This post contains the main terms you’ll need to know in order to work with Travelpayouts.          

This article contains the basic terms used in affiliate marketing and the Travelpayouts platform platform.

• Accrual — The process of manually adding a reward for a particular booking to a partner's account balance.
• Adult traffic — Traffic driven from adult sites.
• Affiliate link — A link that leads to a travel brand's website. Affiliate links contain a unique marker ID which is written into a cookie file on the user’s computer due to which bookings are attributed to a partner thereby bringing him revenue.
• Affiliate platform (network) — A resource which brings together different programs from different brands for users (partners) to work with (promote).
• Affiliate program — A resource allowing users to gain revenue by promoting a brand's tools or services.
• API — A set of requests by means of which partners can receive certain data. More information in the API documentations.
• Banner — HTML code that contains an image and a link to the travel brand's website.
• Banner blindness — A form of selective attention referring to when a user consciously or unconsciously ignores banners or banner-like objects
• Brand / Travel brand — A company or affiliate program that partners can work with within Travelpayouts. For example, Booking.com, Kiwitaxi.ru, etc. 
• Paid search advertising using brand name (traffic type) — The use of a brand name or its derivatives in paid search advertising campaigns (ex.: #cheap hotels on Hotellook#).
• Cash back — A part of the amount paid for a service that gets returned to the buyer. For example, a partner promises a refund of 4% to everyone who buys insurance via his link. The partner reimburses 4% of his revenue.
• Channels - the channels through which the partner brings the audience to the brand's website. They can be pages on social networks, email newsletters, messenger channels, or mobile applications.
• Click-out — A click on a link in the search results redirecting to an OTA or an airline’s website for purchase.
• Click-under — A type of aggressive advertising that works according to the following scheme: the window with the travel brand's website is opened under the current user’s window after any click on the original site regardless of the will of the user.
• Clicks — The number of times your audience clicked on affiliate links or other tools in your content.
• Content project — A website mostly aimed at providing its visitors with information rather than selling goods or services. In the case of Travelpayouts, "content project" is a website that provides visitors with information on travel topics (tips, travel stories, or tourist attraction overviews).
• Paid search (traffic type) — A type of advertising whereby advertising is displayed according to keywords.
• Conversion — A ratio of unique visitors to their actions, including searches, click-outs, and bookings.
• Cookie — A small text file, typically consisting of letters and numbers, downloaded onto a device when the user accesses certain websites. Cookies allow websites to recognize a user’s device.
• Cookie lifetime — The period of time during which an affiliate ID is stored in the user's browser. In the case of the Travelpayouts platform, cookie lifetime is the period of time during which an affiliate ID is stored in cookie files on a user's device thereby bringing revenue to the partner for every booking made by the user.
• CPA (Cost per Action) — A payment model whereby payments are made for each specified action. In the case of Travelpayouts, payouts are made for each completed booking.
• CPC (Cost per Click) — A payment model whereby payments are made per click, rather than per completed booking.
• CTR — The ratio of clicks to impressions of the affiliate tools in your content. It shows how well your affiliate tools attract clicks relative to the number of times they’re displayed.
• Doorways (traffic type) — Web pages that are created (could be generated) for the deliberate manipulation of search engine indexes (spamdexing).
• ECPC — Effective cost per click (The average earnings from one click).
• ECPS — Effective cost per search (The average earnings from one search of travel services via your widgets or White Labels. It helps to estimate how much earnings they will generate).
• ECPU — Effective cost per user (partner's income).
• Email marketing (traffic type) — The use of affiliate links in email marketing through the partner's own email address database.
• Target countries — A practice of delivering content to users based on their geolocation.
• Host — The source through which the reservation was made.
• Iframe — A technology that allows one to display one page inside of another.
• Iframe (traffic type) — A mostly fraudulent type of traffic by which an "invisible" iframe is used to set the cookie with the maximum number of visitors.
• Impressions — The column in statistics displaying the number of times your affiliate widgets and banners (including the White Label) were displayed to the audience. One person can generate multiple impressions.
• Keywords — A set of words and phrases that describe the content of the website and are used in the advertising campaign in paid search advertising.
• Landing page — A webpage (lead capture page, lender) whose main goal is to provide the user with information about goods/services and to convert site visitors into sales or leads.
• Last cookie wins — An attribution model, according to which the purchase is attributed to the partner whose affiliate link gets clicked on last by the user before carrying on a booking. 
• Link generator — An online tool for creating links with the affiliate ID to any page of the travel brand website.
• Low-cost airlines — Airlines that offer lower fares and fewer services than full-service airlines. More information: Low-Cost Airlines.
• ID (affiliate marker) — A special ID number used to track clicks, searches and bookings. More information: (ID and SubID).
• Messengers traffic type — Distribution of advertising links and other advertising materials in messengers.
