Many of our users are new to click tracking and Internet marketing. When first starting out, there can be a lot of information to absorb and it can become confusing at times.
So we wanted to give you a helpful list of some of the words and abbreviations that you may come across in the advertising and marketing industry.
This is by no means a FULL list of them, as new terms are sure to come and go. But we thought this might be helpful when viewing your stats here at ClixTrac or when viewing offers on an affiliate network or when using an ad platform.
A/B Testing
Affiliate
Affiliate Link
Affiliate Network
Affiliate Program
Banner Ad
Bots
Click
Commission
Conversion
Conversion Rate (Conv. Rate or CR)
Cookie
Cookie Expiration
CPA (Cost-per-acquisition)
CPC (Cost-per-click)
CPM
CTR (Click-through Rate)
EPC (Earnings-per-click)
HTML Code
Impressions
IP Address
Javascript Code
Last Click
Landing Page
Pixel
PPC (Pay-per-click)
Referrer
Split-Testing
Sub ID
Sub ID Forwarding
Text Ad
Tracking URL
Unique Clicks
URL
View
A/B Testing
Also called "Split-Testing". This is the process of comparing two similar offers against one another, in order to see which version performs better. You're goal is to see which one has better sales copy or graphics and generates the most customers from the traffic you send.
Affiliate
An individual who promotes a merchant's product or service and receives compensation for the sales or leads they generate. This compensation is often called "commission".
Affiliate Link
A special link that's provided by the merchant and assigned specifically to you, for the purpose of promoting that merchant's product or offer. The link usually contains a unique ID that enables the merchant to track the sales or leads you have generated.
Affiliate Network
A company that manages affiliate programs for a variety of merchants. They sort of play the middleman and provide all the tracking required. They will bill the merchants when sales are generated for their products or services and pay commission to the affiliates who were responsible for generating those sales. The affiliate network will often call the merchants "advertisers" and call the affiliates "publishers".
Affiliate Program
This is when a merchant allows other people (aka affiliates) to promote their product or service and earn money (aka commission) each time their effort results in a new sale or lead.
Banner Ad
A graphical/image advertisement that is placed on a website or ad network, in order to promote a merchant.
Bots
Also known as "Robots", "Spiders" or "Crawlers". These are computer programs that troll the Internet, visiting websites and following links on those websites, in search of something that they were designed to find. For example, sometimes, they are malicious and are used by spammers, in order to find email addresses and send spam. Sometimes, they are indexing robots that are trying to determine where that website should be indexed on search engines, like Google. Sometimes, bots find a tracking link that's posted on a website and follow it, which in turn generates false "Clicks" within your tracking stats.
Click
This is when a person presses on a computer mouse or taps on their smartphone screen, in order to follow your tracking link or interact with your banner ad. It's what happens when the prospect wants to get more information about whatever you're promoting.
Commission
A certain amount of money or compensation that a merchant pays to an affiliate for generating each sale or lead for that merchant.
Conversion
When you get a prospect to take a specific, desired action, after clicking on your ad. Also called an acquisition, since you were able to acquire something from the prospect. It could be buying a product or service, filling out a form, subscribing to a mailing list or whatever the intended goal may be.
Conversion Rate (Conv. Rate or CR)
This is a metric used to show the number of times your ad has been clicked, as compared to the number of times prospects have purchased the product being offered (conversions). The result is displayed as a percentage. The formula that is used is Conversions divided by Clicks multiplied by 100 equals the Conversion Rate (Conversions / Clicks x 100 = Conversion Rate). For example, if your link has 100 Clicks and 5 sales, it has a 5% Conversion Rate (5 / 100 x 100 = 5%). The higher the Conversion Rate, the better that website is doing at converting clickers into sales.
Cookie
A text file that is sent from a website to a visitor's web browser. This file usually contains a small amount of information about that visitor, such as what website they came from or which affiliate referred them to the website and how long the cookie should remain valid. It's simply stored on their computer for later use. The originating website can then use this file for various reasons. (In regards to affiliate marketing, Cookies are used to assign an ID to people that have clicked on your affiliate link and visited the merchant's website.) Cookies are only valid for a predefined period. They then expire and become invalid. If that person returns to make a purchase before the cookie expires, the affiliate will be credited with the sale and receive commission.
