Affiliate

Affiliate Marketing is a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts.
Examples include rewards sites, where users are rewarded with cash or gifts, for the completion of an offer, and the referral of others to the site.

The industry has four core players

Merchant (also known as ‘retailer’ or ‘brand’)
Network
Publisher (also known as ‘the affiliate’)
Customer

The market has grown in complexity to warrant a secondary tier of players, including affiliate management agencies, super-affiliates and specialized third party vendors.