Before launching an offer, it’s best practice to make sure it properly guides information between your partner, your TUNE platform, and the advertiser. This lets you notice and fix incorrectly populated transaction IDs before they affect your revenue.
Although manually performing this test can be confusing, the steps below will guide you through the process of finding the partner tracking link, triggering a click, and confirming the success of a test postback.
Tip: Some of the steps below use Google Chrome developer tools, but other browsers have similar tools that can be used.
1. Prepare Links
Start by getting your offer’s partner tracking link and postback URL from the offer’s page. Depending on whether or not your offer is set up with goals, this information will be in one of two places:
- With offer goals: Payout > View
- Without offer goals: Details > Tracking
If your offer has multiple offer goals, then click the View link that corresponds to the first goal expected (typically a click or app install).
The partner tracking link is listed as the Test Link, and the postback URL is listed as the Postback URL. You’ll need both URLs to complete the testing process.
2. Open Chrome Network Log
In Google Chrome, open a new tab or window. Then, right-click anywhere on the page and select “Inspect” from the menu. In the window or pane that appears, select the Network tab:
Then, check the Preserve Log box:
Now you can see values in the HTTP requests as they’re being passed from partner to network to advertiser.
3. Trigger a Click
Type or paste the partner tracking link from step 1 into the destination bar, then press Enter to trigger a click. Data transferred to or from your browser will appear in the Chrome tool. Any redirects taken by your browser, like those triggered by tracking systems, will also be captured by the tool.
The log entries that appear trace the redirect path from the partner’s tracking system through your TUNE tracking link to all advertiser URLs, until reaching the final landing page.
Scroll to the top of the “Name” column and find the entry formatted like this:
aff_c?offer_id=OFFERID&aff_id=AFFID
In your tool, OFFERID and AFFID will be replaced by the appropriate offer and partner ID values:
4. Find the Transaction ID
Because you need the click session’s transaction ID to fire the test postback, getting that is the next step. The transaction ID value is 30 characters long, contains both numbers and letters, and usually starts with numbers like 101, 102, or 103.
Select the Headers tab in the panel to the right of your selection. This tab shows fields and their values being passed through HTTP requests.
The transaction ID can usually be found in a field labeled “transaction_id”, in a field labeled “tracking_id”, or embedded in a URL like in the image below:
Sometimes, the transaction ID will instead be in the entry above or below the “Name” entry selected in step 3. This is perfectly normal and is caused by the differences in partner interactions from network to network.
5. Fire Test Postback
In the postback URL from step 1, replace TRANSACTION_ID with the transaction ID you found in step 4. Then, type or paste that URL in the destination bar and press Enter.
This fires a test postback from your browser and creates a conversion. Based on the results, you’ll get one of the following responses:
- success=true: A successful conversion was logged by TUNE. Congratulations!
- success=false: A rejected conversion was logged by TUNE.
If your conversion was successful, it will appear in reporting tools shortly. Your offer is ready to launch!
If your conversion was rejected, it may have an invalid, expired, or duplicate transaction ID. To resolve this issue, contact your advertiser to find out why the conversion was rejected.
Viewing Past Test Results
At some point, you may want to go back and view past postback testing results instead of repeating the above process.
To view successful postback tests, go to Reports > Conversion Report > Search. Select “Partner Source” from the dropdown menu and type testoffer into the search box. Click Run Report to display matching successful conversions.
To view errors from unsuccessful postback tests, go to Reports > Server Logs. In “Filter”, select the checkbox next to “Log type” and type the error into the box that appears. Similarly, select the checkbox next to “Action” and type conversion into the box labeled “Action Filter” that appears. Then, click Run Report to display matching conversion errors.
Learn more
For more information on postback tracking, transaction IDs, and the conversion report, you may also find these articles useful: