Affiliate marketing glossary
Deep link
In one sentence
A deep link is a tracked affiliate link that points to a specific product or category page on an advertiser's site rather than to its homepage.
Deep links convert substantially better than homepage links because they remove navigation friction, the customer lands on exactly the item being recommended.
A deep-link generator lets a partner paste any URL from an approved advertiser and receive a tracked equivalent, without waiting for the advertiser to publish a link for that specific product.
Worked example
Two links to the same sale
A reader watches you recommend one specific jacket. A homepage link drops them on the retailer's front page, where they have to find the jacket again through navigation or search, and a meaningful share of them do not. A deep link drops them on the jacket's product page with the size selector in front of them. Same content, same audience, different number of steps between intent and checkout.
Common questions
Deep link, answered
How do I create a deep link?
Paste the product URL from an approved advertiser into a deep-link generator and it returns a tracked equivalent. You do not need the advertiser to publish a link for that specific product, which is the point: the catalogue is available to you in full rather than only the items someone has already built creative for.
Do deep links work on any page of a site?
On any page covered by the advertiser's tracking, which is normally the whole shop. Pages outside it, help centres, blog posts on some setups, third-party subdomains, may not track. If a link is unusually important to a piece of content, it is worth testing it before publishing.
Why did my deep link stop working?
Almost always because the destination URL changed or the product went out of stock and the page was removed. The tracking wrapper is still valid; what it points at is not. This is the main maintenance cost of product-specific content, and the reason publishers working at catalogue scale use a product feed instead of hand-built links.
Keep reading
More from the glossary
Every term here is written to answer one question completely, then point at the next one worth asking.
Affiliate network
An affiliate network is a platform that connects advertisers running affiliate programs with publishers who promote them, handling tracking, reporting and payment between the two.
EPC (earnings per click)
EPC is the average commission earned per click sent to an advertiser, calculated as total commission divided by total clicks over a given period.
Last-click attribution
Last-click attribution credits the entire commission to the final affiliate link clicked before a purchase, which is the default model across almost all affiliate networks.
Attribution
Attribution is the process of determining which marketing touchpoint receives credit for a conversion, and therefore which affiliate is paid.
Cross-device tracking
Cross-device tracking links a click on one device to a purchase on another, so an affiliate is credited when a customer discovers a product on mobile and buys on desktop.
Commission
Commission is the amount an advertiser pays an affiliate for a qualifying action, expressed either as a percentage of order value or as a flat amount per action.
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