Coupon, affiliate and discount terms, defined
The words the coupon and affiliate world uses, defined for the people who pay for it: what each one means, what it looks like on your store and why it matters.
Coupon extensions
- Auto-applyWhen a coupon extension enters codes into a store's discount field one after another and keeps the one that gives the biggest saving.
- Cashback extensionA browser add-on from a cashback or rewards site that pays shoppers part of the affiliate commission a store pays on their order.
- Coupon extensionA browser add-on that finds discount codes for the store a shopper is on and tries them at checkout, often earning affiliate commission on the order.
- Coupon-extension trafficThe store sessions in which a coupon or cashback extension was active, measured apart so you can see what those shoppers buy and what they pay.
- Extension permissionsThe access a shopper grants a browser extension when installing it, such as reading and changing data on every site, which lets it act on your store.
- Voucher siteA website that lists discount codes for many stores and usually earns affiliate commission when a shopper clicks through and buys.
Affiliate attribution
- Affiliate hijackingWhen an extension or publisher adds its own affiliate click late in a visit another partner referred, so the commission moves to it.
- Affiliate networkThe platform between a store and its affiliates that tracks clicks, codes and orders, decides who gets credit, and pays the commission.
- Affiliate publisherAny partner a store pays commission for sending sales: content sites, creators, voucher and cashback sites, and browser extensions.
- Attribution windowHow long after a shopper clicks an affiliate link an order can still be credited to that affiliate and earn it commission.
- Cookie stuffingSetting an affiliate's tracking cookie without the shopper clicking that affiliate's link, so it gets credit and commission for a sale it didn't refer.
- Extension affiliateAn affiliate publisher whose clicks come from software the shopper installed, such as a browser extension, which networks police under separate rules.
- Holdout testAn experiment that leaves a random group of shoppers without a change, so the difference against everyone else shows what the change did.
- IncrementalityThe sales a channel or partner actually caused, as opposed to the sales it was credited with that would have happened anyway.
- Last-click attributionA crediting rule that gives the whole sale, and the whole commission, to the last affiliate whose link the shopper clicked before buying.
- Stand-downA rule that a coupon or cashback extension stays quiet when another affiliate already referred the shopper, so it doesn't take the commission.
Discount codes
- Code freezeA period before and during peak season when a team stops changing its site, so nothing new breaks while traffic and revenue are highest.
- Creator codeA discount code issued to one creator for their audience, which also credits that creator with the sale and usually their commission.
- Discount code leakWhen a discount code reaches shoppers it wasn't meant for, through voucher sites, coupon extensions or sharing, and lands on orders it wasn't priced for.
- Discount depthHow much of an order's price a discount takes off, as a share of the basket. It decides how many extra sales a promotion needs to pay for itself.
- Discount stackingMore than one discount on the same order, such as an automatic sale plus a code, so the combined reduction is deeper than either one alone.
- First-order discountA discount offered to win a shopper's first purchase, usually in exchange for their email address or phone number.
- Margin leakageMargin lost to discounts, commission and fees on orders that didn't need them: small on each order, large across a year.
- Shared discount codeOne code, like SPRING20, that anyone can enter as often as its limits allow. Easy to say and share, and just as easy to copy.
- Single-use codeA discount code that works for one order only. Copies fail after the first use, though the first person to use it may not be the one it was sent to.
- Unique discount codeA discount where each shopper gets their own code, generated in bulk, so every code can be traced to the person or channel that received it.
AI and agentic commerce
- Agent checkoutA purchase an AI platform completes for the shopper inside its own app, passing the order to the store instead of sending the shopper to its checkout.
- Agentic commerceShopping in which an AI assistant or agent finds, compares and sometimes buys products for a person, in a chat or in a browser it controls.
- AI referral trafficVisits that start from a link in an AI assistant's answer, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini, which analytics can miss or misfile.
- AI shopping agentSoftware that shops on a person's behalf, browsing stores, filling carts and entering codes, sometimes all the way to payment.
- Model Context ProtocolAn open standard that connects AI assistants to outside tools and data through servers, so an assistant can read from or act in other software.
