Reference
Affiliate Marketing Glossary
Working definitions written for brands, advertisers, and affiliate managers. Each term links to the topic guide where CostPerNews covers it in depth.
- Activation rate
- The share of approved affiliates that actually generate clicks or sales within a defined period. Low activation is the most common reason programs with many partners produce little revenue. Learn more: Affiliate Program Management
- Advertiser (merchant)
- The brand that runs an affiliate program and pays commissions. Networks often use advertiser and merchant interchangeably. Learn more: How to Start an Affiliate Program
- Affiliate discovery
- Research and tooling used to find prospective affiliates, including SEO analysis of who ranks for commercial keywords, competitor partner analysis, and affiliate directory platforms such as AffiliateFinders. Learn more: How to Find Affiliates and Publishers
- Affiliate manager
- The person responsible for running a brand's affiliate program, including recruiting and activating partners, managing commissions, monitoring compliance, and reporting performance. Learn more: Affiliate Program Management
- Affiliate marketing
- A performance-based marketing model in which a brand pays independent partners (affiliates or publishers) a commission for sales, leads, or other actions they generate through tracked links or codes. Learn more: Partnership and Performance Marketing
- Affiliate network
- A platform that connects brands and publishers, provides tracking and reporting, handles commission payments, and offers a marketplace where partners discover programs. Examples include CJ Affiliate, Impact, Awin, and Rakuten Advertising. Learn more: Affiliate Networks and Partnership Platforms
- Affiliate program
- A brand's structured offer to partners: the commission terms, tracking, creative, rules, and support that let publishers promote the brand and get paid for results. Learn more: How to Start an Affiliate Program
- Affiliate recruiting
- The proactive process of identifying, contacting, and onboarding publishers and creators to join a brand's affiliate program, as opposed to waiting for inbound applications. Learn more: How to Find Affiliates and Publishers
- Agentic commerce
- Purchases initiated or completed by AI agents on a shopper's behalf, which challenge click-based affiliate attribution and are prompting networks to build new tracking approaches. Learn more: AI in Affiliate Marketing
- Cashback and loyalty affiliate
- A publisher that passes part of its commission back to shoppers as cash or points, building repeat purchase behavior. Examples include Rakuten Rewards and major loyalty programs. Learn more: Coupon, Cashback and Loyalty Affiliates
- Commission
- The payment a brand makes to an affiliate for a tracked conversion, expressed as a percentage of sale value (revenue share) or a fixed amount (CPA). Learn more: Affiliate Commission Structures and Rates
- Content affiliate
- A publisher that earns commissions through editorial content such as reviews, comparisons, guides, and recommendations, usually reaching buyers earlier than deal sites. Learn more: How to Find Affiliates and Publishers
- A fraud technique that places affiliate tracking cookies on visitors without a genuine click so the fraudster is credited for later purchases. Prohibited by all major networks. Learn more: Affiliate Fraud, Compliance and FTC Disclosure
- The period after a click during which a conversion is credited to the affiliate. Longer windows favor content partners with long consideration cycles. Learn more: Affiliate Tracking, Attribution and Incrementality
- Coupon affiliate
- A publisher that aggregates discount codes and deals, typically ranking for brand-plus-coupon searches and converting shoppers at the end of the purchase journey. Learn more: Coupon, Cashback and Loyalty Affiliates
- Coupon leakage
- The spread of partner-specific, influencer, or internal discount codes to public coupon sites, causing commissions or discounts to be paid outside their intended channel. Learn more: Coupon, Cashback and Loyalty Affiliates
- CPA (cost per action / cost per acquisition)
- A fixed commission paid for a defined action such as a sale, lead, install, or funded account. Also used to describe the advertiser's average cost to acquire a customer through a channel. Learn more: Affiliate Commission Structures and Rates
- CPL (cost per lead)
- A commission model that pays a fixed amount per qualified lead, common in finance, insurance, education, B2B, and home services programs. Learn more: Affiliate Commission Structures and Rates
