The following article describes the advanced flow of the offer creation. The advanced flow allows you to create any combination of the offer settings.
Feature update history:
20/05/2025 – Added advanced targeting options to revenue and payouts setting.
17/06/2025 – Added mixed value type to revenue and payouts.
The offer creation process consists of 5 steps.
Step 1 - General
The first step to creating an offer is filling in the basic information about the offer.
Description of individual fields
Name - The name of your offer that will be visible to everyone in the offer list.
Description - This field is used to describe an offer to your affiliates.
Restrictions - This field is to specify conditions or limitations to your offer. This section is only displayed once and is optional to fill.
Internal note - Use the internal note to share information with your team or as a reminder for yourself. This field is visible only when completed and is optional.
Visibility - We support three options of visibility: Public, Private and Apply to run.
Public visibility means the offer is accessible to all of your affiliates.
Private visibility means an offer is accessible to the affiliates you assign to it. Private visibility is helpful in two cases: you can have a special offer directed to high-performing affiliates with a higher payout or to test an offer. (We recommend using private visibility for testing.) See our Testing a new Offer article for additional information.
Apply-to-run visibility allows you to control which affiliates are granted access to the offer, enabling them to share their affiliate link for it. You can use it to let affiliates know that this is a more valuable campaign, but that they need to fulfill certain requirements before being granted access.
Offer thumbnail - An offer thumbnail is a sneak peek at your offer. Give your affiliates a glimpse of what your offer is about. You can choose an image to represent the campaign
Category - Keep your offers tidy and organized and group together thematic offers under individual categories.
Offer tags - Offer tags are a way to tag your offers with important information visually. An example of tags can be New, Summer, or Winter sale.
Targeting section
The targeting section contains specifications that affiliates should follow. These recommendations include Device and Channels.
The device specifies what devices are targeted. Channels refer to which traffic channels you prefer.
Step 2 - Conversion type and Revenue & payouts settings
Trackdesk is intuitive for payouts to affiliates. Payouts are structured to give you the ability to customize them to your liking.
Conversion type settings
In conversion types, you can add multiple conversion types to be used in an offer. Conversion types have the following parameters: Conversion type, Value type Number type, Recurrence limit, and On-Hold settings.
Conversion type - This field is for the conversion type you wish to use that is configurable in the Settings.
Value type - A value type is for setting a revenue type — fixed value for payouts (Fixed), percentage payouts (Percentage), percentage based revenue with fixed payouts (Mixed), or fixed values without entering a revenue (Revenue unknown). If you choose a percentage, the value must be prepared in our conversion script. This way, we can calculate the actual affiliate payout. Otherwise, the values are saved in the offer for the payouts for the affiliates. Add your desired conversion types, then click the "Apply" button in the Revenue & payouts block.
Recurrence limit - This means the conversion type is acceptable a specified number of times - once, a specified number of times, or unlimited times for a single click for as long as the click remains stored in the visitor’s website cookie.
On-Hold Settings – This allows you to delay a final conversion status or payout to affiliates by holding traffic for a specified time before allowing the conversion to be paid out. Such function is useful in cases where is higher chance of refunds in e.g. 14 day period.
Affiliate specified payout – You can also select a specific affiliate and set the payout for each conversion type independently of the other settings.
Revenue & payouts settings
Groups
After setting your conversion types, you will see a pre-defined group with conversion types and currently existing tiers in the primary currency you selected when creating your Trackdesk account. You can configure the revenue value for each conversion type, as well as the payout for all affiliate tiers you’ve set up.
Values in each tier get automatically pre-calculated based on default tier commissions for fixed and percentage value types. You can override these values with anything you want. For revenue unknown payouts have to be filled in manually for each tier.
If you use multiple currencies in your program, you can set up different payouts for each currency in the same manner. Click on the "Add currency" button to add a new currency.
Groups can be renamed as you wish with the rename option under the three-dot dropdown menu.
Group targeting
Revenue and payout groups can be targeted by setting conditions that determine when conversions are generated, ensuring they occur only when specific criteria are met.
Location-based targetingy
You can target geographical locations by selecting specific countries you want to accept traffic from. The default setting is accepting all countries.