• Metasearch engine (metasearch) — A search engine that sends queries to several search engines and aggregates the results into one master list.
• Motivated traffic type — Users who agree to perform targeted actions in return for money or any other benefit.
• Negative keywords — A set of words and phrases that are specified in the advertising campaign settings so that ads are not displayed for any search containing those keywords.
• OTA — Online Travel Agency.
• Paid clicks — The column in statistics for the Aviasales program that displays the amount of revenue received from agencies and airlines paying out revenue per click instead of paying for completed bookings.
• Partners — social media influencers, content creators, bloggers and vloggers and other users signed up for Travelpayouts.
• Payout — The process of transferring the earned amount to the partner's account.
• Pop-under (traffic type) — A type of aggressive advertising, whereby the advertisement appears in a new window behind the main page. This new background window loads the advertised website.
• Pop-up (traffic type) — A type of aggressive advertising, whereby the advertisement appears in a new window that opens above the current window after the user clicks on any area of the original site.
• Postback — A URL that allows partners to receive notifications about completed and canceled bookings.
• Potential payouts — The earnings you will receive from pending bookings if brands confirm them.
• PPC — Pay per Click.
• Pre-lander, pre-landing page — A page that appears between your campaigns and the landing page for the program you’re promoting. Pre-landing pages draw in potential customers and encourage them to visit the landing page.
• Program — An affiliate program provided by a travel brand available for Travelpayouts partners (users signed up for the Travelpayouts platform).
• Project — A project used by a partner to promote the services of a travel brand in the Travelpayouts partnership platform. More information: Projects.
• Promotional codes (traffic type) — The use of promotional codes provided by travel brands for other marketing activities to attract users.
• Referral — Partners who sign up with Travelpayouts using another partner's referral link.
• Referral link — A link used by partners to attract new users to Travelpayouts in order to earn additional revenue for each booking made by referral.
• Referral program — An additional way to earn money by recruiting new partners (affiliates). More information: Referral program.
• Referrer domain (referrer) — The website the user came from to make the booking.
• Retargeting / Remarketing (traffic type) — A form of advertising whereby the advertisement is sent to users who showed interest in the product, but left the website without making a purchase.
• Reward — Revenue that is accrued to the partner's account balance in the Travelpayouts affiliate dashboard. The reward can be paid out to the partner once the minimum payout amount is earned.
• Searches — the number of visitors, who came to the brand’s website via your affiliate tools and searched its products through the brand’s search engine.
• Session — The period of time during which a user is active on a website.
• Signature (md5 signature) — An encoded query key formed by the query parameters, affiliate ID, and a security token.
• STR — Sell-through rate. The ratio of clicks to bookings via affiliate tools in your content. It shows how well your affiliate content convinces the audience to make a booking.
• SubID — A parameter that allows partners to track sales separately for each project/tool. The SubID is written after the primary marker and separated from it by a dot. More information: (ID and SubID.
• Targeted ads in social networks (traffic type) — Type of advertising whereby advertising campaigns are displayed in social networks (VK, Facebook, etc.) using the features of the advertising network to target the ads. For example, by sending ads to a specific audience (men aged 18–26 in New York).
• Teaser advertising (traffic type) — A term used for an advertising campaign whereby a series of ads are presented to the consumer without revealing the complete identity of the product or brand until the last ad. Teaser advertising campaigns consist of two parts: a series of teaser ads (one or more than one) and a revealer ad.
• Token — A partner unique access key used for API access.
• Toolbar (traffic type) — A type of traffic (mostly fraudulent) that usually works according to the following scheme: Partner A distributes its Toolbar (browser plugin), which changes the cookie of the original partner B, who actually attracted the buyer. As a result, revenue on the basis of the cookie goes to the wrong person.
• Traffic arbitrage (traffic type) — The process of buying traffic and selling it at a higher rate.
• Travel services — Services offered by brands to tourists. Example: On our website, you can book flights, hotels and other travel services.
• Type-in (traffic type) — A term describing visitors landing on a website by entering a keyword or phrase in the web browser’s address bar rather than by following a hyperlink from another web page, using a browser bookmark, or a search-box search.
• Typosquatting (traffic type) — A form of cybersquatting (creating sites with domain names similar to those owned by existing brands) that targets Internet users who incorrectly type a website address into their web browser. The use of a domain name similar to a known brand or trademark in order to confuse the users who incorrectly type a website address into their web browser.
• Visitors — The number of users, who visited the brand's website from the affiliate tools.
• White Label — A tool that allows one to open search results for travel services on a partner's website page without going to the brand's travel sites (for example https://whitelabel.travelpayouts.com/).
• Widget — An element of a user interface that the user can interact with (e.g., a search form, calendar, or useful resource).
• YouTube traffic (traffic type) — Organic traffic driven from YouTube; e.g. content project on a YouTube channel.