Glossary

Affiliate Marketing Terms for: "A"

Active Server Pages (ASP)

–

A technology which was developed by Microsoft for dynamically generated websites that contain a script which is processed on a Microsoft web server prior to the page being displayed to the user.

Adsense

–

An advertisement serving program run by Google.

Advertisement

–

An ad which may be in the form of a banner, text, flash, video or any other method which may be displayed on a webpage.

Advertisement Budget

–

A set amount of money set aside for an online campaign.

Advertiser

–

A person selling goods or a service.

Adware

–

Software which displays advertisement or redirected URLs.

AD Exchanges

–

An online advertising technology which involves buying, selling and trading online ad impressions.

AD Group

–

A subdivision of an AD campaign, which consists of one or more ads associated with one or more keywords

Ad Network

–

A business that connects sites that want to host advertisements with advertisers who want to run advertisements.

Affiliate

–

A secondary or subsidiary associate; a person who is affiliated with another business.

Affiliate Directory

–

An organized list of affiliate marketing programs.

Affiliate Link

–

A URL link which identifies an affiliate and sends traffic to a website. (Example: fluxads.com/affiliateid=12345)

Affiliate Manager (AM)

–

A person in charge of managing a company’s affiliate program.

Affiliate Marketing

–

An online marketing practice in which an affiliate are rewarded (typically money) for each visitor brought based on the affiliate’s marketing efforts.

Application Program Interface (API)

–

A set of functions that can be called from a computer application to access features of another program.

Application Service Provider (ASP)

–

A company who distributes software applications via internet.

Affiliate Marketing Terms for: "B"

Banner Advertisement

–

An electronic advertisement which is either in the form of flash, jpeg or a gif.

Banner Impression

–

Banner impression measures the number of times the banner is displayed, either on a web page or in a separate browser window as a pop-up or pop-under advertisement.

Baseline

–

An estimate of the budget expected for a campaign.

Bill (Payment)

–

A document requesting payment for an order or service that has been supplied or executed.

Blog

–

An online journal which is available over the internet.

Brand

–

A recognizable identification to a given product or service.

Broadband

–

A high speed internet connection that is always connected to the internet.

Business to Business (B2B)

–

A transaction which takes place between one business to another.

Business to Consumer (B2C)

–

A method of exchanging service or transactions between a business to a consumer.

Affiliate Marketing Terms for: "C"

Campaign

–

An organized marketing effort to advertise using public platforms such as the internet, print publications, email, etc.

Cascading Style Sheet (CSS)

–

A new data format which helps separate style from structure. It gives web developers and website viewers more control of how webpages are displayed inside a browser. A single style sheet may be applied to an infinite amount of webpages.

Check (Cheque)

–

A contract instructing a bank/financial institution to credit a specific amount of currency for a specified account in the depositor’s name.

Click Fraud

–

The practice of artificially generating traffic to a certain campaign through the use of automated click programs.

Click Through Rate (CTR)

–

A practice used to measure the response to an advertisement. CTR refers to the percentage of users who click on a specific link inside a site.

Commission

–

A form of reimbursement for a service rendered.

Common Gateway Interface (CGI)

–

A way of transferring information between an Internet Service and a CGI program. CGI program are often referred to as scripts.

Consumer

–

A person who uses goods or services.

Contextual Advertising

–

A form of targeted advertising which appear on websites and other online media. The advertisements are usually selected based on the websites copy.

Conversion Rate (CR)

–

The percentage of website visitors that take the desired action in the form of a purchase or form subscription.

Cookie

–

A small text file placed on a visitor’s computer which monitors what website URL a user came from or which link he clicked to get to the site.

Cookie Stuffing

–

The act of placing an affiliate tracking cookie an unsuspecting user’s computer which then generates revenue for the person who executes the cookie stuffing.

Copyright

–

A legal concept which gives the rights to the original artist of a certain concept ownership rights to an idea or product.

Cost Per Action (CPA)

–

An online advertising model in which advertisers pay for each specified action (purchase, submission, and so on) linked to an advertisement.

Cost Per Click (CPC)

–

A pricing model based on paying only for those ads that experience a click-through. This is considered as a direct measure of action by the user.

Cost Per Lead (CPL)

–

pricing which typically pays a fixed fee for the acquisition of a customer lead, such as a filled out form or an opt-in email address.

Cost Per Order (CPO)

–

A practice in which an advertiser will pay for each new qualifying order.

