not necessary. It’s enough for the user to fill out the form. If it’s the DOI payment model, then, on the contrary, confirmation is required through a mobile phone or email address.

CPI – Cost-Per-Install, payment for the user installing a game or software.

CPC – Cost-Per-Click, cost per click. Although Affiliates often buy traffic under this model, sometimes the advertiser is also willing to pay for clicks on their advertisements, and such offers occasionally appear in affiliate programs.

CPV (Cost-Per-View) and CPM (Cost-Per-Mille) – these are also forms of payment, relevant for advertising networks. In the first case, it’s payment for a separate advertisement display, in the other – cost for a thousand ad impressions.

RevShare – sharing the profit obtained between the advertiser and the partner. Most relevant for the iGaming vertical. It’s also worth noting that when working under this payment model, there’s a risk that your balance will go negative. Because if the player you brought in wins money in the casino, the latter loses money, so it will share the loss, not the profit, with you. But this all depends on the offer. The minus is usually zeroed out at the end of the month, which doesn’t exactly save the situation.

Hybrid – a mixed form of payment, or a combination of several forms. For example, CPA+RevShare in gambling. Where you first receive a commission for an active player via CPA, and subsequent profit goes according to RevShare.

Flow – linking an affiliate link to a creative, which can be a banner or a simple URL. This is where the traffic pouring starts.

Auto pouring – automatic traffic pouring, made possible through specific services and APIs. It’s used in the realms of Facebook, but modern tools also allow setting up auto pouring in other social networks.

Caps – the daily traffic limit that can be directed to an offer.

Cloaking – a method of optimizing a website for a search engine, where the user sees one version of the page text, and the robot – another, more optimized for the bot from the search engine, not for the user.

Landing page – a landing page where the affiliate link leads. The main characteristic of a landing page should be its triggerability: it must evoke certain emotions, motivate, or even compel traffic to take the target action. For example, casino landing pages that display large wins, registration bonuses, and deposit bonuses on the whole screen.

Doorway – a website created to redirect traffic from it to an advertising page. They act as an alternative to contextual advertising, as they require slightly fewer financial resources while having the potential to bring in more traffic.

White page – “white pages” created to make it easier for the Affiliate to pass moderation in advertising networks, and also act as a buffer in the sales chain.

Buffer – a transit page (sometimes called a “transit”), which stands in the “traffic route” between the creative and the landing page. A pre-landing page or the above-mentioned white page can act as a buffer.

Tracker – a tool that allows collecting and segmenting statistical data. Different trackers can be linked to different links leading to the same offer. For example, if you buy advertising from two webmasters and want to find the most effective one, trackers help with this.

Postback – a tool through which information about the completion of target actions on one platform can be transferred to another. Necessary to unify statistics: collect all necessary data in one place.

Trafficback – a mechanism for redirecting traffic from one offer to others under certain conditions: mismatch of GEO, device, etc.

Traffic Sources and Advertising Types

Most advertisers strictly monitor where the traffic comes from. And if these conditions are violated, you will be accused of fraud, leading to penalties.

Motivated traffic – traffic that performs the target action in exchange for a reward from the Affiliate or webmaster. Almost an absolute taboo in affiliate marketing.

Popunder – an advertising material that is a window that pops up and is activated upon closing the main page.

Clickunder – a mechanism by which wherever the user clicks on the page, they are redirected to a link that the advertiser has embedded in the algorithm.

Desktop traffic – traffic coming from users of personal computers or laptops.

Mobile – traffic coming from users of mobile devices.

Contextual advertising – traffic purchased from contextual advertising networks. Google Ads is, of course, the most popular.

Target – a type of traffic purchased through targeting advertising networks. For example, through Meta services. Unlike contextual advertising, where there are not as many settings, targeted advertising can provide the best efficiency in the hands of a professional. This type of traffic is approved by most offers.

Teasers – traffic purchased through teaser advertising. This format is a small ad whose purpose is to trigger the user to click. For example: “Putin will die from… Read more >”.

SEO traffic, organic – traffic that came to the landing page through a search engine. The sequence looks like this: the user searches for information, enters a link in the search engine, and there already clicks on the advertising creative.

Native advertising – advertising that does not go beyond the context. Used by various influencers. For example: a blogger deals with cooking and advertises thematic inventory – pans, pots.

Broker traffic – requires maximum effort from the Affiliate because they themselves collect applications from users and then transfer them to the affiliate program using tools (API, usually).

Spam – a type of traffic obtained through mass posting of advertising. For example, due to chaotic mailing to email boxes, the database of which was purchased in the darknet. Spam is usually automated, and with minimal effort, it creates a large stream of traffic. Which, by the way, hardly anyone will pay for.

Terms from the Category of Statistics and Metrics

One of the key processes that Affiliates must pay a lot of attention to is analytics. It is carried out by analyzing statistical data and metrics, which are inherently complex (because they’re numbers, come on), and sometimes the names of columns in a table can be unclear. Well, let’s clarify.

Stats – the abbreviated name for statistical tools most used in Affiliate Marketing.

Approval – an Anglicism derived from “to approve” – to approve something. In the case of Affiliate Marketing, it refers to the advertiser approving traffic that performed the target actions. In affiliate programs, approval is measured as a percentage of confirmed conversions: the more target actions are performed according to the advertiser’s conditions from the total number of clicks – the higher the approval.