Coupon-based targeting
You can choose to generate conversions only when specific coupon codes are used. This is particularly useful for:
Running special promotional campaigns with specific partners
Testing different coupon strategies with varying payout structures
Conversion count targeting
Apply this group only before or after a specific number of conversions on click is reached.
Customer ID targeting
Apply this revenue and payout group only when certain customer IDs are detected. This can be useful for:
Special arrangements with enterprise clients
Testing different pricing strategies with specific customer segments
Managing VIP customer programs with custom commission structures
Custom parameter targeting (AdvS and AffS)
Trackdesk supports custom parameter targeting through AdvS (Advertiser) and AffS (Affiliate) parameters, allowing for highly customized targeting rules:
AdvS parameters (Adv S1-S5):
These parameters can be set by advertisers and used to target specific advertiser-defined segments or campaigns.
AffS parameters (Aff S1-S5):
These parameters can be set by affiliates and used to target specific affiliate-defined segments or sub-campaigns.
Using multiple targeting options together
You can combine different groups and their targeting options to create highly specific revenue and payout rules. For example, you might create a group that applies only to:
Traffic from a specific country
Using a particular coupon code
After the 3rd conversion
With specific custom parameters
Targeting evaluation and priority
When multiple revenue and payout groups exist in an offer:
Non-default groups with targeting rules are evaluated first
If no targeting rules match, the default group is used
Make sure your default group has appropriate fallback pricing for all scenarios
Limitations and best practices
Each revenue and payout group must have at least one currency configured
A specific location can only be present in one revenue and payout group
When using multiple targeting options, all conditions must be met for the group to apply
It's recommended to start with simpler targeting rules and expand as needed
Always ensure you have a default group configured with appropriate fallback pricing
Click the "Add condition set" button at the end of targeting setting.
Step 3 - Landing pages
Affiliates use landing pages to send their traffic to you. You can add more landing pages to an offer. Affiliates can then select these landing pages to send their traffic to. You have the option to choose between two primary tracking methods: direct linking and redirecting.
Direct linking allows you to have a set of landing pages that will track all incoming traffic.
Redirect tracking allows you to lead visitors to different landing pages based on their geographical location determined from their IP address, OS, Device type or language. Redirect URLs also contain CIDs that are then used to create conversions.
⚠️ Please note that once an offer is published, the tracking type setting cannot be changed. If you're not sure about what to select, choose the direct linking method.
If you choose the direct linking method, you'll have to add a click script to your landing page and possibly another script based on your integration. We will talk about it more in-depth in Step 5 - Launch section.
The name of the landing page is shown to the user; it should indicate e.g. what the purpose of one landing page is when more than one is present. When only one landing page is added, it is best practice to use names like "Landing page," "Global landing page," "Main landing page," and so on.
Step 4 - Creatives
Creatives (also known as creative assets) are optional but are highly beneficial for your affiliates. You can upload an Image banner, HTML 5 banner, text link, and zip file up to 32mb. With these types of creatives, you will be able to help your affiliates with their promotional activities. Affiliates can see creatives in the offer detail in the tab labeled "Creatives," where they can download or copy them.
Step 5 - Launch
Here we will guide you on implementing the tracking of an offer. On each page, a script/snippet should be present. There are two types of code snippets: click and conversion.
Click tracking code needs to be placed on every page of your website where you would like to track clicks (e.g., every landing page). Make sure that it is placed in the <head> tag, ideally as high as possible.
The conversion tracking code needs to be placed on every page where the conversion should be fired. There is a specific code for every conversion type you have chosen in the offer creation process. This code is usually placed on thank you pages and should only be run if the conversion was successful.
*** In case a percentage number was used for a conversion type, the amount needs to be filled in for the script. There are more variables to use for tracking information. Click here: Adding a Parameter to Conversion Scripts and here Methods of Adding Data to Parameters.
... and that's it!
Now you've seen all the information on how to create an offer. With this, you are ready to invite affiliates! How can you do that? It is simple! Took a look at our next article, How to add Affiliates. If you are interested in any other guides, visit our Help Center.