Payout structures allow you to pay partners differently depending on the type or quality of traffic they deliver. You may evaluate any number of custom criteria such as SKU, product plan, product category, or demographic. This feature is for Enterprise accounts only.
Create a Payout Structure
To manage your payout structures, go to Offers > Payout Structures. To create a payout structure, click Create New. On the next page, in the General Info panel, set the name, advertiser (optional), currency, default payout, and default revenue (optional). Keep in mind that the name will be visible to partners in the partner interface, assuming they have access to the offer.
Add Criteria
Payout structures use criteria to determine if the conversion or user session qualifies for a given rule. These criteria are based on the parameters of your tracking links.
Click Add Criteria to get started. In the Criteria Details panel, enter a Name. This name is displayed in the Payout structure table as a column header. Next, select which Tracking Link Parameter will be used for this criteria.
You can choose from a selection of TUNE parameters and/or enter your own custom parameters. All parameters used in payout structure criteria must be passed to TUNE in the conversion postback/pixel to function properly.
The following TUNE Parameters are supported for criteria:
- adv_sub
- adv_sub2
- adv_sub3
- adv_sub4
- adv_sub5
- aff_sub
- aff_sub2
- aff_sub3
- aff_sub4
- aff_sub5
- source
Next, choose the Type of data to be evaluated. Criteria parameters allow text or numbers as input. There are different operators available for each data type.
Text criteria operators:
- Equals- An equality operator (=) that exactly matches one character value to another
- In-The IN operator is used to determine if the expression matches any value in the list of values.
- Like- ANSI/ISO standard operator for comparing a column value to another column value, or to a quoted string. The conditions match a portion of one character value to another by searching the first value for the pattern specified by the second.
- Not- The NOT operator has one and only one function: negating whatever condition comes next. It retrieves the rows for which the specified condition is FALSE (NOT TRUE).
Number criteria operators:
- Equals
- Less than
- Less than or Equal to
- Greater than
- Greater than or Equal to
- Between
Add Rules
Now that you’ve added some criteria to the payout structure, you can add rules based on those criteria to determine the payout and revenue for a given conversion.
Click Add Rule to continue. In the Add New Rule window, enter a Name for the rule. Next, choose an operator and a value for each criterion we created earlier.
When a rule has multiple criteria, the system requires all the criteria to be met for that rule to apply. For example, above we set the value of the “Product” criteria to “Example”, and the value of the “Lead” criteria to “Test”. If one of these criteria is not met for a given conversion, this rule will be skipped and the payout structure’s default payout & revenue will apply.
Evaluation Order
The order in which rules will be evaluated can be updated by changing the order number on each rule. The evaluation order starts at one, then two, and so on. Rules that use many criteria should be set to a lower number to ensure they are evaluated before less-specific rules. Payout and revenue defaults will always be at the bottom of the table as they will always be evaluated last.
Assigning a Payout Structure to an Offer
Once a payout structure has been created, you can apply it to one or more offers in your account. To assign a payout structure, navigate to the desired offer. In the Payout panel, click Change Payout Structure.
Select the desired payout structure and click Apply Payout Structure.
The selected payout structure is now assigned to the offer and will be used to determine the payout and revenue for the offer.
Pixel/Postback Implementation
Now that the payout structure has been created and assigned to your offer(s), you need to set up your offer pixel/postback to pass back the parameters you defined in the criteria. Going back to our example, the pixel on the confirmation page to trigger the evaluation for the rule we created is:
<iframe src="http://demo.go2cloud.org/aff_l?offer_id=1&adv_sub=example&adv_sub2=test" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" width="1" height="1"></iframe>
Once this is placed and saved on the offer’s confirmation page, you are ready to go!
Partner-Specific Payout Structures
*NOTE* If you set any partner-specific payouts on the offer, those payouts take priority over payout structure settings including partner-specific payout structures.
As a part of a payout structure, you can set partner-specific defaults and rules. To create a partner-specific payout structure go to the partner-specific tab and select ‘Add Partner’
Select the partner you want to set up a partner-specific payout structure for and click ‘Add’. You now can change the default payout and revenue for this partner and setup and advanced payout rules that will only apply to that partner.
Working with Goals
When you assign a payout structure to an offer that has goals enabled, the payout structure will apply to the default goal only. Additional goals will each have their own payout and revenue values which are not affected by the payout structure.