Promotion tool

RedTrack

RedTrack is a cloud tracker built around paid traffic and conversion postbacks. The click log lives in RedTrack, not on a server you administer. You give an ad account a campaign URL, RedTrack records the visit, and it redirects to a landing page or straight to an offer URL. When a conversion comes back, RedTrack attaches it to that visit so you can see which campaign and which ad produced it. This article shows how to make the offer URL a Maxlead tracking link, how to pass RedTrack’s click id, and how the network postback returns the result.

Maxlead is a CPA performance network that has operated since 2015. RedTrack is a separate product. The network does not own the tracker, and the tracker does not approve offers or pay publishers. You open a Maxlead account, copy a tracking link that already includes your publisher id, and decide which paid source is allowed to send people there. RedTrack is the layer that keeps those paid clicks labeled. If RedTrack’s menus change, follow the screen you are logged into. The offer still decides the country, the source, and whether an approved conversion is payable.

Who it is for

RedTrack fits publishers who buy traffic and need the conversion to travel back to the same click the ad platform created a cost for. That is a media buyer running native, push, pop, or social campaigns, and who wants one place to see spend next to the network result. It is less useful if you have no traffic source and only want to read an advertiser page. The preview on the offer is for reading the page. It is not the address you put in an ad.

Paid traffic makes the labeling stricter, not looser. The offer on Maxlead must allow the country and the source. A social placement the offer forbids does not become allowed because RedTrack has a template for that channel. A country outside the offer is not stored as a click on that offer. Read both limits before you create the campaign in the ad account.

After the test you still have two reports. RedTrack shows the campaign, the offer, and the lander that the paid click passed through. The network dashboard shows clicks, conversions, earnings, EPC, and CVR for visits that hit your tracking link. Earnings are approved payout only. CVR is approved conversions divided by clicks. EPC is earnings per click. Approved earnings are paid weekly. Pending and rejected conversions are not paid as if they were approved.

How a campaign is put together

RedTrack splits the setup into objects you can reuse. A traffic channel, or traffic source, describes the ad platform: which parameter carries that platform’s click id, and which extra parameters carry the site, the zone, the campaign, or the creative. An offer source describes the affiliate network: which parameter will carry RedTrack’s click id, and which tokens the network will send back for the click id and the payout. An offer is one URL from that source. A lander is an optional page in front of the offer. A campaign ties a traffic channel to one or more landers and offers and gives you the URL the ads should use.

The offer source is the piece people skip, and then the postback has nowhere honest to point. Create the offer source for this network even if you only run one offer. In that source, the click id parameter is the network field that will store RedTrack’s id. On Maxlead that field is one of s1 through s8. The payout parameter on the postback is the token the network uses for the amount, which is {payout}. Once those two are set, RedTrack can build a postback URL for you. You still have to paste that URL into the network, either as the global postback or as the postback for one offer.

Direct linking is the right first campaign. The ad clicks through RedTrack and lands on the tracking link, with no extra page you have to host. Add a lander only when the offer allows a page in front and you want to measure that page as its own change. The lander’s button has to continue through RedTrack so the same click id reaches the offer. A button that jumps to the advertiser preview drops the id and the publisher id together.

Pass the click id on the tracking link

Copy the tracking link from the offer on Maxlead after the account is allowed to run it. Public offers can be taken once the publisher account is approved. Other offers wait until a request is approved. The copied link already has the offer code and pid. Paste it into the offer URL in RedTrack. Do not retype the domain, and do not use a link that belongs to someone else.

RedTrack’s token for its own click id is {clickid}. Append it as the value of a sub ID. A practical order is s1 set to {clickid}, s2 set to the source label, and s3 set to the creative label. RedTrack replaces the token when it redirects. If you write a fixed string where the token should be, every visitor shares one fake id and the postback cannot tell them apart. Keep s1 as the click id for the life of the campaign. Moving the click id to another slot without editing the postback looks, on the network, like a normal click with a normal label. In RedTrack it looks like a conversion that never arrived.

Do not confuse three ids. The ad platform has a click id, which RedTrack can store so it can later notify that platform. RedTrack has its own click id, which is {clickid}. Maxlead creates another click id when the tracking link is opened, and that one comes back as {click_id}. The postback that RedTrack uses to record the conversion must carry RedTrack’s id, returned from the sub ID where you placed {clickid}. Sending only {click_id} tells RedTrack about a network id it never stored.

How the conversion postback comes back

The network sends a postback when a conversion is approved or rejected. It does not send one while the conversion is still pending. A global postback covers the account. An offer postback covers one campaign and replaces the global URL for that offer. Use the global URL if every offer should report to the same RedTrack domain. Use the offer URL if one campaign reports to a different tracker.

