Separate Unique Clicks

We're excited to let you know LinkTrust 6.5 upgrade is live!

This release was added outside of our normal release schedule to provide a much requested and anticipated feature: The ability to separate and report unique clicks from duplicates.

Now you will have the ability to show affiliates unique clicks instead of total clicks. 

Control of this feature will be set at the campaign level within the filter settings. When enabled, all non-unique clicks will only be counted in the Duplicate Click column in reports. It is important to note, that all new campaigns will default with the new feature enabled, while older campaigns must be manually set.

Our training department created a video to explain the new feature. It will only take a minute to learn how to use it and get it set up the way you want. Watch it today!

New LinkTrust Features Give More Tools In Fight Against Fraud

Salt Lake City, Utah (May 3, 2010)— The LinkTrust team unveiled more tools for fraud prevention, integrations with Payoneer and OfferVault and other anticipated features Monday.

“This release was driven by feature requests from our partners,” said Bret Grow, president of LinkTrust. “It is clear that fraud is one of the biggest issues in the industry and we are excited to provide even more options for fraud control.”

As networks battle fraud they can now use LinkTrust to restrict conversions to a root domain and limit transactions based on a Proxy IP match. As well as noting where the transactions happen, the network can set a minimum time between click and conversion for the transaction to be approved. If the conversion happens too quickly, the transaction won’t be approved.

To get familiar with the new features available in LinkTrust, watch the training webinar May 4 at 11 a.m. Register for the webinar here.

LinkTrust and Payoneer Inc. teamed up to provide LinkTrust partners with an easy, low-cost and safe way to make commission payments to their affiliates. With Payoneer, networks can use co-branded prepaid MasterCard cards to pay affiliates around the world efficiently and securely. Cardholders receive their funds immediately, avoid steep bank charges and hassles, and can use the card to spend or withdraw money in their local currency anywhere that accepts debit MasterCard.

“The Payoneer integration into LinkTrust was a natural step for us,” said Frank Ouimette, LinkTrust cofounder. “We wanted to offer our partners an easy way to streamline the often hassle-filled process of paying their affiliates. This integration is one of many features we released allowing our partners to set up LinkTrust the way they want it.”

Another step in LinkTrust customization, the OfferVault API makes seeing advertised campaigns easier than ever. OfferVault allows affiliates and networks to quickly find top offers and compare payouts between networks. Using OfferVault gives LinkTrust partners another place for affiliates to find their offers and grow their business. For specific information on how to use the API for creative listings, check out the API documentation page in LinkTrust.

In addition to these integrations, there are several new features available to customize LinkTrust by:

• assigning traffic type to campaigns and affiliates

• creating custom campaign categories and affiliate groups

• creating campaign specific terms and conditions

• and capping traffic by affiliate or campaign

For a complete list of the features released this week, visit the LinkTrust support site.

Don’t forget to register for the training webinar, May 4 at 11 a.m. to learn more about these features.

Now that was a good question...

Hey @affbuzz and @trevornk!

We noticed your tweets last night and wanted to let you know, we hear you.

Instead of trying to answer everything on Twitter in a 140-character limit, we're answering you here and hope that it will help all affiliates and networks that use LinkTrust as well.

Your tweet said: "LinkTrust = No access to stats for 10 minutes every hour, a numerical username you can never remember and too many clicks to access stats."

1. Why is there no access to stats for about 6 minutes each hour?

At the top of each hour we roll up the prior hour’s statistics. One of the battles of real time tracking, and fast reporting is that the two contradict each other. The best balance current technology allows is the previous hour’s roll up. We are working to cut this window down from around 6 minutes to 2 minutes.

2. Why have a numerical username?

The numerical usernames are auto-generated by the system based on affiliate id. Every affiliate network using LinkTrust 6 can allow the affiliate to change or not to change their username and password. If this is a feature you haven’t been given, check with your affiliate manager to see if you can get it changed.

3. Why so many clicks to check your statistics?

In LinkTrust 5.7 and 6, the affiliate network has control of the placement of statistic graphs and reports. We suggest affiliate networks have a menu tab solely for reports, which when clicked, automatically loads the report and shows clicks, giving you one-click reporting. In LinkTrust 6, the network has the ability to show a graph of the clicks on the home screen when the affiliate logs in. You can ask your affiliate manager to have the network place that graph in a more visible location.

Hope that helped @affbuzz and @trevornk, we appreciate the feedback!

Geo-Targeted Filtered Click Reporting

We’re releasing two new LinkTrust version 6 features this week for you to feast your eyes on:

-Geo-Targeted Filtered Clicks Report

Run this report to find out what country your geo-filtered clicks come from and see it visually on a world map highlighting the traffic sources.

-Control the affiliate payout, merchant payout and transaction approvals on confirmation pixels.

Find out more about the feature release on the LinkTrust support site.