Cookie Expiration
When cookies are sent to a visitor's web browser by a website, the website also places a date on the cookie and tells the web browser how long that cookie should remain valid. It stamps it with an expiration date. This is typically 30-90 days after the date it was given to that visitor. Once that time has passed, the cookie expires and becomes invalid. Meaning, it's no longer read by the website and gets ignored. Depending on the web browser being used and the visitor's browser settings, expired cookies may then be deleted from their system.
CPA (Cost-per-acquisition)
Also called "cost-per-action". Merchants will often use this term to refer to the amount of money they had to pay to run ad campaigns before someone finally completed a desired action, such as making a purchase or becoming a lead. This term is also used on affiliate networks to describe how much you'll earn per action. For example, if a merchant on the network is paying $4 for each lead you generate for them, they might state the offer has a $4 CPA.
CPC (Cost-per-click)
This refers to the amount of money you had to pay to display an advertisement before someone finally clicked on that ad to go to your website for more information. For example, if you paid $100 to run an ad campaign on someone's website and 20 people ended up clicking on your ad there, you could say that your CPC for that campaign was $5 ($100 / 20 = $5). This term is used to measure your expenses.
CPM
This is the amount of money that it costs you to display a banner advertisement 1000 times (aka 1000 impressions). For example, if a website is selling ad space and offering a rate of $7 CPM, it means they will show your ad 1000 times for $7. Meaning, if you wanted your ad to be shown 20,000 times, it would cost you $140 ($7 x 20 = $140).
CTR (Click-through Rate)
This is a metric used to show the number of times your banner has been clicked, as compared to the number of times your banner has been viewed. The result is displayed as a percentage. The formula that is used is Clicks divided by Views multiplied by 100 equals the CTR (Clicks / Views x 100 = CTR). For example, if your banner has 1000 views and 50 clicks, it has a 5% CTR (50 / 1000 x 100 = 5%). Usually, the higher the CTR, the better that banner is doing at enticing people to click on it. That may then result in a higher number of sales or leads on the merchant's website.
EPC (Earnings-per-click)
This is a calculation that's used when measuring your affiliate earnings. You take the total number of clicks you generated for a merchant and then compare that number to the revenue that those clicks created for you. For example, if your ad campaign generated 200 clicks for the merchant and those clicks led to you earning $70 in affiliate commission, your EPC would be $0.35 ($70 / 200 = $0.35).
HTML Code
HTML is actually an abbreviation for "HyperText Markup Language". HTML code is the code that is used to create webpages on the Internet. With special HTML code, you can specify that certain images or text are linked to other websites and control where people go when they click on certain items. Web browsers use that HTML code when they load the website and display it to the user.
Impressions
Also known as "Views". This is the number of times that your banner is shown on a website. Each time someone loads that page, it will load your banner and add another view count to that banner's stats. It doesn't necessarily mean that person ever physically looked at your banner. For example, if the banner is down near the bottom of the page, they may have never scrolled down far enough to see it. But, since it loaded, it still counted as an impression/view. This data is often used in conjunction with the banner's click counter, in order to determine how effective each banner is performing.
IP Address
A unique string of numbers separated by periods (like 40.77.167.112) that identifies each computer or device using the Internet. These numbers are assigned by that person's Internet Service Provider and it allows their device to communicate over a network. Software such as web browsers use these to request websites from web servers and then display those websites for the user.
Javascript Code
Javascript is a client-side scripting language that brings a little more interactivity to a website. Its functionality is primarily aimed at enhancing forms and navigation. Javascript allows you to dynamically update a webpage's content via servers versus manually changing the HTML code on the page. Some websites may want banners to use Javascript and some may want banners to use HTML code. It's usually just a matter of preference, so we provide both versions of the banner code for our banner trackers.
Last Click
In most affiliate programs, the "last click" is often used to describe a scenario where if a prospect clicks on multiple affiliate links, it will be the last link clicked that gets credit for that prospect's purchase. That's because the last affiliate's cookie will usually replace any other affiliate's cookie that had already been placed on the customer's computer.
Landing Page
Also called a "Destination URL". This is the website address that you want people taken to after they click on your tracking link or banner ad. If you're an affiliate marketer, you'll usually enter your special affiliate link that the merchant provided to you for this setting.
Pixel
A pixel is the smallest unit of a digital image or graphic that can be displayed on the screen. Pixels are combined to form a complete image, video, text or anything visible on a computer display. When it comes to ad tracking, a pixel is often used to count ad views or some other data each time it loads.
