Knowledge Centre

Our affiliate marketing platform provides you the tools to place content from well-known brands on your website. The platform enables you to monitor the performance and effectiveness of the implemented promotional materials in detail, with extensive reporting features allowing you to react and further optimise your online efforts.

We understand that to have and maintain a top-notch website you require some financial support. That’s why TradeTracker will pay out your commission up to 4 times a month. It’s even possible to apply for our Super Fast Payment solution, which will make commissions payable within hours of a transactions approval.
As an affiliate you are in full control of your payments and you may change your payout frequency whenever you like accordingly.
Monthly
When you have set your payouts monthly your payment notice is generated on the 1st of each month.
Twice a month
Setting your payout to twice a month will render a payment notice on the 7th and 21st of each month.
Four times a month
Selecting a payout frequency of four times a month means that your payment notices will be generated on the 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th of each month.
If needed, you can place pause payouts by enabling the “On-hold” option. You may also increase the minimum payout amount to throttle transfers.
Payments will be made shortly after payment notices are generated and can either be conveniently done by PayPal or a wired transfer.

Alongside our payout frequency of up to four times a month, you might also be eligible for our unique ‘Super Fast Payment’ procedure which will make commission’s payable within hours of the transactions approval. You can discuss this feature in-depth with your account manager.

If you’re interested in running advertisers on your site from multiple countries you may add your site to another TradeTracker territory from your affiliate interface. Simply navigate to Account -> My sites and click the “Add new site” link. You may then choose the additional territory you want to apply your site.
Once your application has been approved you are able to manage your activities for that territory by choosing it from the country dropdown at the top of the interface.

Yes you do! Aside from our advanced technologies in registering conversions, we have additional customisable functions available for you to configure. For example, you are able to attach a unique reference (or subid) to your link or provide a call-back location from within the interface so that conversions will be forwarded to your own statistics server. It’s even possible on request to place a third party tracking tag.

Yes we do! The application programming interface (API or Web Service) allows you to access functions and information available within the software by providing programmatic access to the data in your account. Some basic API features include: retrieving account information, campaign information, transaction information, product feed data, payment information, promotion material or a combination of these things in generating advanced custom reports or allowing you to hook-up your own statistics software amongst other things.
Our web services are based on the SOAP protocol. This protocol is a specification for exchanging structured information through Web Services. Access to our API can easily be requested from within your account.

You may choose from a wide array of creatives to place on your site such as text links, banners, product feeds, widgets and voucher/discount codes. For banners you can set up a rotator which will optimise itself automatically based on key metrics you supply, such as EPC.

As an affiliate you will have access to TradeTracker Page Tools. These set of tools will enable you to quickly manage content on your sites from within the TradeTracker interface.
You can simply toggle the visibility of functions such as widgets (comparison tools) and our Link Replacer, which is the perfect tool for automatically generating outgoing tracking links to advertisers.

Widgets are modules containing dynamically generated content which can be added to your website by placing a simple piece of code. The result is a sophisticated travel search engine, or a tool in which fashion items can be compared.
All these widgets can be managed from the Page Tools section in the affiliate interface.

Of course! By aiming to supply the best affiliate software interface available today. When we focused on ease of use, we created something that helps our customer avoid any confusion. However, in a fast moving environment such as the internet, questions are bound to come up. Luckily, there is a team of skilled industry professionals available waiting to help when you get stuck.

Whether you’re a seasoned professional or a beginner, your account manager will always guide you through your start-up process. With an array of commission models to choose from (CPS, CPL, CPC, CPM and more) and options to incorporate a hybrid model available, it’s all down to the correct mix of approaches so that your affiliated websites have choices when implementing a campaign.
No Win, No Pay
Choosing the right commission model is key in attracting the best publishers to promote your campaign. Once started, your account manager will use the appropriate communication channels to inform the publishers about your campaign. Keeping your creatives – including product feeds and offers – up to date will significantly improve your results.
No Financial Hassle
We take care of the invoicing and payments for your affiliates, so you can spend your time tailoring campaigns and building relationships with publishers.

