Voluum - The Definitive Guide - Part Two (5)
The first article about
Before, I went through the pros and cons of the affiliate tracker and you got to look at the main stats panels. Now it’s time to learn how to correctly set the tracker and get to know which are the options you should go for.
This is the main topic of this
Ready to go forth, diving deeper into this tracking platform? Time to get a move on!
Let’s make sure that, by the end of this article, you know how to integrate the Voluum tracking platform. It’s gonna be step by step, which means you’ll become ready to use Voluum like a pro!
Diving into Voluum – Creating a New Traffic Source
First of all, you need to set your traffic source in the traffic source tab, clicking the option “New traffic source.”
You should first check the traffic source templates available since Voluum already has an integration with the most popular ones. In case your traffic source is on the list, you should definitely choose it because you’ll have an easier time integrating parameters.
Can’t find your traffic source?
No worries. You can manually integrate all parameters.
If your traffic source is not part of the predefined lot, you need to insert its name and integrate the postback URL, which should be provided by your traffic source.
You need the postback in order for Voluum to send info about the conversions it gets from the affiliate network to your traffic source.
Let’s look at an example of a postback URL integration on ExoClick. ExoClick is on the list of predefined traffic sources. This means all parameters and the postback URL are automatically set.
Where goal is your internal unique ID on ExoClick, tag is the clickid parameter of ExoClick and {externalid} is the clickid parameter of Voluum.
Basically, what you need to do in order to set-up the postback correctly is to equate two clickids parameters — from both your traffic source and Voluum ({externalid}), inside the postback URL.
Next step: you should take a look at the “advanced” tab inside the Traffic Source sheet.
If you’ve set a pre-defined network, there won’t be a lot of extra stuff to do apart from investigating which parameters you’re able to track.
Let’s look at the same example of ExoClick.
Here, you can see such parameters already integrated: custom variable1 – campaign ID; custom variable2 – variation ID; custom variable3 – domain; custom variable4 – site ID; custom variable5 – zone ID; custom variable6 – category ID; custom variable7 – country; custom variable8 – format.
Now you’re asking yourself: why would I need them? The answer is simple: when you start running your campaign, you’re gonna be able to see the stats filtered by each of these parameters.
This makes it possible for you to check how much profit a specific campaign has brought you, or how much a website has lost. This way, you can decide what to do knowing exactly what’s going on, becoming able to improve your performance and get that tasty cash!
Here’s something you’ve gotta know right now: the more parameters you have, the more variables to optimize you’ve got in your pocket.
Therefore, you’ll be able to get on a full-granular mode, checking remarkably specific details and taking Media Buying analysis to a whole new level!
Don’t use a predefined traffic source? Apart from setting your postback URL, you need to get to know what sort of parameters your ad-network is gonna be able to provide.
That’s the only way for you to successfully set custom variables on the “Advanced” tab on “Traffic source”.
Integrate Your Affiliate Network
Just like what we’ve seen in the case of traffic sources, there’s a bunch of predefined affiliate networks to play with as well.
By choosing one, it’ll provide you a global postback URL, which you’ve got to insert on your affiliate network.
Here, you’ve got several options to choose from.
You can click the first option in order to automatically add the clickid to your offer URLs.
Moreover, if you know that your affiliate network works in such a way that you’re able to have several transaction IDs with the same click id (which means that one clickid can have many conversions subscribing/installing various products at the same time), I suggest you accept duplicated postbacks.
If you’re using Mobidea, I recommend you enable this option. If you personally feel that you only want to receive postbacks from specific IPs, you can set it all up on Voluum.
Setting Up Your Offer
The offers button is an option of the “Flows” menu.
Here, you need to specify the name of the offer and then add your offer URL on the URL tab. If you work with a Smartlink, you can create only one offer and insert your Smartlink URL.
We suggest you pick “Global” as a country. Why? Because — as soon as you start sending traffic to this offer — the Smartlink will automatically detect the country, sending your user to the best offer according to his segment.
On Voluum’s stats, you can sort by country and analyze the performance of each one. If you’re working with a Single Offer, you’ll need to create a different offer on Voluum; one that’s aligned with different offers from your affiliate network.
Want more reasons to pick “Global” as your preferred country? Here we go:
1. The offer can be available for several countries, avoiding offer duplication;
2. Let’s say your traffic source fails to provide you traffic from a selected country only. In this case, you can normally have a safety fallback in your offer, and your traffic will be redirected to another offer according to the country and won’t be lost.
Furthermore, in this step, you need to set dynamic tracking parameters (depends on the traffic source) which you want to send to the stats of your affiliate network.
Var1 represents the campaign ID on ExoClick, and Var3 represents domain. By aligning these parameters with Mobidea’s internal parameter, you can get to check more detailed stats on Mobidea.
Here is the example of how we set parameters, using ExoClick as a traffic source and the Mobidea Smartlink®.
Don’t want to send more detailed stats to your affiliate network? Then you’ve only got one single parameter to set: that’s the ClickId parameter equal to the clickid parameter of your affiliate network which, in the previous example, was data3.
Here’s another example where cid is the network’s clickid parameter.
After that you need to choose the affiliate network which you have already set in the previous step.
The postback for your affiliate network will show up after you’ve saved your offer. You need to replace the parameters marked as REPLACE according to your affiliate network and place this postback URL on their side.
If you know the offer’s payout, you can set it manually, as shown in the following example.
