Glossary
Ad server & affiliate marketing glossary
Plain-English definitions of the terms behind ad serving, affiliate tracking, and media buying — from postbacks and click IDs to traffic-back and smartlinks. Written for people who run campaigns, not for a textbook.
A
An ad server decides which ad to show for each request, delivers it, and records impressions, clicks, and conversions. How ad servers work, explained simply.
An ad zone is a named placement slot on a publisher property with its own tag, targeting, and stats — the unit ad servers use to organize inventory.
An affiliate network is a marketplace that matches advertisers with publishers and handles tracking, reporting, and payments for both sides.
Approval rate is the share of submitted conversions an advertiser accepts after review. Holds, rejection reasons, and why the rate moves.
Attribution decides which click gets credit for a conversion. How last-click attribution and attribution windows work in affiliate tracking.
B
Bot traffic is non-human clicks and impressions — crawlers, click farms, fraud scripts. How it distorts campaign stats and how to filter it.
C
A click ID is a unique identifier generated for every ad click, passed to the advertiser and returned in the postback to attribute conversions.
Conversion rate is the share of clicks that end in a conversion. What counts as a good CR and how flow, geo, and traffic quality move it.
Conversion tracking records when a visitor completes a desired action and attributes it to the click and campaign that caused it. Methods and trade-offs.
CPA pricing pays only when a defined action happens — a lead, sale, or install. How the CPA model works and when it beats CPC and CPM.
A CPA network connects advertisers who pay per action with affiliates who drive the traffic, handling tracking, payouts, and quality control in between.
CPC pricing charges the advertiser for each click on an ad. How CPC bidding works and how it pairs with EPC in campaign math.
CPM is the price per 1,000 ad impressions. Where CPM buying is used and how to convert between CPM, CPC, and CPA in campaign math.
CTR is clicks divided by impressions — the share of people who saw an ad and clicked it. What it tells you about creatives and placements.
A custom tracking domain puts your own domain on tracking links instead of a shared platform domain — for trust, deliverability, and control.
D
Direct linking sends ad traffic straight to the offer page with no prelander in between. When it outperforms bridge pages and when it burns budget.
E
EPC is revenue divided by clicks — the standard yardstick for comparing offers and placements regardless of conversion rate or payout size.
M
Media buying is purchasing ad traffic — push, pop, native, search — and arbitraging it against offer payouts. The core loop, explained.
O
An offer is a packaged advertiser deal: the product, landing pages, payout, conversion event, and traffic rules an affiliate agrees to when promoting it.
P
A payout is the amount paid to an affiliate for each conversion. How payout rules, geo tiers, and revenue share models work.
A postback URL is a server-to-server callback that reports a conversion, carrying the click ID so the sale or lead is credited to the right click.
A prelander is a page between the ad and the offer that warms the visitor up — quizzes, advertorials, spin-wheels — to lift conversion and approval rates.
R
Redirect tracking routes each click through the tracker before the destination — via HTTP 302 or an HTML/JS hop. Trade-offs of each method.
ROAS is revenue divided by ad spend. How it differs from ROI, and which one to optimize in performance campaigns.
S
S2S tracking reports conversions directly between servers using a click ID, instead of relying on browser pixels and cookies. Reliable and blocker-proof.
A smartlink is a single URL that auto-routes each click to the best-matching offer by geo, device, and carrier. Where smartlinks fit and their trade-offs.
Sub IDs are free-form labels (sub1–sub5) appended to tracking links to segment traffic by placement, creative, or keyword in reports.
T
A tracking link routes a click through the tracker, which logs it, assigns a click ID, and redirects to the destination. Anatomy of a campaign URL.
Tracking macros are placeholders like {click_id} or {payout} that tracking systems replace with real values at click or postback time.
A tracking pixel is a snippet on the confirmation page that reports a conversion from the browser. Simple to install, but fragile compared to postbacks.
A traffic-back URL is the fallback destination an ad server redirects to when no campaign can serve — monetizing unsold or filtered traffic.
W
A white-label ad server runs under your own brand and domain, so advertisers and publishers see your platform — not the vendor behind it.