Time to read: 7 min.
This article covers the following topics:
- What is Smartlink?
- How to start working with smartlinks?
- How does the Smart Algorithm work?
- Where can I check Statistics for a specific Smartlink?
- Smartlink via API
What is a Smartlink?
The Smartlink is a monetization tool that allows your affiliates to get only one link to all the offers. Using the technology of machine learning, it automatically selects the offers by several parameters.
This tool is available for our clients on the Enterprise plan or higher.
In Affise Smartlink URL looks like:
http(s)://<YOUR_DOMAIN>/sl?id=<SMARTLINKS'_SELECTED_CATEGORY_ID*>&pid<AFFILIATE_ID>
Once the user clicks the smartlink, he will be automatically redirected to the most suitable offer from the selected category (according to the user's geo, device, os type, os version, etc.).
Smartlinks work by using an algorithm that decides which offer is shown for each specific user. The algorithm takes data about a user and analyses all the information received to send visitors to an offer that is most likely to be converted.
How to start working with Smartlinks?
To start working with Smartlinks, you need:
1) Create a Smartlink category in the ‘Smartlinks’ section using the ‘Add’ button:
2) Fill in needed ‘Name’ of your Smartlink, choose ‘Domain id’ (i.e., tracking domain that will be used in Smartlink URL) and place ‘description’ for your Affiliates if needed.
3) Once it’s done, you can proceed with adding offers into the created Smartlink right in the 'Offers' section - > 'Offer edit' page - > 'Tracking' tab:
If you are using our special tool CPAPI, you can easily add a great number of offers into the Smartlink while setting a specific CPAPI campaign:
4) Once several offers are added into the Smartlink, an affiliate can find the same Smartlink category into 'Affiliate panel' - > 'Offers' section - > 'Smartlinks' tab:
An affiliate will see a whole list of Smartlinks once created by you. However, their traffic will be distributed among the offers they are enabled for. If the affiliate is not enabled for any offer, his traffic will be redirected to Global Trafficback URL - see our guide on Trafficback feature to get more information about that.
5) Once pressing on a specific smartlink category, Affiliate will see Smartlink itself:
Smartlink can also be updated with additional parameters sub1-sub8 if needed.
In the link provided as an example:
http://rocketcompany.g2afse.com/sl?id=5a8c148a94864100413a7922&pid=4925
you will find:
- rocketcompany.g2afse.com - your tracking domain;
- id=5a8c148a94864100413a7922 - Affise internal ID of a specific Smartlink;
- pid=4925 - Affiliate ordinal ID.
6) Once Smartlink is updated, it’s ready to use by the Affiliate, and traffic can be sent.
How does the Smart Algorithm work?
The selection of the offer is carried out only among the offers of the same Smartlink category, and among the offers available to the partner (public status or affiliate is already connected to the offer).
For smartlinks, the process is the same as when you work with affiliates in the usual way: if your affiliate is disabled from some offers/advertisers - such offers won’t participate in traffic distribution.
Traffic is distributed in the following way:
1) Offers in the Smartlink are divided into targeting groups by:
- GEO
- OS
- Device
- Connection type
- Carrier
Once a click reaches a Smartlink, it chooses the most suitable group of offers: ex., if a click was made from Android, it will select several offers for Android.
Mind if the click doesn't meet other targeting restrictions of the offer (like sub restrictions), it will go to Trafficback.
2) Offers are divided into ‘old’ and ‘new’ ones. New offers are those offers that were updated less than two days ago. New offers get 10 % of the traffic, the rest of the traffic goes to old offers.
3) One of the rates, which is always considered by the Smartlink, is EPC (Earning per Click): the higher EPC an offer has, the more chances are the offer will be rotated.
As a result, once a user clicks the smartlink, the smart algorithm selects the offer, which matches the user's targeting conditions in the best possible way.
We recommend you to have at least one public offer (available for all active affiliates) without any restrictions in order to let traffic be led to at least one relevant offer in the Smartlink.
Where can I check Statistics for a specific Smartlink?
The statistics for you Smartlinks are shown on the separate slice.
You can also check which offers are added into a specific Smartlink category in the offer’s list:
Smartlink via API
You can get the information about all Smartlinks you have in Admin panel via this method:
GET /3.0/admin/smartlink/categories
https://api.affise.com/docs3.1/#smartlink-categories126
You also can see the number of offers in some particular Smartlink:
GET /3.0/admin/smartlink/category/{id}/offers-count
https://api.affise.com/docs3.1/#smartlink-offer-count130
Also there is an opportunity to add a new Smartlink, to edit or to delete the existent Smartlink:
Add: POST /3.0/admin/smartlink/category
https://api.affise.com/docs3.1/#smartlink-category
Edit: POST /3.0/admin/smartlink/category/{ID}
https://api.affise.com/docs3.1/#smartlink-edit-category
Remove: POST /3.0/admin/smartlink/category/{ID}/remove
https://api.affise.com/docs3.1/#smartlink-category-remove
Affiliates can get the information about available Smartlinks via API:
GET /3.0/partner/smartlink/categories
https://api.affise.com/docs3.1/#smartlink-categories
And they also can see the number of offers in some particular Smartlink:
GET /3.0/partner/smartlink/category/{id}/offers-count
https://api.affise.com/docs3.1/#smartlink-offer-count
You can add a Smartlink category to the offer by using the parameter 'smartlink_categories' with using of this method:
POST /3.0/admin/offer
https://api.affise.com/docs3.1/#add-offer
The following articles can be helpful:
- How to create a new offer?
- How to Import Advertisers?
- How to set targeting restrictions by 'sub' accounts?
Should you have any further doubts or questions on Smartlinks, feel free to contact our support team via support@affise.com, operating 24/7 for your convenience.
Updated by Tatiana Mankevich
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