Affiliate marketing glossary

An HTTP response that sends the visitor to another URL and marks the move as temporary. Affiliate /go/ links use it, or its sibling 307, because the destination will change and nothing should remember the old one.

Creating and warming up ad accounts and profiles on Meta, Google or TikTok so they survive review and spend, for campaigns that platforms would otherwise reject. A farmer is the team member who does it.

The merchant's bank in the card system: a Visa or Mastercard member that accepts card payments for businesses and pays the issuer back when a chargeback lands, even if the merchant can't.

A set of ads run together for one goal and one audience: one offer, one GEO, one source, a group of creatives and a budget. Platforms structure spend as campaigns, ad sets and ads.

A platform that sells ad placements across many sites and apps at once: it collects publishers, sets formats and prices, takes the advertiser's money and shares it with the publishers. Push, native, pop and banner networks are the affiliate's daily sources.

Offers and traffic sources with sexual or explicit content: adult dating, cam sites, enhancement products, adult sites as placements. Mainstream platforms ban it; specialized networks live on it.

The person or company that sends traffic to an offer and is paid for the results. Affiliates own an audience or buy traffic; networks and advertisers are their counterparties.

The code a program or network assigns to you and writes into every link it generates, so clicks and sales are credited to your account. It exists only inside that network: when a program moves elsewhere, your old ID means nothing there.

A URL that carries your affiliate ID, so the program knows who sent the visitor and whom to pay. It usually sits on the network's domain, which means the network, not you, decides how long it keeps working.

Your contact at a network or advertiser: opens offers, raises caps and payouts, explains what counts as a lead, chases the finance team when a payment is late. Worth keeping close.

Advertising where the advertiser pays partners (affiliates) for results: a sale, a lead, an install or a deposit. The affiliate finds the traffic, the advertiser pays a fixed rate or a share of revenue.

A platform that connects advertisers with affiliates: it hosts offers, tracks clicks and conversions, holds and checks leads, and pays out. Many run their own call centers and in-house media buying.

A brand's own partner scheme: it signs affiliates directly, tracks their referrals on its own platform and pays by CPA, RevShare or hybrid. No network sits in between, so the brand writes the terms and keeps the score.

An ad account run through an agency that works directly with a platform such as Meta, Google or TikTok. It brings agency-level support, billing through the agency and a manager who can take a moderation question to the platform.

A browser that runs many isolated profiles, each with its own fingerprint, cookies and proxy, so a platform sees separate people instead of one person with many accounts. The standard tool for running several ad accounts.

Systems an operator or network uses to score incoming traffic and players for signs of fake accounts, bots, stolen payments or bonus abuse. Their verdict decides which of your conversions are paid, and you rarely see why.

The share of your leads the advertiser accepts and pays for. A 30% approval rate on 100 cash-on-delivery leads means 30 confirmed orders. Low approval means bad traffic, a bad offer, a bad call center, or shaving.

Average revenue per paying user: revenue in a period divided only by the users who paid, leaving out players who never deposited. It measures what depositors are worth, while ARPU measures the whole audience.

Average revenue per user: total revenue in a period divided by active users, which tells an affiliate what a typical referred player is worth. It is the first input when weighing RevShare against a CPA.

The rules that decide which click, channel or affiliate gets credit for a conversion. In affiliate programs the advertiser's attribution settings determine whether you get paid, and they can differ from what your tracker shows.

The platform closing an ad account, a profile or a page for breaking its rules, often with the balance frozen. The everyday cost of grey traffic; teams count banned accounts as a line in the budget.

An image ad in a fixed size (300×250, 728×90, 320×50) placed in a slot on a page or in an app, with a headline, a call to action and a link. The oldest display format; bought per thousand impressions or per click.

An ad network that sells banner placements across its publishers, by impression or by click, with targeting by GEO, device and category. Cheap volume in Tier-2 and Tier-3; adult and mainstream networks run separately.

Bookmaker offers: sports bets, esports, virtual sports. Paid like casino offers, per first deposit or as RevShare, with the calendar of matches setting the rhythm. Licensed and advertised openly in many GEOs, banned in others.

The most you are willing to pay for a click or a thousand impressions in an auction-based source. A higher bid buys better placements and more volume; the right bid is the one that keeps the campaign profitable.

An offer built to deceive: fake cures for serious diseases, phishing for card details, fake investment schemes, hidden subscriptions. Illegal in the GEOs it runs in, and a reputational and legal risk for everyone in the chain.

The list of placements, sites, zones or apps a campaign excludes because they do not convert or are fraudulent. Built from tracker data as the campaign runs; the first optimization on push, native, pop and in-app traffic.