Our software is fully scalable, meaning advertisers can easily add a complete product catalogue with millions of products and have them available to thousands of affiliates. There are numerous opportunities with your account manager to guide you during the process and available to advise the best approach for your online campaign and website.
It is also possible to oversee many kinds of promotional methods simultaneously from within the TradeTracker interface. If you need more and development is in your blood, we also provide a full-featured API system to communicate with our platform.

Getting your campaign to run in multiple countries is as easy as contacting your account manager at TradeTracker, who will prepare all the necessities required to get you up and running. Your account manager will take care of the initial steps of contacting individual countries for implementation.
You can choose whether to have one central point of contact or to work with individual account managers in each country, which can be useful in the event you have multiple employees taking care of regional marketing activities. No matter what you choose, your campaigns are manageable from one single interface, allowing you to not have multiple logins for separate territories.

Being able to see exactly which site or campaign is most efficient is key in extracting the best performance. Extensive and real-time reports are therefore available from within your account. At your fingertips are simple figures such as clicks, leads, conversions, to more sophisticated information of eCPC, EPC, CSR and CLR.
These reports provide you detailed information about the performance of campaigns you are running on different levels. You are even able to extend or fully customise reports and save them for future reference.

Prepayment enables you to pay a certain amount upfront, which is used to mark your invoices containing the affiliate commissions as paid immediately after the invoice has been generated. This will ensure fast payouts to affiliates meaning they are happy and willing to reinvest in your campaign, as opposed to your competitors who may not offer this.

Product feeds (also called data feeds) are an export of your in-stock products. These are often generated in either XML or CSV format and can be used easily within the TradeTracker platform. We support a wide variety of existing feed types such as Google Shopping for example.
A product feed is a highly recommended, user friendly and low maintenance tool for affiliates to generate more conversions as visitors are redirected to the dedicated product page they’re interested in.

Our experience tells us that text links have the highest conversion rate when compared to other promotional materials as they are easily infused with content.
Text links can be easily used by affiliates when writing a product review or blog post. Affiliates can add a simple link to the corresponding product/service as a hyperlink in their review or article.

Aside from general promotional material options, you are also able to quickly add voucher (discount) codes and consumer offers from within the interface. General discount codes can boost your campaign significantly, especially upon start-up. If you do not have voucher codes to share just yet, you can also add certain consumer offers as creatives, seeing as these are a perfect way for affiliates to promote your brand with an additional offering such as ‘free shipping’.

Absolutely! HTML materials allow you to create more dynamic advertisements such as dynamic product content and search boxes. HTML advertisements have increased in popularity due to their flexibility and styling possibilities.
Using HTML search boxes allow visitors to perform a search directly from within the affiliate site. After pressing the search button the visitor will be redirected to the search results page on the website of an advertiser.

Even though banners in general don’t generate a similar amount of click through ratios as text links, they do absolutely add value. We currently live in a visually dominant society and this goes for affiliates and their visitors alike, so it is key to ensure your brand and products are represented aesthetically. In our experience mixing the two increases your probability of leading to a click.
Affiliates that promote you by additionally using banners help increase your branding position. We recommend updating or renewing banner material regularly and linking to certain site categories or product specific pages, as this tends to increase the conversion ratios.

Yes we do! The application programming interface (API or Web Service) allows you to access functions and information available within the software by providing programmatic access to the data in your account. Some basic API features include: retrieving account information, campaign information, transaction information, product feed data, payment information, promotion material or a combination of these things in generating advanced custom reports or allowing you to hook-up your own statistics software amongst other things.
Our web services are based on the SOAP protocol. This protocol is a specification for exchanging structured information through Web Services. Access to our API can easily be requested from within your account.

