Traffic arbitrage has developed its own jargon, and without understanding basic terminology a beginner cannot even read a post in a colleague's Telegram channel. What is EPC, how does approval rate differ from conversion rate, why does everyone say "funnel" instead of "campaign" — these questions come up within the first days of entering the niche.
This glossary covers 15 key terms you cannot do without in any guide, case study, or discussion. Plus a few bonus concepts that come up in every other conversation in affiliate marketer chats.
Why this slang exists at all
Arbitrage is an industry with high turnover and compressed communication. Team leads, media buyers, and affiliate network managers exchange dozens of messages a day. It is simply faster to say "the funnel spent $500 at 40% ROI" than "the advertising campaign with a specific offer, traffic source, and creative spent $500 in ad budget and generated a 40% return on investment."
The slang is not for show — it is for speed. Learning the basic terminology before your first tests is essential, otherwise half your time will go toward deciphering other people's messages and articles.
1. Offer
An offer is a specific advertiser's proposition that an affiliate promotes in exchange for a commission.
One offer is tied to one product or service, one geo, and one payout model. For example, "Casino X for Germany with a $150 payout per first deposit" is an offer. The same casino for Poland with an $80 payout is already a different offer.
All offers are listed in affiliate network catalogs. The affiliate selects an offer, receives a unique tracking link, and drives traffic to it.
2. Vertical
A vertical is the thematic niche in which an affiliate operates.
The main verticals in 2026: gambling (casinos and sports betting), nutra (dietary supplements and health products), crypto, dating, sweepstakes (prize draws), finance, and mobile apps. Each vertical has its own offers, traffic sources, creatives, and approaches.
Experienced affiliates typically specialise in one or two verticals because the specifics run deep. What works in nutra does not work in crypto, and vice versa.
3. Geo
Geo is the geographic zone (country or region) to which traffic is directed.
Geos are divided into tiers:
- Tier-1 — USA, Canada, UK, Australia, Germany, Scandinavia. The most affluent audience, expensive traffic, high payouts.
- Tier-2 — Eastern Europe, South America, parts of Asia. Medium payouts, medium traffic costs.
- Tier-3 — Africa, Southeast Asia, CIS countries. Cheap traffic, low payouts, but enormous volumes.
Geo choice determines almost everything — which traffic source to use, what creatives to make, what language to write landing pages in.
4. Funnel (Bundle)
A funnel (or "bundle" / "stack") is a working combination of all campaign elements: traffic source, geo, creative, pre-lander, landing page, and offer.
When an affiliate says "I found a profitable funnel," they mean they found a combination of these elements that consistently generates profit. Change one element and the funnel may stop working.
Finding a working funnel is the core activity of an affiliate. Experienced teams test dozens of hypotheses per week to find one that works.
5. Landing Page
A landing page is the destination page where the user completes the target action.
This is the offer page itself: casino registration, supplement order, app install. The landing page's goal is conversion. A good landing page has a clear CTA, minimal distractions, and loads fast.
Landing pages can be provided by the affiliate network or custom-built by the affiliate. Custom pages generally convert better but require time to develop.
6. Pre-lander
A pre-lander (also called a "prelander" or "bridge page") is an intermediate page between the ad and the landing page that warms up the user.
Classic example: an article in the format "Housewife from Berlin won €3,000 at Casino X." The user reads the story, gets emotionally engaged, then clicks through to the landing page and registers.
A pre-lander increases conversion by 2–3x compared with direct traffic to the landing page. Especially effective in nutra and gambling.
7. White Page
A White Page is a page that complies with the advertising platform's policies and is what moderators see when reviewing a campaign.
While a real user lands on the main offer page, the reviewer from Facebook or Google sees a neutral thematic page — a blog, informational site, or educational portal.
A White Page is a mandatory tool for working in regulated verticals (gambling, crypto, nutra) on strict platforms like Facebook Ads and Google Ads. Learn more about white pages →
A White Page is not a system bypass — it is essential infrastructure for regulated verticals. Without a quality white page, a campaign will not pass moderation even if every other funnel element is perfect.
8. Creative (Creo)
A creative (or "creo") is the ad material: banner, video, ad copy — everything the user sees before clicking.
Creative quality determines CTR and cost per click. In arbitrage, people say a creative "burned out" — meaning the audience got tired of seeing it, CTR dropped, and the campaign became unprofitable.
Experienced affiliates run 5–10 creatives simultaneously, constantly testing new ones. Spy tools allow you to monitor competitors' creatives to find winning approaches faster.
9. CR (Conversion Rate)
CR (Conversion Rate) is the percentage of visitors who completed the target action.
Calculated simply: number of conversions divided by number of clicks, multiplied by 100. If 50 out of 1,000 clicks resulted in a registration — CR is 5%.
CR is one of the key funnel metrics. A low CR means the funnel is weak: either the landing page is poor, the traffic is untargeted, or the offer does not match the audience.
10. EPC (Earnings Per Click)
EPC (Earnings Per Click) is the average revenue generated per click.
Calculated as total revenue divided by number of clicks. If a funnel earned $1,000 from 2,000 clicks — EPC is $0.50.
EPC shows how much the affiliate earns per click. If EPC exceeds the cost per click (CPC) — the funnel is profitable. If it falls short — it is running at a loss. This is the fastest metric for evaluating campaign viability.
11. ROI (Return on Investment)
ROI (Return on Investment) is the return on investment — the primary profitability metric.
Formula: (profit − expenses) ÷ expenses × 100%. If you spent $1,000 and earned $1,500, ROI is 50%. If you spent $1,000 and earned $800 — ROI is −20% (a loss).
In arbitrage, 30–50% ROI is considered a good result for a long-term funnel. ROI above 100% is excellent but those funnels typically have a short lifespan.
