This affiliate marketing glossary explains 50 terms that media buyers, affiliate managers and advertisers use every day in cash-on-delivery (COD) nutra, the vertical of health and beauty products such as supplements, creams and gels.
It is written for newcomers and for buyers moving into COD nutra from other verticals. Terms are grouped by topic, and each one has its own anchor link, so you can jump to the term you need or send a colleague a direct link to it.
Jump to a group:
- Offers and payout models
- Lead life cycle
- Players
- Traffic and tracking
- Funnel and creatives
- Metrics
- Slang
Offers and payout models
An offer is a product that an advertiser pays affiliates to promote, published with its conditions: the payout per conversion, allowed GEOs and traffic sources, caps and creative restrictions. The terms below describe how that payout is earned.
COD (cash on delivery)
COD (cash on delivery) is a sales model in which the customer leaves a phone number, confirms the order with a call center and pays the courier in cash when the parcel arrives. It is common in markets where many buyers avoid paying online. The prepaid alternative, where the customer pays by card upfront, is called a straight sale (SS).
See also: COD affiliate marketing: how cash on delivery offers work.
In COD nutra: you are paid when the call center confirms an order, but the advertiser earns only when the parcel is paid for, so lead quality matters to both sides (see why prepaid wins in Germany and France).
CPA (cost per action)
CPA (cost per action) is a payout model in which the affiliate earns a fixed amount for each completed target action, and in COD nutra that action is usually an order confirmed by the call center. Media buyers also use CPA as a metric: how much ad spend one approved conversion costs. Keep both meanings in mind when you read reports and offer terms.
In COD nutra: you are paid for approved leads only, so a cheap lead that the call center rejects still costs you its full price.
CPL (cost per lead)
CPL (cost per lead) is a payout model in which the affiliate is paid for every valid lead, such as a submitted form with a real phone number, whether or not it becomes an order. Among media buyers, CPL more often means a metric: ad spend divided by the number of leads. Most COD nutra offers pay per approved order, so CPL usually describes your cost.
In COD nutra: compare your CPL with eCPL (payout multiplied by approve rate) to see whether a campaign can pay off at all.
Cap
A cap is the maximum number of leads or conversions an offer accepts from one affiliate or from the whole network within a set period, usually a day. Advertisers set caps to match call-center capacity, stock and budget. Leads sent above the cap may be paid at a lower rate, redirected or left unpaid, depending on the agreement.
In COD nutra: ask your affiliate manager about the cap before you scale, and agree on a raise in advance if your approval is good.
Low price
Low price is affiliate slang for offers whose landing page shows a much lower price than the product’s usual one, often presented as a limited promotion. The low price makes it easier to leave a request, so leads come in cheaper. The final order is agreed during the call-center confirmation, so approval and buyout can differ a lot from regular-price offers.
In COD nutra: judge a low-price offer by eCPL and approval after a few days of traffic rather than by the number of leads on day one.
Lead life cycle
A lead is a request from a potential buyer, usually a name and phone number left on a landing page. In COD nutra a lead passes through several statuses before it becomes your payout and the advertiser’s delivered order.
Call-center confirmation
Call-center confirmation is the phone call in which an operator contacts a new lead, checks that the person really wants the product, confirms the address and agrees on the package and price. A lead becomes an approved order only after this call. Most COD nutra advertisers run their own call centers or use outsourced ones in the target country.
In COD nutra: the speed and quality of these calls affect your approval as much as your traffic does, so ask how quickly new leads are called.
Approval (approve rate)
Approval is the confirmation of a lead as a real order, and the approve rate is the share of your leads that the call center confirmed. As an illustrative example, if 40 of 100 leads are confirmed, the approve rate is 40%. Because most COD nutra offers pay only for approved leads, the approve rate directly sets how much each lead earns you.
See also: COD lead statuses explained: new, approved, trash, cancelled and hold.
In COD nutra: low approval often points to targeting problems such as the wrong age or curious clicks, but also check the price and promises on your landing page.
Trash and duplicates
Trash is the status for leads that cannot become orders: fake or wrong phone numbers, test entries, spam and people who say they never left a request. A duplicate is a repeat lead from the same person, for example the same phone number twice within a short period. Networks usually count a duplicate once and do not pay for the copies.
In COD nutra: a high share of trash usually means bots, incentivized clicks or a form that is too easy to submit by accident, so fix the source before scaling.
Hold
Hold is the period during which a network keeps your confirmed earnings before they can be withdrawn. It gives the advertiser time to check lead quality and, in COD, to see early buyout results. Hold length depends on the network, the offer and your history. The word is also used for leads still waiting for a call-center decision.
In COD nutra: ask about the hold before you start, because it sets how much working capital you need to keep buying traffic.
Scrub
Scrub is the filtering of submitted leads by a network or advertiser to remove duplicates, fakes and other invalid entries before conversions are counted. A scrub is a normal, agreed part of the terms and shows the real quality of your traffic. It becomes a problem only when rejections are unexplained or do not match what the call center saw.
In COD nutra: ask for rejection reasons by sub ID so you can cut bad placements quickly (more in What is scrub in nutra).
Shave
Shave is the hidden underreporting of an affiliate’s conversions, when a network or advertiser marks good leads as rejected or leaves some of them out to pay less. Unlike a scrub, a shave is neither disclosed nor explained. Typical warning signs are approval that drops sharply as soon as you scale, or statuses that contradict your own tracking data.
In COD nutra: send statuses to your tracker by postback, compare the same traffic across partners and prefer partners that show lead statuses and call outcomes openly.
Upsell
An upsell is an offer of a larger or more expensive order during the call-center confirmation, such as a full course instead of one pack or an extra related product. It raises the advertiser’s average order value. Whether an upsold order changes your payout depends on the offer terms, so check them or ask your affiliate manager.
In COD nutra: a strong upsell rate helps the advertiser earn more per order, which is one reason they can afford a higher payout or cap for good traffic.
Buyout
Buyout is the share of shipped COD orders that customers actually pay for and collect from the courier or post office. It is the final step of the COD chain and decides whether an offer makes money for the advertiser. Orders that are refused at the door or never collected return to the warehouse instead of bringing revenue.
In COD nutra: affiliates are usually paid on approval, but traffic with poor buyout hurts the advertiser, and networks respond by lowering payouts or caps for that source.
RTO (return to origin)
RTO (return to origin) is a COD parcel that could not be delivered or was refused by the customer and is sent back to the seller. The advertiser pays for delivery and the return and gets no revenue, so a high RTO rate can wipe out the margin of an offer. The term is common in Indian and Southeast Asian e-commerce.
In COD nutra: RTO is the other side of buyout, and clear price and product information on the landing page helps reduce it because fewer customers are surprised at the door.
Players
The parties involved in a typical COD nutra deal, from the product owner to the person who buys the traffic.
Direct advertiser
A direct advertiser is the company that owns the product and sells it itself, running its own offers, call center and delivery and working with affiliates directly or through its own affiliate program. With no reseller in between, payouts, caps and hold are agreed with the people who actually set them, and feedback on traffic comes from the source.
In COD nutra: a direct advertiser sees approval and buyout data first-hand, so it can tell you quickly which of your sources bring real buyers.
CPA network
A CPA network, also called an affiliate network, is a platform that connects advertisers with affiliates, collects offers in one place, tracks leads and pays affiliates for conversions. It provides statistics, landing pages, postbacks and payouts, plus support through affiliate managers. Some networks only resell other companies’ offers, while others also run their own products as advertisers.
In COD nutra: before you send traffic, check how the network shows lead statuses, how long the hold is and how payouts are made.
Affiliate (publisher)
An affiliate, also called a publisher or webmaster, is a person or team that sends traffic to offers and earns a payout for each conversion. Affiliates can be solo media buyers, in-house buying teams or owners of websites, channels and communities. Affiliates choose the GEO, traffic source, funnel and creatives, while the advertiser handles the product, calls and delivery.
In COD nutra: tell your manager which sources and GEOs you plan to run, since offers often allow some sources and forbid others.
Affiliate manager
An affiliate manager is the network or advertiser employee who works with affiliates: helps choose offers and GEOs, shares landing pages and creatives, explains restrictions, sorts out lead statuses and agrees on caps and payouts. A good manager also tells you early when something is wrong with your traffic, before the problem turns into lost money.
In COD nutra: ask the manager for approval and buyout broken down by your sub IDs, because this is the fastest way to see which placements to cut.
Traffic arbitrage (media buying)
Traffic arbitrage is buying traffic on ad platforms and earning on the difference between what that traffic costs and what the offer pays for the conversions it brings. Media buying is the more common Western name for the same work, and a media buyer is the person who launches, tests and optimizes the campaigns, working solo, in a team or in-house.
