Updates — 08 May 2023
Server Parallel Tracking is Coming to Affise
Almost three years passed since Google announced their solution of parallel tracking. The “blink of an eye” time reduction has turned into a completely new era for all market players. And the benefit of the parallel tracking as the concept evidently became widely popular. Thus, its presence is no longer considered as a privilege but as a must for more and more companies. What’s more, advertisers and networks are looking for solutions that provide server-to-server parallel tracking and doubt those that don’t.
However, there is a challenge we want to address today. How often upon clicking an ad do you get irritated with a pacing sequence of changing links or a failure to reach the desirable destination because of internet connection loss? For many users it is just a matter of convenience, but what if we talk about brands and networks whose revenue depends on traffic and respectively decreases when a user doesn’t land on the final page.
Affise has no intention to stay behind the scene. We aim at being a solid player in the affiliate marketing field, thus, we’re coming with our server parallel tracking solution.
For most marketers the principle of operation is quite familiar and understandable, instead of following through all subsequent redirect chain elements, a user lands immediately on the final landing page. At the same time, you don’t lose any redirects data — from now on all redirects are made server-side.
In short, server-side tracking implies that the server makes a direct request to a destination endpoint rather than hold the client’s browser responsible for making that request.
Thus, if a regular redirect scheme for a user looks like:
With Server Parallel Tracking it’ll look like:
While the 2nd and the 3rd steps are called directly on the server, and the user is redirected straight to the App Store or to any other final landing tracking URL of the offer.
From the integration point of view, a parallel tracking URL doesn’t pose any difficulty for Affise users. At the offer preview page users generate a tracking link and give it to partners, the same integration flow runs with advertisers. To start server parallel tracking just fill in the field “Parallel tracking URL”.
The “Tracking URL” field in this case is for a direct landing URL (a user needs to reach) and “Parallel tracking URL” field is for the advertiser’s tracking link (the one generated at the advertiser’s platform).
Moreover, no need to worry about the targeting. All targeting rules are taken into account the same as with the standard flow.
For example, when the condition on an offer geo is not met, the click will be sent to the Trafficback URL without enabling server parallel tracking. Quite a simple rule: if there’s a click on our tracking URL, and it wasn’t redirected to the Trafficback or no clickid was generated, the redirect is hooked via Parallel tracking URL.
When working with other trackers, do not forget to add the required by trackers’ conditions parameters. For example, while working with AppsFlyer do not forget to add &redirect=false to the link placed in the field “Parallel tracking field”
The Affise user will receive a postback as usual – from his direct advertiser. Though to be sure that the final landing page’s tracker could properly match the info on a real click with its clickid value, and descend it via all the chain’s elements in postbacks, one must indicate {clickid} both in the Tracking URL and Parallel tracking URL. Each subsequent element needs to pass it in its own corresponding parameter.
It’s worth mentioning the current version is not the only variation of parallel tracking. Further, we are about to introduce an opportunity to reach the advertiser’s final page without following an Affise tracking URL. Thus a fascinating journey only begins enabling Affise users to plunge into a powerful world of Parallel Tracking.
The feature is available for Custom plans. Should you have questions regarding the set-up, contact your Customer Success manager.
Written by
Junior Product Manager
Ana is honoured to enter the Product Management community as empathy and huge inclination to make the world better and easier is a key princple in her life. Ana always keeps in mind that products are made by people and for people. So, why not create valuable, useful and hence profitable products?
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