The traffic vocabulary you will meet across every source, ad platform and dashboard — the channels, formats and delivery metrics behind each campaign.
These terms are the shorthand every buyer uses. For the reasoning behind them, read traffic sources explained, weigh the trade-offs in SEO vs paid traffic, and see how a specific channel behaves in understanding native ads.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Organic traffic | Visitors who arrive without you paying per click — SEO, social and referrals. |
| Paid traffic | Visitors you acquire by buying ads. |
| Cold traffic | Users with no prior awareness of the offer; needs warming up before the pitch. |
| Warm traffic | Users who already know the brand or have engaged before, so they convert more readily. |
| Direct traffic | Visitors who reach you by typing the URL or via an untagged link. |
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Native ads | Ads styled to match the surrounding content feed so they read as recommendations. |
| Push ads | Notification-style ads delivered to opted-in users, either classic (device) or in-page. |
| Pop traffic | Full-page ads that open in a new tab or window on click. |
| In-app ads | Placements shown inside mobile apps and games. |
| Search (PPC) | Paid ads on search engines, matched to a user's query and intent. |
| Paid social | Ads bought on social platforms and targeted by the algorithm and interests. |
| Display / banner | Image ads placed across a network of websites. |
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Impression | One display of your ad to a user. |
| CPM | Cost Per Mille — the price for one thousand impressions. |
| CPC | Cost Per Click — what you pay for each click. |
| CTR | Click-Through Rate — the share of impressions that become clicks. |
| Reach | The number of unique users who saw your ad. |
| Frequency | The average number of times each user saw your ad. |
| Fill rate | The share of available ad requests a source actually serves. |
Where to go next: match a channel to your offer in choosing the right traffic source, learn a specific format in push traffic explained or social media traffic, then protect your numbers with traffic quality analysis and grow with scaling traffic safely.
A practical tour of affiliate traffic sources — native, social, search, push and in-app — with the strengths, costs and use cases of each.
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Core · 11 min readNative converts — but not if you point cold clicks straight at an offer.