In COD nutra: your margin depends on ad costs, approve rate and payout together, so improving any one of them changes the result of the whole campaign.
Traffic and tracking
Where your visitors come from and how you measure what they do after the click.
Traffic source
A traffic source is any channel that sends visitors to your funnel: social ad platforms such as Facebook, TikTok and Google, push and native ad networks, pop traffic, search, messengers, and your own sites or channels. Each source has its own audience, prices, moderation rules and list of allowed verticals, so the same offer can perform very differently across sources.
In COD nutra: check the offer’s list of allowed traffic sources first, because leads from a forbidden source can go unpaid.
Tracker
A tracker is software that records every click and conversion in your campaigns and shows which source, placement, creative and landing page bring profit. Popular examples are Keitaro, Binom, Voluum and RedTrack. The tracker sits between the ad and the offer, passes a click ID to the network and receives lead statuses back by postback.
In COD nutra: a tracker lets you see approval by creative and placement rather than just lead counts (see our comparison of five trackers).
Postback (S2S)
A postback is a server-to-server (S2S) request that a network sends to your tracker or ad platform when a lead’s status changes, for example when it is created, approved or rejected. Because it travels between servers, it does not depend on cookies or the visitor’s browser. The click ID inside the request ties the status to the exact click.
In COD nutra: set up postbacks for both new leads and approvals, so your tracker shows the approve rate for every creative and placement.
Click ID and sub ID
A click ID is a unique identifier that a tracker or ad platform assigns to each click, and sub IDs (sub1, sub2 and so on) are extra parameters you add to the offer link to label traffic by source, campaign, creative or placement. The network stores these values with each lead and returns them in postbacks and reports.
In COD nutra: label every placement and creative with sub IDs so you and your manager can see approval by segment and switch off weak ones.
UTM tags
UTM tags are standard parameters added to a URL, such as utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign, that tell analytics tools like Google Analytics where a visit came from. They describe the source, medium and campaign of a visit. Click IDs and sub IDs, by contrast, identify individual clicks and leads for your tracker and the network.
In COD nutra: UTM tags are useful on your own pre-landers and sites, but for payouts and lead statuses rely on sub IDs and postbacks.
Pixel and Conversions API
A pixel is a piece of code from an ad platform, such as the Meta Pixel or TikTok Pixel, that sends events from your page back to the platform so it can measure results and optimize delivery. The Conversions API (CAPI) sends the same events from a server, which makes tracking less dependent on browsers and ad blockers.
In COD nutra: a lead event fires instantly while approval comes later, so some buyers send approved orders through the Conversions API to optimize for real orders.
Push traffic
Push traffic is advertising delivered as browser or mobile notifications to users who agreed to receive notifications from a website. The ads look like short messages with an icon, a title and a line of text, and are usually bought per click or per thousand impressions on push networks. The format offers large volume at low prices.
In COD nutra: push visitors tend to click on impulse, so a pre-lander and strict placement filtering usually matter more here than on social traffic.
Native ads
Native ads are ad units designed to match the look of the content around them, such as recommendation widgets with an image and headline below news articles. They are bought on networks like Taboola, Outbrain and MGID and usually lead to an advertorial or another pre-lander rather than straight to the offer’s landing page.
In COD nutra: native networks have their own content rules for health products, so read them before you build the advertorial.
Funnel and creatives
What the user sees on the way from the ad to the order form. Together these steps make up the sales funnel.
Creative
A creative is the ad itself: the image, video or text with a headline that users see on a traffic source. It is the main variable media buyers test, because the creative decides who clicks and with what expectations they arrive on the page. One offer usually needs many creatives to find a profitable one.
In COD nutra: a creative has to fit both the ad platform’s rules and the offer’s restrictions (see trigger words in ad creatives).
Angle
An angle is the main idea or reason to buy that a creative and landing page are built around, for example an expert recommendation, a personal story, a price promotion or worry about a health problem getting worse. One offer can be promoted from many angles, and testing several angles often teaches you more than testing many images with the same idea.
In COD nutra: check the offer’s restrictions before choosing an angle, since some GEOs and sources do not allow medical claims or doctor images.
Pre-lander
A pre-lander is an intermediate page between the ad and the offer’s landing page that warms up the visitor with a story, article, quiz or video before showing the order form. It filters out casual clicks and prepares the visitor for the offer, which usually improves lead quality and approval at the cost of some lost clicks.
