Here, in Digital Marketing Glossary, I gathered a list of acronyms, jargon, terms and lingo generally used in the online business world.
If you are new to this online business industry, then this list is for you, which will help you to understand these buzzwords that are commonly used.
Digital Marketing Glossary of Terms
Advertiser:
The person selling the goods or services; also knows as the merchant. The advertiser or merchant pays affiliates for sending traffic to the merchant’s web site after a product or service is purchased.
This is the company that produces the products or services that you promote as an affiliate. More commonly referred to as the Merchant.
An individual who promotes products or services for a merchant in exchange for receiving compensation for the sales or leads they drive. See my post on how affiliate marketing works for additional information.
Affiliate Agreement:
Terms between a merchant and an affiliate that govern the relationship. This includes the terms on which the affiliate will be rewarded for the traffic sent to the merchant’s web site.
Affiliate Information Page:
A page on your web site that explains the terms of your affiliate program including your commission rates, affiliate agreement, a link for existing affiliates to log-in, as well as a link to the signup page for new affiliates.
Affiliate Link:
A URL tracking link that identifies the affiliate and sends traffic to the merchant’s web site. For example, a link might look like http://www.yourdomain.com/yourpage.php?AffiliateID=5999
These links are unique in order to track the traffic coming from the Affiliate Site. Typically these links can be simple text links, images, product links, etc.
Affiliate Manager:
The person responsible for running the merchant’s affiliate program. This includes recruiting affiliates, establishing incentive programs, creating media for the affiliates, reporting on sales and paying affiliates.
Affiliate Program can also be called an Associate Program, Partner, Referral or Revenue sharing program. In such a program the merchant rewards the affiliate for web traffic, sales or leads on a pay-per-click, pay-per-sale, or pay-per-lead basis.
Affiliate Program Directory:
A comprehensive listing of merchants’ affiliate programs. The directories are typically categorized by industry and include the typical payout or commission rates. Click here for a sample list of affiliate program directories.
Affiliate Solution Provider:
Third-party company that provides an affiliate tracking solution on a hosted basis. Typically an affiliate software solution is hosted by you with your web site. With an affiliate solution provider, they provide the hosting for you.
Affiliate Tracking:
The process of tracking a link uniquely by affiliate using an Affiliate Link.
Associate:
Synonym for an affiliate.
Adware:
Adware is usually included in free computer programs users download without realizing the Adware is also part of the package. In many cases, the advertisements are unwanted and difficult to get rid of, even after uninstalling the offending program. Most merchants will not work with affiliates who want to promote their offers via Adware. Get more information on affiliate adware.
Affiliate Agreement:
The agreement between the merchant and the affiliate regarding the affiliate relationship. It usually defines the roles, rules, responsibilities and legalities of the relationship on both sides.
Affiliate Link:
A link provided to you by the merchant that includes a unique tracking code specifically assigned to you for the merchant to track the sales you are responsible for generating for them.
A third party who provides affiliate program management to a merchant. Affiliate networks provide the technology for tracking affiliate efforts, ensure that sales are properly tracked, commissions are paid to affiliates, handle reporting for both the merchant and individual affiliates and help expose the merchant to potential affiliates for their products and services. You can find a list of the more mainstream affiliate networks here.
Affiliate Program:
A program offered by a merchant to allow individuals to recommend or refer people to their products or services in exchange for the person doing so receiving a commission based upon a predefined desired outcome generated by the referral. The “individuals” sending the referrals are called affiliates.
For example: Amazon Associate Program
Affiliate Software:
A software program that a merchant can use to run their own affiliate program in the house as opposed to using an affiliate network that helps the merchant track affiliate efforts and generate affiliate reporting.
Affiliate Tracking:
A unique ID attached to the links you use to send traffic to the merchant that is specifically for you to track your sales for or referrals to the merchant. Example of affiliate tracking in a link: merchant.com/? ID=YOURUNIQUEID.
Auto Approval:
Merchants approve or deny affiliate’s entry to their program in one of two ways – via automatic approval or manual approval. Auto-approval means they approve all affiliate applications automatically and instantly.
Banner Ad:
An electronic advertisement or billboards such as an animated GIF, Flash Movie, JPEG that advertises a product, service, or web site.
Bounce Rate:
The percentage of visitants to a website that leaves quickly without clicking or interacting with any section of the webpage. For instance, if 100 people visit a site, and 50 of them quickly leave, the website has a bounce rate of 50%. Websites intend to have as low of a bounce rate as possible, and averages point to be anywhere between 40-60%.
