Sub-marks, macros, postbacks, and this and that

Introduction

Hi everyone, today we have a little tutorial for those who want to get into the technical part of arbitrage: let's deal with sub-tags, macros and postbacks. I promise that I will tell you 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 organized 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 your browser will use to communicate with the hosting site where the procl/land files are located. In this case it is HTTPS protocol - i.e. a secure version of HTTP protocol, which is necessary for transferring hypertext (html-pages).

After :// and before the question mark we have our domain, but further on after the question mark are parameters in the format: name=value, combined by the & sign. I.e. if the link says ad_name=bestcreoever, we have the name of the parameter: ad_name, a value: bestcreoever.

Parameters

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

• from the source of the traffic to tracker usually pass parameters of a click, for example: from which campaign the click came, from which adset and from which advertisement
• from tracker in PPs usually pass in parameters a unique click identifier, which tracker generated and assigned to the user who clicked on the link, but if you like to see the detailed status in the PP rather than in the trackerthen you can also pass the name of the prokla, lend, baer name, etc.
• from the PP back to tracker parameters are passed, the values of which include lead status, payment, currency, etc.

So, these very parameters have not had much luck in that they have come up with multiple names, which causes confusion:

-in the early days of Internet marketing, they came up with a set of parameter names like utm_campaign, utm_source and they named them utm tags. Here's a screenshot with examples from Wikipedia:

- in partner programs they invented a set of parameter names like sub1, sub2 and so on, and they named them submarketslike, uh: sub1=bestcreoever. The sad thing is that different PPs have different names for these same sublabels. If the most common sub1, sub2 etc., then, for example, in M1 are names: s, w, t, p и m.

In essence, sub-tags and utm-tags are no different, so I will refer to them as just tags or parameters.

Macros

Let's imagine a situation where we pour several creatives into a traffic source in one ad group and want to track in the trackerwhich ad each click comes from. The ads we have are called, let's say: bestcreoever и teaser2but a group of announcements: m35-65 (i.e. men between the ages of 35 and 65). We came up with a name for the parameter in which the name of the ad will be passed - ad_nameand for Adseth. adset_name.

Bottom line: the link we put in the first ad will be: https://greatprofit.tk?adset_name=m35-65&ad_name=bestcreoever

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

But what if we have 10 ads and 3 adsets? And in general, if we are too lazy to manually write values for parameters in the link every time? To the rescue come to the rescue macros.

macro - is a specially marked part of the reference used to dynamically replace the value of a parameter. Does it sound complicated? Let's look at an example. For now we need to understand that a macro is usually written as some word in curly braces (sometimes in double curly braces, as in fb), like:

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

How does a macro work? We select a macro available in the system (let's say, in the traffic source) and insert it into the link instead of values of the parameter we're looking for.

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

Macros, as you can probably guess, don't just come in traffic sources, they also come in tracker and PP has them too! And, as usual, there is no single standard and everywhere there are their own macros, you should look for them and read about them in the help. To make things more confusing, macros are called differently in different systems: in Facebook they are called dynamic parameterssomewhere. tokens - but it doesn't change the fact that just a part of the reference that will be replaced with the actual macro value at the right moment.

В tracker Keitaro there's a whole bunch of macros. And to use macros in tracker it is possible not only in links, but also in html code of procs and lends! For example, there is a macro {city}which is replaced by the user's current city, determined by his IP address. Thanks to it, it is possible to make headings such as: "Doctors from the city.{city} recommend taking this remedy before going to bed."

But the most commonly used macro in Keitaro - this {subid}. It is used to send a unique click identifier to the PP. For example, if you redirect directly to the link of the PP, then when you create an offer and select the PP Keitaro itself will automatically add to the link the necessary label from those in the selected PP, and will specify the macro as the value for this label. {subid}.

Now, when the user from the traffic source goes to the tracker, tracker will give it an id and redirect it to an offerer link (that you took from the PP) like: http://lucky.online?subid=1432fkerwq where 1432fkerwq and will be the user's unique identifier.

Postback

Why do you need to pass some unique click identifiers to the PP? All in order to get from the PP back to the tracker lead data. The request that the PP engine sends to you in the trackerit's called postback. In this very postback, the PP will transmit tracker the same unique click identifier that it received from the tracker previously + all information on the lead: thrash it or sale, how much dough you received and in what currency.

Postback setting is available in any PP, but it is often hidden in not the most obvious places. The postback link looks like this:

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

As you can see, there are ppl inside the postback link macros (using Lucky Online as an example):

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

Based on the identifier tracker will assign all received information to the necessary click, and you will be able to view the status from all PPs in a single interface trackerwithout bouncing around on affiliates!?

Conclusions

I hope I've managed to convey to you in a simple way how important it is to make full use of the tools that an arbitrageur has at his fingertips: sub-tags, macros and postbacks. Thanks to them, we can gather all the statistics we need in one place - in the tracker and run analytics on as much data as we can.

For any (but not too dumb) questions, write to PM me, and Yellow Web was with you, ley in plus, gentlemen!