Affiliate Marketing
Glossary

Affiliate Marketing:
Affiliate Marketing is a type of performance-based marketing when business rewards affiliates for visitors or customers. It's a process of commission earned for promoting a product or service. Here is the complete list of affiliate marketing terminologies and acronyms either you're a newbie or seasoned veteran.

A/B testing:
A user experience research methodology with a comparison of promotion tools based on their performance. The random experiment determines an effective method with hypothesis testing on two variants. It's also known as split-run testing or bucket testing.

Above the Fold:
Part of a web page or email that'd be visible to the user when it has finally loaded. It's the most important area for online marketers since it's the first point for page visitors to interact. This area is not static and would differ from user to user due to screen resolution.

Ad:
A creative way of advertising your offers for the services you provide.

Ad Agency:
Agency partnering with marketers and advertisers to produce ad contents.

Ad Exchange:
A digital marketplace with traffic source groups connected to Demand-Side Platforms (DSP) and Supply-Side Platforms (SSP). Usually, in display and video ad inventories, advertisers and publishers create an advertising space through real-time auctions.

Ad Network:
A company that connects traffic buyers to sellers. The need to use the network is to understand the price market better and optimize traffic. Thanks to its several pricing models, the ad network is a platform to connect publishers with advertisers.

Ad Tech:
Advertising technology software in place to improve operational effectiveness.

Ad Tools:
Web advertising elements like banners, landing pages, and iframes that can be included in the sales funnel.

AdSense:
A Google's ad network for publishers that determines payments for affiliates based on clicks and advertiser's bid.

Advertiser:
A merchant who hires affiliates for the promotion of their various products and/or offers. The payment would be defined in the affiliate agreement for which the affiliate party is rewarded when a visitor takes action.

Adware:
Also known as spyware, a hidden program inside software that's used to transmit information to advertisers. It's usually downloaded without users' awareness and could even be hard to eliminate even after software uninstalls.

AdWords (Google Ads):
A Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising platform by Google that enables placing ads in search engines, non-search websites, and mobile apps.

Affiliate (affiliate marketer):
A website owner, media buyer or broker, social account owner, or mailing list owner who receives a commission payment for clicks, referrals, or sales from merchants.

Affiliate Agreement:
The terms of service that list responsibilities such as payout terms and commission agreed by an advertiser and an affiliate.

Affiliate Link:
A unique URL with the affiliate's login information to track traffic sent to the offer, landing page, website.

Affiliate Manager:
A person responsible for helping affiliates in their affiliate marketing endeavors.

Affiliate Marketing:
Performance-based marketing that ensures that affiliates would only get paid when visitors get engaged on the site. The most common way of affiliate marketing is converting a visitor on the website into a paying customer.

Affiliate Marketing Forum:
A form of the online community that allows users access to the flow of information in the affiliate marketing industry.

Affiliate Network:
A network that offers services for both affiliates and merchants as a mediator.

Affiliate Program:
A program set for promoting a product or offer using affiliates. The arrangement sees that the advertiser pays the affiliate for clicks, sales, or leads on the website.

Affiliate Program Directory:
A complete and categorized list of merchant's affiliate programs that has information on payouts and commission rates.

Affiliate Software:
A computer program to control affiliate programs using tracking and reporting tools. This software would have dedicated accounts to manage the traffic of links, sales, and leads to the website.

Affiliate Solution Provider:
Third-party companies governing campaign tracking for affiliates and traffic for website owners.

Affiliate Tracking (Tracking URL):
Tracking affiliate performance based on sellers' action of clicks, sales, and conversions using Affiliate Link.

Alexa Rank:
A third-party marketing tool used for estimation of website traffic. As its data panel is a sample of all internet users, online businesses can use the ranking information for competitive analysis.

Alternative Text (Alt Text/Anchor Text):
Used to inform sites about the content type of a linked image with a word or sentence.

API (Application Program Interface):
An interface for users to access data on the website with the purpose of automated and straightforward searches.

APK (Android Application Package) Offers:
Deploying the Affiliate Program (see above) in Android mobile devices as an application.

Auto-Download Offers:
Content downloaded without user consent once the banner is clicked.

Auto-Approve:
When an affiliate's application is automatically approved and accepted as soon as it's submitted.

Autoresponder:
Automatic response (usually email) that’s sent to new subscribers.

ASVOD (Ad-supported streaming video on demand):
A configuration in ad-supported streaming to charge users for services in a subscription model. Production companies HBO, Netflix, and Hulu Plus have these configurations in their systems.