Affiliate Marketing
Jargon Buster
The account settings area of your dashboard allows you to manage and change your login credentials, update your username and update your password.
An Affiliate who buys ad space on numerous websites (creating a network) with the intention of serving merchant creative across this network of sites.
An Affiliate who buys ad space on numerous websites (creating a network) with the intention of serving merchant creative across this network of sites.
The billing details area will contain the relevant payment information for your account, such as payment contact person, company details, subscription information and direct debit or credit card details.
Adwords is the name of the Google tool which allows anyone to bid on keywords to appear within the sponsored listings section of the Google search engine results pages.
A website owner that earns a commission for referring clicks, leads, or sales to an advertiser. Also known as Publisher or Partner.
Terms between an advertiser and an affiliate, or an affiliate and an affiliate network. This includes the terms on which the affiliate must follow to be rewarded for the traffic sent to the advertiser's website.
If you are operating as a business, you have the ability to add your business details to your Commission Factory affiliate account such as business name, address, phone number email address and ABN. If you do not provide these details, we do not add GST onto your commission payment invoices. If you wish Commission Factory to add GST onto your commission payment invoices, please ensure your ABN is correct and you are registered for the Goods And Services Tax (GST) with this option selected.
A URL tracking link that identifies the affiliate and sends traffic to the merchant's web site. For example, a link might look like: https://t.cfjump.com/XXXXX/YYYYY/ZZZZZ. 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.
The person responsible for running the advertiser's affiliate program. This includes recruiting affiliates, establishing incentive programs, creating media for the affiliates, reporting on sales and paying affiliates.
Affiliate networks act as an intermediary between affiliates and advertisers. They offer services to both affiliates and merchants including reporting and payment services.
The affiliate application process whereby all applications are immediately accepted/approved once the affiliate has applied to the program.
A Banner is an electronic display image that is available for affiliates to integrate into their site. Banners are usually formatted in GIF, Flash Movie and JPEG that advertises a product, message, service or website.
A blog is a regularly updated website or web page, typically one run by an individual or small group, that is written in an informal or conversational style.
A web browser is a software application for accessing information on the world wide web. Commonly used browsers are Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari or Chrome.
Shopping cart abandonment refers to visitors who add items to their online shopping cart, but exit without completing the purchase. Affiliates can assist using their technology to recover this lost revenue.
A cashback website is a type of reward website that pays its members a percentage of the commission earned when they purchase goods and services.
A form of tracking that does not require a click to be the source of the transaction. Uses exclusive coupon code assigned to individual affiliate to match the transaction to the affiliate, instead of a click. This may also be known as cookie-less tracking.
The action when a user clicks on a link and follows through to the merchant's web site.
Income an affiliate earns for generating a sale or a lead to an advertiser's website.
A website that publishes textual, visual or aural content that is encountered as part of the user experience. It may include, among other things: text, images, sounds, videos and animations. An example of a content site should be a news site or online magazine.
Percentage of clicks that result in a sale/lead.
Small text files stored on the visitor's computer, which record information that is of interest to the merchant site. In the Affiliate channel, software cookies are utilised to track which affiliate the web visitor came from and which creative type (banner, text links etc) they clicked on. They can also store the date/time of the click for purposes of tracking the time elapsed between a click and a conversion to a sale or lead.
When a cookie is planted on a web browser, a date when the cookie expires is defined. This date is important because affiliate sales can only be recorded before the cookie expiration date. This period will also determine if repeat sales will be recorded.
The cost for a conversion such as a sale or lead.
Cost of an individual click. An internet advertising model used to drive traffic to a website, in which an advertiser pays an affiliate when the ad is clicked on.
Coupons are used by Advertisers to encourage customers to convert. Also known as Vouchers, and Discount Codes, Coupons will have a code attached to the offer. For example: Save 10% OFF sitewide using code 10OFF. These can be found under the Creatives section of the dashboard.
A website that publishes in directory style advertiser coupons, vouchers or promotional offers to its users.
Deal aggregators use incentive offers, sales and promotion data (from API or product feed) to publish on their or third-party sites.
A Deep Link is a hyperlink that directs to a specific landing page or image on a website, instead of the default URL or main landing page i.e. homepage. An example of this would be if an Advertiser would like Affiliates to direct to their products section or the newsletter sign up page, instead of the homepage. This can be created by an Advertiser in the Creatives section or by Affiliates via the Creatives section.
Display Network is an intermediary that allows advertisers to access a group of websites, videos and apps where display banners can be advertised.
Domain parking is the registration of an Internet domain name without that domain being used for content. Affiliates who own these domains often use domain parking to direct their paid search activity to these sites.
EPC stands for Earnings Per Click and is a calculation of clicks sent to a program or landing page divided by the sale amount, or for affiliates the commission earned. E.g. If $20.00 has been earnt after sending 100 clicks then the EPC is $0.20.
An Email Creative is a set of creatives that advertisers upload to Commission Factory for Affiliates to promote directly via their email database. The creatives have an HTML code that can be copied by the affiliate and may include specific offers or messaging to help encourage their database to convert.
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.