Cost Per Sale (CPS)

–

An advertiser’s expense divided by the total number of sales received as a result of an investment. This helps merchants figure out the cost that has incurred to make each sale possible.

Cost Per Sale (CPS)

–

An advertiser’s expense divided by the total number of sales received as a result of an investment. This helps merchants figure out the cost that has incurred to make each sale possible.

Cost Per Thousand (CPM)

–

An abbreviation for the term “Cost Per Thousand”. The “M” is the Roman Numeral for “Thousand”.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

–

The cost associated in getting a website visitor to become a customer of your product/service.

Affiliate Marketing Terms for: "D"

Data

–

A collection of information.

Direct Linking

–

Directly linking to another site/resource on another server so that it appears to be part of the linked website.

Display Advertising

–

A type of advertising which typically contains images, company branding or a mixture of both. The advertisement is usually placed adjacent to general editorial content on a website.

Domain Name

–

The unique name of a site which identifies an internet site.

Affiliate Marketing Terms for: "E"

Earnings Per Click (EPC)

–

The average of an affiliate program’s earnings per one thousand link impressions.

Email

–

A method of exchanging messages through the internet, primarily for human use.

Email Link

–

An affiliate link to a merchant site or service.

Email Marketing

–

A form of direct marketing which uses email to communicate commercial advertisements to a specified audience. Every email sent by a marketer is either a potential customer or a current customer of the company.

End User

–

The person who actually uses a product or website.

Exit Pop

–

An online advertisement which pops up when a user exits a website.

Affiliate Marketing Terms for: "F"

Facebook

–

A free social networking site that allows users are to join networks organized by city, workplace and schools. People can also add friends and send them messages.

False Advertising

–

Misleading statement in an advertisement.

FLOG

–

A fake blog which at first glance appears to be from a credible source but was actually
created by a company for the purpose of marketing a product on the blog.

Forum

–

An online community where visitors may post topics of common interest.

Fraud

–

An act of deceiving another person for personal gain.

Affiliate Marketing Terms for: "G"

Google Adwords™

–

Google’s pay per click advertising program.

Google PageRank™

–

A technology which was implemented by Google that ranks a webpage based on a scale of 0 to 10. This method measures the relevancy of any given webpage within a set of sites that it is hyperlinked with.

Gross Revenue

–

Funds received for goods and services over a given period of time.

Guerilla Marketing

–

An unconventional marketing tactic which involves unusual approaches to market a product or service.

Affiliate Marketing Terms for: "H"

Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML)

–

A set of tags and rules which are used to create websites.

Affiliate Marketing Terms for: "I"

Impression

–

How many times a banner was displayed or viewed on a site.

Incentive

–

An additional payment other than the one that is being originally offered.

Incentivized Traffic

–

Users who have received some sort of compensation for visiting a site.

Interactive Advertising

–

A type of interactive media which is which is used to promote products, brands, services and more.

Internet

–

A global network which consists of thousands of smaller networks which enable users to share information via websites, online chat and electronic mail.

iPhone

–

A multimedia Smartphone with internet capabilities marketed by Apple Inc.

Affiliate Marketing Terms for: "J"

JavaScript

–

A scripting language used to add interactivity to a website.

Affiliate Marketing Terms for: "K"

Keyword

–

The term in which a user enters into a search engine.

Affiliate Marketing Terms for: "L"

Landing Page

–

A website that appears when a user clicks on an advertisement or a search engine result link. The pages will usually displays relevant content pertaining to the search engine triggered keyword or phrase.

Lead

–

A potential client interested in purchasing a product or a service.

Link Back

–A technique used by website owners to receive notification when other webmasters link to one of their sites/resources.

Link Directory

–

A directory of website links submitted by users which are categorized by keywords. This is also known as an RSS Directory.

Link Popularity

–

The amount of sites which link to a particular site.

Link Trade

–

The act of trading links with other website with the purpose of promoting your own website.

Affiliate Marketing Terms for: "M"

Malware

–

Malicious software that is designed to damage one's computer without the owner's consent.

Manual Approval

–

The process of manually validating an affiliate’s application to sign up to an affiliate network.

Market Share

–

A percentage of a market held by a company.

Marketing

–

A process which involves creating, communicating and delivering offerings that have value to customers and clients.

Marketing Guru

–

Someone who is a genius at selling/marketing a product or service to a consumer.