Conversion (or “convert”), CR – the ratio of the number of completed target actions to the total amount of traffic. It is expressed as a percentage. The higher the conversion rate, the better your campaign is working. If you see a low conversion rate, you need to work on your sales chain: conduct analytics, split testing, look for flaws, change creatives, etc.

Lead – a user who followed an affiliate link and performed the target action.

CTR – a metric that records the number of clicks on a creative, link.

ROI – not just a metric, but a formula that calculates how effective the campaign was. In many affiliate programs, ROI is calculated automatically and displayed in a separate column of the table.

Trash – traffic that the system (or the advertiser) considers to be junk. For example – unpaid goods. Although there is a lead since an order was made, but without money, it’s worthless, so it goes into the rejected category, the trash. This is not fraud, which is more about the Affiliate deliberately violating the terms of the offer.

Professions in Affiliate Marketing

The times of lone Affiliate are gradually ending, being replaced by large Affiliate Marketing teams. They include various specialists, including the following.

Team Lead – heads the Affiliate Marketing team. Not only an inspirer but also directs the team, defines the direction and volume of work. Is responsible for assigning tasks within the project.

Media Buyer – an “Affiliate on the basics,” a person who purchases advertising, monitors its placement, budgets, and even creates marketing strategies. Unlike Affiliate, they do not engage in deep analytics of campaigns.

Creative – a person responsible for producing promo materials.

Pourer – deals with operating already created and tested connections. Among the main duties is the constant monitoring of statistics to ensure the effective pouring of traffic.

Farmer – engages in buying and creating accounts: from registration to further warming up, so the account is ready for use. They can be used, for example, for promoting targeting advertising on FB.

Terms for Affiliate Pouring from Social Networks

Social networks are one of the key sources of traffic today. But getting a large number of leads is not always easy, as there is not only a lot of competition but also many pitfalls. Most often, the first ones can be encountered almost immediately when registering an advertising cabinet. But let’s move on to the terms.

ARD and PARD – ban on advertising activity – restrictions on the display of ads introduced by FB for new accounts. PARD – these are accounts that have already passed the advertising activity ban check and can be used to launch campaigns.

Autoregs – accounts that were created automatically using special software. When there is mass creation of new accounts – this is farming, farming.

Self-regs – accounts that were created manually by an Affiliate, farmer.

Warming up – the process of preparing an account to launch advertising campaigns from it. It’s done by creating artificial activity. Thus, the platform trusts the account more, not seeing it as a bot, spammer, etc. Accounts created as a result of farming are also actively warmed up to get the maximum profit from them.

Trust, trusted account – trust, or accounts that the advertising platform, in the form of FB or another social network, conditionally “trusts.” These accounts include PARD, or others where the user verified their data.

Agency accounts – accounts used solely for advertising, as they have more necessary tools for work. Specifically, they are used to advertise in those countries where your other accounts cannot get access. Such accounts are obtained from the affiliate program itself or bought.

Terms that Didn’t Fit into the Main Categories

A/B testing (or split testing) – one of the methods of marketing research aimed at improving and increasing the conversion rate of landing pages. It’s done as follows: the audience is divided into two groups, one sees a certain widget on the landing page, and the other doesn’t. The result compares the behavior factor of both groups and decides whether to keep the widget or if it negatively affects conversions. The advantage of the method is that split testing doesn’t scare the entire target audience, thereby not provoking a lead outflow.

Upsell – selling higher than stated in the offer. For example, when a user buys not only the product you are promoting but also related products. This will be an upsell, for which advertisers often pay extra.

Rebill – when the lead performs the target action again. Rebills are usually paid, but sometimes – not.

API – an abbreviation for “Application Programming Interface,” which means the interface for programming software. In the case of Affiliate Marketing, this is a configured protocol that helps better understand the nature of traffic, get more information from clicks, improve conversion, etc. APIs are used to automate routine processes in Affiliate Marketing.

Smartlink – a scripted “smart” link that generates content under traffic and chooses the most optimal offer for it.

Case – the experience of a specific Affiliate/webmaster/etc., provided in the form of an article. Cases must include statistical data that can be verified: they must not be blurred or drawn. Cases are used for analysis, finding new sales chains and marketing strategies, or modernizing current ones. By the way, there are also “fabricated cases” – these are made-up stories aimed at advertising or vain motivation.

Referral – a person registered through your referral link. Otherwise, a person you brought to the advertiser or to the affiliate program. Referrals also bring money to the referrer – the person who brought them into the project. The advertiser calculates commission fees, and the referral loses nothing in the process.

Semantic core – a set of key and thematic words that not only most vividly describe a product or service but are also used for promotion in search engines. Some advertisers provide their semantics to Affiliates and webmasters to ease, for example, the process of setting up contextual and targeting advertising. Or they can be applied to optimize doorways, landings, and especially websites.

In Summary

Did you find something new for yourself? Or maybe you noticed that some terms are missing here? Share with us and others your views and knowledge in our cozy Telegram community, to continue creating the Ukrainian affiliate marketing dictionary together.

As always, with respect, your Geek!

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