BackLinks:
Backlinks are incoming links to a webpage. When a webpage links to any other website, it’s called a backlink. In the past, backlinks were the significant metric for the ranking of a website. A site with a lot of backlinks tended to rank higher on all primary search engines, including Google.
Charge Back:
Refers to a product being returned or a sale “falling through” that you were already paid for. Since the sale didn’t actually finalize, the merchant will deduct the amount you were previously given in commission for that sale from your affiliate commissions. In lead generation, this can also occur if the merchant decides the leads sent were unqualified or fraudulent in nature.
Click Fraud:
In regards to affiliate marketing, click fraud most often refers to generating “fake” clicks to a merchant program that is based on a PPC compensation method. The fake clicks (which can be generated in a manual or automated fashion) have no chance of converting for the merchant since the traffic clicking the ads have no real interest in the product or service the merchant is selling.
Click-Through:
Also sometimes spelled as “Click Thru”. This refers to the act of someone clicking on your affiliate link and being taken to the merchant’s website.
Call To Action (CTA):
An element on a web page utilized to drive visitors towards a particular action or conversion. A CTA can be a clickable button with text or an image, and typically uses an imperative verb phrase like: “call today,” “enroll now,” “buy now.”
Click-through Rate (CTR):
Also sometimes spelled as “Click Thru Rate”. A metric used to show the number of times your affiliate link has been clicked on compared to the number of times the link has been viewed displayed as a percentage. To find your CTR, simply take the number of clicks the link has received and divide it by the number of impressions (times the link was shown) and times the result by 100 to get your CTR percentage.
For example – if you are displaying a banner ad that has had 100 impressions and received 1 click, then you would take 1 (clicks) and divide it by 100 (impressions) to get .01 (result) and multiply that by 100 to arrive at a CTR of 1%.
Cloaking:
Hiding content on a webpage or hiding affiliate tracking code in links. Hiding content on a webpage is bad as it is against the guidelines of the mainstream search engines such as Google. Hiding affiliate tracking in a link is an acceptable and widely used practice. If you’d like more information, I wrote an article on why and how I cloak affiliate links.
Contextual Link:
Refers to a text link placed within your website or blog content versus a link that is placed in the sidebar as a more traditional advertisement.
Co-Branding:
Some merchants will create a specific and custom landing page for an affiliate to send referrals to that contains both the merchant’s branding and the referring affiliate’s branding.
Example – a merchant might create a page on the merchant’s website that shows a lead form that contains both the merchant’s logo and the specific affiliate’s logo on the page. This is referred to as Co-branding. Many times merchants limit Co-Branding opportunities to only being available to Super Affiliates.
Commission:
The predefined money or fee a merchant pays an affiliate for generating a predefined, desired outcome for the merchant.
Conversion:
Getting a user to take a specific, desired action. It could be buying a product or service, filling out a form, signing up for an email list or whatever the intended goal may be.
Conversion Rate:
A metric used to show the number of times your affiliate link has generated a predefined conversion compared to the number of times the link has been viewed displayed as a percentage. To find your conversion rate take the number of sales a link has generated and divided it by the number of impressions the link received and multiple the result by 100 to get your conversion rate percentage.
For example – if your link was viewed 100 times and generated 2 sales, then you would take 2 (sales) and divide it by 100 (impressions) to get .02 (result) and multiply that by 100 to get a conversion rate of 2%.
Cookies:
A text file that is sent from a website to a file within a user’s web browser. Cookies are used for various reasons on the web as a whole. In regards to affiliate marketing, Cookies are used to assign an ID to a user that has clicked on your affiliate link to get to a merchant website for a predefined period. If the user returns within that predefined period (whether or not they click on your affiliate link again) then you will be credited with the sale.
Example – a user clicks your affiliate link (cookie gets “dropped” to their browser) and then bookmarks the merchant’s website to buy later. The user returns before the Cookie Expiration and makes the purchase. You would receive credit – and this commission – on the sale.
Cookie Expiration:
The amount of time a Cookie set by someone clicking on your affiliate link has to show a conversion before you are no longer credited with a sale even if that user eventually ends up making a purchase. The standard length of a Cookie is typically between 30-90 days. Anything below 30 is considered low/short while anything above 90 is considered to be healthily above average.