Players exploiting casino or sportsbook promotions for bonus money, not play: duplicate accounts, coordinated groups, low-risk bets to clear wagering. The operator voids the bonus, and the affiliate loses the commission on those players.

Bidding on a merchant's brand name or trademark in search ads to catch people already looking for it, then collecting the affiliate commission. Many programs forbid it, and breaking that rule usually costs the commissions and the partnership.

An intermediate page between an ad and the offer, there mainly to pass the visitor on with a short pitch and a button. Google Ads rejects bridge pages that exist only to link elsewhere; a page with real content is not one.

An estimate of what a campaign will cost over a period, built from the expected bid, click volume, conversion rate and the offer's cap. It sets the test budget and tells you when to stop.

Operators who phone the people who left an order and confirm it, upsell extras and handle support. In cash-on-delivery offers the call center decides which of your leads become approved sales.

The button or line that tells the visitor what to do next: Order now, Get the bonus, Install. The CTA is where the ad or the page converts, and its wording, colour and position are worth testing on their own.

The address a site declares as the main version of a page, using the rel="canonical" link tag. Copies and parameter variants point to it, so search engines index one page instead of many.

The maximum number of conversions an advertiser accepts from an affiliate or an offer per day, week or month. Leads over the cap are not paid. Caps are raised for good traffic and are the first thing to ask about before scaling.

Subscriptions charged to the user's mobile phone bill: the user on a carrier's mobile network taps a button and is subscribed, sometimes with a PIN. Paid per subscription; runs on mobile traffic identified by carrier in Tier-2 and Tier-3.

A written account of a campaign: source, offer, GEO, creatives, landers, the numbers and the result. Published cases show what worked; the working setups are usually kept private until they stop paying.

The customer pays the courier when the parcel arrives, not at checkout. The dominant model for physical goods and nutra in Tier-2 and Tier-3 GEOs, where card payment online is not the habit. Converts well, gets refused at the door.

A conversion that requires the user to enter card details, usually for a free trial, a sample or a sweepstake entry. High payouts, strict traffic rules, and a subscription behind most of them.

A card payment reversed by the cardholder's bank after a dispute: the casino loses the deposit and pays a fee. Affiliate terms usually let the operator claw back commission already paid on that player.

The share of active players who stop playing in a period, usually a month: the number that decides how long a referred player keeps earning you money. It sets what RevShare is worth against a fixed CPA.

A unique code assigned to a single click, which travels with the visitor through the funnel and comes back with the conversion. Your tracker issues one, and ad platforms add their own: gclid from Google Ads, fbclid from Meta.

A script that opens the advertiser's page in a new tab on the user's first click anywhere on the publisher's page. The same traffic as popunder with a different trigger; sold per thousand by pop networks.

Showing one page to the platform's reviewers and bots and another to real visitors, so an ad for a grey offer passes review. Done by a tracker or a dedicated cloaking service that filters by IP, device, referrer and behaviour. Against every platform's rules.

Grouping players by when they arrived, usually their registration or first-deposit month, and tracking each group's revenue and activity month by month. It shows whether a batch of traffic keeps earning or fades.

A payout level in a deal that rises with volume: reach a set number of FTDs or a set amount of NGR in a month and your rate steps up. Not to be confused with GEO tiers, which group countries.

A script that hides a page, a file or a video until the visitor completes an action: fills a form, installs an app, submits a phone number. The action is a CPA offer; the locker is the monetization.

Ads matched to what the person is looking at or searching for: search ads on keywords, and display ads placed by page topic or by the user's recent interest. Intent-driven, expensive, and strict about what it allows.

The share of visitors who did the target action: CR = conversions / visitors × 100%. Lander CR, offer CR and approval rate are different steps of the same funnel and are measured separately.

Setting an affiliate cookie on a visitor's browser without a real click, through a hidden iframe, an image or a script, so that if they later buy from the merchant the affiliate is credited. Fraud in every affiliate program's terms.

The time after a click during which a sale still counts as yours. The program sets it: 24 hours at Amazon Associates, 30 days for web sales at Etsy. It only works while the cookie or tracking record survives.

Both a payment model and a metric. As a model: the advertiser pays a fixed amount per action (sale, deposit, registration). As a metric: what an action cost you, CPA = spend / actions.

An affiliate network that pays per action: sale, lead, install, deposit. It aggregates offers from many advertisers, tracks conversions and pays affiliates on a schedule.

The price of one click on your ad. As a buying model: you pay per click, not per impression. As a metric: CPC = spend / clicks. The starting point of every campaign's economics.

