BEST PRACTICES | OCTOBER 2008


Best Practices for tracking media placements using Linkshare links
When an advertiser offers a higher revenue share or an upfront fee to a publisher for a special placement on their website it is important to get a clear picture of how it performs. With Linkshare, you can easily track your ROI for any placement. You can see exactly where impressions and clicks are coming from, how many sales happened from each of the placements, and how well each converts to a sale.

In order to accurately track a placement on a publisher’s site you should always create a link just for that placement. Let’s say you would like to offer a key partner increased revenue share in exchange for a special holiday placement which includes a listing on the homepage, in a category, and in an email.

Step one: Create a private offer just for the publisher and include the details of the placement (correct revenue share, time period, etc.). Extend the offer and make sure the publisher opts-in to the offer.

Step Two: Create a link for each placement. Create a text link or banner and include Name/ID and Title as something that will easily identify the placements – e.g. CouponDude.com 9-08 Home, CouponDude.com 9-08 Category, CouponDude.com 9-08 Email.

Important: When creating the link, you want to assign it to the publisher (in this case CouponDude.com). Press the Programs button (see number 2 in the screenshot above). A list of all of your offers should be displayed. Click the private offer that you created in step one and hit “OK”. This will allow only the affiliate opted-in to that offer to use the link. DO NOT assign to all.

Notify the publisher that their links are available in the Linkshare interface and verify that they are using them correctly.

Step Three: After the links have been uploaded by the publisher and the placement is underway, you can measure activity one of two ways. First, you can run a link type report. You will drill down in the link type report to the links that you created for the placement. You will see the links listed as the Name/ID that you assigned to them in step two. The link type report will show impressions, clicks, and sales from that link alone. Since the link is only being used for the placement, you can get a good measurement of your ROI. Second, you can run a program level report and look up the private offer you created in step one. This report will give you an overall view of how the campaign is doing rather than each particular link placement.