For sure! With the tools TradeTracker provides, you will be able to optimise your online campaigns with ease. It is however beneficial to be regularly in touch with your account manager who has a proficient knowledge of getting the best out of your presence. He or she will optimise your co-operation with your publishers so that profitability can be ensured for both parties. Our account managers will contact you on a regular basis or you can simply contact them. The details of your account manager can be found within your interface dashboard.

It is based on the outcome of the balancing test and the principle that the data used in the course of executing the tracking activities are based on data which carries a very low risk of negative impact on the data subject’s interest and will not result in a high risk to individuals being tracked.

Affiliates are a data controller when they provide for a newsletter subscription or otherwise have a (contracted) relationship with visitors – being their customers.

Whether one is controller or processor depends on the relevant party. It is important to understand the position of the party, as defined in the GDPR. A data controller is the entity which determines the purpose and manner for which data is processed, either by itself or alongside others. This means that the data controller determines ‘why’ data is processed.

The data processor, on the other hand, does not make decisions as to why the data should be processed. However, it can make some limited decisions about ‘how’ the data should be processed. This means, for example, a data processor may make decisions about the type of software used in the processing, but it may not make decisions about the essential elements of the processing. A key essential element of processing is which personal data to process. Therefore, if a data processor, while assisting the data controller in achieving its purposes, decides what data should be processed to achieve those aims, it will most likely become a data controller jointly with the first controller.

This is up to each party to determine. TradeTracker processes personal data as a Data Controller with regards to the tracking of transactions under article 6.1 (f) – legitimate interest. Under Article 6.1 of the GDPR, processing shall be lawful only if and to the extent that at least one of the following applies:

• (a) the data subject has given consent to the processing of his or her personal data for one or more specific purposes;
• (b) processing is necessary for the performance of a contract to which the data subject is party or in order to take steps at the request of the data subject prior to entering into a contract;
• (c) processing is necessary for compliance with a legal obligation to which the controller is subject;
• (d) processing is necessary in order to protect the vital interests of the data subject or of another natural person;
• (e) processing is necessary for the performance of a task carried out in the public interest or in the exercise of official authority vested in the controller;
• (f) processing is necessary for the purposes of the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party, except where such interests are overridden by the interests or fundamental rights and freedoms of the data subject which require protection of personal data, in particular where the data subject is a child.

No, we will not sign a data processing agreement, but instead an arrangement. Both the merchant and TradeTracker are Data Controller, making us Joint Controllers. Also, certain information will remain in the TradeTracker system even after the contractual obligations are completed, for the sake of reporting to other (previously) involved parties. This is part of the reason why TradeTracker is (also) a Controller.

TradeTracker also positions itself as a data controller, not a processor, for the purpose of the affiliate program. Under article 26 of the GDPR where two or more controllers jointly determine the purposes and means of processing, they shall be joint controllers. They shall determine their respective responsibilities for compliance with the obligations under this Regulation in a transparent manner, in particular as regards the exercising of the rights of the data subject and their respective duties to provide the information referred to in Articles 13 and 14 of the GDPR, by means of an arrangement between them.

No, this is not standard procedure since TradeTracker (also) positions itself as a data controller for the purpose of the affiliate program. The affiliate and TradeTracker are both Data Controllers, making us Joint Controllers for which parties need to agree on how to handle respective responsibilities.

TradeTracker is a Data Controller in respect of the affiliate program. In this case the merchant and TradeTracker are joint controllers, whereby the agency has certain obligations it needs to meet under the Data Processing Agreement it has in place with the merchant. In this case, Article 26 arrangements need to be in place between the Agency and TradeTracker and the addendum is often sufficient. If the agency insists to have (only) standard data-removal articles added to the addendum, to meet their obligations, this amendment is possible since it is a general requirement under GDPR for data to be removed upon request.