Cookie Stuffing:
A practice that underhandedly deposits cookies from merchants onto users’ computers when the user has never visited the merchant through the affiliate’s link and potentially may not have even the affiliate’s website. Cookie stuffing is done with the intent of stuffing as many cookies as possible onto as many user computers as possible in the hopes that they eventually come across the merchant website and make a purchase.
The larger and broader the merchant, the more likely that is to occur (think Amazon). Cookie stuffing is heavily looked down upon by legitimate affiliates and most merchants ban affiliates using cookie stuffing in their affiliate agreements.
Cost Per Action (CPA):
Cost Per Action (also referred to as Cost Per Acquisition). This refers to the amount of money paid to obtain the desired outcome (usually something like a sale or signup).
Cost Per Click (CPC):
Refers to the amount of money paid to generate a click by a user on one of your links. For example – if you spent $200 on an ad campaign and received 100 clicks on that campaign, then your CPC would be .50 cents (clicks generated / campaign cost = CPC).
Cost Per Thousand (CPM):
This refers to the amount of money it costs to display an advertisement per 1000 impressions. For example – if you wanted to buy advertising on a website that offered their advertising at a $5 CPM and you wanted that ad to show 10,000 times, then you would need to pay $50 (desired impressions / 1000 * CPM) for that advertising.
Cost Per Order (CPO):
Same as CPA but refers specifically to sales.
Creative:
A type of graphical ad or text link provided to the affiliate for use in promoting the affiliate program.
Customer Bounty:
Also referred to as a commission. A bounty is a predefined money or fee a merchant pays an affiliate for generating a predefined, desired outcome for the merchant.
Disclosure:
A page or notice on your website or blog that makes your site visitors aware if you are being paid or compensated (via affiliate marketing or any other methods) for any purchasing recommendations or product or service endorsements you make on your site. A disclosure is required if you’re doing affiliate marketing to be in accordance with a new law recently enacted by the FCC.
Direct Linking:
Refers to having your affiliates links go directly to the landing page rather than a redirect. This can help with your search engine ranking.
E-mail Link:
An affiliate link to a merchant site in an e-mail newsletter, signature, or a dedicated e-mail blast.
Earnings per Click (EPC):
Your earnings per click are the average amount you earn every time someone clicks on your affiliate link. To find your EPC you would take the amount you have generated in commissions from an affiliate link and divide it by the total number of clicks that link received.
Example – if an affiliate link has generated $4000 in sales over the lifetime of your affiliate relationship and the same link was clicked on 12,000 times, then you would divide $4,000 (sales) by 12,000 (clicks) to get an EPC of 33 cents. This means you earn an average of 33 cents each time someone clicks on your affiliate link.
First Click:
In affiliate marketing, the first click is often used to describe an affiliate program where the first affiliate to get a user to click a link and make a purchase within the limits of the cookie expiration is the one to be credited with the sale, even if the user landed on another affiliate’s website and actually converted after clicking on a link from the second site. There has long been a debate between whether first click or last click is most beneficial to both the affiliate and the merchant.
HTML code:
Refers to the lines of code that an affiliate places on their web page(s) for linking to the merchant’s site. This HTML code contains the unique identifier that identifies the traffic as coming from the Affiliate’s web site.
Impression:
An impression is a measure of how many times an ad is shown on a page. For every time the ad is shown, one impression will be counted.
In House:
Refers to a merchant who runs their affiliate program by themselves using an Affiliate Software and not by using an Affiliate Network.
Indie program:
Short for “independent affiliate program” and refers to a merchant who runs their affiliate program in the house themselves using Affiliate Software and not via an Affiliate Network.
Joint Venture (JV):
This typically refers to a business relationship for one event, product or project versus an ongoing, more permanent relationship. For example – if two well-known bloggers were to create a single product together and market it simultaneously as a joint effort, it would be referred to as a Joint Venture or JV partnership.
Keywords:
A keyword is a word that your audience or customers used to search for related topics on search engines. If you want to about a boutique shop, a relevant keyword could be “Buy boutiques” [short keyword] or “Looking to purchase goods from a boutique shop” [long tail keyword]
Keyword Stuffing:
This is the practice of utilizing a lot of keywords in the content for purposes of making it more visible on search engines. If you do it, you will be penalized by search engines. Never keyword stuff, just provide excellent and valuable content.
