Understanding Tracking With Server To Server Postbacks

Learn ow Everflow's Server-to-Server (S2S) postbacks offer a dependable method for tracking conversions by detailing how they work with Transaction IDs generated during clicks to accurately record affiliate performance without relying on browser cookies.

Introduction

Everflow's Server Postbacks (S2S) Postbacks offer a robust solution for precisely recording conversions, ensuring you and your partners have a clear picture of campaign performance. This method eliminates reliance on browser-based tracking, providing a more reliable and secure way to monitor your affiliate activities.

Let's delve into how these postbacks function and why they're essential for optimizing your tracking and reporting within Everflow.

A Reminder On Linking Types

Conversions generally happen after Clicks, and it’s very important to first select your Click Tracking type.

If you haven’t decided on the types of Click Tracking, here’s an introduction to the concept.

S2S Postbacks is the most reliable method for Conversion Tracking, specifically because it doesn’t need to rely on Cookies in your browser, set during the Click Tracking process.

Server To Server Postbacks method can be used with any Linking Type, but this Conversion Tracking Method is usually paired with Redirect Links.

How Server-To-Server Postbacks Work

We need to understand S2S postbacks in the entire context of the tracking journey, which means understanding Clicks & then Conversions.

We’ll break down how Direct Links & Redirect Links can both work with S2S Postbacks, but first let’s remind ourselves of the concept of the Transaction ID.

Please read more in-depth on Transaction ID’s here, a pre-requisite to understand Conversion Tracking.

The simple idea is, once a Click has happened, that Click will generate a Transaction ID. This Transaction ID, will be associated with a Partner (usually an Affiliate), and an Offer.

After that, when the conversion happens, the S2S Postback method will be used to send an Advertiser Postback, essentially a “signal” from the Advertiser’s website to Everflow, that lets Everflow know that a Conversion Event has happened.

Server-To-Server Postback Format

In order to understand how Everflow associates the Conversion Event included in the Postback to the Partner and Offer, let’s dig into the format of this Postback.

This is the core format for the Advertiser Postback when using the S2S Postback method.

Here’s a breakdown of the example above:

Tracking Domain: This is basically one of the Tracking Domains that is available to you.
NID: This is your Customer ID, also known as Network ID (Nid), which will be prefilled when accessing your Postback URL
Transaction_id: This is the identifier that is created during Click Tracking (or Impressions). The Transaction ID associates this conversion with a Click, Partner & Offer. Connecting the entire attribution funnel.

How To Generate Conversions Using S2S Postbacks

The most important attribute in the Postback is the Transaction ID. As noted above, a Transaction ID is generated much before the Conversion Event occurs. In order to tie the Conversion Event to the Click, we’ll need to fetch the Transaction ID, and call the Postback URL to record the conversion.

With Redirect Linking

If your Linking Type chosen for this Offer are Redirect Links, the Transaction ID will be present in the URL once the visitor lands on the Default Landing Page. The URL will look something like this:

Once the visitor lands on the Default Landing Page for the Offer, it’s up to your tech team to fetch the _ef_transaction_id parameter value from the URL & store it.

NoteIn the Default Landing Page URL during Offer setup, the macro name that stores the Transaction ID might’ve been set to something else like “tid” or “s1”, so please refer to your specific configuration for exactness.

Whether you store it in a First Party Cookie or you store it in your backend, Everflow is agnostic to this part when using the S2S Postback Method for Conversion Tracking.

When the visitor finally converts, you’ll send the Transaction ID value you’d stored earlier, in the Advertiser Postback.

With Direct Linking

If you’re using Direct Linking, once the visitor lands on the Default Landing Page, you will need to use the Click Script from the JavaScript SDK in order to track the Click, which in turn generates a Transaction ID.

Once you call the Click function (1), it will return the Transaction ID via a JavaScript Promise. From there your task is the same as with Redirect Linking, you’ll store that Transaction ID however you want.

Once the conversion happens (2), you’ll pass the Transaction ID in the Advertiser Postback (3), in the same way as we showed in the Redirect scenario.