When an advertisement or any form of digital media renders on a user's screen. Impressions are not action-based and are merely defined by a user seeing the advertisement.
Every time we pay you, an invoice is generated and a record is kept in your account. This allows you to keep accurate bookkeeping of your finances. You can view your invoices from your affiliate dashboard or download them for your financial department to have record of.
The page that shows more information about the advertiser's program including commission rates, specific program restrictions, program information and stats.
Affiliates that navigate the user from search engine results to the advertiser's website with at least one interim stage (usually a landing page). Affiliates who run paid search activity often refer the traffic they are getting from these ads to a landing page before then giving the option for users to click further to the advertiser's website.
Loyalty affiliates monetise their membership base through advertiser promotions and increased rewards. A membership base might be employee programs, shopping points, charity/club focused and more.
Refers to the process of validating affiliate applications and then approving them manually after their details or promotional websites have been deemed suitable.
An Affiliate who buys exit traffic and pop-under opportunities from website owners.
Media buying is the act of purchasing advertising inventory on a third-party site or via an ad network. The Media buy might be on performance (CPA), on click (CPC), per 1000 impressions (CPM) or fixed tenancy ($X amount). Media buys will take different forms depending on the publisher, creative and medium.
A synonym for Advertiser. A company that pays for their product to be advertised through various different channels.
Affiliates that run search advertising campaigns that navigate the user from 'search engine results' on a mobile device (such as a smart phone) to the 'merchant's website'.
On-Site Abandonment refers to an affiliate using technology that activates onsite (e.g. Overlay) when a customer is leaving and aims to recover any potentially lost sales.
The payment settings area on your dashboard allows you to specify your preferred payment option (such as Payoneer or Bank Deposit), and how often you would like Commission Factory to pay your commission. You may choose to withdraw your commissions weekly, bi-weekly or monthly.
Commission Factory is one of the only large-scale networks that offer weekly payments to affiliates. We recognise how important it is for affiliates to have consistent cash flow.
Rewards an affiliate for each unique click driven to the advertiser's website.
A marketing pricing system where the advertiser only pays for leads generated at their website. A lead can be a signup form, software download or contest sign up.
An online marketing pricing system where the affiliate is paid on the basis of the number of sales that are directly generated by them for an advertiser.
Sales that have not been validated by the advertiser. The majority of advertisers have a 30-day validation window, however, this differs from advertiser to advertiser.
A form of marketing where payment is only made on measurable results such as a conversion.
A cookie is dropped on every user that views an ad (which means almost every visitor). Even if the user does not click on an ad, the cookie remains with their browser. If the user visits the advertiser's website or somehow completes the defined "action" for the advertiser, attribution is given to the appropriate campaign. For this type of attribution tracking, you need to understand that a "look-back window" is defined, usually in days, to set a limit on how long, after viewing an ad, attribution should be counted for any impression.
Post view typically refers to a type of tracking whereby conversions are tracked to a view or impression and not a click through. AKA Post Impression (PI) or View Through Tracking (VVT).
A comparison shopping website, sometimes called a price comparison website, comparison shopping agent, or comparison shopping engine, is a vertical search engine that shoppers use to filter and compare products based on price, provider and other comparison measures.
Product aggregators use product level data (from API or product feed) to publish on their, or third-party, sites. Thus they replicate product display, however clicking through to purchase on the advertiser site.
Stands for 'Return on Advertising Spend' and is used to determine media effectiveness. It 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 advertising spend. This can also be represented as 5:1 or 16:1 meaning that for every $1.00 spent you get a return of $5.00 or $16.00..
Stands for 'Return on Investment' and is a performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or compare the efficiency of a number of different investments. It directly measures the amount of return on a particular investment, relative to the cost of the investment.
Affiliates that run search advertising campaigns that navigate the user from social media websites to the merchants' websites.
A Text Link, also known as a Promotion Link, is a link that's created by an Advertiser / Agency to communicate an offer or message for Affiliates to use on their site. The offer or message must be clear, concise and include any relevant T&C's for Affiliates to ensure they promote the message correctly.
Third-party tracking tags or pixels are most commonly used by CPA Networks, Sub-Networks, Cashback or Loyalty Affiliates. The tracking code is placed on the merchant or sub networks website and reports/collects data to an external source.
Refers to a snippet of code that collects data needed to identify when a sale has been driven by an affiliate and is placed on all website pages including the confirmation page of a brand's website.
A transaction active affiliate is an affiliate that has sent at least one conversion for your program in the last 30 days.
The process of only counting unique clicks from each web visitor. Unique clicks are typically identified by IP address and browser header.
Advertisers are able to provide Affiliates with Video Creatives to embed and promote on their site. These video creatives will automatically contain tracking data for affiliates, meaning any customers that click through the video can convert immediately.
Widgets are web-based resources that can be embedded into an Affiliate's website to promote an advertiser. These widgets can be used for a search form, product listing, active scroller, competitions, surveys or animated banners that are hosted by the Advertisers site.
Stands for Extensible Markup Language and is a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format readable for both humans and machines. It can be used by affiliates to import data and is more complex than a simplified .csv.
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