Last Click:
In affiliate marketing, the last click is often used to describe an affiliate program where the last affiliate to get a user to click a link and make a purchase is the one to be credited with the sale – even if a valid cookie from a prior click on a different affiliate’s link still exists on the user’s computer. There has long been a debate between whether first click or last click is most beneficial to both the affiliate and the merchant.
Landing Page:
The target webpage a user lands on after clicking on a link (either in an ad or link, etc.). Some landing pages are created with the purpose of lead generation, and other pages are with the goal of directing the flow of traffic throughout a website.
Lead:
A potential consumer in the sales funnels who has communicated with a business with the intent to purchase by a call, email, or online form fill.
Manual Approval:
Merchants approve or deny affiliates’ entry to their program in one of two ways – via automatic approval or manual approval. Manual approval means that the merchant or affiliate manager for the program looks at each individual application for entry to their program before deciding whether or not to approve them for participation in the program.
Multiple Tiers:
Refers to running a multiple tier affiliate program where affiliates who refer other affiliates earn a commission off of those affiliates.
Merchant:
The person selling the goods or services is referred to as the merchant. The merchant pays affiliates for sending traffic to the merchant’s web site after a product or service is purchased.
Niche:
A specific topic or vertical. For example – if you own a site about dogs, then your niche would be dogs – as well as pets in the broader definition of a niche.
Outsourced Program Manager (OPM):
Also known as an Affiliate Manager.
Payment Threshold:
The dollar amount of commissions an affiliate has to accrue before being paid. Some merchants set a minimum payment threshold themselves (to lower accounting costs by paying less frequently to people sending very few sales) while others allow the affiliate to do so (usually to avoid receiving frequent smaller checks and instead receive one larger one).
Point of Difference (POD):
This is the service, product, content, advantage or angle your website has versus competitors within the same niche that makes your website or blog different and stand out.
P3P Privacy Policy:
A protocol for sharing private information over the Internet from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). A Web site’s privacy policy is defined by the Webmaster answering a standard set of multiple-choice questions, which result in tags embedded in the Web site’s home page. Users also define their privacy requirements in their P3P-enabled browsers; for example, whether they allow their names disclosed to third parties. If the Web site policy and user preferences are not the same, the browser alerts the user.
P3P also assists with online sales. It lets users decide what specific data they are willing to divulge automatically to the site, such as shipping address and credit card number. If the site requests more data, the browser alerts the user, who can then decide whether to share it or not. For more information, visit www.w3.org/P3P.
Pay-Per-Sale (PPS):
An affiliate marketing program that rewards affiliates based on each conversion to a sale such as when purchasing a product or service from the merchant’s web site. Pay-per-sale programs usually offer the highest commissions but tend to have the lowest conversion rates.
Pay-Per-Lead (PPL):
Affiliate program that rewards affiliates for conversions to leads. A lead might include a signup form, software download, survey, contest or sweepstakes entry, signup for a trial, etc. Pay-per-lead generally offers midrange commissions and midrange to high conversion ratios.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC):
Rewards an affiliate for each unique click to the merchant’s web site. This type of affiliate program is uncommon because of click fraud or fake clicks.
Performance-Based Marketing:
Marketing in which the merchant only pays commissions for results such as conversions to sales or leads.
Raw Clicks:
Refers to a term often used in affiliate reporting that allows you to see how many overall clicks have occurred on your affiliate link. Raw clicks show every click that occurs, even if it is the result of the same person clicking an affiliate link 8 times in a day. Raw clicks are often shown in conjunction with Unique Clicks to give an affiliate a fuller picture of affiliate link activity.
Recurring Commissions:
The process of rewarding an affiliate repeatedly whenever the merchant charges a customer a recurring fee. For example, a web host that charges customers every month might reward the affiliate a percentage of each month’s payment from the customer.
Residual Earnings:
Programs that pay affiliates not just for the first sale a shopper form their sites makes, but all additional sales made at the merchant’s site over the life of the customer.
Return on Advertising Spending (ROAS):
This is the amount of revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising. For instance, a ROAS of $1 means you’re generating $1 in sales for every $1 in advertising spend, and a ROAS of $5 means you generate $5 in sales for every $1 in spending.
Return on Investment (ROI):
This is what all marketing managers want to see from the money they spend on their marketing and advertising campaigns. The higher the sales, the large the number of shoppers and the greater the profit margin generated by sales the better the ROI.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM):
Search Engine Marketing(SEM) is a method that companies can get higher placement on search engines by bidding on search terms.
