Promotion tool

Voluum

Voluum is a cloud affiliate tracker. You open it in a browser, and the click log stays on Voluum’s side instead of on a machine you rent and patch. A campaign ties a traffic source to an offer URL, with landing pages in between when you choose to use them. Reports then show which path received the visit. This article explains how to put a Maxlead tracking link in that offer URL, how to pass Voluum’s click id through, and how the postback brings an approved or rejected conversion back.

Maxlead is a CPA performance network that has operated since 2015. Voluum is a separate product. The network does not own it, and the tracker does not pay you. Publishers open a Maxlead account, copy a tracking link that already carries their publisher id, and send visitors there. Voluum is a way to organize that send when you buy media or rotate pages. If a button in Voluum moves, trust the screen you are logged into. Whether a conversion can be paid still depends on the offer.

Who it is for

Voluum is for publishers who need a record of the click before the visitor reaches the advertiser. Media buyers use it when one account buys native, push, or pop traffic and they want those sources in one report. Site owners use it when they would rather paste a campaign URL into a page than paste a raw offer link. It is the wrong tool if all you want is to read the advertiser page. The preview on the offer is for reading. Traffic belongs on the tracking link.

The tracker also does not widen the offer. The offer on Maxlead must allow the country and the source you plan to use. A visit from a country the offer does not accept is not saved on that offer. A source the rules forbid can be rejected even when Voluum shows a lead. Read those two lines before you create the campaign, not after you have spent.

You will still check two places after the test. Voluum tells you which campaign, path, lander, and offer URL the visitor passed through. The network dashboard tells you which of those visits became clicks on your publisher id, and which of those clicks became approved conversions. Earnings on that dashboard are approved payout only. Pending and rejected conversions are not paid as if they were approved. Approved earnings are paid weekly.

How a campaign is structured

Voluum keeps four objects that are easy to mash into one link. The traffic source is where the visitor comes from. You map the tokens that source can pass, such as a site id, a campaign id, a creative id, or the source’s own click id. Map them once and reuse the source. The campaign is the URL you give that source. A click on the ad hits the campaign URL, Voluum records the visit, and the campaign decides the next hop.

A lander is a page between the campaign and the offer. An offer, inside the tracker, is a named URL, not the advertiser’s product by itself. For this network that URL has to be the tracking link from the offer page. A path is the rule that sends a share of visitors to a lander and then an offer, or straight to the offer. Weights let you split traffic. Name the path after the country and the creative, not after the word test. A week later the name is the only reminder of what you changed.

Direct linking skips the lander. The visitor goes from the traffic source to the offer URL, and Voluum is in the middle only long enough to store the click and replace tokens. That is a clean first test, because a failure has fewer causes. Add a lander only when the offer allows a page in front and you are ready to measure the extra step on its own. Do not use a lander that hides the action the advertiser is paying for.

Pass the click id into the tracking link

Open the offer on Maxlead only after your publisher account is allowed to run it. Public offers can be copied once the account is approved. Other offers stay closed until you request them and the request is approved. Copy the tracking link. It already contains the offer code and your publisher id in pid. Do not rebuild it from memory, and do not borrow a link from another publisher.

Paste that link into the Voluum offer URL. Then add the sub IDs the network stores. Maxlead keeps s1 through s8. It also creates its own click id when the visitor opens the tracking link. Voluum’s click id is a different value. Voluum must get its own id back if the conversion is going to land on the right visit. The network’s click id is what you see in Activity, and it is what the {click_id} token returns.

The Voluum token for its click id is {clickid}. Put that token, unchanged, as the value of one sub ID. Voluum replaces it at redirect time. A static word does not identify the visit. Use s1 for {clickid}, s2 for the traffic label, and s3 for the creative label. Later slots can hold a placement or a daypart. Keep that slot aligned with the postback. If s1 is the click id today and the headline tomorrow, Voluum will receive a headline where it expected an id. The traffic source may also pass its own click id, often stored in Voluum as the external id, for reporting back to the ad platform. That value is not a stand-in for {clickid}. Put it in a later sub ID if you want it on the network report. Do not overwrite s1 with it.

How the postback returns the conversion

A postback is the request the network sends when a conversion is approved or rejected. Pending conversions do not send one. You can set a global postback for the whole account, or an offer postback for a single campaign. The offer URL replaces the global one for that offer only. Use the global postback when every campaign should report to the same Voluum domain. Use the offer postback when one campaign should report somewhere else.

Voluum expects its click id in a parameter named cid. Copy the postback URL from your Voluum tracking domain. Replace the cid placeholder with the token for the sub ID that holds {clickid}. If that is s1, cid is {sub1}. Put {payout} on the payout parameter if you want the amount the network reports. That token is filled in dollars with two decimals. You can also send {status}, {offer}, and {sub2} through {sub8} if you want the decision, the offer code, and your labels on the same request. Those extra tokens do not replace cid. Voluum matches the visit by the click id.

