LinkGroups
A Link Group (otherwise known as a SmartLink) is a way for an affiliate to split traffic across multiple different destinations. This split can be targeted, optimized, or random. Link groups get their own tracking link and support pass through and dynamic values just the same as regular tracking links.
Performance Metrics
Random
Random is the simplest link group. You add links to the group and traffic is randomly distributed across all links in the group. This is not affected by percentage random or any other settings
Optimized
Optimized links choose the best performing link based on your specified performance criteria. You may base your optimization on epc, rate of conversion, or rate for custom event types if any exist.
- Stats Scope - Specifies if you want to consider all of your traffic, all of the traffic network wide, or just traffic to this specific group.
- Stats Date Range - Specifies the time range to include in the optimization.
- Hit Threshold - Specifies the minimum number of hits required for each of the possible landing pages before the best performing link will be used.
- Percent Random - Specifies what percentage of traffic will continue to to be distributed randomly while the rest of the traffic is optimized.
Targeted
Targeted links allow you to direct traffic based on date and time, country, and device type. Links get added to the individual targets just like you add them to any other link group.
- Hours - Restricts this target to only specific hours of the day
- Days - Restricts this target to only specific days of the week
- Authorized / Unauthorized Countries - Restricts this target to geoip location
- Device Type - Restricts this target to specific device types
Targeted links can be either randomly distributed or optimized by epc.
Adding Links
There are three places to add links to an existing group:
1) From the link groups page, paste a link, choose a group, confirm that it is correct and hit 'Add Link to Group'.
2) From the edit link group page, click 'Add a New Link'. Paste in the link, confirm that it is correct and hit 'Add Link to Group'.
3) From the linkcodes page for a specific offer, click 'Group'. This will bring you to th link groups page from method 1 with the link already in place.
Deep Linking
Individual links can have deep links hard coded into them. For example, using the following linkcode to link to http://example.natsfornetworks.com/landing_page1.html:
http://example.natsfornetworks.com/track/MjozOjE/landing_page1.html
Affiliates can also manipulate the query string. For example, the affiliate can pass the variable extra_var=1234 to a landing page by appending a question mark and the variable assignment to their linkcode:
http://example.natsfornetworks.com/track/MjozOjE/?extra_var=1234
Similarly you can deep link the link group tracking link and have the details pushed through to the individual links For Example http://example.natsfornetworks.com/lgtrack/Mi4z?ocid=xxx will go to
http://example.natsfornetworks/com/track/yourlink?_ocid=xxx
Model Link Group
An admin can flag one link group as the 'model' to use for other affiliates without manually setting it up on each account. Once a model has been chosen, you can continue to edit that model, and either push those changes to all affiliates using the model, or update specific affiliate accounts to check for changes. From the admin you can create the model link group on any affiliate that does not already have it. There is also a configuration option to create the model link group on all new affiliate accounts. This config can be found in the configuration admin on the "Affiliates" sub page, under the "Signup" section: "Model Link Group on Signup".
