In your application, one of the most important things to your partners is getting paid for the success of their campaigns. TUNE provides you with a robust payout system that lets you set up anything from a basic offer with a flat revenue & payout to dynamically determining the payout to the partner based on criteria from the conversion. This system also tracks the revenue from each impression, click, and conversion so you can focus on your profits.
What Are Revenue & Payout?
Those new to TUNE can sometimes find the difference between the terms “revenue” and “payout” a bit confusing, but the concept is pretty simple. The wording is set to the perspective of the admin platform.
The revenue is the amount you collect from the advertiser of the offer. In accounting terms, this would be referred to as accounts receivable. You are going to send an invoice to the advertiser at the end of the billing period that will show what they owe you for the conversions that you have sent to their site. If you don’t work with external advertisers and own your product/service, then the revenue value is what you will earn from each sale on your site. For example, if you sell an eBook online for $29, you can set the revenue value for the offer as $29 as well.
The payout value is the amount you are paying to the partner for each conversion that they send to your platform. Ideally, this value will be less than the amount of the revenue set in the offer. The difference between the two will be the profit that your company has made from that conversion.
Payout and revenue values can contain five decimal places ($0.00000). Some mobile markets thrive with media buys under $0.01, and TUNE is happy to support companies in those environments.
At the end of the billing period, you will send an Accounts Payable invoice to each of your partners that have made earnings with a statement of how much you will pay them for that period.
Setting Default Offer Payout & Revenue
To set the payout and revenue settings for an offer, first go to the offer’s page. Find the Payout panel and click the Edit button at the top to view and modify the offer’s payout and revenue settings:
Payout & Revenue Types
At the top of each section, you will see a dropdown that contains the Payout Type or Revenue Type. This setting lets you choose what metric and method to track revenue and payouts for that offer. Enterprise accounts can also schedule changes for a future date.
Revenue per Conversion/Cost per Conversion (RPA/CPA): This is a flat payout paid when the offer conversion pixel/postback is fired after the offer has been completed. This is the most common payout method for offers.
Revenue per Sale/Cost per Sale (RPS/CPS): This is a set percentage of the total sale of a conversion. When this revenue or payout is set, the offer pixel/postback will include a sale amount parameter that you will pass the total sale amount from the sale that the partner was attributed to, and the offer will calculate the revenue and payout of the conversion dynamically. Please put whole number values (40%, 12%, not 21.5%) into this field when selected.
Revenue/Cost per Conversion plus Revenue/Cost per Sale: With this option, you are setting a flat revenue/payout and specifying a percentage of a sale amount on top of that. This is a combination of the two above payout types.
Revenue per Click/Cost per Click (RPC/CPC): Instead of paying out on conversion, you can also set a flat revenue/payout on click, and each click will receive a payout. You don’t need a conversion pixel for these offers because the payout occurs at the click, and conversions are still tracked and appear in the conversion report.
Revenue per Thousand Impressions/Cost per Thousand Impressions (RPM/CPM): If you want to track impressions instead of clicks and conversions, this option is set to pay out for every 1,000 impressions. For this to happen, the partner needs to use the impression pixel provided for them in the offer to track impressions. If they want to use a provided creative file to display, the impression pixel is added to it automatically.
For most offers, the payout and revenue types will be the same metric; for example, you will commonly set up an offer that will have CPA and RPA set. However, this is only sometimes the case, as your revenue can be measured differently than your payouts. For example, nothing stops you from setting up an offer that collects revenue per click (RPC) but pays out to partners using cost per action (CPA).
Custom Payouts for Partners
There are many instances where just the default revenue and payout will suffice. You might have a super-affiliate on board that you want to incentivize by offering a better payout. In TUNE, you can set custom payout or revenue values for specific partners to do just that.
On the offer page, find the Payout panel and click Partner Payouts. On the page that appears, there is a table of custom payouts for this offer. Click Add at the top of the table. Then, select the partner from the dropdown menu.
You will then see a set of fields, as well as the default payout & revenue at the top. If you want a custom payout for the partner, type in the new value in the Payout per Conversion field and click Add. The payout and revenue type will stay the same for the custom payout.
Note: Adding a custom payout for a partner will not update previous conversions to the new payout retroactively. It will only apply to conversions going forward.
Once the custom payout/revenue has been added to the offer, you can see it show up in the table:
If you want to update the partner’s payout/revenue later on, you can click on the value in the table cell and edit it there. Click Save at the bottom of the table once you’re finished.
Enterprise accounts can also schedule the changes for a future date. To do so, click Schedule Change on the right side of the table for that partner, then pick the date and time you want the change to take effect.
Payout & Revenue Tiers
You can organize your partners into tiered groups and assign each tier a specific payout in the offer. To set up payout tiers, read our article on Payout & Revenue Tiers.
Payout & Revenue Groups
Enterprise accounts that want to pay partners based on more dynamic criteria like conversion or session data can use the Payout & Revenue Groups feature. Some example uses are paying partners based on what country the user comes from, what product was purchased, or what landing page was used.
Payout Structures
Payout Structures allow you to pay partners differently depending on the type or quality of traffic they deliver. You may evaluate custom criteria such as SKU, product plan, product category, or demographic. This feature is for Enterprise accounts only.
Payout Hierarchy
With a suite of payout options in your system, it’s essential to understand which payout settings will take preference. The hierarchy is as follows:
- Passing payout or revenue on conversion
- Specific partner payout or revenue
- Payout Structures -or- Payout & revenue groups -or- Payout tier
- Default offer payout
Suppose a partner-specific payout for the offer will apply to all payout events for that goal/offer. However, if there is no partner-specific payout set for that partner and offer combination, the system will attempt to apply payout and revenue groups, payout structures, and payout tiers. If none of these rules are met, then the default offer payout will apply to that payout event.
If you have both a partner-specific payout and that partner is a member of a payout and revenue group set for that goal/offer, any payout events for that partner will have the payout and revenue dictated by the partner-specific payout. The payout and revenue group will not apply to payout events from that partner.
Passing Payout or Revenue on Conversion
There might be situations where the offer's payout or revenue will be much more dynamic, with each conversion having a custom payout or revenue. In this case, you can pass in the payout or revenue as a parameter in the pixel or postback URL.
Important: When passing a custom payout or revenue, you will override any payout or revenue setting the offer or partner has set in the application.
To enable this setting, go to Company > Customize Application > Settings > Tracking. Find Specify Amounts on Conversion, and set it to “Enabled.” You can then start passing these values on conversion.
To pass a custom payout on conversion, append the payout parameter to the end of the URL:
http://demo.go2cloud.org/aff_lsr?transaction_id=TRANSACTION_ID&payout=10.00
The same can be done with a custom revenue, with the revenue parameter:
http://demo.go2cloud.org/aff_lsr?transaction_id=TRANSACTION_ID&revenue=12.00