- CPS (cost per sale)
- A commission paid only when a tracked sale occurs; the standard model for ecommerce affiliate programs. Learn more: Affiliate Commission Structures and Rates
- Creator affiliate
- A video, social, newsletter, or podcast creator who promotes products through affiliate links or codes, often on a hybrid fee-plus-commission basis. Learn more: Creator and Influencer Affiliate Programs
- Deep link
- An affiliate link that sends the visitor to a specific product or landing page rather than the brand's homepage, generally improving conversion. Learn more: Affiliate Program Management
- EPC (earnings per click)
- Average affiliate earnings per click on a program's links, used by publishers to compare programs and by brands to gauge competitiveness. Learn more: Affiliate Commission Structures and Rates
- First-party tracking
- Affiliate tracking that stores identifiers on the brand's own domain and reports conversions server-side, reducing loss from browser restrictions on third-party cookies. Learn more: Affiliate Tracking, Attribution and Incrementality
- FTC disclosure
- The requirement under U.S. Federal Trade Commission endorsement guidance that affiliates and creators clearly disclose material connections, such as commissions, to the brands they promote. Learn more: Affiliate Fraud, Compliance and FTC Disclosure
- Hybrid deal
- A partner arrangement combining a flat fee or paid placement with a performance commission; the common structure for top publishers and creators. Learn more: Affiliate Commission Structures and Rates
- Incrementality
- The revenue or customers a channel produces that would not have occurred without it. Measured through holdout tests, new-customer analysis, and reconciliation with marketing mix models. Learn more: Affiliate Tracking, Attribution and Incrementality
- Last-click attribution
- The default affiliate attribution model that credits the final click before conversion, which tends to favor coupon and cashback partners that appear at checkout. Learn more: Affiliate Tracking, Attribution and Incrementality
- LLM visibility
- How often and how favorably a brand or its partners appear in answers generated by AI assistants, an emerging measure as shoppers use AI for product discovery. Learn more: AI in Affiliate Marketing
- Locking period
- The time between a tracked sale and the point at which its commission becomes final and payable, allowing for returns and validation. Learn more: Affiliate Program Management
- Marketing mix modeling (MMM)
- Statistical analysis of how marketing channels contribute to sales over time. Affiliate is often undercounted in MMM because its spend is variable and its effect overlaps with other channels. Learn more: Affiliate Tracking, Attribution and Incrementality
- Multi-touch attribution
- Models that distribute credit across several partner interactions in a customer's path rather than assigning it all to the last click. Learn more: Affiliate Tracking, Attribution and Incrementality
- Network fee (override)
- The fee an affiliate network charges the brand on top of publisher commissions, usually a percentage of commissions or of tracked sales, plus setup or minimum monthly charges. Learn more: Affiliate Networks and Partnership Platforms
- OPM (outsourced program manager)
- An agency that manages a brand's affiliate program on its behalf, typically handling recruiting, partner relations, commission strategy, compliance, and reporting. Learn more: Affiliate Program Management Agencies (OPMs)
- Paid placement
- A fixed-fee purchase of exposure on a publisher's site, newsletter, or channel, such as a featured listing or dedicated email, usually in addition to commission. Learn more: Affiliate Commission Structures and Rates
- Partnership marketing
- Growth through affiliates, creators, referral and B2B partners, and brand collaborations managed on shared tracking and measured on outcomes. Learn more: Partnership and Performance Marketing
- Partnership platform
- Software that extends affiliate tracking and payment infrastructure to creators, B2B referral partners, and strategic partnerships, managed as one portfolio. Learn more: Affiliate Networks and Partnership Platforms
- Performance marketing
- Paid marketing priced on measurable results such as clicks, leads, or sales. Affiliate marketing is the performance channel in which independent partners bear the risk of delivering those results. Learn more: Partnership and Performance Marketing