Payment per app install: the user installs the app, the install is attributed to your click, you are paid. As a metric, CPI = spend / installs. The model of mobile app offers and a step in many iGaming funnels.

Payment for a lead: a form, a registration, a sign-up, without waiting for a sale. As a metric, CPL = spend / leads. Popular in finance, dating, iGaming registrations and any offer that sells data.

The price of a thousand ad impressions. Display, video, push and pop traffic is mostly sold this way. CPM = spend / impressions × 1000. Your creatives decide how many of those impressions become clicks.

A fixed payout per confirmed order: the call center approves it, the affiliate is paid, whether or not the parcel is delivered and paid for. The usual model of cash-on-delivery goods and nutra.

Payment per completed sale, usually as a percentage of the order value: 10% of every purchase, 40% of a subscription. As a metric, CPS = spend / sales. The model of e-commerce and software offers.

The ad itself: the image or video, the headline and text, the call to action. Creatives are made for a specific offer, GEO and source, and are the first thing to test and the first thing that burns out.

Raising the share of visitors who convert, by testing changes to the page or the funnel: headlines, forms, offers, page speed. Done with split tests, one change at a time.

The share of impressions that turn into clicks: CTR = clicks / impressions × 100%. It measures the creative and the targeting, not the offer. A push ad at 1% CTR is doing well; a native teaser at 0.2% is normal.

Offers of dating sites and apps, mainstream or adult, paid per registration (SOI or DOI), per confirmed profile or per subscription. One of the largest and oldest verticals, with traffic on every source that allows it.

An affiliate link that sends the visitor to a specific product or category page instead of the merchant's homepage, with your affiliate ID intact. Major networks include a tool that builds one from a store URL.

Money a user puts into an account at a casino, a bookmaker or a trading platform. The first deposit (FTD) is the standard payout event of iGaming offers; a minimum deposit amount is part of the terms.

A Google Ads policy violation: the ad does not accurately show where the click leads, and it gets disapproved. Typical triggers are a display URL on a different domain from the final URL, or a redirect to another domain.

The company whose product the offer sells, working with affiliates without a network in between. Direct deals pay more but demand volume, quality and paperwork.

Sending paid traffic straight to the affiliate link or the offer page, without a landing page of your own in between. It is fast and cheap to test, but many programs and ad platforms restrict it.

Visual ads: banners, teasers, video and rich media placed on sites and in apps. Bought by the impression or the click, from ad networks or direct from the site owner.

A conversion counted only after the user confirms: clicks the link in an email, enters an SMS code, completes a second step. Fewer conversions than SOI, cleaner leads, higher payouts.

Switching traffic between several domains so that links keep working when a domain gets blocked, flagged or banned. Networks and trackers do it for click and lander domains; in gambling it is routine, because regulators keep adding domains to block lists.

A page built to rank in search for a set of queries and then send the visitor somewhere else, usually by redirect. A black-hat SEO tactic; search engines penalize it when they find it.

Selling goods you do not stock: the customer orders from your store, you buy from a supplier who ships directly to them, and you keep the difference. An e-commerce model that runs on paid traffic and thin margins.

Selling goods online. As an affiliate vertical it covers store offers paid per order or as a share of the sale, dropshipping and cash-on-delivery goods. Large volumes, small margins, mainstream-friendly creatives.

What a click on your link is worth at the network, when you are paid per action: eCPC = payouts / clicks. The number to compare with the CPC you pay for those clicks.

Sending offers to a list of email addresses: your own subscribers, an advertiser's base, or a rented list. A legitimate channel with your own list, spam with a bought one. Deliverability decides everything.

Average earnings per click on an offer: EPC = payouts / clicks. Networks publish it per offer as a rough guide to what the offer is worth; your own EPC on your traffic is the number that counts.

Offers of services that write essays, papers and theses for students. Paid per order, usually a share of a large first order and of repeat orders. A Tier-1 niche with seasonal demand, search and social traffic, and ethical questions.

Artificial likes, followers, views, clicks or installs bought from farms and bots to make numbers look real. Used to warm accounts and fake social proof; counted as fraud by advertisers and platforms when it reaches their side.

Someone selling affiliate-marketing courses and mentorships on the strength of screenshots, promising income and delivering old or invented setups. The money is in the course, not in the traffic.

In Google Ads, the landing page people reach after clicking your ad. Its domain must match the display URL, and it may not redirect to another domain, which is why affiliate links do not belong in this field.

Offers from banks, lenders and fintech apps: loans, credit cards, microloans, debit cards, trading and crypto apps. Paid per application, per approved loan or card, or per funded account. High payouts, regulated advertising, strict lead validation.