Media Buy

–

The act of buying advertising space from a company to communicate an offer/ad to potential customers.

Merchant

–

The person selling the goods or services on a website.

Mobile Marketing

–

A form of marketing which involves the use of a mobile phone as a way or marketing ads to users.

MySpace

–

A social networking site with an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music, and videos for teenagers and adults.

Affiliate Marketing Terms for: "N"

Net 7

–

Payments made 7 days after the end of the month for revenue generated in the previous month cycle.

Net 15

–

Payments made 15 days after the end of the month for revenue generated in the previous month cycle.

Net 30

–

Payments made 30 days after the end of the month for revenue generated in the previous month cycle.

Net Revenue

–

Profit left over after paying all the expenses of an endeavor.

Net Terms

–

Payments made after a certain number of days after the end of the month for revenue generated in the previous month cycle.

Newsletter

–

A regular publication which is generally contained to one topic and is sent out to subscribers periodically.

Niche

–

A targeted portion of a specific market.

Affiliate Marketing Terms for: "O"

Online Shopping

–

The act of purchasing a product or service over the internet.

Optimize

–

To achieve maximum efficiency to save time and cost.

Opt-In

–

The act of agreeing to receive email from a particular company or associated companies.

Outsourced Affiliate Manager (OAM)

–

Affiliate managers that work outside of the company’s premises.

Affiliate Marketing Terms for: "P"

Page View (PV)

–

A single webpage viewed by an end user through an internet browser.

Partnership

–

A business entity between owners who share each others profits and losses of a businesses undertaking.

PayPal (paypal.com)

–

An online business which allows payments and money transfers to be made through the internet.

Pay for Inclusion (PFI)

–

A model in which website owners pay a search engine to be listed in search engine results.

Pay For Performance (PFP)

–

A marketing model which is based on delivering sales or other measurable performance.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

–

An internet advertising method which advertisers pay their host (search engines, websites which utilize keyword query matches) per advertisement click. The cost per click usually ranges from ten cents to one dollar or more.

Pay Per Click Search Engine (PPCSE)

–

Search engines that run PPC campaigns based on the bid amount received from an advertiser. Advertisers are only charged when a link/URL is clicked.

Pay Per Impression (PPI)

–

A method used by marketers to calculate based on the number of impressions an Ad receives.

Pay Per Lead (PPL)

–

A model in which a payment is due to an affiliate when relevant leads are received by an advertiser.

Pay Per Sale (PPS)

–

A model in which Advertisers use when payment is due only when sales are received by the advertiser/merchant.

Pay Per View (PPV)

–

A developed version of Pay Per Click (PPC) which markets campaign links for free. An advertiser is only charged when a user clicks on the link or advertisement.

Payout

–

The amount of money paid out.

Platform for Privacy Preferences Project (P3P)

–

A protocol allowing websites to state their use of information they collect about users of a specific site. The act web established by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

Point of Purchase (PoP)

–

The location where an actual product or service is purchased. This may either be a physical location or an online equivalent.

Poll

–

A survey which is conducted to a specific group of people.

Pop Under

–

A variation of a pop-up which opens a new browser window under an active browser window with the purpose of not interrupting a user browsing a site.

Pop Up

–

An online advertisement which pops up in a new browser window with the purpose of attracting internet traffic or to capture email addresses.

Pop Up Impression

–

See “Banner Impression”

Pre Pop

–

A site pop up/advertisement which is displayed when a user enters a website. Usually with the purpose of collecting email addresses, zip codes and other information from a user.

Privacy Policy

–

A policy which states how a company collects and uses information about a consumer.

Promotion

–

The act of breaking down information about a product, product line, brand or company.

Publisher

–

A person who makes information available for public view either through books, periodicals and electronic resources such as websites, blogs and more.

Publisher

–

A person who prepares an online advertisement by producing site copy and other elements of an ad.

Affiliate Marketing Terms for: "R"

Referral

–

The recommendation of a person or business to another.

Revenue

–

Income from a company which usually come from sale of goods or services to a customer.

Revenue Sharing

–

A practice in which affiliate/advertising networks pay a certain percentage of sale revenues generated by customers whom the affiliate refer via various advertising methods.

Robot (BOT)

–

An application which crawls the internet with the purpose of indexing a webpage.

ROI (Return on Investment)

–

The evaluation of money earned (or lost) against the amount of money invested.