Read status before you treat the row as money. The status token is approved or rejected. Credit approved. Do not credit rejected. The request is a GET, and the URL has to start with http or https. An empty sub ID becomes an empty cid, which Voluum cannot match. Test with a real click on the campaign URL, not a sample id pasted into cid. Activity should show the visit and the sub IDs. After an approval, Voluum should show a conversion on the click id it created. If the network shows an approved conversion and Voluum does not, the postback is pointed at the wrong token or the wrong domain.

Clicks versus approved conversions

Voluum counts a visit when the campaign URL is hit. Maxlead counts a click when the tracking link is opened and the country is allowed. If Voluum has visits and the network has none, the redirect missed the tracking link, or the country was outside the offer. Neither problem is solved by raising the bid.

The dashboard shows clicks, conversions, earnings, EPC, and CVR. CVR is approved conversions divided by clicks. EPC is earnings per click. Reports that count for you do not list conversions that are still pending. A row that appears in Voluum as soon as a form is submitted can be ahead of the network. Wait until the network shows approved or rejected before you call the click settled. Weekly payout uses approved earnings only, so a pending lead is not money you can plan a media budget around.

Scale only the slice that already matched the rules, and keep the same sub IDs while you add volume, so the new clicks compare with the test. Do not change the lander, the country, and the bid in the same step. A new headline gets a new creative sub ID. A new source gets a new source sub ID. Mixed labels make CVR a blend of two tests, and then EPC cannot tell you which test paid.

A worked example with us-native and headline-a

Assume the offer allows the United States and allows native traffic. Both have to be true on the offer you copied. If native is forbidden, or the United States is not listed, this is not a campaign to launch. Pick another offer, or do not buy that source. The tracker cannot waive the rule.

Create the native platform as a traffic source and map only the tokens it really passes. Create a campaign on that source. Add an offer whose URL is the tracking link, with s1 set to {clickid}, s2 set to us-native, and s3 set to headline-a. Those two words are your labels. us-native means this test is United States native traffic. headline-a means the first headline. They are not values the network requires. They are the strings you want to see again when you break the report down.

Leave the lander off for the first run. Put the campaign URL in the native campaign. A visitor clicks. Voluum replaces {clickid} with a real id and redirects to the tracking link with pid, s1, s2, and s3 filled in. The network stores the click because the country is allowed, then sends the visitor to the advertiser. s1 remains the long Voluum id. You do not trim it.

The postback points at the Voluum domain with cid set to {sub1} and payout set to {payout}. Add status set to {status} and offer set to {offer} so the request also carries the decision and the offer code. When the conversion is approved, the network calls that URL. Voluum finds the visit because cid matches the id it created. The payout on the row is the amount the network sent for that approved conversion. Do not type a different payout into the offer settings and ignore the token.

On the network side, break the report out by sub ID. You should see us-native and headline-a with clicks, approved conversions, EPC, and CVR. Voluum should show the same offer receiving those clicks and, after approval, the conversions. If the two systems disagree, stop. Buying more traffic will not force the click id to match.

Mistakes

Sending traffic to the advertiser preview is the mistake that looks harmless. The preview opens the advertiser page so you can read the form, the language, and the action. It does not carry your publisher id. Visitors who land there never create a click you can be paid on, and Voluum has nothing to match when a postback never comes. The offer URL in Voluum is the tracking link. The preview stays a reading copy.

Rewriting the click id is the next one. {clickid} has to survive until Voluum replaces it. Do not shorten the id, add spaces, or paste an example id from a help page into a live URL. Do not aim cid at {click_id} unless you stored the network’s own click id in the field Voluum treats as its click id, which this setup does not. cid is {sub1} because s1 holds Voluum’s id. Renaming s1 on the tracking link without editing the postback deletes the match even though both screens look filled in.

Judging one hour of data is how small samples become budget decisions. One hour can be a broken redirect, a slow approval, or three clicks that happened to convert. Read clicks first, then approved conversions, then EPC and CVR on a window where one click cannot swing the rate. A chart that refreshes quickly is not evidence that the offer has settled.

Using a forbidden country or source wastes an otherwise careful setup. us-native is a valid label only when the offer allows the United States and allows native. Clicks from a country outside the list are not saved on that offer. Leads from a forbidden source can come back rejected. Rejected is the rule, not a broken postback. If the offer is paused or the link is removed, stop the ads the same day.

Start with the publisher account

Voluum can record the visit and receive the postback only after the offer URL is a tracking link on your own publisher id. Open a publisher account from the Maxlead homepage, copy the link for an offer you are allowed to run, and place {clickid} in s1 with labels such as us-native and headline-a in the next slots. Confirm the country and the source on the offer, send a small test, and compare clicks with approved conversions before you scale. The cloud tracker is the record of the path. The network is where the click, the status, and the weekly payout of approved earnings live.