A player's first real-money deposit at a casino or sportsbook: the event most iGaming CPA deals pay for, once it meets the qualification rules. Qualified usually means minimum amount met, identity verified, right GEO, no duplicate account.

A routing rule inside a tracker campaign that decides where a click goes: which landers and offers, for which GEO, device or other condition. Keitaro calls them flows (formerly streams); Binom builds the same logic from paths and rules.

Traffic or leads that are not what they claim: bots, incentive traffic sold as organic, fake leads, installs from farms, traffic from banned sources. The advertiser does not pay for it, and the affiliate who sent it is cut off.

The whole path from ad to payout: source, creative, pre-lander, lander, offer, and the tracking between them. A working funnel is what a media buyer sells and protects; a case study is a funnel written down.

Online casinos, slots, poker and lotteries. Paid per first deposit (CPA), as a share of net gaming revenue (RevShare) or both (hybrid). The highest payouts in affiliate marketing, licensed in some GEOs and banned in others, and a whole industry of apps, cloaking and conferences around it.

Offers for games on mobile and desktop, paid per install, per registration or per in-game event such as reaching a level or making a purchase. Broad audience, mainstream creatives, tight quality rules after the install.

The country (sometimes the region or city) a campaign targets and an offer accepts. Written as a two-letter code: US, DE, BR. The same offer pays and converts differently in every GEO.

Mass-market physical products sold from a single-product page at an impulse price and paid on delivery: gadgets, tools, household items, watches, toys. Same funnel as nutra without the medical claims; wide creatives, low payouts, high volume.

An offer that is legal but breaks the ad platforms' rules: nutra with medical claims, iGaming where it is not licensed, crypto, adult dating, some finance. Runs on cloaking and farmed accounts, or on networks that allow it.

What players lose to a casino or sportsbook: total bets minus winnings paid out, before bonuses, taxes and fees. It is the industry's headline revenue figure and the starting point for calculating NGR.

A player who deposits and bets far above average, usually handled by a VIP team. On RevShare a high roller can make your month, or wipe out several months of commission with a single big win.

The time between a conversion and its payout, while the advertiser checks the lead: days for cash-on-delivery approval, up to a month or more for deposits, chargebacks and returns. Money on hold is not money yet.

A payout that combines a fixed amount per conversion with a smaller revenue share afterwards: $50 per first deposit plus 20% of net revenue. Common in iGaming for affiliates who bring volume and want both cash flow and upside.

An HTML element that shows another page inside yours. Affiliates use iframes to show an offer page under their own domain, or to load a tracking pixel. Some networks forbid iframed traffic.

A mobile app, often a thin wrapper around a casino site, used as the landing page for iGaming campaigns on app-install traffic. Rented from app services or built in-house; a core tool of Meta and UAC gambling traffic.

Permission from a gambling regulator to offer casino or betting services in specific markets. It tells an affiliate whether a brand can be promoted legally in a GEO, and who answers when something goes wrong.

Ads inside mobile apps: banners, interstitials, rewarded video, playables, sold through mobile ad networks and exchanges. A large source for app installs, games, utilities and iGaming apps.

Offers that sell knowledge: courses, webinars, e-books, memberships, coaching. Paid per registration for a free event or per sale of the product, often as a share of a high ticket. Runs on native, social and email.

Offers paid for installing software or an app: the user downloads, installs and opens, and the affiliate is paid. Mobile apps, browser extensions, utilities, VPNs. Easy to convert, easy to fake, judged by what happens after the install.

Offers where the payout depends on a phone call to an automated or live line: horoscopes, psychics, adult chat, consultations. Paid per call or per minute the caller stays. A pay-per-call niche with its own networks.

The words people type into search. In search advertising you bid on them; in SEO you build pages around them. In affiliate work, keywords tell you what a buyer wants before they see an ad.

Identity and age checks a casino runs on a player: ID document, address, sometimes source of funds. Many iGaming programs count an FTD only from a verified account, so a deposit that fails KYC often isn't paid.

The page the visitor lands on after the click, built to get one action: an order, a form, a registration. In affiliate funnels the lander is the advertiser's page or the affiliate's own copy of it; the pre-lander comes before it.

A model that gives the whole commission to the last affiliate link the buyer clicked before purchase, inside the cookie window. It is the most common model in affiliate programs, and it rewards whoever is closest to checkout.

A visitor who did what the offer asks and can now be counted: left contact details, registered, made a deposit. What exactly counts as a lead is written in the offer's terms and decides when you get paid.

Collecting contact details of people interested in a product or service, for the advertiser to sell to: insurance quotes, loan applications, solar, education. Paid per validated lead, judged by what the leads turn into.

