Offer URLs, publisher tracking links, and other URLs in OffersHub carry significant information between you, your advertisers, and your publishers. Here, we introduce the tools you’ll use to send and receive that data: parameters, values, and macros.
Parameters and Values
How does data get communicated through a link?
With each click and conversion, vital information passes via a mix of parameters and values. A parameter tells a server what information is being passed (like the offer ID or a mobile device ID), and a value is the information itself. You can think of a parameter as a special word, and the value of that parameter is the definition of that word.
Let’s illustrate these concepts. Here’s a tracking link URL for a hypothetical offer with offer ID 1001 that was generated for partner ID 2002:
The offer_id parameter is paired with a value of “1001”, and the aff_id parameter is paired with a value of “2002”. Information sent as parameters and values have a certain structure to them—the parameter, then an equals sign (=), then the value.
Query Strings
You may have seen that the above URL additionally contains a question mark (?) just before the offer and affiliate IDs. When a server gets this kind of URL, the question mark shows that anything that follows can be used in the server’s next task. The term query string refers to everything after the question mark in a URL.
Query strings are composed of parameter-value pairs, where each pair is separated by an ampersand (&). An ampersand indicates that another parameter is being added to the query string, and so precedes each parameter after the first.
When To Use Parameters & Macros?
Your use of parameters and macros changes based on who you’re working with. Your business contacts have their own tracking systems, and each system has its own set of parameters and macros. Because you need to consider multiple tracking systems while modifying a link, things can quickly become confusing.
We recommend thinking about who wants the data and who provides the data. The party requesting data inserts their parameters into the link, and the other party inserts their values or macros.