PPC (Pay-per-click)
This term describes when an advertiser has to pay a certain amount each time someone clicks on their ad. This is a common practice when dealing with ad networks, such as Google AdWords. The goal of the advertiser is often to convert a certain percentage of those ad clickers into paying customers and make their campaign profitable. PPC is sometimes used in affiliate programs as well. Just like with ad networks, the merchant may pay the affiliate for clicks on their affiliate link, instead of sales. However, merchants rarely pay affiliates based on clicks nowadays, due to bad affiliates that cheat and use bots or other means to send fake clicks to their affiliate link.
Referrer
Also called the "Referring URL". It's the website URL that a visitor came from, in order to reach another website. If you're running a banner ad on Facebook.com, Facebook.com (or the exact webpage URL from Facebook.com/whatever/yadayada) will show up as the "referrer" for that banner's clicks.
Split-Testing
Also called "A/B testing". This is the process of comparing two similar offers against one another, in order to see which version performs better. You're goal is to see which one has better sales copy or graphics and generates the most customers from the traffic you send.
Sub ID
Also referred to as CID tracking, SID tracking and TID tracking. Many ad networks and affiliate programs will refer to it differently. For example, Commission Junction calls them SID and ClickBank calls them TID. Sub IDs allow you to add extra tracking details to your existing trackers and log that information with your stats. You might want to use that extra ID to track a specific traffic source. For example, if you're running ads on Facebook, you could add something like &subid=FB or &subid=Facebook to the end of your tracking link. That way, all clicks and conversions that come in with that specific Sub ID will be displayed in the Sub ID stats area here and kept separate from the normal daily stats. So it makes it easier to see how specific traffic sources are performing acrossed a variety of trackers.
Sub ID Forwarding
Sub ID Forwarding allows you to take Sub ID data that is being captured during the tracker's click process and forward that data over to your destination website, as the clicker is being redirected to that website. It simply attaches the extra data to the end of your landing page URL and takes the clicker to a slighly modified destination URL. The destination website can then also capture that same Sub ID data and carry it into your sales data for you. If you're an affiliate marketer, you might not have access to the merchant's website code and therefore can't embed normal conversion tracking code on their website. So this special Sub ID Forwarding feature gives the merchant the ability to log that info and help you see where your sales are coming from. When you enable this feature, it's important to make sure you're using the proper identifier in your trackers. For example, ClickBank uses "TID", so you'd add &tid=[word] to your ClickBank trackers, instead of our standard &subid=[word]. The website receiving the traffic has to have the correct identifier sent to them, so they know which item to log for you.
Text Ad
This is an advertisement that consists of words or sentences and has no image or graphics associated with it. Rather than using a flashy image to catch the prospect's attention, you use words that entice them and make them curious enough to click on the ad to get more information.
Tracking URL
Also called a "tracking link". This is simply a website link that is being used to count the number of times people use it. The tracking system counts the click and then instantly redirects the clicker to the real destination website.
Unique Clicks
Unique clicks tell you how many separate people clicked on your link that particular day. Meanwhile, general clicks tell you how many times the link was clicked altogether. For example, let's say one person clicked on your tracking link today, but they clicked it 5 times. Well, we would count all 5 of those clicks in the tracker's general click stats, but only their first click would be considered a "unique click". Therefore, your stats would show 5 Clicks and 1 Unique. A tracker only counts one "unique click" from that person each day. If that person clicks the link any more during that same day, they'll increase the tracker's general click count, but the stats for unique clicks will remain the same. If that same person was to use that tracker again days later, they would again be counted as a unique click for that new day and the screening process would begin all over again.
URL
URL is the abbreviation for Uniform Resource Locator, which is just a fancy way of saying website address. It tells the web browser where to go, so it can then locate that website's web hosting and display the website for you.
View
Also known as an "impression". This is the number of times that your banner is displayed on a website. Each time someone loads that page, it will load your banner and add another view count to that banner's stats. It doesn't necessarily mean that person ever physically looked at your banner. For example, if your banner is down near the bottom of the page, even though the page may have loaded the banner as it loaded the rest of the page's content, that person may have never scrolled down far enough to see it. But, since it loaded, it was still counted as a view/impression. This data is often used in conjunction with the banner's click counter, in order to determine how well each banner is performing.
If you have any words within your ClixTrac control panel that you need help understanding, please let us know.