Putting a long affiliate URL behind a short address on your own domain, such as /go/brand, that redirects every visitor to the same destination. It is URL masking for tidiness and control, not the ad-policy cloaking that shows reviewers a different page.

The gradual death of links you published: the program moved networks, the product page is gone, the domain lapsed or the short link was retired. For affiliates, a rotten link often still loads a page and simply stops paying.

Spreading one merchant's sales across several merchant accounts so none of them crosses the card networks' chargeback triggers. Mastercard says it usually serves no legitimate purpose; FTC orders ban it.

Adapting an affiliate site or lander to a GEO, well beyond translation: local language and currency, the payment methods people use, required legal lines. Done badly, a page ranks for nothing and lists brands the market does not allow.

How much a customer is worth over the whole relationship: total deposits minus winnings for a player, total subscription payments for a subscriber. Advertisers set payouts from it; affiliates on RevShare live on it.

Mastercard's database of merchants terminated for cause, such as excessive chargebacks, fraud or laundering. A listing names the business and its owners, lasts 5 years and blocks most new merchant accounts.

Merchant category code: the 4-digit code that tells card networks and issuers what a merchant sells. It drives risk rules, issuer declines and fees, so a wrong MCC is a red flag in itself.

A specialist who buys paid traffic and runs it to offers: sets up campaigns, tests creatives and landers, watches the numbers and scales what pays. Works alone or inside a team with a shared budget.

Buying ad impressions or clicks from platforms and networks and sending that traffic to offers, so that the payouts exceed the ad spend. The affiliate side of media buying lives on the margin between the two.

A company of media buyers running paid traffic at scale: buyers, a team lead, designers, a tech person for landers and cloaking, a farmer for accounts, and often its own apps and account shops.

An account with an acquiring bank that lets a business accept card payments. A business bank account alone can't take cards; the merchant account is where the bank agrees to carry the card risk.

A company that legally sells your product to the customer on your behalf, handling payments, tax and disputes. Paddle and Lemon Squeezy work this way, for software and digital goods only.

Visitors from messaging apps: Telegram channels and ads, WhatsApp broadcasts, Viber, Discord communities. Small, engaged audiences; ads by channel owners or through the platform's own ad system.

Merchant ID: the number that identifies one merchant account at the acquirer. Card networks count chargebacks and fraud per MID, which is why grey offers spread sales across many of them.

A copy of a site on a different domain, launched so users can still reach it when the original address is blocked. In gambling and betting, operators keep mirrors ready and send affiliates fresh links whenever a domain goes down.

Creatives or pages that promise what the product does not deliver: a free phone, a cure, a celebrity's endorsement. Produces clicks, trash leads and complaints, and is grounds for rejection on every platform and at most networks.

Traffic sold without targeting: all GEOs, devices and placements together, often the remnant a network could not sell otherwise. Cheap, unpredictable and mostly useful for smartlinks and testing.

Ads that look like the content around them: recommended-article widgets under news stories, sponsored posts in feeds, a paid article in a blog. Bought from native networks per click; runs on advertorial pre-landers.

A RevShare clause that carries a losing month forward: when your players win more than they lose, the negative balance comes out of future earnings. With no negative carryover, the balance resets to $0 every month.

What a casino or sportsbook keeps after paying out wins and deducting bonuses, taxes and fees: the usual base for RevShare commission. Its exact formula, which varies by operator, decides how much you are paid.

Health and beauty products sold with a story: weight loss, joint pain, potency, skin, diabetes supplements, detox. The biggest cash-on-delivery vertical in Tier-2 and Tier-3 and a trial vertical in Tier-1. Grey by nature: medical claims are banned in ads.

A product or service an advertiser pays affiliates to promote, with the terms attached: the action that is paid, the payout, the GEOs, the allowed traffic, the cap. An affiliate chooses offers the way a store chooses stock.

A network taking an offer from another network or advertiser and listing it under its own name with a lower payout. Common and not necessarily bad, but every layer takes a margin, adds hold and adds a place where leads can be lost.

A page that looks like a news site or a store and links to dozens of offers at once. Used as a pre-lander for teaser and pop traffic, and as the monetization layer of content lockers. Networks supply ready-made ones.

An online casino licensed in one jurisdiction that accepts players from countries where it holds no local license. Its risks reach the affiliate too: blocked domains, failed deposits and, in some countries, legal exposure for advertising it.

Visitors who found you without a paid placement: from search results, a shared link, a profile, a channel. Free per visit but expensive in time; the traffic of publishers and content affiliates.

