Affiliate, referral & influencer marketing glossary

Affiliate marketing is a performance-based channel where a business pays external partners (affiliates) a commission for each sale, signup or action they drive through their own trackable links or codes.

A referral program rewards a company's existing customers for introducing new paying customers, usually through a shareable link or code built into the product.

Influencer marketing is a channel where creators promote a product to their audience, typically compensated through flat fees, commissions on tracked sales, or a mix of both.

An affiliate network is a marketplace that connects merchants with affiliates, handling tracking, reporting and consolidated payouts across many programs in exchange for a fee or revenue share.

Attribution is the process of determining which affiliate, referrer or campaign gets credit for a conversion, based on the touchpoints that preceded the sale.

Server-side tracking (also called server-to-server or S2S/postback tracking) records conversions through direct server-to-server calls rather than relying on browser cookies or client-side scripts.

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

Last-click attribution credits the conversion to the most recent affiliate link or touchpoint the customer interacted with before buying.

Coupon code attribution credits a sale to an affiliate or influencer based on a unique discount code the customer entered at checkout, instead of a tracked link click.

UTM parameters are tags added to a URL (such as utm_source and utm_campaign) that identify where traffic came from, letting analytics and affiliate tools attribute visits and conversions to a specific source.

Sub-ID tracking lets an affiliate or influencer append a custom identifier to their links so they can break performance down by placement, campaign, or individual post.

A recurring commission pays an affiliate on every renewal of a subscription they referred, not just the first payment, for as long as the customer keeps paying (or up to a defined limit).

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

A chargeback is a forced reversal of a payment initiated by the customer's bank or card issuer, typically after a dispute, returning the funds to the customer.

A mass payout is the process of paying many affiliates at once in a single batch, rather than sending each payment individually.

Affiliate fraud is any attempt to earn commissions through illegitimate means — such as fake conversions, stolen credit, or self-dealing — rather than genuine referrals.

Cookie stuffing is an affiliate fraud technique that drops tracking cookies onto users who never clicked an affiliate link, so the affiliate is falsely credited for conversions they did not drive.

Self-referral fraud occurs when an affiliate makes purchases through their own referral link — or via friends and fake accounts — to collect commissions on their own spending.

Chargeback fraud is when a buyer disputes a legitimate card payment to reclaim the money while keeping the product — in affiliate programs it is doubly costly, because the merchant may have already paid a commission on the reversed revenue.

A card fingerprint is a stable identifier a payment processor derives from a physical card number, letting merchants recognize the same card across transactions — and across different customer emails — without ever storing the card number itself.

EPC, or earnings per click, is the average commission an affiliate earns per click they send, calculated as total commissions divided by total clicks.

Customer lifetime value (LTV) is the total revenue a business expects to earn from a customer over the entire relationship, before or after costs depending on the definition.

Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors or clicks that complete a desired action — such as a signup or purchase — out of the total who had the opportunity.