Affiliate & creator marketing glossary

An affiliate is an individual or company that promotes another business's products in exchange for a commission on the sales or actions they generate.

An affiliate disclosure is a clear notice telling readers that a link may earn the publisher a commission if they buy, required by the FTC and comparable regulators to keep affiliate recommendations transparent.

Affiliate fraud is any attempt to earn commissions illegitimately, such as fake clicks, forced cookies, self-referrals, or fabricated conversions.

Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing model in which a business pays external partners a commission for each customer or sale they refer.

An affiliate network is an intermediary platform that connects merchants with a large pool of affiliates, handling tracking, reporting, and consolidated payments in exchange for fees, and giving both sides an established marketplace.

An ambassador program is a structured, ongoing initiative in which a brand recruits loyal creators or customers to represent it over time, rewarding them with commissions, product, or perks for sustained promotion.

AOV, or average order value, is the average amount spent each time a customer places an order, calculated as total revenue divided by number of orders.

ASCI guidelines are the Advertising Standards Council of India's rules requiring influencers and advertisers to clearly label promotional content with disclosures like #ad or #sponsored, India's counterpart to FTC endorsement rules.

Attribution is the process of determining which affiliate or marketing touchpoint should receive credit — and the commission — for a conversion.

An attribution window (or conversion window) is the period after a click or interaction during which a resulting conversion is credited to that referral; it generalizes the cookie window to cover code- and server-tracked conversions too.

A brand ambassador is a creator or customer who represents a brand over an ongoing period, regularly promoting it in exchange for pay, product, commissions, or perks, forming a longer-term association than a one-off post.

A brand deal is a paid agreement between a brand and a creator to promote the brand's product, defined by deliverables, usage rights, exclusivity, timing, and a fee or commission.

A brand partnership is a collaborative arrangement between a brand and a creator or another brand to work together on content, campaigns, or ongoing promotion, spanning one-off deals to long-term ambassador and affiliate relationships.

A clawback is the reversal of a previously credited affiliate commission when the underlying sale is refunded, cancelled, or charged back.

A commission is the payment an affiliate earns for each qualifying conversion they drive, set as a percentage of the sale or a fixed amount per action.

A content affiliate earns commissions by creating articles, reviews, tutorials, or videos that naturally recommend products with tracked links, driving conversions through helpful, search- or audience-driven content.

A conversion is the qualifying action — such as a sale, signup, lead, or subscription — that triggers an affiliate commission.

Conversion rate is the percentage of referred clicks or visitors that complete a qualifying action, calculated as conversions divided by clicks.

Cookie stuffing is an affiliate fraud technique that drops tracking cookies onto users' browsers without a genuine click or referral, so the fraudster is credited for sales they did not actually influence.

A cookie window (or cookie duration) is the length of time after a referral click during which a resulting conversion will still be credited to that affiliate.

A coupon affiliate drives sales by publishing discount codes and deals for a merchant, earning commissions when shoppers use their codes; valuable for volume but sometimes scrutinized for how incremental the sales really are.

CPA, or cost per action (also cost per acquisition), is a pricing model where the advertiser pays only when a specific action — a sale, signup, or lead — is completed, aligning cost directly with results.

CPC, or cost per click, is the amount an advertiser pays each time someone clicks their ad or link, a common pricing model in paid search and display and a key metric for PPC affiliates.

CPL, or cost per lead, is a pricing model where the advertiser pays a fixed amount for each qualified lead — such as a form submission, quote request, or signup — generated, common in lead-generation affiliate programs.

CPM, or cost per mille, is the price an advertiser pays per one thousand impressions of an ad or sponsored content, a standard way to price awareness-focused campaigns and influencer posts.

The creator economy is the ecosystem of independent creators — writers, video makers, streamers, and educators — who earn a living directly from their audiences and brand partnerships, supported by platforms and tools for content, monetization, and payments.

A creator storefront is a personalized shop page where a creator curates and links the products they recommend — often earning affiliate commissions on sales — turning their recommendations into a shoppable, trackable destination.

CTR, or click-through rate, is the percentage of people who click a link or ad out of those who saw it, calculated as clicks divided by impressions, measuring how compelling a link, ad, or promotion is.

Deal registration is a process that lets a partner formally claim a sales opportunity so they receive credit and protection if the deal closes.

A deep link is an affiliate tracking link that sends the customer to a specific product or page on the merchant's site rather than just the homepage.

Engagement rate is the percentage of a creator's audience that interacts with their content — likes, comments, shares, saves — relative to followers or reach, used as a key measure of audience quality and influence.

EPC, or earnings per click, is the average commission an affiliate earns per click on their tracking links, calculated as total commissions divided by total clicks.

First-click attribution credits the commission to the first affiliate or link that introduced the customer, even if other partners were involved later.

First-party cookies are set by the website a user is visiting, while third-party cookies are set by other domains such as ad or tracking networks; browsers increasingly block third-party cookies, pushing affiliate tracking toward first-party and server-side methods.

Form 1099-NEC is a US tax form a business files to report non-employee compensation, such as affiliate commissions of $600 or more paid to a US person in a year, with a copy sent to the affiliate.

An FTC disclosure is the clear, conspicuous statement a US creator or affiliate must make when they have a material connection to a brand — such as being paid or earning a commission — so audiences know the content is an ad or endorsement.