RSS (Real Simple Syndication)

–

A file format developed for webmasters which puts content on a website into a standardized format. RSS Technology was originally developed for users to automatically stay updated on their favorite websites.

Run On Network (RON)

–

A type of promotion where banners, images or text ads appear on a number of websites.

Affiliate Marketing Terms for: "S"

Search Advertising

–

The act of placing online advertisement on a site that show results from a search engine.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

–

A technique which is associated with researching, submitting, and positioning a website within search engines with an aim to achieve the best website exposure on a search engine.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

–

A process in which a website is optimized to generate quality traffic via search engines. The process usually involves editing website copy to specify targeted keywords which are then indexed by search engines.

Search Engine Positioning (SEP)

–

A technique aimed at achieving natural rankings on major search engines.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

–

The page displayed to a user after submitting a search query into a search engine.

Search Marketing

–

A form of Internet marketing which promotes websites by increasing visibility to a search engine.

Server-Side Include (SSI)

–

A variable value that a server includes in a website file (HTML) before sending it out to an end-user who browses the site.

Social Media

–

Internet based tools which are used for sharing information among people.

Social Media Optimization

–A

method which uses social media and community websites to generate publicity through social news, blogging, images and more.

Social Network

–

A social structure of individuals and organizations who directly interact with each other.

SPAM

–

An unwanted unsolicited email.

Spyware

–

Malicious software which is loaded on an unsuspecting user’s computer to partially take control of the user’s interaction with the internet.

Suppression List

–

A Suppression List is a list of suppressed e-mail addresses used by e-mail marketers to comply with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2004. The unsubscribed email addresses are placed into a "suppression list" which is used to "suppress" future email messages to that email address.

Super Affiliate

–

An affiliate/publisher capable of generating a significant amount of traffic to an affiliate’s program.

Survey

–

An informal collection of user opinions.

Affiliate Marketing Terms for: "T"

Target Audience

–

A specified audience or demographic group.

Terms of Service (TOS)

–

Rules and regulations which one must adhere to follow in order to use a service. In terms of affiliate marketing, it is an affiliate program’s service agreement with an affiliate.

Testimonial

–

A statement which supports a fact or a claim.

Text Link

–

A URL link which is not accompanied by a graphic.

Tracking Pixel

–

A tracking pixel is an object that is placed in a web page or e-mail and is usually invisible to the user but allows checking that a user has viewed the page or e-mail. One common use is in e-mail tracking. Alternative names are Web beacon, tracking bug, tracking pixel, pixel tag, 1×1 gif, and clear gif.

Tracking URL

–

A tracking technique used by marketers to track what keywords or phrases resulted in traffic or sales from a website.

Traffic Exchange

–

A website which provides a service to website owners in exchange for internet traffic.

Twitter

–

A free social networking that allows its users to send and read other users' updates known as tweets.

Two-tier

–

A system where affiliates earn commissions on their conversion as well as the conversions of the affiliates they have referred to a network.

Affiliate Marketing Terms for: "U"

Uniform Resource Locator (URL)

–

The global address of a website located on the World Wide Web.

Unique Visitor (UV)

–

A term used in tracking website’s traffic. Website traffic tracking software distinguishes between visitors who visit a website once and a visitor who returns to a site multiple times. A unique visit is determined by the unique IP address of a user.

Unsolicited Bulk Email (UBE)

–

Email messages sent in bulk to a large group of recipients without prior consent from the receiving recipients.

Affiliate Marketing Terms for: "V"

Vertical Site

–

A specific site used to spread marketing message to a large audience in a specific industry.

Viral Marketing

–

The process of passing an offer or product through Word of Mouth.

Affiliate Marketing Terms for: "W"

Web 2.0

–

The second generation of internet web based services such as social networking sites and wikis. These technologies let people share information online in ways that were previously unavailable.

Web Analytics

–

The study of online behavior to collect internet data to understand and improve web usage.

Web Designer

–

A person who plans and designs a websites look and feel.

Web Developer

–

A developer who specifically develops applications for the Internet/World Wide Web.

Web Host

–

A business that provides online storage space to host a website.

Wire Transfer

–

A form of credit transfer which allows one person or company to transfer money from one bank account to another.

Word of Mouth

–

Passing information along by verbal means but not limited to face to face, telephone, email or text messaging.

World Wide Web (WWW)

–

A computer network which consists of a collection of internet sites that offer text, graphics, sound and other resources.