An ad layer that opens on top of the page and blocks it until closed or acted on. Used for exit offers, subscriptions and content locking. Aggressive, cheap, and banned on the platforms that care about experience.

Visitors you pay for by the click, the impression or the action: social ads, search ads, push, native, pops, in-app. The traffic of media buyers; fast to test, scalable, and gone the moment you stop paying.

Payment for a qualified phone call: the visitor calls a tracked number and stays on the line long enough for the advertiser's rules. Used for insurance, legal, home services, rehab, real estate. Serious money per call, strict quality.

Payment for the length of a phone call rather than for the call itself: an IVR line, a psychic hotline, a consultation. The longer the caller stays, the more the affiliate earns.

A provider such as Stripe, PayPal or Square that boards many small merchants under its own master merchant account. It says yes fast and reviews you afterward, which is why its closures come later and without warning.

What the offer pays per approved conversion, or the money the network sends you on payday. Payouts are set per offer and GEO, negotiated up with volume, and paid on a schedule after the hold.

Prescription-type medicines sold online without the prescription: erectile dysfunction, weight-loss drugs, painkillers. High payouts because almost no source allows the ads; runs on email, search in some GEOs and adult traffic.

A mobile offer where the user enters their phone number and confirms a PIN by SMS, subscribing to a content service billed by the carrier. Paid per confirmed subscription; runs on mobile carrier traffic in Tier-2 and Tier-3.

A piece of code on a page that reports events to an ad platform or a tracker: a view, a lead, a purchase. The platform uses it to optimize delivery and build audiences; the affiliate uses it to feed conversions back to the algorithm.

A full page that opens in a new tab or window behind the one the user is looking at, discovered when they close the current one. The cheapest large-volume traffic there is, sold per thousand by pop networks.

A window or layer that opens in front of the page, on load, on a timer or when the visitor tries to leave. Used for offers, discounts, subscriptions and exit intent. Blocked by most browsers when it is a real new window.

A request the network's server sends to your tracker when a conversion happens, carrying the click ID and the payout. It ties every lead back to the click, creative and placement that produced it, without cookies or pixels.

Advertising you pay for by the click, and the name of search advertising as a discipline (Google Ads, Bing Ads). As an affiliate payout model it is rare: some push-subscription offers pay per click the subscriber makes on the ads they later receive.

A page between the ad and the landing page that warms the visitor up: a story, a quiz, an advertorial, a comparison. It raises the conversion rate of the lander and gets grey creatives through review.

A video ad shown before the video the user chose, usually five to twenty seconds, skippable after five. YouTube's main format; also sold by video networks. Bought per view or per thousand.

Offers a network does not list publicly: the ones its in-house team runs, exclusive advertiser deals, or listed offers with better terms for affiliates who proved their traffic. Access comes through the manager.

Revenue from the network minus the cost of traffic and tools. The number a media buyer optimizes for. Profit = payouts × approved conversions − ad spend − costs.

An IP address you route a browser profile through, so a platform sees a user in the right country on a normal connection. Residential and mobile proxies look like real people; data-center IPs are flagged. Bought per IP, per GB or per port.

Payment service provider: the company that processes deposits and withdrawals for a casino, by card, e-wallet, bank transfer or local method. If deposits fail in a GEO, registrations don't become FTDs and your numbers drop.

An affiliate who monetizes an audience they own: a content site, a YouTube channel, a newsletter, a Telegram channel. Publishers place ads and affiliate links; media buyers buy traffic.

An ad network that sells clicks on push notifications, from a subscriber base its publishers collected. Auction pricing, targeting by GEO, device, OS and subscriber age, a low minimum deposit. Where many media buyers start.

Short messages delivered to a phone or desktop by a site the user once allowed, with an icon, a title and one line of text. Sold as ad traffic by push networks per click; converts on sweepstakes, dating, finance, iGaming and nutra.

The permission a user gives a site to send notifications. As a traffic source, a base of subscribers to monetize; as an offer, a payout for every subscriber you collect, or a share of the ad clicks they generate later.

A payout that requires the user to do more than convert once: deposit a minimum amount, place a few bets, trade a set volume. Common in iGaming, forex and crypto offers, to filter out one-time deposits.

A click from someone who matches the offer: the right GEO, device and intent. Unqualified clicks cost the same and convert worse, which is why sources and placements are filtered.

A visitor who could realistically convert: in the offer's GEO, on a supported device, with an interest in the product. Targeting exists to buy more of these and fewer of everyone else.

Buying ad impressions one at a time in an auction that runs while the page loads. A demand-side platform bids for each user based on data; the highest bid shows its ad. Most display and native traffic is sold this way.