- Platform-native affiliate program
- A program run by a platform itself, such as YouTube Shopping, TikTok Shop, or Amazon Associates, that lets creators earn without going through the brand's own network account. Learn more: Creator and Influencer Affiliate Programs
- Product feed (data feed)
- A structured file of a brand's products, prices, and links that publishers use to build comparison pages, deal listings, and dynamic ads. Learn more: Affiliate Program Management
- Program terms (terms and conditions)
- The rules publishers agree to when joining a program: allowed and prohibited promotional methods, commission and attribution rules, reversal policy, and enforcement. Learn more: Affiliate Fraud, Compliance and FTC Disclosure
- Publisher
- An affiliate partner that promotes brands to its audience: content sites, review and comparison sites, newsletters, creators, coupon and cashback platforms, and communities. Learn more: How to Find Affiliates and Publishers
- Recurring commission
- A commission paid on renewals or ongoing subscription payments for a defined period, common in SaaS and membership programs. Learn more: B2B and SaaS Affiliate Programs
- Referral program
- A program that rewards existing customers or partners for referring new customers, often run on the same platform as an affiliate program but with different partner types and incentives. Learn more: B2B and SaaS Affiliate Programs
- A commission model that pays the affiliate a percentage of the sale or, in some verticals, of ongoing revenue such as subscription fees or net gaming revenue. Learn more: Affiliate Commission Structures and Rates
- Reversal
- The cancellation of a previously tracked commission because of a return, cancellation, fraud, or violation of program terms. Learn more: Affiliate Program Management
- Server-to-server (S2S) tracking / postback
- A tracking method in which the brand's server reports conversions directly to the network or platform instead of relying on a browser pixel. Learn more: Affiliate Tracking, Attribution and Incrementality
- Sub-affiliate network
- A publisher that recruits its own partners under a single network account and shares commission with them, giving brands reach but reduced visibility into who is promoting them. Learn more: Affiliate Fraud, Compliance and FTC Disclosure
- Super affiliate
- A partner that drives a disproportionately large share of a program's revenue, usually through significant traffic, strong conversion, or both. Super affiliates typically expect negotiated rates and dedicated support. Learn more: How to Find Affiliates and Publishers
- Tiered commission
- A structure that raises the commission rate when a partner reaches volume, revenue, or new-customer thresholds, or that pays different rates by partner type. Learn more: Affiliate Commission Structures and Rates
- Trademark (brand) bidding
- An affiliate buying paid search ads on a brand's own name or trademarks, capturing traffic the brand would have earned directly. Usually prohibited or tightly controlled. Learn more: Affiliate Fraud, Compliance and FTC Disclosure
From our publisher · Sponsored · Disclosure
Put the terms to work
CostPerNews is published by the team behind two affiliate-industry businesses built for brands, advertisers, and affiliate managers.
Affiliate Program Management Agency
Experience Advertising
Experience Advertising is a full-service affiliate program management (OPM) agency founded by Evan Weber in 2007. The team launches, manages, and grows affiliate programs on CJ Affiliate, Impact, Awin, ShareASale, Rakuten, Everflow, TUNE, and PartnerStack — with hands-on publisher recruiting as the core of every engagement.
- Program launches, migrations, and full-service management
- Proactive affiliate and publisher recruiting, not just network directory listings
- Commission strategy, compliance monitoring, and reporting for brand teams
Talk to Experience Advertising → experienceadvertising.com
Affiliate Discovery Software
AffiliateFinders
AffiliateFinders is a searchable directory and discovery platform for affiliate managers. It surfaces active content affiliates, review sites, coupon and loyalty publishers, newsletters, and creators across hundreds of verticals so brand teams can build a recruiting pipeline in minutes instead of weeks.
- Search affiliates by niche, traffic type, and network participation
- Export prospect lists straight into your outreach workflow
- Built by an affiliate manager, for affiliate managers
Search AffiliateFinders → affiliatefinders.com