There is no need to explicitly mention the individual parties you share data with or use as (sub-) processor. However, the category of recipients needs to be specified as third parties, in which case the TradeTracker service relates to e.g. online marketing services. Customers are allowed to create their own statement or alternatively may use the following text example:

[Merchant/Affiliate] makes use of the services of TradeTracker.com. Their role is to help advertisers and publishers understand which advertisements displayed by publishers have generated which sales, leads or other actions for advertisers. This allows the advertiser to pay a publisher only when the advertisement displayed (or any alternative required action) by the publisher refers an individual to the advertiser and that individual makes a purchase. TradeTracker uses data, including cookies, to achieve this understanding. This data relates to individuals but does not identify them by name. It is pseudonymous data and relates to a single referral by an individual from one website to another, and then a confirmation that a purchase was made.

TradeTracker also maintains a database of references to individual’s devices, so that they can understand whether an advertisement viewed on one device, for example a phone, caused a purchase to be made by that individual on one of their other devices, for example a laptop. This database does not allow people to be identified by name, which is not possible for TradeTracker itself to achieve.

TradeTracker does not build profiles which show an individual’s internet purchase history over a period of time. TradeTracker also does not target individuals with advertisements for products and services based on their perceived interests. Their role is simply to measure the effectiveness of specific online advertisements.

Yes, there is a possibility to opt-out of TradeTracker cookies. Publishers can apply the TradeTracker ‘deny-handler’ to opt-out from TradeTracker cookies.
In addition to refusing TradeTracker cookies, under the GDPR the user must also be able to opt-out from having their personal data processed. This opt-out is possible via the cookie page on the TradeTracker domain, referred to by the merchant or publisher as indicated in their own privacy policy. This opt-out sets a functional cookie on the user’s system and avoids any tracking over cookies from the TradeTracker domain. As result the user has opted-out from TradeTracker processing personal data. The result is active until the user removes the cookie from his system or provides an opt-in. There is no alternative method for TradeTracker, or any provider using similar processes due to the nature of the business and limited scope of personal data it is involved with, to otherwise avoid users being tracked by cookies.

On one hand, cookie consent is required for placing any non-functional cookie, irrespective of whether personal data is included in such cookie. On the other hand, data consent is one of the lawful grounds to process personal data, referring to Article 6.1(a) of the GDPR. Therefore, giving consent to cookies being placed and giving consent to data being processed can be two very different things.

TradeTracker does not depend on consent from the individual / data subject, due to the legitimate interest as a legal basis for processing personal data. The processing of personal data and consent for cookies however are two separate things to consider.

For the use of cookies, consent is (usually) required under the ePrivacy Directive. Cookies placed by TradeTracker do not contain personal data, but may be considered personal themselves. Hence, they are not subject to data consent which is another legal basis for processing personal data. As per our Terms and Conditions for publishers, they are required to obtain consent for cookies. TradeTracker assumes the publisher has obtained the visitor’s consent for cookies unless TradeTracker is informed otherwise. If cookies are accepted, the tracking may occur via cookies.

In certain countries, like the Netherlands, affiliate cookies are exempted from requiring consent as required under the current ePrivacy Directive. Hence, the explicit consent is not required for this type of cookies unless they contain personal data.

TradeTracker makes use of cookies and other non-cookie-based tracking methods. Unless there is an explicit opt-out for the TradeTracker tracking services (under the opt-out for personal data processing), various tracking methods like fingerprint may be used since they do not require explicit consent from the user. To lawfully process the (pseudonymized) personal data in this functional “analytical tracking process”, TradeTracker applies legitimate interest as a lawful basis to do so.

If a user explicitly opts-out of cookies and this information is adequately passed on to TradeTracker, the user expects cookies to not be set. In general, only when the user explicitly requests to opt-out from TradeTracker processing their personal data the transaction is not tracked. Alternative tracking methods are used otherwise, and transactions will generally be tracked.

If a user explicitly opts-out of cookies and this information is adequately passed on to TradeTracker, the user expects cookies to not be set. In general, only when the user explicitly requests to opt-out from TradeTracker processing their personal data the transaction is not tracked. Alternative tracking methods are used otherwise, and transactions will generally be tracked. Users will always be able to opt-out from TradeTracker by following the appropriate process as indicated in the privacy policy.

