TUNE's Deep Linking feature allows you to link users to specific pages or sections within your mobile app, rather than just the home page. This is useful for directing users to specific content, promotions, or other features within your app, and can improve the user experience by making it easier for them to find what they're looking for.
To use TUNE's Deep Linking feature, you'll need to set up deep links in your app and configure TUNE to recognize those links. Here's how to do it:
Set up deep links in your app:
Deep links are URLs that take users directly to specific pages or sections within your app. To set up deep links, you'll need to modify your app's code to recognize specific URLs and take users to the appropriate page or section. There are several frameworks and libraries available for both iOS and Android that can help you implement deep links quickly and easily.
Configure TUNE to recognize your deep links:
Once you've set up deep links in your app, you'll need to configure TUNE to recognize them so that you can track clicks and conversions. To do this, log in to your TUNE account and navigate to the "Deep Linking" section. Here, you can specify the deep link URL format that your app uses, as well as any additional parameters that you want to track, such as campaign IDs or affiliate IDs.
Enabling Deep Links
To enable deep links on an offer, first go to the offer’s page. In the Tracking panel, click Edit. Set the Deep Links setting to “Enabled” and click Save.
Back on the offer page, you will now see a similarly named setting in the Generate Tracking panel:
When you check the box, a field will appear that you can put in the custom URL you want that tracking to redirect to. For example, let’s put this URL in the field:
http://example.com
When you update the tracking link by clicking Update, the final tracking link will look like this:
http://demo.go2cloud.org/aff_c?offer_id=1&aff_id=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fexample.com
As you can see, the custom URL was appended to the end of the tracking link in an encoded format (done automatically when put into the deep link field.) The URL parameter is used to tell the ad server what URL to redirect to on click. If the deep link setting is enabled for the offer, you can put any URL into that URL parameter, it does not have to be entered each time using the field in the generate tracking section:
http://demo.go2cloud.org/aff_c?offer_id=1&aff_id=1&url=URL_HERE
Ideally, the URL is encoded, or used URL safe characters to not trip up the original tracking link. If you are adding URLs manually to tracking links, consider using an encoding tool like this one to encode your custom deep links.
There’s no reporting tool that shows if deep links are being used. To do this, the partner would have to append partner sub-ID values to signify that they used deep links. If you are adding a tracking link into a creative and the click action isn’t working as expected, the click URL may need to be URL encoded.
Create deep link URLs for your campaigns:
With deep links set up in your app and TUNE configured to recognize them, you can now create deep link URLs for your campaigns. These URLs can be used in your ads, emails, social media posts, or other marketing channels to take users directly to specific pages or sections within your app. To create a deep link URL, simply append your app's deep link URL format to the TUNE tracking link for your campaign, along with any additional parameters you want to track.
Test your deep links:
Before launching your campaigns, it's important to test your deep links to make sure they're working correctly. You can do this by clicking on the deep link URLs in a web browser or on a mobile device and verifying that they take you to the appropriate page or section within your app.
By following these steps, you can use TUNE's Deep Linking feature to improve the user experience for your app users and track clicks and conversions more effectively.
There are many instances that the default offer URL or even additional offer URLs will not be where the partner wants to send traffic to. Especially with e-commerce sites, partners will often want to send traffic to a specific product or category page.
TUNE has a setting in the offer that lets the partner specify what URL the traffic will be redirected to by specifying that URL in the tracking link using the URL parameter.
Deep Links for Postback Tracking Offers
If the offer is set to track using server postbacks, one obstacle encountered is passing the transaction ID to the custom URL specified on click. If you are manually adding deep links to your partner tracking URLs, then this will encounter a problem as the transaction ID won’t be passed to the custom URL unless you remember to add the {transaction_id} macro to the deep link so the ad server and append the actual value on redirect.
The generate tracking tool checks what parameter the {transaction_id} tool is passed into on the default offer URL and assumes that the custom deep link will accept that same parameter, and appends the parameter along with the {transaction_id} macro in the custom deep link. This is only done when the deep link is pasted into the field in the generate tracking section.
For example, let’s say this is the default offer URL set for the offer:
http://www.example.com?trans={transaction_id}
Because the offer is set to the server postback w/ Transaction ID attribution method, the generate tracking tool determines that the same trans={transaction_id} value needs to be passed to the new URL. So when the original URL is entered into the deep link field:
http://example.com
The final tracking link will append the deep link along with the encoded parameter at the end:
http://demo.go2cloud.org/aff_c?offer_id=1&aff_id=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%3Ftrans%3D{transaction_id}
This then redirects to:
http://www.example.com?trans=10234968756738933345
Passing Macros Through Deep Links
In the example above, you can see that the transaction ID macro can be added to a custom deep link and the value will be passed through to the URL successfully. This same setup can be applied for all optional macros that can be passed through any default offer URL.
Example:
http://demo.go2cloud.org/aff_c?offer_id=1&aff_id=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fexample.com%3Fsub_id%3D{aff_sub}
The macros to pass values through do not have to be encoded like the rest of the URL.