In COD nutra: most sources need a pre-lander that matches the angle of the creative (more in our guide to pre-landing pages).
Advertorial
An advertorial is a pre-lander written to look like an editorial piece, such as a news story, interview or review, that leads the reader to the product. It is the usual landing format for native ads. A good advertorial explains the problem and the product in a believable way and is marked as advertising where local rules require it.
In COD nutra: never use invented quotes from real doctors or celebrities, because it breaks advertising rules and is a common reason for rejected traffic.
Quiz funnel
A quiz funnel is a pre-lander built as a short questionnaire, for example about age, habits or symptoms, that ends with a recommendation and the order form. Answering questions keeps visitors engaged and filters out people outside the target audience. The answers can also personalize the final page and give the call center useful context.
In COD nutra: a quiz can raise lead quality, but every extra question costs some leads, so test the number of steps.
Landing page
A landing page is the offer’s page with the product description, price and order form where the visitor leaves a name and phone number. In COD nutra, landing pages are usually provided by the advertiser or network in several versions, translated and adapted for each GEO, and you can run them with or without a pre-lander in front.
In COD nutra: test the different landing pages available for your GEO, because the one with the best CR does not always give the best approval.
Bundle (combo)
A bundle, also called a combo or a link, is the full working combination of offer, GEO, traffic source, targeting, creative and pre-lander that brings profit. Media buyers search for bundles, test them and scale the ones that work. Bundles are rarely shared openly, because one that many people run soon stops paying off.
In COD nutra: every bundle eventually burns out through creative fatigue or competition, so keep testing new ones while the current one is profitable (more on building a sales funnel).
Spy tool
A spy tool is a service that collects ads from traffic sources and lets you search them by GEO, keyword, format, landing page or advertiser. Media buyers use spy tools to study which angles, creative formats and funnels already run in a market before they launch their own campaigns, and to see how long ads stay live.
In COD nutra: use spy tools for ideas and market research, since copying a competitor’s creative one to one rarely works and may break platform rules.
Metrics
The numbers you check to decide whether to stop, fix or scale a campaign.
CTR (click-through rate)
CTR (click-through rate) is the percentage of people who clicked an ad out of everyone who saw it, calculated as clicks divided by impressions and multiplied by 100. It shows how well a creative catches attention in a given audience and placement. A higher CTR usually lowers your cost per click at the same CPM.
In COD nutra: a high CTR with low approval often means the creative attracts curious clicks instead of buyers, so check the whole chain before you scale.
CR (conversion rate)
CR (conversion rate) is the percentage of visitors who completed the target action out of all who reached a page or funnel. In COD nutra it usually means click-to-lead conversion: how many visitors of the landing page or the whole funnel left their name and phone number. CR helps you compare landing pages, pre-landers and traffic segments.
In COD nutra: track CR together with the approve rate, because a funnel that turns many clicks into leads but few leads into orders still loses money.
CPM (cost per mille)
CPM (cost per mille) is the price you pay for 1,000 ad impressions, and the standard way social platforms and many push and native networks charge for ads. It reflects how competitive the audience and the placement are. CPM usually rises in high season, on narrow audiences and in GEOs where many advertisers compete for the same users.
In COD nutra: compare campaigns by cost per approved order rather than by CPM alone, since cheap impressions can come from an audience that never buys.
CPC (cost per click)
CPC (cost per click) is the average amount you pay for one click on your ad. It can be a buying model, where you bid per click, or a metric calculated as ad spend divided by clicks. CPC depends on CPM and CTR together: a more engaging creative lowers your CPC even if the price of impressions stays the same.
In COD nutra: compare your CPC with the offer’s EPC to see quickly whether the traffic has a chance to pay off.
EPC (earnings per click)
EPC (earnings per click) is the average amount an affiliate earns for each click sent to an offer, calculated as total payouts divided by the number of clicks. Networks show EPC to help affiliates compare offers, and media buyers compare it with their CPC: when EPC is higher than CPC, the traffic pays off.
In COD nutra: a network’s EPC is an average across many affiliates and sources, so treat it as a reference point and measure your own.
eCPL and eCPA
eCPL (effective cost per lead) is what one lead is actually worth to you after approval, calculated as payout multiplied by approve rate. eCPA (effective cost per action) is what one approved order actually costs you: ad spend divided by the number of approved leads. A campaign is profitable when your CPL is below eCPL, or your eCPA is below the payout.
