Direct links enable advertisers to link directly to their site without redirecting through the TUNE tracking servers.
About Direct Links
Direct links pass offer and partner ID values to the landing page rather than starting a tracking session on click. Direct links transport the user directly to the advertiser’s site, giving these links SEO value and reducing the potential number of site redirects. Additionally, they provide you with the ability to pass partners their partner IDs on the end of website URL, rather than emailing them a tracking link or having them log in to TUNE.
Limitations
There are a number of other TUNE features which you can’t use with direct links. These include geotargeting, conversion caps, redirect and secondary offers, and the TUNE ad manager. These features require traffic to reach us before the landing page so that we can act to block or redirect.
Direct link offers track conversions using client-side methods, i.e., TUNE Javascript Tracking or cookie-based pixels.
Setting Up an Offer with Direct Links using Javascript Tracking
To use this feature, set an offer to use the Server Postback w/Transaction ID tracking protocol and place the direct link site as the Offer URL. Do not include &transaction_id= in the Offer URL. Next, go to the Tracking panel of the offer and click Edit. On the next page, set Direct Links to “Enabled” and click Save.
Afterwards, configure the Javascript SDK in the head of the offer site to add click tracking functionality:
<script>
!function(){var o=window.tdl=window.tdl||[];if(o.invoked)window.console&&console.error&&console.error("Tune snippet has been included more than once.");else{o.invoked=!0,o.methods=["init","identify","convert"],o.factory=function(n){return function(){var e=Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments);return e.unshift(n),o.push(e),o}};for(var e=0;e<o.methods.length;e++){var n=o.methods[e];o[n]=o.factory(n)}o.init=function(e){var n=document.createElement("script");n.type="text/javascript",n.async=!0,n.src="https://js.go2sdk.com/v2/tune.js";var t=document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0];t.parentNode.insertBefore(n,t),o.domain=e}}}();
tdl.init("YOUR TRACKING SERVER DOMAIN")
tdl.identify()
</script>
You'll need to replace "YOUR TRACKING SERVER DOMAIN" with your tracking domain, making sure to use a secure domain if the code is integrated on an HTTPS site. Unless you have set a custom tracking domain, it will look something this:
https://demo.go2cloud.org
This code will track the click and start the user session by placing the generated transaction ID in the session storage of the user's browser.
Setting Up an Offer with Direct Links using Pixels
Set an offer to use either an iframe or image pixel tracking protocol. Next, go to the Tracking panel of the offer and click Edit. On the next page, set Direct Links to “Enabled” and click Save.
Back on the offer page, find the Generate Tracking panel and copy the “Direct Link Code”.
Important: If you’re sending users to a secure site, you must be using a secure tracking domain and you must be generating a secure link.
Place the code in the HTML of the default offer landing page and in any other additional landing page URLs that are created. This code will track the click and start the user session by placing a cookie in the user's browser.
Partner Links
Your partners can then access your offer as they normally would, however, their new link appears as a direct link:
www.example.com?offer_id=1&aff_id=1
rather than the standard link format:
http://demo.go2cloud.org/aff_c?offer_id=1&aff_id=1
Additional Tracking Link Parameters
You can still pass additional tracking link parameters into the offer URL like partner sub IDs and source values:
www.example.com?offer_id=1&aff_id=1&aff_sub=test&source=thisisatest