Hello,
I recently joined stm. After reading through the forum I sometimes reading about cloakers. (f.ex. @twinaxe post https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...s-simultaneous)
I understand that a cloaker basically let's you promote offers that are outside the guidelines of the traffic source as it basically "cloakes/hides" your traffic from the traffic source and its checking systems.
As a coder that is turning marketeer I have some questions about it:
Hey,
Welcome to STM.
1) What are other reasons to use a cloaker?
Hide your landing page from spytools can be a reason.
Do you pay less for the traffic?
The cloaker itself won't impact that. It can give you access to cheaper traffic where you would not normally not allowed to run.
2) What are popular cloakers?
There is a discussion about that here:
https://stmforum.com/forum/showthrea...hlight=cloaker
Any examples to github or code samples?
The code is usually very simple. What is expensive in a cloaker is to maintain the database of IP to detect when to cloak and when not.
Even if you find some code online, it will be of little use without an up-to-date database.
3) Are there any services that provide cloaking for us?
See thread above.
4) I currently only found twinaxe posts about cloakers. Any other threads that you can recommend on stm?
Not many.
If you are just starting AM, I won't start with cloaking though. This adds a level of complexity and uncertainty that will not help you. Better to run safe offers to get going. When you know what you are doing, you could decide to move on cloaking.
@jeremie has answered the questions pretty thoroughly.
To clarify: Basically a cloaker will redirect visitors that fit the criteria you specify to one page, while sending the rest to another page.
Example: Send traffic source reviewers to a page that complies with their advertising terms (typically called the "safe page"), while sending the "real" visitors to the misleading landing page (typically called the "money page") and/or offer.
Typically the criterion is a database of IPs like @jeremie mentioned. You can also build your own IPs - by setting up some type of monitoring on your landing page or some sort of script that can capture IPs. IPs you get from the initial few views/clicks before your campaign goes live would be from reviewers. Set up enough of these on a traffic source and you can theoretically stand to build a list of most/all reviewer IPs.
Or you may notice that all the reviewer IPs are from a certain location - for example from one or more cities where that traffic source's offices are located. In which case you may choose to use location as the criterion.
And of course commercially available cloakers come with their own database, and will typically help you to capture reviewer IPs for you for new traffic sources when you set up your first campaigns there and get them approved.
Word of warning though: Traffic sources have gotten better at detecting cloaking, especially FB. So cloak at your own risk. And find updated and actual reviews (on blackhat forums) on cloakers to make sure to choose one that still works well. Also, last I heard, even the best commercial cloaker will leave a footprint so you wouldn't be immuned from account bans. The idea is to make bans more infrequent. Of course you'd want to do further research to verify yay or nay, as I'm not an expert on the topic - at least not since many years ago...
If you're interested in this topic, browse some relevant posts on a blackhat forum - you'll find everything you wish to know and more.
Amy
Sent from my iPhone using STM Forums
The previous replies are pretty much spot on already but I´d like to add one more point.
Often affiliates think that running BH or using cloakers is somewhat of a bulletproof way to success.
But it isn´t, when your campaign sucks without cloaking it most probably will also suck with.
Cloaking can help to run stuff that is not allowed to run on the trafficsource, it can also help to prevent from being caught by Googles (getting flagged), it can also help to run more aggressive landers or whatever.
No matter how or why you want to use a cloaker, there is one thing you need every single time: A converting campaign
Cloaking is no shortcut to profits, you need to learn how to run campaigns anyway so better don´t tzhink too much about such tactics yet.
Better learn first how to run campaigns without it and you will see that mostly you don´t even need to use stuff like cloakers to succeed.
Yes, they can give a competitive advantage but when you can´t succeed without a cloaker you probably also won´t succeed with.