Affiliate Marketing Glossary
Advertiser
Company or institution that offers advertising material (text link, banner, HTML advertorial) via the affiliate program of an affiliate network to be processed by the affiliate in a website, newsletter or other digital media.
Advertorial
An advertorial is a cross between an advertisement and an article. The text of the article is usually not drawn up by the editors of the magazine or website but by an advertiser. An advertorial is therefore not independent and must always be seen as a form of advertising. Because of this form, the advertiser has the opportunity to create a longer contact moment with the recipient, so that he can better inform the recipient about the subject. The text of the advertorial does not always have to go directly over the advertiser, but it remains a promotion.
Affiliate
Webmaster who manages one or more websites and places advertisements of advertisers on his website via an affiliate network.
Affiliate network
An affiliate network is a company or organization that serves as an intermediary between advertisers and webmasters. An affiliate network always has multiple campaigns from multiple advertisers.
Affiliate program
An affiliate program consists of having a network of affiliates that are rewarded by the advertiser on the basis of a fee for branding (impression), provided visitor (click), request (lead), and / or sell (sale).
Affiliate marketing
In affiliate marketing, a publisher (affiliate) receives a fee for generating a transaction (eg a lead or sale) for the advertiser promoted by the publisher. As soon as a publisher promotes an advertiser via an affiliate program, the publisher has become an affiliate of the advertiser. The advertiser provides the affiliate with suitable promotional material, and gives the affiliate a fee (commission) for the transactions that the advertiser wants to have realized. In order to show the promotional material, affiliates place a tracking code in their website and / or newsletter. Once a visitor clicks on a link placed by the affiliate, and this results in a transaction on the advertiser's site, this action is tracked online (registered) by the tracking software. The affiliate receives a fee for the realized transactions according to the commission model previously agreed with the advertiser. With the affiliate program an advertiser also has the opportunity to reward an affiliate for branding (per 1000 impressions) and/or per visitor (click). Optionally, a fixed fee per day can also be given by an advertiser to an affiliate.
Banner
A banner is a graphic advertisement (image) that can be placed at any position on a web page or in an e-mail message (newsletter), and where the graphic design is central. A banner can be made up in different formats and different forms (eg flash, .gif, .jpg, .png) and can be both a static illustration and a moving image. If the viewer of the banner clicks on this, the advertiser's webpage is generally opened.
Visitor
A person who visits a web page.
Campaign
The entire promotional offer offered by an advertiser. In a campaign, a description is given of the duration of the action, the commission per transaction, etc. For the promotion of a campaign, an advertiser makes promotional material. One advertiser can offer multiple campaigns.
Clickthrough
One speaks of a clickthrough or 'click through' when a visitor clicks on an advertisement and thus retrieves the underlying web page. The number of times an ad was clicked by visitors as a percentage of the total number of visitors is called the clickthrough ratio (CTR).
CLR
The number of leads divided by the number of visitors multiplied by 100. The result is displayed as a percentage. For example, the CLR is 1% when 100 visitors have visited the website and one of these visitors has generated a lead.
Conversion
Concersion means "conversion". People usually talk about the conversion if you want to know how many sales (Click Sales Ratio) or leads (Click Lead Ratio) have come from the number of visitors. Also used to indicate how many "clicks" there have been compared to the number of banner impressions (Click Through Ratio)
Conversion rate
Conversion rate is the percentage of clicks that leads to an actual result, ie a lead or a sale. With this, the effectiveness of the medium can be measured. A high conversion indicates that the website of the affiliate is in line with the products and or services of the advertiser.
Cookie
A cookie is a small text file containing data that is placed by the visited website in the browser of the visiting user, with unique identification data about this person. A cookie may contain information such as date, time, names of visited pages or purchased products. This allows visitors, for example, to be recognized during a recurring visit. Advertisers who work with cookies can therefore also receive compensation if the visitor delivers an order at a later time than the moment at which the visitor visited the website via the promotional material of an advertiser.
Cookie time
The period after which the operation of a cookie will expire. This is usually a period between 30 and 60 days.
CPM
Prices based on the number of impressions during a certain period. A CPM of €10 means you pay €10 per 1000 times your ad is shown. ('M' is the Roman number for 1000).
CSR
The number of sales divided by the number of visitors multiplied by 100. The result is displayed as a percentage. For example, the CSR is 1% when 100 visitors have visited the website and one of these visitors has generated a sales.
CTR
The number of clicks divided by the number of impressions multiplied by 100. The result is displayed as a percentage. For example, the CTR is 1% when 100 visitors have seen the ad and one of these visitors has clicked on the ad to go to the underlying web page.
Dashboard
A user interface that can organize and present information in a way that is considered the most optimal and easy by the user. The name refers to the fact that it sometimes looks like a dashboard of a car or plane. Is therefore also called cockpit.
Deeplink
A link to a web page that has one or more levels below that of the homepage, for example a link that directly refers to a specific (product) page of the advertiser. In this way the visitor, who arrives directly on the right page, can order without first having to search for the right page within the website of the advertiser.