RedTrack’s postback reads its click id from a parameter named clickid. The payout is commonly carried in a sum parameter, which is the field RedTrack labels for the amount. Copy the postback URL RedTrack shows after the offer source is saved. Set clickid to {sub1} if s1 holds {clickid}. Set the sum parameter to {payout}. You can add {status}, {offer}, and the other sub ID tokens if you want the decision and your labels in the same request. Status is approved or rejected. Count revenue only for approved. A rejected status is a conversion that did not count, even if RedTrack has a row for the click.

The network sends the postback as a GET to an address that starts with http or https. Tokens are filled and encoded for you. Test by clicking the campaign URL RedTrack gave the ad account. Then check Activity for the click, the publisher id, and s1 through s3. When an approval happens, RedTrack should attach a conversion to the click id it created, with the payout the network reported. If Activity shows approved and RedTrack shows nothing, clickid is mapped to the wrong token, or the postback was saved as inactive. Do not respond by rewriting the click id in the offer URL.

Read clicks before you scale

RedTrack counts a click at the campaign URL. The network counts a click when the tracking link opens and the visitor’s country is allowed on the offer. A gap between those two numbers means the redirect failed, or the country was outside the offer, or the ad sent a source the link never received. Sort that out while the spend is still small. A paid campaign that shows cheap clicks in the ad account and zero clicks on the network is not a scaling candidate. It is a broken handoff.

Use EPC and CVR from the dashboard, not a one-hour snapshot inside the tracker, to decide whether the paid click is worth more of the budget. CVR uses approved conversions. EPC uses approved earnings. A lead that is still pending is absent from the reports that count for you, and it is absent from the weekly payout. RedTrack may show a conversion earlier if something else fired. Trust the approved row on the network before you raise bids.

When you do add budget, keep s2 and s3 the same so the new clicks sit next to the test. Change the creative sub ID when you change the ad. Change the source sub ID when you change the channel. Scaling is more of the traffic that already matched the rules. It is not a new country, a new source, and a new lander launched under the old labels.

A worked example

The example only works if the offer allows the United States and allows native traffic. If either line is missing or forbidden, do not run it. RedTrack cannot add a country to the offer, and a template named for a traffic channel is not permission from the advertiser.

Add an offer source for the network. Point its click id field at s1 and its payout field at {payout}. Create the offer with the tracking link, and set s1 to {clickid}, s2 to us-native, and s3 to headline-a. us-native is your name for this United States native test. headline-a is your name for the first headline. Create a campaign that uses the native traffic channel and this offer, with no lander yet. Put that campaign URL in the native ad account.

A click hits RedTrack. RedTrack writes a real click id into s1, leaves s2 as us-native and s3 as headline-a, and sends the visitor to the tracking link. The network stores the click because the country is allowed, then continues to the advertiser. Your postback, global or on this offer, uses clickid set to {sub1} and the sum parameter set to {payout}. Include status set to {status} so you can see approved or rejected without guessing.

When the conversion is approved, the network requests that URL. RedTrack matches clickid to the visit and records the payout it was given. On the network report, us-native and headline-a should show clicks, approved conversions, EPC, and CVR. The two systems will not match to the minute, because approval takes time. They should match once the conversion is approved or rejected. If they do not, stop the ads and check s1 before you change the bid.

Mistakes

The advertiser preview is the wrong destination for paid traffic. It opens the page so you can check the language and the action. It does not include your publisher id, so those visits never become your clicks, and RedTrack never receives a postback it can match. The offer URL is the tracking link you copied. The preview stays closed while the campaign is live.

Rewriting the click id breaks the only key the two systems share. Leave {clickid} as a token. Do not paste a sample value, do not trim the id, and do not put the network’s {click_id} into RedTrack’s clickid parameter. That token is the network’s id, created after the redirect. RedTrack is waiting for the id it created before the redirect, which returns as {sub1}. Editing s1’s name on the tracking link, and leaving the postback on {sub1}, is the same mistake with an extra step.

One hour of paid data is a noisy sample. The ad account will show spend immediately. The tracker will show clicks immediately. The network may show no approved conversion yet because the advertiser has not decided. Raising the budget in that hour multiplies a test you have not read. Wait for clicks on the dashboard, then for approved conversions, then look at EPC and CVR on a window that a single click cannot dominate.

A forbidden country or source is not a tracking problem. If the offer does not allow the United States, us-native is a label on traffic the offer will not store. If the offer does not allow native, the same label sits on a source the advertiser can reject. Rejection with a correct click id means the rule fired. Fix the offer choice or the traffic, not the token. Pause the ads the day the offer pauses. A postback cannot pay a click the advertiser is no longer buying.

Open the account, then the campaign

RedTrack needs a tracking link before any of the postback work matters. Open a publisher account from the Maxlead homepage, choose an offer that allows your country and your source, and put {clickid} on s1 with labels such as us-native and headline-a beside it. Save the postback with clickid set to {sub1} and the payout token on the sum parameter. Send a small paid test, and compare RedTrack’s clicks with approved conversions on the dashboard before you scale. The tracker tells you which ad the click came from. The network tells you whether that click was approved, and approved earnings are what the weekly payout includes.