Affiliate Glossary

A partner who sends players to a casino and is paid for the ones who deposit.

An independent marketer, whether a site owner, a streamer, a media buyer or a community operator, who drives traffic to an operator under a tracked link and earns commission on the players who convert. The affiliate owns the traffic and the audience. The operator owns the product.

See also: Affiliate network, Tracking link

The person who sets your deals, allocates casinos to you and handles your account.

Your counterpart at the network. They agree your rates per casino, decide which brands you are placed on, supply creative and tracking links, and are who you go to when something is not converting or a payment is late.

See also: Affiliate network, Deal

An intermediary that aggregates casino programmes, handles tracking and consolidates payouts.

Rather than contracting with each operator separately, an affiliate works with an iGaming affiliate platform that holds the commercial relationships and provides one tracking layer, one dashboard and one monthly payment across every brand. The trade-off is a layer between the affiliate and the operator. The benefit is deal access, consolidated reporting, and not chasing ten payments.

See also: Affiliate, Affiliate manager

The rule deciding which affiliate is credited when a player converts.

Last click, meaning the most recent affiliate touched before registration, is the near-universal default in iGaming. The second half of the rule is the window: how long a click stays valid. On a lifetime revenue share, attribution is usually bound to the player account at registration rather than to the click, which is what makes it keep paying.

See also: Click ID, Tracking link

Paid search ads on the casino's own brand name.

Widely restricted, because the operator would be paying for a player who already typed their name into a search box. Restrictions are contract terms, and breaching one usually voids the commission on that traffic.

See also: Traffic source

A deposit reversed by the player's bank or card issuer.

The money goes back, so the conversion it created is unwound and any commission paid on it is reversed. Surfacing chargebacks is one of the main reasons a conversion is held for review before it is confirmed.

See also: FTD, Reversal

The token issued when someone clicks your link, returned later with the conversion.

The thread that connects a click to a deposit. It is issued at click time, carried into the operator's systems, and echoed back on the conversion callback. A conversion arriving without one cannot be attributed to anybody, which is why it is the field integrations most often get wrong.

See also: Tracking link, S2S postback, Attribution

A flat fee paid once for each player who deposits and meets the qualifying bar.

Cost per acquisition. The rate is fixed and paid a single time per qualifying player, regardless of what that player does afterwards. Predictable, which is why it suits paid media. See what CPA is.

See also: RevShare, Hybrid, FTD

The agreed commercial terms between an affiliate and a casino: model, rate and conditions.

A deal names the model (CPA, RevShare, hybrid), the rate, the qualification bar, the accepted countries and the permitted traffic channels. Deals are per affiliate and per casino, so two affiliates promoting the same brand routinely hold different terms.

See also: CPA, RevShare, Qualification

Total earnings divided by total clicks, or what one click is worth to you.

The quickest way to compare two casinos or two campaigns on one number, because it folds both conversion rates and the deal rate together. It is only meaningful over enough clicks to be stable, and only comparable between campaigns targeting similar audiences.

See also: Funnel, CPA

A player's first real-money deposit at a casino, the event most deals pay on.

First-time deposit. It is first per casino, not per person: the same player depositing at two different brands produces two legitimate FTDs, because each operator is acquiring a customer they did not have. A later deposit by the same player is a redeposit, not an FTD. See what an FTD is.

See also: Redeposit, Registration, CPA

The stages a visitor passes through: click, registration, first deposit, redeposit.

Each step has a conversion rate against the step above it. Click to registration tells you whether your audience matched the offer. Registration to deposit tells you whether the operator's onboarding converts them. A strong first rate with a weak second is usually the casino's problem, not yours.

See also: Registration, FTD, EPC

The country a player is in, and whether a programme accepts it.

Deals specify accepted territories, driven by licensing, local advertising law and the operator's own commercial priorities. A market being reachable is not the same as it being permitted. Coverage by country is on the programme pages.

See also: Restricted territory, Deal

What players lost, before any deduction.

Gross gaming revenue is stakes minus winnings, with nothing subtracted. It is the operator's top line and the starting point from which NGR is derived. Affiliate revenue shares are essentially always paid on NGR, not GGR.

