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Smartlinks

Time to read: 8 min.

topic.pngThis article covers the following topics:

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.

 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: 

Markup 2020-06-02 at 11.54.56.png

2) Fill in the fields:

NewSL.png

Where: 

  • Name: name your Smartlink in the way you want.
  • Domain Id: if you have custom tracking domains, you can assign one to this new Smartlink.
  • Description: describe which offers are included to your Smartlink.
  • Privacy level:set the privacy level for the Smartlink.

    There are three levels:

    • public – Smartlink is available for all publishers without any request by default. You do not need to enable affiliates for the public Smartlink.
    • pre-moderation – Requires network manager's confirmation for an affiliate to have access to the Smartlink.
    • private – Smartlink is not visible from the affiliate's side, except affiliates connected by the manager from the admin side.

import.png It is possible to enable/disable the affiliate for a certain Smartlink only on the Smartlink edit page.

The affiliate can request for access on the Affiliate panel. Once he does it, you receive a new ticket in the 'Tickets' section.

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: 

Markup 2020-06-02 at 11.49.10.png

You can also check which offers are added into a specific Smartlink category in the offer’s list:

Markup 2020-05-20 at 18.56.05.png

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:

Markup 2020-05-20 at 17.54.17.png 

4) Once several offers are added into the Smartlink, an affiliate can find the same Smartlink category into 'Affiliate panel' - >  'Smartlinks' section:

SLaff_panel.png

The subsection 'All' contains all Smartlinks with the 'Public' and 'Premoderation' privacy level. The subsection 'Available' contains all Smartlinks with the 'Public' privacy level as well as those Smartlinks, which the affiliate is enabled for.

import.pngEven if the affiliate is connected to the Smartlink, his traffic will be distributed among the offers he is 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: 

SLbase.png

If the affiliate doesn't have access to the Smartlink, he may request it:

SL_moderate.png

Smartlink can also be updated with additional parameters sub1-sub8 if needed.

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?

Affise has been working on a new Smartlink algorithm, which is much smarter and more flexible. It allows involving all Smartlink offers into traffic distribution and selecting the offer according to more precise criteria and calculations.

New algorithm

The selection of the offer is carried out only among the offers of the particular Smartlink. It takes four steps to define the offer where traffic will go to.

Step 1

Click eliminates offers where there is a reason to send the click to the trafficback:

    1. Targeting groups checking: whether there is an offer with a suitable general or personal targeting group.
    2. Offer privacy checking: whether the affiliate has access to an offer (the offer should be public or the affiliate should be connected to the offer). 
    3. Caps checking: whether the offer has cap rules of all types and time frames that aren't reached.

Step 2

About 20% of traffic is distributed among all suitable offers equally. It allows new offers to be involved in the traffic distribution and receive traffic to recalculate EPC and detect changes in performance over time.

Step 3

The rest 80% of traffic is distributed among top-10 offers with the highest EPC. If there are less than 10 offers that have calculated EPC, no other offers will be used.  EPC is calculated with the usage of four filters applied at the same time:

    1. EPC of this particular Smartlink.
    2. EPC of this particular affiliate, who the click belongs to.
    3. EPC of the country, which the click was made from.
    4. EPC of the OS, which the click was made from.

Step 4

If there is no opportunity to calculate EPC for all suitable offers (no enough data, the Smartlink is new, zero revenue and payout in the offer, and so on), 80% of traffic goes to 10 random offers.

import.pngEPC = Revenue of conversions of all statuses except Declined / number of clicks.

Old algorithm

The selection of the offer is carried out only among the offers of the particular Smartlink, 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
  • 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.

import.png 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. EPC is calculated for the last 7 days.

EPC formula: EPC = revenue approved / clicks

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. 

SL.png

You also can filter by a certain Smartlink in the following slices:

  • Custom
  • Daily
  • Weekly
  • Monthly
  • Advertisers
  • Account managers
  • Affiliates managers
  • Offers
  • Affiliates
  • Countries
  • Cities
  • OS
  • Device brand
  • Mobile ISP
  • Connection type
  • Landing

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

article.pngThe following articles can be helpful:

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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