Affiliate marketing is a model in which partners (publishers, creators, comparison sites) promote a product on their own channels and are paid for the result, most often a sale or a lead. For the advertiser it means low risk: you pay only for an actual result, not for the delivery itself. Settlement is usually based on commission (a percentage of the sale, CPA or CPL), and traffic is attributed through dedicated links and cookies. It is worth watching partner quality, because some affiliate traffic is of low value or captures sales that would have happened anyway. (Compare: CPA, CPL)