Weighted Distribution For Affiliate Marketers

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Optimization is one of our favorite words. Why? Because the more we can optimize our platform, the more our affiliate partners can do with their campaigns. And the more our affiliate partners can optimize their efforts, the more they can earn. It’s through our affiliate and representative collaborations that we come up with some of our greatest platform ideas. As a result, this latest release is no exception.

Affiliates can distribute traffic with our Weighted Distribution feature by segmenting traffic in offer groups to its most granular level!

What is Weighted Distribution?

The Weighted Distribution feature will now allow affiliate partners to select the percent of traffic. Percents can be selected down to the decimal, that they want to direct to each offer within an offer group.

Our new Weighted Distribution feature can be used for standard traffic scenarios. In addition to an enhancement to our popular PerformPRIORITY and Image/Brand Rotation features.

Need a feature refresher? Our PerformPRIORITY feature allows affiliates to select one or more offers in a Priority Group. Then you can select other “backup” offers in a Secondary Group. These secondary offers will be used only if the primary offers become unavailable. Image and Brand Rotation enables affiliates to choose a particular vertical, such as Auto Insurance, and the Image and Brand Rotation feature will then display the product image and name. In addition to that specific products’ corresponding landing page, that has the highest chance of converting the unique visitor. (Interested in some of our other latest updates? Learn more about Perform[cb]’s features here and here.)

Standard Traffic Scenario

Let’s say you have an offer group containing three offers you’d like to rotate. With our traditional setup, our algorithm will select and serve up the offer in your offer group that is most likely to convert for each individual consumer based on historical data. With Weighted Distribution, you can choose the exact percentage of traffic you’d like directed to each offer. For example, offer one in the group could be assigned 50% of the traffic, while the two remaining receive 25%. You can also choose to lock offers at certain percentages, but be flexible with how you distribute the rest of the remaining percentage to your other offers. Have more than three offers for an offer group? Add as many as you’d like. Our Weighted Distribution feature can be utilized on an unlimited number of offers.

This feature is perfect for traffic types such as Survey or SMS where the offer does not need to be brand-specific. But you’re looking for more precise control over which offers are displayed more often.

PerformPRIORITY or Brand/Image Rotation Scenario

Our Weighted Distribution feature also has the unique ability to be used on offer groups utilizing PerformPRIORITY and/or Brand/Image Rotation. For example, when using PerformPRIORITY, you can still choose to have 100% of your traffic go to your primary offer(s) as normal, but if you’d prefer to have granular control over how traffic is split among your secondary offers, you can elect to use Weighted Distribution instead of our algorithm. For offers that are brand sensitive, you can still utilize our Brand/Image Rotation feature as usual. But now you can control the percentage of traffic that will receive each brand within the rotation link.

Easier A/B Testing

The ability to split up traffic to offers at the precise level that Weighted Distribution allows is a game-changer for A/B testing. Previously, if our affiliate partners wanted to A/B test two (or more) offers against each other, they often would go through the process of setting up a new campaign link for the second offer, then monitoring performance between the two. That meant double the work setting up campaigns and double the work checking for performance. By A/B testing with the Weighted Distribution feature, you can house all your tests through just one link. Meaning you save time on set up, and you get more accurate reporting.

Let’s say you’re running our exclusive offer X, and you’d like to split test with offer Y, but you’re currently running offer Y at a different network. To seamlessly compare the two and consolidate your efforts, you can now move your traffic to our offer Y and easily run your A/B test with offer X through our Weighted Distribution.

Weighted Distribution Use Case

Here’s a look at our Weighted Distribution in action. Previously, one of our affiliate partners had been running an Auto Insurance offer group where one top-performing offer required a redirect at 7 p.m. The redirect was going to a separate marketer’s offer that allowed night and weekend traffic. Now, thanks to Weighted Distribution, this affiliate partner was not only able to bump up the percentage of traffic to the top-performing offer during prime hours, but they were also able to send a percentage of their prime time traffic to the offer that was previously getting a bulk of non-prime hours. Our affiliate partner benefited from higher overall EPCs. While the top-performing offer got more premium traffic, and the redirect offer picked up primetime traffic. In addition to the night and weekend traffic they were already receiving.

Setting Up Weighted Distribution

When setting up an offer group, our affiliates now have the option to choose Algorithm (set as the default option) or Weighted Distribution.

When the Weighted Distribution option is selected, sliders will appear, allowing affiliates to move the slider tab up or down to choose the percentage of traffic they’d like each offer to receive. You also have the option to type in the exact percent, down to the decimal, if you choose.

You’ll also notice a ‘lock’ option. This tool can be used when you want one, or a few, offers to receive an exact percentage of traffic, but then want any remaining traffic to be sent to your other offers.

Both Algorithm and Weighted selections are available on both Preferred and Secondary offer priority levels, giving our affiliate partners the flexibility to set up their groups with whatever traffic rule combinations they prefer.

Designed with practicality in mind, our Weighted Distribution offers granular control in the cleanest, most intuitive way possible. It’s our goal to not only provide our affiliate partners with the tools they request, but to apply our industry knowledge and analytics to provide features that are even better than expected. Have an idea for our next great feature? We’d love to hear! Reach out to our team of experts today.

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Weighted Distribution: Affiliates Can Now Distribute Traffic Down to the Decimal