Affiliate Marketing Glossary

Above the Fold: The part of a web page or email immediately visible to a user before he or she scrolls down. This area depends on the resolution of a visitors computer screen. The content within this area, which often includes advertising, is typically seen as having more value, and this is why visitors encounter and interact with it first.

AdSense: The part of Google’s AdWords CPC advertising model that pays publishers (affiliates) for displaying ads. Payment is determined based on the number of clicks made and the amount of the advertiser’s bid.

Advertiser: A person selling a good or service (see also: Merchant). Advertisers pay affiliates whenever a visitor takes the action (or actions) decided upon and defined in the affiliate agreement.

AdWords: A PPC advertising program from Google.


Affiliate: An individual or business that owns a website and earns a commission for referring clicks, leads or sales to a merchant.

Affiliate Agreement: The terms between a merchant and an affiliate that regulates their relationship, including how the affiliate will be compensated for referring traffic to the merchant's website.

Affiliate Link: A unique URL tracking link that sends traffic to a merchant's website and identifies the affiliate who referred the visitor; these links are generally embedded in text, images, product links, etc. An example of an affiliate link might look like this: http://www.URL.com/page.asp?AffiliateID=999

Affiliate Manager: The person responsible for running the merchant's affiliate program. This job involves everything from recruiting affiliates to establishing incentive programs, creating media for the affiliates, reporting on sales and paying affiliates.

Affiliate Program: A program in which a merchant rewards an affiliate for web traffic, sales or leads on a PPC, PPS or PPL basis. They are also referred to as Associate Programs, Partners, Referrals or Revenue sharing programs.

Affiliate Program Directory: A comprehensive listing of a merchant’s affiliate programs. They are typically categorized by industry and include information about payout or commission rates.

Affiliate Network: The mediator between an affiliate and a merchant's affiliate program. Networks offer services to both affiliates and merchants, such as reporting and payment services.

Affiliate Software: A software program used to run and manage an affiliate program. These programs help users sign up affiliates, managing links and track impressions, clicks, sales and leads.

Affiliate Solution Provider: These are third-party companies that provide an affiliate tracking solution on a hosted basis. While affiliate software solutions are hosted by users within their own websites, affiliate solution providers take care of the hosting them.

Affiliate Tracking: The process of tracking a link from an affiliate using an affiliate link.

Associate: See Affiliate

Auto-Approve: An affiliate application process that automatically accepts/approves all applications as soon as they’re submitted. This term can also be used to describe the automatic acceptance of all sales recorded by affiliates.

Autoresponder: An email, or series of emails, that are automatically sent to a new subscriber, often in the form of a newsletter series.

Banner Ad: An animated GIF, Flash movie or JPEG advertisement on a Web page that promotes a product, service or website.

Browser: A client software program that is used to access various Internet resources. Examples include Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.

Business-to-Business (B2B) Advertising: A marketing strategy that involves the transaction of goods and services among two businesses rather than a business and a customer.

Charge Back: An invalid sale that results in the affiliate's commission being forfeited.


Click Fraud: The practice of artificially generating traffic to an advertiser's site. This can be done manually or through the use of automated clicking programs (called hitbots). This results in advertisers paying for traffic that has no potential for revenue generation while the scammer receives a percentage of the PPC fees paid out by the advertiser.

Click Fraud Monitoring: Independent services that monitor clicks from PPC campaigns.

Click-Through: The act of a user clicking on a link that follows through to a merchant's website.

Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of users that click on a link and visit a merchant's website.

Co-Branding: When affiliates are able include their own logo or branding symbols on the pages that they send visitors to using affiliate links.

Commission: The income an affiliate earns for generating a sale, lead or click-through to a merchant's website. Also known as a referral fee, finder's fee or bounty.

Contextual Linking: When one places affiliate links to specific products in relevant or related text, articles or pictures on a Web page.

Cookies: Small text files stored on a visitor's computer to record information that is of interest to a merchant site. In affiliate software, cookies are used to track which affiliate a visitor came from and which banner or link they clicked to get there. They can also store the date and time of the click to see how much time elapsed between a click and a conversion.

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