Search Engine Result Page (SERP):
Search Engine Results Page(SERP) is the list of results given by a search engine after a search query is executed. Mostly, if you are looking for where your website ranks for “Best Digital Marketing Company,” a SERP report will let you understand that your website is ranked #4. That means your site is in the Fourth position (1st page).
Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
Search Engine Optimization is a method a company optimizes its webpage enabling the website to rank higher on a search engine’s results pages (SERPs). The higher your ranking, typically more traffic is generated (if the keyword has traffic) and more targeted traffic.
Sessions:
A metric in Google Analytics that measures one user interacting with a website while a given period, which Google defaults to 30 minutes. A session is not subordinate to how many pages are viewed, so if a person goes to a website and looks around at many web pages for 20 minutes, it would count as one session
SID Tracking:
Also referred to as CID tracking, MID tracking and TID tracking. “SID” is the abbreviation for the sub-campaign tracking abilities offered by Commission Junction. Almost every mainstream network refers to it differently. SIDs allow you to create specific tracking codes for your affiliate links to track the success of a specific effort.
Spider Detection:
The process of detecting and ignoring automated spiders or bots such as search engines like Google/Googlebot.
Super Affiliates:
The highest performing affiliates. Typically less than 1% of affiliates are super affiliates yet that 1% typically will bring more than 90% of your sales.
Squeeze Page:
This refers to a page that is designed to only have one goal or desired conversion in mind. Typically, squeeze pages remove any distractions for the desired goal. Example – navigation elements on the page may be removed to keep the user focused solely on the specific “pitch” being made.
Targeted Marketing:
Offering the right offer to the right customer at the right time.
Tracking Method:
The way that a program tracks referred to sales, leads or clicks. The most commons are by using a unique web address (URL) for each affiliate, or by embedding an affiliate ID number into the link that is processed by the merchant’s software. Some programs also use cookies for tracking.
Tracking Code:
Refers to the hidden 1X1 pixel tracking code that is placed on the confirmation page of your store for tracking sales conversions.
Two-tier:
Affiliate marketing model that allows affiliates to sign up additional affiliates below themselves, so that when the second tier affiliates earn a commission, the affiliate above them also receives a commission.
Unique Clicks:
Refers to a term often used in affiliate reporting that allows you to see how many unique people have clicked on your affiliate link versus seeing all clicks (Raw Clicks) that have occurred. If a person on their home computer clicks your affiliate link 3 times, then 1 of those clicks would be considered a unique click. What is defined as unique typically resets after 24 hours with most programs? So, if that same person in the above example comes back 6 days later and clicks on your affiliate link 1 more time, they would now account for 4 raw clicks and 2 unique clicks.
Viral Marketing:
The rapid adoption of a product or passing on of an offer to friends and family through word-of-mouth (or word-of-email) networks. Any advertising that propagates itself the way viruses do.
Whitelabel:
White labeling refers to a merchant allowing an affiliate to sell products under their own brand with no mention of the actual merchant. Visitors to the affiliate’s website would likely believe it was the affiliate who was actually selling the items or taking the leads since there is no mention of an outside merchant.
This typically occurs by the merchant creating a website branded solely to the affiliate on their own server under their control and allowing the affiliate to “mask” that website as appearing to be a subdomain on the affiliate website. Many times merchants limit Whitelabeling opportunities to only being available to Super Affiliates.
FAQs Related to Digital Marketing
1. What is difference between digital marketing and affiliate marketing?
If we talk about the difference between digital marketing and affiliate marketing so, there is no comparision between both the term. Because,
Digital marketing is the vast term and affiliate marketing is one of the element you can say or part of digital marketing.
2. What are digital marketing tools?
Tools help to ease your work, similarly, digital marketing tools will help you execute a proper strategy and scale up your business.
Here is the list of tools used by professional marketers.
3. What are the types of digital marketing?
Digital marketing is the component of marketing that utilizes internet and online based digital technologies and platforms to promote products and services.Below are the types or channels of digital marketing:
- Content marketing
- Search engine marketing
- Display Advertising
- Mobile Marketing
- Social Media Marketing
- Email Marketing
- Influencer Marketing
- Affiliate Marketing
Conclusion
I put most of the buzzwords that are being used in the Digital Marketing world and important to know.
I hope this Digital Marketing Glossory will be helpful for beginners to start the digital /affiliate marketing journey.