Dimension
The size of the promotional material (banner, HTML-advertorial). For example, the dimension of a banner can be 468 x 60 pixels.
HTML advertorial
Ad form in which the user usually has the possibility to perform an activity. Think of a registration form, search engine or calculation form.
Impression
The number of times a banner is displayed. Every time a banner is shown, it is counted as one impression.
Individual segment
Within an affiliate software system, the advertiser has the possibility to arrange one-to-one commission fees with one or more affiliates, and to record them within an individual segment. These agreements are separate from the predefined segments that are available for all affiliates.
IP-tracking
IP-tracking is a method for measuring transactions, despite the fact that the cookie has been deleted after visiting the affiliate site. If there is no longer a cookie, the IP address and browser identification of the visitor is compared with the information in the database. If the IP address of the visitor already exists and it matches the specific advertiser, then a transaction is recorded.
Approve
Assessing transactions by an advertiser that have been realized via the network. An advertiser can approve a transaction, reject it, or leave it "under assessment" to approve it at a later time.
Key ratio
Indicates the extent to which you can use promotional material from merchants for search engine marketing.
Click
The moment a visitor clicks on the promotional material and arrives at the advertiser's page.
Lead
A completed transaction in which a visitor on the advertiser's page has performed an action for which data has been transferred, but where no financial transaction has taken place (for example, a mortgage quotation request or a subscription to a free newsletter).
Merchant
Company or institution that offers advertising material (text link, banner, HTML advertorial) via the affiliate network to be processed by the affiliate in a website, newsletter or other digital media.
Performance Based Marketing
Performance Based Marketing is a no-cure-no-pay marketing technique. The earnings for the promotion of products and services of the merchant are only paid when measurable performances have been delivered.
Pop-up
Form of advertisement. A small advertising window that is automatically opened as a new window when visiting a website.
Product feed
Also called XML feeds. Product feeds are files in which all or part of the articles of a webshop are included. Product feeds can be used by affiliates within dynamic websites that display product and price information, with deep links to the relevant products. A product feed automatically displays the current offers or advertisements of an advertiser on the website of the affiliate, for example in the form of an XML-based text or a CSV file. An affiliate can determine in which graphic form the product feeds are displayed.
Product group
A product group is a collection of ('group') products that belong to one product category.
Promotional material
Collective name for an advertiser's advertisement material such as text links, banners, HTML advertisements, etc.
Publisher
Company or institution that manages one or more websites and places and distributes information on this.
Referrer
The URL of the web page from the user's browser showing an advertiser's advertisement.
Rotator
A rotator is a tool that displays a different banner or text link every time it is called via your site. In this way, an affiliate can automatically display various selected banners or text links that "rotate" with each other at the same location on the web page.
RSS
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is an application of XML and is used to make links to information on a website available to others. This can be visitors to the website concerned, but also other websites that want to make use of these links. RSS is mainly used in weblogs or news sites to keep up to date with the latest article/news. Weblogs are usually maintained with specially developed publication software. This kind of software (for example Blogger, Movable Type, Pivot and Radio Userland) generates an easy-to-use, or even automatic, RSS-output in addition to the regular HTML output.
Sale
A visitor has purchased a product or service via the site of an affiliate on the site of an advertiser, which has been measured by the affiliate software system.
Segment
Within the affiliate software system, the advertiser has the possibility to define commission structures that can be defined with the help of one or more segments. For example, an advertiser can include the "Standard", "Silver", and "Gold" segments in the commission structure. Depending on the performance of the affiliate and / or the category where the website of the affiliate is located, an affiliate is (automatically) divided into a segment. A segment can be pre-defined, but can also be an individual agreement between the advertiser and the affiliate (individual segment).
Text link
Form of advertisements that only consist of text. A text link is a word or (short) sentence, which links to the website of the advertiser.
Traderule
To automatically assign a segment to an affiliate, an advertiser can use the so-called "Traderules". Depending on the predefined criteria by the advertiser, the software of the affiliate network ensures that an affiliate automatically falls into the right segment. Criteria may include: the number of sales generated per month, reaching a certain CRS, etc. Affiliates are reassessed every 24 hours, after which they are automatically placed in the right segment.
Transaction
A transaction is a lead or sale.
Compensation
The commission determined by the advertiser per realized impression, click, lead, sale or day. This fee can vary per advertiser, per campaign, and per affiliate.
Individual segment
Within the affiliate software system, the advertiser has the option of agreeing one-on-one commission fees with one or more affiliates, and recording them within an individual segment. These agreements are separate from the predefined segments that are available for all affiliates.
Unique visitor
A unique person who visits a website within a certain time period (usually 24 hours) from a single IP address. If a visitor visits the same website several times within the set time period, then this counts for one unique visitor.
URL (Uniform Resource Locator)
Each web page has its own specific human-friendly URL, or internet address. URLs link to computer-friendly IP addresses of special computers called Domain Name Servers (DNS).