Time to get down on your terms.
Affiliate marketing involves many abbreviations and acronyms that can be confusing. Hence, we’ve specially prepared this easily digestible glossary of the terms you should be familiar with.
Here are 12 key affiliate marketing terms you have to know!
1. Advertiser/Merchant
An advertiser is either an individual or establishment that has a business. He/she provides products and/or services to customers.
Affiliates receive payment and earnings for sending traffic to the advertiser’s site after someone makes a purchase from the advertiser.
2. Affiliate/Publisher
An affiliate, like an advertiser, can also be either an individual or business. Affiliates oversee promoting an advertiser’s offers to others and bringing in sales or generating leads.
3. Affiliate Link
An affiliate link is a URL tracking link that an affiliate uses to send traffic to an advertiser’s site. It also helps the network identify the affiliate.
4. Affiliate Programme
An affiliate programme is an agreement between an advertiser and affiliate, or between an affiliate network and affiliate; where the advertiser or network pays the affiliate commission for generating web traffic, sales or leads.
The payment model can either be based on a pay-per-click (PPC), pay-per-lead/cost per lead (CPL), pay-per-sale or cost per acquisition (CPA) basis.
5. Affiliate Network
An affiliate network is a third-party intermediary linking advertisers and affiliates.
Advertisers use the network to expand their reach and find more affiliates to promote their products. Affiliates can easily find and take part in suitable affiliate programmes on the network.
Check out more here!
6. Offer
An offer is the promotion of a product or service, produced by affiliate managers. Offers typically have all relevant details about the program payout model and prices. Also known as a campaign.
7. Click-Through Rate (CTR)
The CTR is the percentage of visitors who click on a link and visit the advertiser’s site. It is calculated based on clicks ÷ impressions.
8. Sales Lead
A sales lead is a correspondence that has the potential to become a paying customer.
9. Charge Back
This refers to an invalid sale that leads to the loss of an affiliate’s commission. Find out how to prevent this.
10. Conversion Rate
This is the percentage of clicks that end up as a sale or lead. The formula is lead ÷ clicks or sales ÷ clicks.
11. Traffic
Traffic refers to the amount of visits a website gets over a time period. Tools like Google Analytics and hit counters help measure your web traffic.
12. Targeted Marketing
This form of marketing matches a suitable offer to a suitable customer at a suitable time using cookies from data platforms or ad networks. This is one reason why you’ll be more likely to see an advertisement on other webpages related to what you just searched for or browsed.
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