The campaign has been running for three days, spend is growing, leads are coming in, but it is not clear whether that is good or bad. The answer is always in the numbers, but you need to look at a chain of them, not just one. Each affiliate marketing metric covers its own stretch of the path from ad impression to payout, and where the chain sags tells you what to fix.
The affiliate marketing funnel: which metric goes where
The path of money through a funnel looks like this:
impressions → clicks → reached the offer → leads → approved leads → payout
CTR CPC CR approval rate EPC, ROI
Each transition is a separate metric. Below are all the main ones with formulas.
Metrics table with formulas
| Metric | What it shows | Formula |
|---|---|---|
| CTR | Ad click-through rate | clicks / impressions × 100% |
| CPM | Cost per thousand impressions | spend / impressions × 1000 |
| CPC | Cost per click | spend / clicks |
| CR | Conversion to lead or sale | conversions / clicks × 100% |
| Approval rate | Share of confirmed leads | approved / all leads × 100% |
| CPL | Cost per lead | spend / leads |
| CPA | Cost per action | spend / conversions |
| EPC | Earnings per click | revenue / clicks |
| Profit | What you earned | revenue − spend |
| ROI | Return on investment | (revenue − spend) / spend × 100% |
| ROAS | Return on ad spend | revenue / spend × 100% |
Now a closer look at each one, with examples. All numbers below are illustrations, not benchmarks.
Each metric in detail
CTR: ad click-through rate
CTR (click-through rate) shows what share of the people who saw the ad clicked it. It is a metric of the creative and the targeting.
Say the ad was shown 20,000 times and 300 people clicked: CTR = 300 / 20,000 × 100% = 1.5%.
A low CTR is a reason to change the creative, the headline or the audience. A very high CTR with low conversion sometimes signals clickbait: the ad promises something the offer does not deliver, and people leave. Claims in the creative and on the page are also governed by platform policies; see policy-compliant ad creatives.
There is also landing page CTR: the share of pre-lander visitors who click through to the offer. It shows how well the pre-lander “warms up” the visitor.
CPC and CPM: the price of traffic
CPC is what one click costs. CPM is what a thousand impressions cost. The platform charges under one model, but you can calculate both. If you pay for impressions, CPC = CPM / 1000 / CTR.
For example, a $6 CPM and a 1.5% CTR give CPC = 6 / 1000 / 0.015 = $0.40.
The takeaway: a higher CTR makes the click cheaper even when CPM stays the same. So working on the creative is working on the price of traffic.
CR: conversion rate
CR (conversion rate) is the share of clicks that turned into a lead or a sale. It is a metric of the offer, the landing page and traffic quality.
It matters what you count conversion from. If you count from all clicks, the denominator includes bots, scanners and spy tools, and CR will be understated. It is more accurate to count from clicks that reached the offer.
Say 1,000 people reached the offer and there were 40 leads: CR = 4%.
If CR dropped while CTR and cost per click stayed the same, look at the landing page, the offer (has it ended, have the terms changed?) and the traffic: have bots started coming in?
Approval rate: the share of confirmed leads
Approval rate is how many leads the affiliate network confirmed. In nutra and e-commerce a call center confirms the lead; in finance, the application is reviewed. Unconfirmed leads sit on hold and later either become a sale or get rejected.
Example: 40 leads, 18 approved → approval rate 45%.
A low approval rate signals unmotivated traffic: maybe the creative overpromises, maybe the traffic is low quality, or maybe the problem is the network's call center. Statuses are covered in detail in conversion statuses: lead, hold, approve.
CPL and CPA: the cost of a result
CPL (cost per lead) is how much you paid for one lead. CPA (cost per action) is the cost of one target action: a sale, a deposit, a sign-up.
Example: spend $400, 40 leads → CPL = $10. 18 approved → cost per approved lead = 400 / 18 ≈ $22.20.
The main rule: the cost of an approved action must be lower than the payout. If the network pays $24 per approval and each one costs you $22.20, the funnel is profitable, but with a thin margin.
EPC: earnings per click
EPC (earnings per click) is the average revenue from one click. It is arguably the most useful metric for quick decisions, because you can compare it directly with the cost per click.
