Affiliate marketing glossary
Product feed
In one sentence
A product feed is a structured file an advertiser publishes listing its catalogue, product names, prices, images, availability and deep link URLs, which publishers use to build comparison tables, widgets and automated content.
Feeds are what make catalogue-scale affiliate content possible. Without one, a publisher listing 400 products maintains 400 prices by hand and is wrong within a week. With one, prices and stock status update automatically and dead links disappear before a reader hits them.
Feed quality varies sharply between advertisers and is worth checking before committing to a build. A feed that omits stock status will send readers to out-of-stock pages, and a feed that updates weekly is unusable for anything price-sensitive.
Common questions
Product feed, answered
Who needs a product feed?
Anyone maintaining more products than they can update by hand. A publisher listing 400 items keeps 400 prices accurate manually and is wrong within a week; a feed updates prices and stock automatically. For a creator linking a handful of products per post, a deep-link generator is the right tool and a feed is overhead.
What makes a product feed good or bad?
Three things: how often it updates, whether it carries stock status, and whether the deep link URLs actually work. A feed missing stock status will send readers to out-of-stock pages, and a weekly feed is unusable for anything price-sensitive. Both are worth checking before committing to a build.
Are product feeds available on every program?
No, and quality varies sharply where they exist. Large retailers almost always publish one; smaller advertisers frequently do not. It is worth confirming before designing content that assumes catalogue data.
Keep reading
More from the glossary
Every term here is written to answer one question completely, then point at the next one worth asking.
Sub-affiliate network
A sub-affiliate network is a company that holds approved relationships with affiliate programs on major networks and lets smaller publishers and creators promote those programs under its account, sharing the commission it receives.
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.
Cookie window
The cookie window is the length of time after a click during which a resulting purchase is still credited to the affiliate, commonly ranging from 24 hours to 90 days.
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.
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