12. CPA (Cost Per Action)
CPA (Cost Per Action) is a payment model in which the advertiser pays for a specific user action.
The action is whatever the advertiser needs: registration, deposit, purchase, form submission. CPA is the most popular model in affiliate marketing because it benefits both sides: the advertiser pays only for results, the affiliate gets a fixed rate per conversion.
Alternative models: CPL (Cost Per Lead) — pay per lead; CPS (Cost Per Sale) — pay per sale; RevShare — a percentage of the customer's lifetime value (LTV).
13. Approval Rate
Approval rate is the percentage of submitted leads that the advertiser confirms and pays for.
If an affiliate sent 100 leads and the advertiser paid for only 40 (the rest were low quality — fake, spam, or rejections) — the approval rate is 40%.
Approval rate is critical for calculating real profit. A funnel with an EPC of $1.00 at a 30% approval rate actually yields $0.30 per click. Experienced affiliates always factor in approval rate when calculating economics.
14. Traffic Run (Pour)
A traffic run (or "pour") is the process of launching traffic to an offer.
"Running $500 on a funnel" means spending that amount on testing the funnel. "Ran a one-day test" means launching a test campaign and gathering statistically significant data within 24 hours.
Running traffic is the core workflow of an affiliate. Half the poured budget typically goes negative (this is normal), because the goal of a traffic run is to find a working funnel — not to generate instant profit.
15. Cap
A cap is a limit on the number of leads an advertiser is willing to accept within a given period.
For example, an offer may have a cap of "50 deposits per day." This means that if an affiliate delivers 50 deposits by 6 PM — all subsequent leads for the rest of the day are unpaid because the cap is exhausted.
Caps are set for several reasons: the advertiser cannot handle a large volume of applications, their ad budget ran out, or they are testing traffic quality. Always confirm the cap with the affiliate manager before launching a funnel.
Bonus terms you will encounter every day
- Bump — a payout rate increase on an offer. If an offer paid $50 per deposit and the network bumped it to $70 — the rate has been raised.
- Shave — a dishonest practice where the affiliate network "loses" some leads or rejects them without valid reason, effectively skimming the affiliate's earnings.
- Hold — the period during which the network withholds payment until traffic quality is confirmed. Standard hold is 14–30 days, after which funds become available for withdrawal.
- Anti-fraud — a system used by the affiliate network or advertiser to detect and filter fraudulent traffic (bots, incentivised traffic, click fraud).
- Account farming — the process of "warming up" ad accounts before launching affiliate traffic to reduce the risk of an early ban.
- Antidetect browser — a specialised browser (Dolphin, Indigo, AdsPower) that enables working with dozens of ad accounts without detection. Each account is assigned its own "fingerprint" — user-agent, screen resolution, fonts, proxy.
- Multi-account — the practice of operating multiple ad accounts simultaneously to scale launches and reduce the risk of total loss if one account is banned.
- Retention — re-engaging a user after their first action. In gambling, for example, motivating a player to make a second deposit. High retention increases payouts under RevShare models.
How to start applying these terms
The best way to memorise terminology is not to study the glossary in isolation but to apply it immediately in practice. A few steps:
- Join niche Telegram channels and affiliate marketer chats. The slang is used in every message. After a week of active reading, most terms will stick automatically.
- Read affiliate case studies. Case studies use all these terms in context — you will see how they relate to each other and in what situations they apply.
- Register with affiliate networks. Offer cards list payout, geo, approval rate, cap — half the terms in this glossary in action.
- Keep your own metrics spreadsheet. When you calculate CR, EPC, and ROI from your own campaigns, the terms stop being abstract and become working tools.
What to study next
Once you have the basic terminology down, the next step is understanding how to choose a vertical that suits you, which traffic sources to start with as a beginner, and how affiliate network relationships work. These topics build on knowledge of the slang — without it, guides read like a foreign language.
If you plan to work in regulated verticals like gambling, crypto, or nutra on strict platforms (Facebook, Google, TikTok) — study the topic of White Pages and the moderation requirements for landing pages separately. This is critical infrastructure without which campaigns on these platforms simply do not survive.
FAQ
15–20 key terms from this glossary are enough to understand basic guides and communicate with affiliate network managers. The rest will come naturally through practice.
CR (conversion rate) is the percentage of landing page visitors who completed the target action (e.g., submitted a lead). Approval rate is the percentage of those leads the advertiser confirmed and paid for. CR reflects funnel quality; approval rate reflects traffic quality and advertiser reliability.
It depends on your strategy. Solo affiliates typically chase high ROI with smaller budgets. Large teams and media buyers optimise for volume — lower ROI but greater turnover. The ideal scenario is finding a high-ROI funnel and scaling it to maximum capacity.
A landing page converts warm traffic that is already ready to act. A pre-lander warms up cold traffic — people who came from an ad and are not yet sure whether they need the offer. Pre-landers typically increase conversion rates 2–3x.
A creative burns out when the audience gets tired of it — CTR drops, cost per click rises, and the campaign becomes unprofitable. Reviving a burned creative is difficult; it is usually replaced with a new one. Sometimes launching it in a new geo or to a fresh audience where it has not yet been shown helps.
It depends on the vertical and traffic source. On average, 30–50% ROI is solid for a long-term funnel. ROI above 100% occurs with short-lived funnels that burn out quickly. Funnels with ROI below 20% are usually not worth scaling — there is too little margin when approval rates or click costs fluctuate.
Knowing the terminology is the first step in arbitrage. The second is understanding how all these concepts connect in real work. Read case studies, participate in professional communities, and launch your first tests. Only in practice do abstract terms become working tools.