A repeat charge on a customer's card or phone bill after the first purchase: the next month of a subscription, the next delivery of a trial product. Offers built on rebills pay the affiliate more for customers who stay and claw back when they cancel or charge back.

Sending a visitor from one URL to another automatically. Trackers use redirects to record a click before passing it on; some ad formats use them to move a visitor off a page without a click.

Tracking visits with a script on your landing page instead of sending the click through a tracker redirect first. The ad points straight at your page, which suits platforms that reject redirect links, and the script reports the visit to the tracker.

A link attribute that tells search engines a link is paid, sponsored or affiliate. Google asks publishers to add it to affiliate links; rel="nofollow" is still accepted, and both values can be combined.

The rules and tools that limit gambling harm: deposit limits, time-outs, reality checks and self-exclusion. In regulated GEOs they also govern advertising, so an affiliate's ads and pages must comply or put the operator's license at risk.

Showing ads to people who already visited your page or interacted with your ad, using a pixel or an audience list. Cheaper and better converting than cold traffic; limited by the size of the audience you can collect.

Payment as a percentage of what the advertiser earns from your users, for as long as they stay: 30–50% of a casino's net revenue from your players, a share of subscription payments. Slow to start, and can pay for years.

Profit as a share of what was spent: ROI = (revenue − spend) / spend × 100%. Spend $1,000, earn $1,500 back, and the ROI is 50%. The standard way media buyers compare campaigns of different sizes.

A share of each day's card sales that the processor holds back and releases after a fixed period, often 5-10% for 90-180 days. It covers chargebacks that arrive after the sale.

Return to player: the share of all money wagered on a game that it is designed to pay back over a very large number of rounds. A 96% RTP describes the game's math, not what any player gets back in a session.

To send paid visitors through your tracking link to an offer. A media buyer runs traffic to an offer, on a GEO, from a source: for example Meta traffic to a nutra offer in Italy.

A network that collects traffic and does not pay: it delays, invents rejections, then closes. The worst outcome for an affiliate and the reason payment reputation is the first thing to check. This site marks such companies with a scam warning and switches their links off.

A tool that collects data from sites and apps automatically: contacts, prices, members of a community, competitors' pages, comments. Used for audiences, research and copying landers; against the terms of most platforms.

A network or advertiser hiding some of your valid conversions and not paying for them. Hard to prove, easy to suspect when the approval rate drops for no reason. The tracker and a test lead now and then are the ways to catch it.

Creatives built to disgust or alarm: parasites, wounds, skin conditions, disaster. They stop the scroll and drive clicks to nutra and health offers, and are banned everywhere except teaser networks and some push networks.

One link that sends each visitor to the best-paying offer for their GEO, device, carrier and time, chosen automatically by the network. No testing, no targeting: all the traffic goes to one URL. The way to monetize mixed and remnant traffic.

Sending offers by text message to a phone list. Works for local services, finance and e-commerce with your own opt-in base; spam and often illegal with a bought one. Regulated in most GEOs.

Visitors from social platforms, paid or organic: Meta, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, X, Reddit, Pinterest, and the communities and channels on them. The largest audiences and the strictest ad reviews.

A conversion counted when the user submits a form once, with no confirmation step. Easy to convert, easy to fake, so SOI offers pay less and watch quality after the fact.

Sending traffic to two or more versions of a creative, a pre-lander, a lander or an offer at the same time and keeping the one with the better numbers. The core method of media buying; the tracker does the splitting.

A service that collects other people's ads: creatives, landers, the offers they lead to, how long they ran and where. Buyers use it to see what converts before spending, and to find angles, pre-landers and networks for a vertical.

Small banner-like images that float over a page, on mobile especially, and can be dismissed. They pass review easily and get past ad blockers; volume is modest and clicks are cheap.

A person paid to put their name on a company and a merchant application for a business someone else runs. It's the front that shell merchant accounts are built on, and banks and regulators treat it as fraud.

Parameters in a tracking link that carry what you want to know about each click: source, campaign, creative, placement, click ID. Networks pass them back in postbacks and show them in reports, so conversions can be broken down by anything.

An affiliate who joined a program through another affiliate's referral link and earns that recruiter an override on the newcomer's results. The override is usually paid by the program on top, not taken out of the newcomer's own commission.

Offers where the user enters to win a prize (a phone, a gift card, a car) by leaving an email or a phone number, or by entering card details for a trial. Paid per lead (SOI, DOI) or per card submit. The universal offer for cheap traffic.

A US casino-style site run under sweepstakes law with 2 virtual currencies: one bought and played for fun, one given away free and redeemable for prizes. Not the same as sweepstakes offers, which are giveaway lead-gen.