Yes, if data provided to TradeTracker is considered personal data. For example, the Order ID is considered personal data and consequently parties need to make arrangements with regards to that data. Such arrangements are provided for under the standard merchant agreement and alternatively standard GDPR-addendum.

Under the current ePrivacy Directive there is no obligation to provide a possibility to reject cookies. Instead, the website provides a well-informed consent requirement to the user. The alternative is to leave the website.

TradeTracker only stores the data for as longs as is required to achieve the purpose for the particular processing of the data but removes any personal data [maximum 24 months] after the contract is terminated or after transactions are invoiced and paid out to the affiliate depending on the type of data.

Data related to the services of TradeTracker and performance of the contractual obligations between the network, merchants and affiliates are physically stored in the EU / EEA.

The TradeTracker platform is built to provide limited access to users, depending on their need to work with such information. Masking the last octet of IP-addresses is sufficient in the interfaces since it is only visible to the users operating under the contractual terms. Outside the UI the data is pseudonymized and therefore complies with GDPR. The information available to TradeTracker staff is used for fraud prevention.

Based on the limited personal data gathered by TradeTracker, the only information to possibly be removed is transactions data connected to an IP address. However, this can only be achieved by either receiving order IDs from the merchant, or the user sharing the IP address. The latter not being reliable due to its changing character.

Alternatively, the user refers to personal details (like contact details) provided as an affiliate. These can be anonymized upon request or alternatively will be removed according to internal policies.

As the consumer starts its journey on the publisher’s site, the publisher is responsible to safeguard the visitor’s personal data, for example, by operating under SSL protocols. This means that as the visitor continues its journey to the merchant, it passes via TradeTracker servers through secured connection. Here, TradeTracker is responsible for the adequate processing and safeguarding of the data. Subsequently, as the visitor browses the site of the merchant, it is the merchant’s responsibility to safeguard the data.

Availability
Data centres and applied infrastructure are built in clusters in various regions. All data centres are online and serving customers; no data centre is “cold.” In case of failure, automated processes move customer data traffic away from the affected area. Core applications are deployed in an N+1 configuration, so that in the event of a data centre failure, there is sufficient capacity to enable traffic to be load balanced to the remaining sites. Furthermore, Processor makes use of DDOS mitigation technologies.
Integrity
Data processing locking mechanisms make sure the Data is only processed if prior processes have completed successfully. This means that integrity of the data is guaranteed.
Confidentiality
Personal Data is encrypted, and only selected employees have access to the processing actions of the Dat. When an employee no longer has a business need for these privileges, his or her access is immediately revoked, even if they continue to be an employee or otherwise involved with the company.
Security audits
Adequate review of policies and applications are executed every six months. TradeTracker is assisted by third party legal advisors to review continued compliance.
Portability
Upon request of Controller, Processor or Data Subject, TradeTracker undertakes to provide records of any Data Subject and has devised a streamlined process to adhere to such requests in a timely manner.
Accountability
TradeTracker makes use of various monitoring and logging tools on both application and infrastructure level. All data processed through such activities is fully compliant with privacy policies.
Individual records containing any Personal Data are stored with a ‘time to live’ (TTL) and will be removed or destroyed / anonymized at such point.
Physical security
Amazon Web Services (AWS) delivers a scalable cloud computing platform with high availability and dependability, providing the tools that enable AWS to run a wide range of applications.
Among others, the following measures are adhered to by AWS: AWS data centres are housed in nondescript facilities. Physical access is strictly controlled both at the perimeter and at building ingress points by professional security staff utilizing video surveillance, intrusion detection systems, and other electronic means. Authorized staff must pass two-factor authentication a minimum of two times to access data centre floors. All visitors and contractors are required to present identification and are signed in and continually escorted by authorized staff.

We understand that the new GDPR regulations may cause queries to come up. For further questions concerning TradeTracker and the GDPR you can email us.