Example: 1,000 clicks to the offer brought in $432 → EPC = $0.432. A click cost $0.40. Each click earns, on average, $0.032 more than it costs.
Affiliate networks often show an offer's network-wide EPC as a guide to how much the offer pays per click on average. But your EPC depends on your traffic.
ROI and ROAS: return
ROI (return on investment) is profit relative to spend. ROAS (return on ad spend) is revenue relative to spend.
Example: revenue $432, spend $400.
- profit = 432 − 400 = $32;
- ROI = 32 / 400 × 100% = 8%;
- ROAS = 432 / 400 × 100% = 108%.
In affiliate marketing ROI is the bottom line: it shows what percentage you earned on top of every dollar invested. Detailed formulas and the nuances of hold, exchange rates and infrastructure costs are in a separate article on how to calculate profit and ROI.
Reading metrics together: diagnosing a funnel
One metric on its own tells you nothing. Here are typical patterns and what they mean:
| What you see | Likely cause | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Low CTR, normal CR | The creative does not hook | Test new creatives and angles |
| High CTR, low CR | The ad promises the wrong thing | Align the creative and the landing page |
| Normal CR, low approval rate | Unmotivated leads | Change the angle, geo or source |
| EPC below CPC | The funnel is losing money | Lower the traffic cost or change the offer |
| CR dropped sharply in a day | Offer, landing page or traffic | Check the offer, the page and the bot share |
| High ROI on low volume | Statistical luck | Get more traffic before scaling |
Tip. Do not make decisions about a creative or a geo until it has at least a few conversions. Zero leads on 50 clicks with a 2% CR is not a failure yet, just normal randomness.
Compare like with like
Metrics depend heavily on the day of the week, the time of day and how many leads are still on hold. So:
- compare a week with a week, not Monday with Saturday;
- for recent days, remember that approval rate and revenue will keep growing as leads get confirmed;
- compare creatives within one geo and one platform, not “creative A in Germany vs creative B in Poland”;
- do not mix data by click date and by conversion date in one report.
If a metric jumps around from day to day, widen the period: on small volume it is easy to mistake random fluctuation for a trend.
Pass rate to the offer is not a quality metric
If a cloaker sits in front of the offer, there is one more number: the pass rate, how many visits reached the offer. It is tempting to read it as a traffic grade, but it is not one. It depends on the source: paid traffic with a verified click ID can have a high pass rate, and that is normal. Only a very low pass rate is worrying, because it means the filter rules are probably cutting real people along with the bots. Filtering is covered in how to filter out bots.
Where to find these metrics in ArtisanClo
In ArtisanClo, money is analyzed in the Reports section (for flows with the tracker). The Money by slice table shows clicks, conversions, CR, revenue, cost, profit and ROI by default. The Customize columns button turns on the rest (To offer, LP clicks, LP CTR, On hold, EPC and CPA) and changes their order.
Breakdowns: flow, source, day, country, offer, device, and under More… branch, pre-lander, OS, browser, ISP and parameters sub1–sub10. The breakdown and filters are saved in the page URL, so you can send a colleague a link to the report. For deep analysis there is the report builder: nested grouping such as “offer → country → campaign parameter”, a tree with subtotals and CSV export.
Important calculation details:
- On hold means payouts the network is still reviewing; they are not counted as revenue;
- revenue is assigned to the click date, not the conversion date;
- cost per click (CPC) in reports is calculated on passed clicks.
The Statistics section shows what the filter did with the traffic: clicks, passed, filtered, unique visitors, conversions, revenue, and in the traffic mix, CR as the share of conversions among passed clicks and EPC as revenue per passed click. The dashboard has a traffic quality score, a rating of the traffic itself in which the share of real visitors carries the most weight. More on the features page.
For metrics to be calculated you need three things: parameters in the link (see Click ID and SubID), postbacks from the network and a cost per click.
The bottom line
Affiliate marketing metrics are a chain: CTR tells you about the creative, CPC about the price of traffic, CR about the landing page and offer, approval rate about lead quality, EPC and ROI about the outcome. Look at them together and across the same breakdowns, do not draw conclusions on small volume, and remember that hold is not money yet. If you are just starting out, see the affiliate marketing glossary and the article on tracker for affiliate marketing.