Choosing who sees the ad: GEO, city, language, device, OS, browser, carrier, hour, interests, age, placement. Every source has its own targeting; the tighter it matches the offer, the less traffic is wasted.

A traffic distribution system: software that sorts clicks by GEO, device, language, IP or bot signals and sends each group to its own destination. Keitaro started out calling itself a TDS, and trackers still do the job.

A small image with a provocative headline, built to make the reader curious rather than to show the product. The unit of teaser and native networks: cheap clicks, bold creatives, an advertorial behind them.

An ad network built around teasers: small image-and-headline cards placed in widgets on publisher sites. Cheap clicks, loose moderation, strong in CIS and Tier-3; the ancestor of today's native networks.

Groups of countries by purchasing power and ad cost. Tier-1: the US, Canada, Western Europe, Australia. Tier-2: Eastern Europe, Latin America, parts of Asia. Tier-3: the rest. Higher tiers pay more per lead and cost more per click.

The software between the ad and the offer that records every click, splits traffic between landers and offers, receives postbacks and shows cost and revenue side by side per source, creative, placement and GEO. The media buyer's main tool.

The domain your tracking links run on: the network's own click domain, or a domain you connect to your tracker. Its reputation decides whether clicks get through, so treat it as a consumable and keep a spare ready.

Any link that records a click before sending the visitor on: a network's affiliate link, or a campaign URL on your own tracker. It logs the source, device and click ID, then redirects to the page or offer.

A Google Ads field for your tracking URL, with the final URL inserted through the {lpurl} parameter. It records the click for your tracker without changing where the visitor lands, and accounts new to click trackers must use a certified one.

Offers of trading platforms: forex brokers, crypto exchanges and trading apps, and formerly binary options. Paid per registration or per funded account (a first deposit, sometimes with a qualification). High payouts, heavy regulation, a history of scams.

Visitors sent to a page or an app. In affiliate marketing traffic is counted in clicks, described by its source, GEO and device, and valued by how well it converts.

Turning visitors into revenue: sending them to offers, showing them ads or selling them a product. For a media buyer, monetization is the payout the offer sends back for the traffic bought.

Where the visitors come from: an ad platform (Meta, Google, TikTok), an ad network (push, native, pop), a site, a channel, a mailing list. Every campaign is named by its source and every source has its own rules, prices and audience.

Running one business's card payments through another business's merchant account, so the bank sees a different merchant. Card networks treat it as fraud; US regulators call it credit card laundering.

A lead the advertiser could not use: a wrong number, a made-up name, a duplicate, a joke order. Trash is not paid and, if there is a lot of it, gets the affiliate's traffic cut off.

An offer where the customer gets the product for shipping cost or a token payment and is billed the full price, usually as a subscription, if they do not cancel. Big payouts, chargeback risk, mostly Tier-1 nutra.

An extra product or a bigger package offered after the customer has decided to buy: a second bottle, a longer course, an accessory. The call center's upsell raises the order value and the advertiser's margin.

The address of a page. In affiliate work every link carries meaning: the tracking link records the click, the offer link identifies the affiliate, and parameters in the URL pass the campaign, creative and placement along.

Standard URL parameters (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, utm_content, utm_term) that tell analytics where a visit came from. Affiliates use them alongside tracker parameters to see which source, campaign and creative sent each click.

A lead whose data checks out: a real name, a reachable phone number or email, the right GEO, no duplicate. Some offers pay per valid lead before any sale; that is where quality rules matter most.

Visa Acquirer Monitoring Program: Visa's monthly check of disputes plus fraud reports against card-not-present sales. Since April 2026 a merchant is excessive at 1.5% and 1,500 events in most regions.

A category of offers with its own products, audience, traffic sources and rules: nutra, iGaming, betting, dating, finance, e-commerce, sweepstakes, crypto, adult. Buyers, networks and conferences organize themselves by vertical.

How many times a player must bet bonus funds, sometimes bonus plus deposit, before cashing out. A 35x requirement on a $100 bonus means $3,500 in bets. Affiliates who advertise a bonus have to state it correctly.

A casino brand run on a provider's platform and license: you bring the brand and the traffic, the provider runs games, payments and compliance. Fast to launch, with little control over what decides revenue.

An offer that every ad platform allows as it is: real stores, apps in the official stores, software, insurance, education, mainstream services. No cloaking, no account farming, lower payouts and a long life.

The list of placements a campaign runs on and nothing else: the sites, zones and apps that proved they convert. The end state of optimizing a network campaign, and what makes a case study repeatable.