See also: NGR

A smaller flat fee per depositor plus a smaller revenue share.

Both models at once, each reduced. It funds media spend up front while keeping some of the long tail. The usual choice when the traffic is proven but the retention is not. See CPA vs RevShare.

See also: CPA, RevShare

Players rewarded for signing up or depositing.

Converts well and retains badly, because the player is there for the reward, deposits the minimum and leaves. Commonly restricted for exactly that reason, and a frequent cause of voided conversions when run undeclared.

See also: Traffic source, Qualification

Whether a month of negative revenue is carried forward and deducted from your next positive month.

If a cohort wins more than it stakes, that month's net revenue is negative. With carryover, the deficit rolls forward and must be worked off before you are paid again. Without it, each month starts at zero. It is one line in a contract and it can be the most expensive line in it. TopStep Partners operates a no negative carryover policy on standard RevShare agreements.

See also: RevShare, NGR

What players lost, minus bonuses, fees, tax and other agreed deductions.

The base a revenue share is calculated on. The deductions are not standardised: bonus costs, payment fees, gaming duty and sometimes platform fees all vary by contract. A higher percentage of a heavily deducted NGR can be worth less than a lower percentage of a lightly deducted one, so compare the definition before the rate.

See also: GGR, RevShare

The bar a player must clear before a conversion is payable.

Typically a minimum first deposit, sometimes a wagering requirement, sometimes both, plus country and channel conditions. Two deals at the same headline rate with different qualification bars are not worth the same, and the difference only becomes visible after the traffic is bought.

See also: FTD, CPA, Deal

Any deposit by a player after their first one.

It is not an FTD, and on a standard CPA deal it pays nothing extra. On a revenue share it is simply more activity feeding the monthly net revenue figure. A deal paying per deposit rather than per first deposit is a materially different deal.

See also: FTD, RevShare

A player creating an account, before any money has moved.

The middle stage of the funnel. The player has arrived through your link and opened an account, but has not deposited. It proves your audience matched the offer. On its own it very rarely earns anything in iGaming.

See also: FTD, Funnel

A country a programme will not accept traffic from.

Sometimes a licence condition, sometimes a legal prohibition, sometimes a commercial choice. Traffic from a restricted territory does not merely fail to convert. It can void the commission on the campaign that produced it.

See also: GEO

A confirmed commission cancelled after the fact.

Happens when the underlying conversion turns out to be fraudulent, a chargeback, a duplicate account or a breach of the deal's traffic terms. A reversal is recorded as its own correcting entry rather than by editing history, so the trail stays auditable.

See also: Chargeback, FTD

A percentage of the net revenue your players generate, paid for as long as they play.

Revenue share. You receive a share of net gaming revenue every month rather than a one-off fee, so earnings compound with retention. What counts as net revenue, and whether losses carry over, are the two clauses that decide what the percentage is worth. See what RevShare is.

See also: CPA, NGR, Negative carryover

A server-to-server call from the casino announcing that a conversion happened.

No browser involved, so it is unaffected by ad blockers, cookie policy or the player navigating away. It carries the click ID, the event type, the amount, a unique transaction id and a signature. See what an S2S postback is.

See also: Click ID, Attribution

A percentage of what the affiliates you referred earn, paid by the network on top.

Also called a referral override. You introduce another affiliate, then earn a share of their commission, up to 10% here. It is never deducted from the person you referred. The network pays it in addition. See sub-affiliate commission.

See also: Affiliate, CPA

Your personal link for one casino, carrying the identifier that attributes players to you.

Unique per affiliate and per casino. Rewriting or stripping its parameters is the most common self-inflicted cause of missing commission. See how affiliate tracking works.

See also: Click ID, Attribution

Where your players come from, and whether the casino permits that channel.

Search, paid social, push, email, Telegram, streaming, influencers and more. Every deal names the channels it accepts, and an unlisted channel should be treated as prohibited rather than unspecified. See traffic sources.

See also: Brand bidding, Incentivised traffic