GMV, or gross merchandise value, is the total sales value of goods sold through a channel or platform over a period, before deducting fees, refunds, or costs — a common headline metric for marketplaces and creator commerce.

Incrementality measures how many conversions a marketing channel or partner truly caused that would not have happened otherwise, separating genuinely driven sales from those that would have occurred anyway.

An influencer affiliate blends influencer marketing with affiliate pay: a creator promotes a brand to their audience and earns commissions on tracked sales, often alongside or instead of a flat sponsorship fee.

Influencer marketing is a strategy in which brands partner with creators who have engaged social audiences to promote products, paying through flat fees, free product, affiliate commissions, or a combination.

Last-click attribution credits the entire commission to the final affiliate or link the customer clicked before converting.

A lifetime commission pays an affiliate on every future purchase a referred customer makes, for the life of that customer, not just the first sale, strongly rewarding partners who bring loyal, repeat buyers.

Link cloaking is the practice of masking a long, parameter-heavy affiliate URL behind a shorter, branded, or tidy link that redirects to the destination, making links cleaner, more trustworthy-looking, and easier to manage.

A link-in-bio is a single landing page linked from a social profile's bio that routes followers to multiple destinations — content, shops, and affiliate links — working around platforms that allow only one clickable URL in the profile.

LTV, or customer lifetime value, is the total revenue a business expects to earn from a customer over the entire relationship.

A media kit is a creator's promotional summary — audience size, demographics, engagement rate, past brand work, and rates — shared with brands to win partnerships, functioning like a portfolio and pitch in one document.

A merchant is the business that owns the product and runs an affiliate program, paying partners a commission for the customers they refer.

An MRR commission ties an affiliate's earnings to the monthly recurring revenue a referred customer generates, paying a percentage of that MRR over time.

A multi-tier affiliate program lets affiliates earn a commission not only on their own sales but also on sales made by the sub-affiliates they recruit.

Multi-touch attribution distributes credit for a conversion across the several marketing touchpoints a customer interacted with, rather than giving all credit to the first or last click, aiming for a fairer view of each partner's contribution.

Net-30 or net-60 payment terms mean a commission or invoice is paid within 30 or 60 days after it is approved or the sale clears, giving a buffer for refunds and reconciliation before money leaves.

Partner marketing is a broad discipline of growing revenue through external partners — affiliates, referrers, resellers, ambassadors, and integration partners — encompassing affiliate marketing and extending into strategic and channel partnerships.

Payout cadence is how frequently an affiliate program pays out approved commissions, such as weekly, monthly, or net-30 after a sale clears.

A payout threshold is the minimum balance an affiliate must accumulate before the program will release a payment.

Performance marketing is an umbrella term for digital marketing where advertisers pay based on measurable results — clicks, leads, or sales — rather than upfront for exposure, with affiliate marketing as a core channel.

A PPC affiliate promotes a merchant's offers by buying paid search or display ads and routing that traffic to affiliate links, profiting from the gap between ad cost and commissions earned.

PRM, or partner relationship management, is the software and process used to recruit, onboard, manage, and grow a company's network of business partners.

A promo code is a unique coupon assigned to an affiliate so that purchases using the code are attributed to them, even without a tracked link click.

A rate card is a creator's published pricing sheet listing what they charge for each type of deliverable — an Instagram Reel, a YouTube integration, a story, or a bundle — used as a starting point for brand-deal negotiations.

Reach is the number of unique people who saw a piece of content, while impressions count the total times it was displayed including repeat views — so impressions are always equal to or greater than reach.

A recurring commission pays the affiliate a share of every renewal payment a referred customer makes, not just the first sale.

A referral is a new customer or lead brought to a business by an existing customer or partner, typically tracked so the referrer can be rewarded.

Referral marketing is a strategy that encourages existing customers to recommend a product to others, usually with a two-sided reward, leveraging personal trust to acquire new customers at low cost.

RPM, or revenue per mille, is the estimated revenue a creator or publisher earns per one thousand content views, combining all monetization sources into a single per-thousand figure.

Server-to-server (S2S) postback tracking records conversions by sending an event directly from the merchant's backend to the affiliate platform, without relying on browser cookies.

A SaaS partner program is a structured program through which a software company rewards external partners — affiliates, referrers, and resellers — for driving new subscriptions.

Self-referral fraud occurs when an affiliate uses their own referral link or code to buy — or has friends do so — to collect a commission on their own purchase, a violation most programs explicitly prohibit and claw back.

SKAdNetwork (SKAN) is Apple's privacy-preserving framework for attributing mobile app installs and conversions without exposing individual user data, central to iOS affiliate and performance tracking after Apple's privacy changes.

A sponsored post is social or blog content a creator is paid to publish promoting a brand, which must be clearly disclosed as an ad under FTC and comparable rules.

A tax form such as the W-9 or W-8BEN collects the legal and tax information a merchant needs to pay an affiliate and meet reporting obligations.

A tiered commission structure raises an affiliate's commission rate as they reach higher sales or volume thresholds — for example 10% up to ten sales, then 15% beyond — rewarding top performers with better rates.

User-generated content (UGC) is content — photos, videos, reviews, and posts — created by customers or creators rather than the brand itself, valued in marketing because it feels authentic and trustworthy.

Whitelisting, also called allowlisting, is when a creator grants a brand permission to run paid ads through the creator's own social account, so the ads appear to come from the creator's handle for greater authenticity and reach.