Illustrative example (round numbers): a $20 payout and a 40% approve rate give an eCPL of $8, so leads bought at $6 earn money and leads bought at $10 lose it.
ROI (return on investment)
ROI (return on investment) is profit divided by spend and multiplied by 100, and it shows how much you earned or lost for every dollar spent on traffic. An ROI of 0% means you broke even, a positive ROI means profit and a negative ROI means a loss. It is the main figure media buyers use to judge a campaign.
Illustrative example (round numbers): you spent $1,000 on traffic and earned $1,500 in payouts, so profit is $500 and ROI is 50%.
ROAS (return on ad spend)
ROAS (return on ad spend) is revenue divided by ad spend, shown as a ratio or a percentage, and it is the standard metric in e-commerce and on ad platforms. Unlike ROI, it uses revenue rather than profit. For an affiliate whose only cost is traffic, a ROAS of 1 (100%) means break-even and anything above it means profit.
Illustrative example (round numbers): $1,500 in payouts on $1,000 of ad spend is a ROAS of 1.5 (150%), the same result as an ROI of 50%.
Break-even
Break-even is the point where your earnings from a campaign equal what you spent on it, so ROI is 0%. Media buyers work out break-even values before a test, such as the highest CPL or CPC they can afford, to know when to stop a losing campaign and when to keep it running for more data.
In COD nutra: your break-even CPL equals your eCPL, so with an illustrative $20 payout and 40% approve rate you can pay up to $8 per lead.
Dayparting
Dayparting is scheduling ads to run only at certain hours or on certain days of the week, based on when your audience converts best. It cuts spend in hours that bring clicks but few leads or approvals, and it lets you raise bids in the hours that work. You need enough data per hour before drawing conclusions.
In COD nutra: also consider call-center working hours in the GEO, since leads that arrive at night may wait until morning (more in how time of day affects conversion).
Scaling
Scaling is increasing the volume of a profitable campaign while keeping it profitable. Vertical scaling means putting more budget into what already works, and horizontal scaling means copying the bundle to new audiences, placements, sources or countries. Both usually need fresh creatives, because results tend to fall as the same audience sees the same ads.
In COD nutra: agree on a higher cap before scaling and watch approval closely as volume grows (see our guide to scaling campaigns).
Slang
Words you will hear in affiliate chats and at conferences, many of them borrowed from Russian-speaking affiliate communities.
Burzh
Burzh is affiliate slang, from the Russian word for bourgeois, for foreign markets, originally the rich Western countries such as the USA, Western Europe and Australia. It is used in contrast to CIS GEOs, so running burzh means working with traffic and offers outside the Russian-speaking market. The word is used loosely and its meaning depends on the speaker.
In COD nutra: in nutra chats burzh often means any non-CIS GEO, from Europe to Asia and Latin America, so ask which countries someone means.
Drain (spend)
Drain, or spend, is slang for money lost on traffic that did not pay back, as in a campaign that drained the budget. Some drain is a normal part of testing, because every test also buys data about which creatives, GEOs and audiences do not work. Drain turns into a real problem when tests run without a budget limit or without conclusions.
In COD nutra: set a test budget and stop rules in advance, such as a maximum CPL or a minimum approve rate (more in why budget drain is part of the process).
Pour in the plus
Pour in the plus is slang, translated from Russian, for running traffic at a profit, when payouts are higher than ad spend and ROI is positive. Pouring in the minus is the opposite. Media buyers say a bundle pours in the plus only after it has shown stable profit on enough volume over several days.
In COD nutra: count the plus on approved leads and confirmed earnings, since early lead numbers can look better than the final payout.
GEO tiers
GEO is the country or region you target, and GEO tiers group countries by purchasing power and ad competition. Tier 1 covers the richest and most competitive markets such as the USA and Western Europe, Tier 2 covers middle-income markets and Tier 3 covers developing markets with cheaper traffic. The split is informal and differs between networks.
In COD nutra: cheaper traffic in Tier 3 often comes with different payouts, approval and buyout, so compare GEOs by eCPL and ROI rather than by click price.
Missing a term?
If a term you hear in chats is missing here, or you want a deeper explanation of one of them, ask in our Telegram channel t.me/aff1com. To run COD nutra offers with a direct advertiser, register at AFF1.