However, if the value of your payout varies, you should then replace it in your postback URL.
http://csoku.voluumtrk3.com/postback? cid={{DATA3}}&payout={{MONEY}}
where {{DATA3}} is the clickid parameter of Mobidea,
{{MONEY}} is the parameter of the dynamic payout on Mobidea.
-When the offer is set, you can get moving to the next step: adding a pre-lander.
Here, the only thing you’ve gotta do is add your pre-lander URL on the tab. You should keep the “Country” tab unchanged, for the aforementioned reasons.
In case you rotate your offer, you can pick a number of offer parameter that’s equal to one.
Creating the Flow
This option opens up a lot of possibilities. Basically, it allows you to decide how you want your traffic to be distributed.
For example, let’s say you wanna split test, sending traffic to different offers. On the flow tab, you can create several paths for your traffic. In fact, you’ll even be able to determine the percentage of traffic that’s gonna be driven to the offer. This can be really helpful.
This way, you can send a great deal of traffic to the best-performing offer. At the same time, by sending a smaller amount of traffic to other offers, you keep testing offers and checking what works best.
If the situation changes, you can easily redirect your traffic to the one that becomes the most profitable for you!
In this section, you can also set whether or not you wanna use direct linking. This makes the user from your traffic get instantly redirected to your affiliate network’s offer.
Looking for something else?
As you see in this example, you can also set an additional step before users see the offer.
What happens?
They’ll land on a prelander.
In this tab, you can add several prelanders for specific offers and test them in order to understand which one’s working better for your offer. In this case, prelanders will rotate each time the offer is shown.
This way, you can estimate the performance of each set of Pre-lander + Offer Link.
As in the offer path, you can also set the percentage of traffic for each pre-lander, based on the number of times you want each prelander to be shown before users can see the actual offer.
Another amazing feature of the Flow section is the fact that you can create your own rules on how you want your traffic to be redirected based on conditions such as Brands and Models, Browsers, Connection Type, Country, State/Region, City, Day of the Week, Device Type, IP, ISP, Language, Mobile Carrier, OS, Time of the Day, Referrer, User Agent, and Custom Variables.
Let’s say you’ve got an offer that’s working well for all OS except iOS. Then, you’ve got another one which works only for iOS.
In this case, you can create a path and redirect all the traffic to the first offer. More than that: you can create an additional rule!
You can do something like this: if the traffic comes from iOS, it goes to another path.
If you work only with one Smartlink from only one affiliate network, this feature is not that important.
Nonetheless, in case you only work with a Single offer or a combination of Smartlink + Single offer, this option may be very useful.
In addition, if you’re testing several affiliate networks and know that one is much stronger in a specific OS, the possibility of setting such a precise rule is really gonna help you boost those sugary profits!
Create a Campaign in Voluum
The last step before you can actually start to run your wonder campaign is here!
Now what?
You’ve gotta create a Campaign.
This is when you need to choose a traffic source, which you’ve already predefined beforehand. Here, once again, I recommend you leave the “Country” tab empty.
Later on, it can be auto-replaced.
You also need to understand if you want to track your costs from your ad network, based on the pricing model you’re using. You can set the CPC, CPM, or CPA value you’re paying for your traffic. In case you work with SmartCPM, you don’t have a fixed amount of costs.
What to do? Pick the option “Don’t track costs” because you won’t need to track them at all, will you? Remember: in this case, you do need to check your costs on your ad-network.
Voluum also has the option of tracking costs automatically. However, I’ve tried this many times before and I’ve been able to understand that – with some networks – this option may not really work that well.
Therefore, this isn’t something I’d tell you to do. Even so, if you really wanna use it, please be sure to test beforehand, so as to be certain that everything’s tracked correctly.
On the advanced settings tab, you can choose the flow you’ve already pre-defined on the previous step. Apart from that, you can create a new path specifically for this campaign, choosing a new path of offers and prelanders inside the campaign.
Wanna use the simplest option available to you?
Pick only one offer URL as the destination URL.
https://academy.mobidea.com/wp-conte...8/image_15.png
If you’ve selected the predefined flow, Voluum will remind you of that fact on your flow settings, showing you how your traffic will be distributed.
When you save your campaign settings, the campaign ID will appear on the Campaign URL tab. This URL needs to be included on your traffic source as a destination offer URL in order for you to start sending your traffic to a specific offer, becoming able to track all your data on Voluum.
https://academy.mobidea.com/wp-conte...image_16-1.png
If you follow these steps, I can guarantee you’re gonna be ready to start running your campaign.
Hope this guide was able to make things clear for you, allowing you to become a Voluum master!
Thanks for the guide. I was just reading about the paths & weights in
So, even after reading their KB, correct me if I'm wrong but if I have just 1 Lander @ 100, and 1 Offer @ 100 and that green paths weights button clicked ON, the user will get to my lander every single time before getting sent to the offer right? Which also begs the question...shouldn't I just turn the green button for path weights off if I'm using just 1 lander and 1 offer?
Hi, Tsmllc!
How's it going?
You could turn it off. I don't see the point of it, though.
First, it's unlikely that you're testing just one lander and one offer, right? This means that - when you want to play with the weights - the button should be ON.
Plus: I'm not sure if
Hope this helped!
Cheers!
Holy shit! Now I've got the lightbulbs I need and can finally use
I'm not tech-stupid (well mostly not), but holy crap I've had a hard time with
Thank you!
@
If anyone ever needs further details of the steps outlined, kindly refer to our online Userguide here.
It's a bit of a beast that took the better part of 2 months (evenings / weekends) to complete, so I hope you guys find it valuable 
As always, feedback is welcomed!
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