95 terms from Marketplace, Affiliate and Partner Economics, each defined in a sentence or two, with a link to the calculator that works the number out where one exists.
Advertising cost of sale. Ad spend divided by the revenue those ads produced, expressed as a percentage. It is ROAS inverted, and the two say the same thing in opposite directions.
Open the calculator →The brand paying for results.
A click through a tracked partner link.
The same, from the advertiser point of view. A variable cost, so it belongs inside contribution margin.
Open the calculator →Stopping affiliates claiming sales another channel already produced.
Whether the commission you pay leaves enough margin after everything else.
Open the calculator →Earnings per hundred clicks, the metric publishers judge you on.
Any scheme claiming commission for results that were not produced.
An ad view on a partner property.
A lead attributed to a partner.
Lifetime value of customers arriving through affiliates. Often lower, especially from coupon sites.
Open the calculator →What is left after commission.
Paying partners a commission for sales or leads they send you.
A middleman connecting advertisers with publishers and handling tracking and payment.
The order itself, as recorded in the network.
Either side of that relationship, depending on who is speaking.
What you actually pay out after reversals.
The partner sending the traffic.
Revenue attributed to the affiliate channel.
Revenue over commission paid. Looks excellent, and ignores incrementality.
Open the calculator →A sale attributed to a partner.
The same in affiliate programmes.
How a click is connected to a later sale.
The share of submitted conversions the advertiser accepts.
A rule forcing credit to one channel regardless of the path.
Partners bidding on your brand name and claiming credit for demand you created.
The advertising cost of sale at which a sale contributes nothing and costs nothing. It equals your contribution margin percentage, and spending above it buys volume at a loss.
Open the calculator →Two channels competing for the same customer and both charging you.
The share of transactions disputed by the cardholder.
Automated or fake clicks generated to earn payment or drain a competitor budget.
Firing a fake click at install time on mobile to steal attribution.
A ceiling on what a partner can earn per sale.
A minimum payout per result.
Faked or hijacked conversions.
Dropping tracking cookies on people who never clicked, so the partner claims later sales.
Crediting a sale to whoever supplied the discount code.
Coupon sites taking commission on sales that were already happening. The oldest problem in affiliate.
The same mechanism, spelled out.
Payment per sale, usually a percentage of order value.
A partner link pointing straight to a product rather than the homepage. Converts far better.
What a publisher makes per click sent. Your offer competes against every other offer on their site.
What a publisher makes per lead delivered.
What a publisher makes per completed sale.
Short for earnings per click.
Crediting the partner who introduced the customer. Favours content sites.
One rate regardless of volume or product.
Short for gross merchandise value. A scale number, not a revenue number.
Total value of goods sold through a marketplace, before fees and returns.
A mix of fixed fee and revenue share.
The same after commission and margin. The only number worth managing to.
Affiliate revenue that would not have arrived otherwise. Always lower than attributed revenue.
Genuinely new revenue from a partnership.
Crediting the final partner touch. Favours coupon sites that appear at checkout.
Average order value on a marketplace. Often lower, because comparison is easier.
Open the calculator →Conversion rate on marketplace traffic, usually higher than on your own site because intent is stronger.
Open the calculator →What is left after marketplace fees, fulfilment and advertising. Frequently thinner than sellers expect.
Open the calculator →GMV after returns and cancellations.
What the network charges on top of commission, usually a percentage of payout.
A higher rate for genuinely new customers. The cleanest fix for coupon cannibalisation.
Open the calculator →Short for net merchandise value. Closer to reality than GMV.
What it costs to recruit and onboard a partner.
A partner taking credit for sales another channel already produced.
The balance between content sites, coupon sites, loyalty apps and creators.
The same across all partner types.
Margin on business coming through partners.
The same for non-affiliate partnerships.
Whether a partner earns more than they cost to support.
A grouping used to set commission or support level.
Extra payment for exceeding quality or conversion targets.
A server call confirming a conversion back to the partner.
What the partner earns per result.
The same measured per publisher. The spread between publishers is usually enormous.
What the publisher keeps after their own costs.
How good the traffic from a given publisher actually is.
The share later cancelled, usually for returns or fraud.
Server-to-server tracking, independent of the browser.
The full term. Survives cookie loss and ad blockers.
A parameter partners use to label their own traffic sources. Essential for spotting which sub-source is fraudulent.
Total advertising cost of sale. Ad spend measured against total revenue rather than only ad-attributed revenue, which shows whether paid activity is lifting organic sales or replacing them.
Open the calculator →Rates that rise with volume. Aligns incentives, and squeezes margin exactly when volume is highest.
A charge for the tracking infrastructure itself.
A value carried in the URL so a conversion can be traced back.
The same, described in the contract clause that forbids it.
Whether the visitors behave like real prospects.
Checking traffic for bots and fraud before paying for it.
Extra payment for hitting a volume threshold.