Subnetwork Compliance

This guide informs subnetwork publishers of the compliance requirements of Commission Factory.

Below outlines information about the objectives for the requirements and implementation guidance for subnetwork compliance. 

Objectives

1. To establish a consistent compliance approach where multiple traffic sources are used under one publisher ID.
2. Provide Commission Factory clients with transparency and choice.
3. To strengthen the relationship between our clients and publishers.

Requirements

Subnetworks are required to pass back the domain of the traffic source responsible for conversion per transaction under their publisher ID. Optional: To also provide publisher type (ie. coupon, loyalty, content, browser extension, media buying, etc).

Implementation

Commission Factory has 4 available spaces for additional parameters within our tracking links. We call these additional parameters Unique IDs. The use of Unique IDs enables you to report on a specific identifier allocated to each traffic referrer. Some use cases are:

• To identify a traffic source where multiple traffic sources are used under one publisher ID
• To tag a campaign to measure specific performance and ROI
• To pass back customer IDs where someone needs to be allocated points or cashback

Here is our Developer Documentation about Unique IDs and the GET Reports/UniqueId Function if access to our API is needed. 

Subnetworks must use the first Unique ID field to populate their sub-affiliate ID to facilitate the match back to their own platform. Commission Factory now requires subnetworks to also pass back the domain name for the publisher in Unique ID 2. An additional optional request is for Unique ID 3 to populate the type of publisher (example: content, coupon, browser extension, etc.). With this additional data, we can also assist with setting up custom commissions for specific traffic types where necessary for any programs.

If passing through the domains isn’t possible, subnetworks will need to create 3 separate affiliate accounts for all incentivized traffic inclusive of:

First account: Content, influencers

Second account: Loyalty, cashback, browser extensions, coupon

Third account: Media buying (first and/or third-party display)

Subnetworks will need to adjust the existing tracking links accordingly and reapply to all programs, which our team can help you with.

Benefits

By implementing unique IDs, subnetworks are able to report specifically on them or apply them as a dimension to any custom report. In the use case of a subnetwork, it also unlocks dynamic commission capabilities whereby sub-publishers can be offered specific rates from advertisers, meaning better engagement and better overall commission rates.

By splitting out traffic across separate publisher IDs, this will as a minimum enable subnetworks to work with new clients who do not want to work with incentivized traffic and continue working with any existing client who may change their terms to remove incentivized partner types, as is sometimes the case.

The additional transparency will provide the flexibility to operate on higher commissions for non incentivized partner types, where some programs have commission rates per partner type. Overall, these elements help subnetworks to set up long-term strong and profitable relationships with our clients.

If you have any questions about any of the above, please feel free to reach out to us at affiliates@commissionfactory.com and loop in your product or tech team if needed.