Sub IDs, Macros, Postbacks, and All That Stuff

Introduction

Hello everyone, today we have a small educational program for those who want to delve a little into the technical part of arbitration: let’s deal with subtags, macros and postbacks. I promise that I will tell everything literally on my fingers — even those who are inside the latest models of armored vehicles will understand.

Let’s start by looking at how links are structured using the following example:

https://greatprofit.tk?adset_name=m35-65&ad_name=bestcreoever

At the beginning of any link is the name of the protocol by which your browser will communicate withhosting, on which the procl/land files are located. In this case, this is the HTTPS protocol — i.e. a secure version of the HTTP protocol, which is needed for transmitting hypertext (html pages).

After :// and before the question mark we have our domain written, but then after the question mark we haveparametersin the format: name=value, combined through the & symbol. Those. if the link says ad_name=bestcreoever, then we have the parameter name:ad_name, a value:bestcreoever.

Options

Parameters in affiliate marketing are needed to pass named values ​​from one site to another, for example:

• from traffic source totrackerUsually they pass click parameters, for example: from which campaign the click came, from which adset and from which ad
• fromtrackerin affiliate network they usually pass in the parameters a unique click identifier, whichtrackergenerated and assigned to the user who came through the link, but if you like to look at the expanded stats in affiliate network, and not intracker, then you can also transfer the name of prokla, land, the name of the buyer, etc.
• from affiliate network back totrackerparameters are transmitted whose values ​​include lead status, payment, currency, etc.

So, these same parameters are not particularly lucky in that they have been given several names, which causes confusion:

-at the dawn of Internet marketing, they came up with a set of parameter names likeutm_campaign, utm_sourceand named themutm tags. Here is a screenshot with examples from Wikipedia:

— in partner programs they came up with a set of parameter names likesub1, sub2etc. and named themwith submarks, type:sub1=bestcreoever. The saddest thing is that different affiliate network names of these very sublabels are different. If the most commonsub1, sub2etc., then, for example, in M1 these are the names:s, w, t, pAndm.

In essence, sub IDs and utm labels are no different, so in what follows I will simply call them labels or parameters.

Macros

Let’s imagine a situation where we upload several creatives to a traffic source in one ad group and want to track themtracker, from which ad each click comes. Our advertisements are called, say:bestcreoeverAndteaser2, and the ad group:m35-65(i.e. men from 35 to 65 years old). We came up with a name for the parameter that will convey the name of the ad —ad_name, and for the adset –adset_name.

Total: the link that we will insert into the first ad will be:https://greatprofit.tk?adset_name=m35-65&ad_name=bestcreoever

For the second:https://greatprofit.tk?adset_name=m35-65&ad_name=teaser2

But what if we have 10 ads and 3 adsets? And in general, what if we are too lazy to manually enter the values ​​for the parameters in the link each time? They come to the rescuemacros.

Macro– this is a specially marked part of the link used to dynamically replace the value of a particular parameter. Sounds complicated? Now let’s look at an example. For now, you need to understand that a macro is usually written as some kind of word in curly braces (sometimes in double curly braces, like in Facebook), like:

{{ad.name}}, {payout}, {click_id}, etc.

How does a macro work? We select a macro available in the system (for example, in a traffic source) and insert it into the link insteadvaluesthe parameter we need.

For the example above: if we don’t want to write the value for the parameter every timead_name, then on Facebook we can write our link like this:https://greatprofit.tk?adset_name=m35-65&ad_name={{ad.name}}. When Facebook shows your ad to the user, it will automatically replace the macro in the link{{ad.name}}to the name of your ad, and the link will take its normal form! The same can be done for adsets:https://greatprofit.tk?adset_name={{adset.name}}&ad_name={{ad.name}}

Macros, as you probably guess, exist not only in traffic sources, but also intrackerand affiliate network has them too! Moreover, as usual, there is no single standard and everywhere there are macros, you need to look for them and read about them in the help. To make things more confusing, macros is called differently in different systems: on Facebook they are calleddynamic parameters, somewheretokens— but the essence does not change from this — thisjust part of the link, which at the right time will be replaced with the real value of the macro.

INtrackerKeitaro has a whole bunch of macros. Moreover, use macros intrackerpossible not only in links, but also in the html code of procl and landing pages! For example, there is a macro{city}, which is replaced by the user’s current city, determined by his IP address. Thanks to it, you can make headlines like: “Doctors from the city.{city}It is recommended to take this remedy before bed.”

But the most commonly used macro in Keitaro is{subid}. It serves to pass a unique click identifier to affiliate network. Let’s say, if you redirect directly to the affiliate network link, then when you create offer and select affiliate network Keitaro will automatically add the required label to the link from those that are in the selected affiliate network, and specify the macro as the value for this label{subid}.

Now, when the user goes from the traffic source totracker, trackerwill assign it an identifier and redirect it to the offer link (which you took from affiliate network) like:http://lucky.online?subid=1432fkerwqWhere1432fkerwq and will be the user’s unique identifier.

Postback

Why the hell should we pass some unique click identifiers to affiliate network? Everything in order to receive from affiliate network back totrackerlead data. The request that the affiliate network engine sends to youtracker, calledpostback. In this very postback, affiliate network will transmittrackerthe same unique click identifier that you received fromtrackerearlier + all the information about the lead: is it trash or a sale, how much money did you receive and in what currency.

The postback setting is available in any affiliate network, but it is often hidden in not the most obvious places. And the postback link looks something like this:

http://ip.your.tracker/postback?subid={get.subid}&payout={amount}&currency={currency}&status={status}

As you can see, there are ppts inside the postback linkmacros(using the example of Lucky Online):

• {amount}– will be replaced by the payment amount
• {currency}– payment currency
• {status}– lead status
• {get.subid}– the same click identifier that we passed in the subid label in the example above.

Based on IDtrackerwill assign all received information to the desired click, and you will be able to view statistics from all affiliate network in a single interfacetracker, without jumping on affiliate programm!?

Conclusions

I hope I was able to convey to you in a simple form how important it is to use to the fullest those tools that an arbitrageur has almost under his nose: sub IDs, macros and postbacks. Thanks to them, we can collect all the statistics we need in one place — intrackerand conduct analytics based on the maximum amount of data available to us.

For any (but not very stupid) questions, write a PM, and Yellow Web was with you, give it a plus, gentlemen!