Looks Do Matter

I had a bit of inspiration about software development recently. The circumstances are perhaps a bit unusual. I was sitting with my wife in labor and delivery at the hospital. The monitors for mom and baby are hooked up to a computer. The application which graphs the vital information for both had two features which really caught my eye. First was an animated stork which flew across the top of the screen. The second was that a nurse changed the colors to be shades of blue because we were having a boy.

Neither of these features provided additional functionality to help the doctors or nurses attending to us. What they did do was provide us with a bit of comfort. We spent most of our time watching the screen to ensure all was well. The little UI touches made what was a very sterile medical application a bit more comforting to expectant parents.

The “ah ha” moment for me was that too often I focus on providing raw functionality and information. I don’t always consider the impact of those little UI touches as I should. I’m very excited though about some recent UI development breakthroughs with LinkTrust.

Our upcoming release features some new graphing capabilities in the affiliate center. They will be the first of a number of graphs we plan to add in coming releases. We are also working on some other major UI enhancements in coming releases. While functionality is very important I’ve learned so are those little UI touches.

Now before you get too concerned, none of the UI enhancements will involve flying storks or dancing babies. Although perhaps a animated mouse being clicked might be in order.

New LinkTrust Webinar Series

Hello blogosphere, I'm Gavin.

With all the exciting features we're releasing this month, I want to make sure that our partners have the know-how to implement them as soon as they're released.

To make you all aware of the capabilities of the new features, we're hosting an hour-long training webinar February 3, 2010 at 11 a.m.

Join us as we look under the hood and give you more tools to grow your business. Some of the features we'll cover in this webinar include:
- Affiliate Fraud Scoring
- Affiliate Fraud Signup Filtering
- Mass Creative Importing
- APIs
- Affiliate Commissions/ Payments
... and more additions to save you time!

Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/924240131

Keep the learning ongoing and Click Here for a schedule with dates and topics of future webinars.
See you there!

Milestones

LinkTrust had one of our best years in 2009. We had a few specific goals at the beginning of 2009 and it's awesome to look back and see that we reached those goals, along with some other major accomplishments.

Releasing LinkTrust 6 to production was at the top of our list for 2009. Version 6 brought industry-leading features and performance enhancements to the platform. The project represented more than a year of planning, hard work and execution involving everyone at LinkTrust and Burstabit Technologies. As of Dec. 2009, more than 75 percent of LinkTrust partners are fully utilizing version 6!

With the increasing risk of fraud and malicious activities in our industry, improving our DDoS mitigation and response times were a top priority. We completed our integration with Prolexic Technologies in providing full DDoS mitigation services to protect our partners. As we worked with Prolexic this year, we have decreased our response times to DDoS attacks to a fraction of what they were during the first DDoS attacks LinkTrust experienced.

Our final major goal was realized in the last few days of December. Through a three-phase process, we upgraded the LinkTrust network infrastructure to a redundant SAN environment with clustered databases. The SAN project gives LinkTrust the necessary foundation to provide the high caliber of performance needed throughout 2010.

Our efforts to improve LinkTrust in 2009 paid off. The number of LinkTrust partners doubled, and there are more than 150 ad networks and merchants using LinkTrust.

This year we look forward to doubling our clientele again. We know that doing this relies heavily upon the performance of our platform and our customer service.

Our first step in 2010 to show our dedication to high performance and providing our customers with the tools to run successful businesses will be the release of some long-anticipated features including:
-Cross-platform Affiliate Fraud Detection
-Affiliate Fraud Filtering and Scoring
-Affiliate Payment Tracking
-Multiple Sub IDs (up to 10)
-Mass Creative Import
-Account Management for API's
-Unlimited Affiliate Pixels
-Geographic Traffic Reporting
-Rich Flash Graphing

We anticipate this feature list will be released as early as mid-January.

This list of features is just the beginning of the dozens of enhancements planned for LinkTrust 6 in 2010. We will release the most sophisticated lead capture and management features available anywhere, additional graphing throughout the Partner Center, more Ajax in reports and lists, multi-currency support, traffic capping, QuickBooks integration, the ability to set payouts by Sub ID, set bonuses, schedule payout changes, campaign and affiliate management APIs, click analytics, and dedicated servers or virtual farms for high-volume partners.

I'm also excited for the release of the Marketplace where offers can be cross-marketed between all LinkTrust powered networks.

In addition to providing more whistles and bells, features and performance enhancements, we're working closely with other industry leaders in integrating with their services. We recently integrated with RingRevenue's PayPerCall platform and are finalizing integrations with OpenX's Ad Server and Payoneer's prepaid affiliate cards.

We recognize that our success in 2009 is due largely to the loyalty of our partners. We look forward to building on this relationship throughout 2010. Thank you for your support and business!

Sincerely,

Bret Grow
President

January Features

Bryan asked me to post this for him today:

I wanted to comment on a recent change that was made to the 6.0 Partner Center Login Page. We have some exciting features coming in January. Our development staff is putting the final touches on this great release.

The most exciting features are the Affiliate Fraud Scoring, Custom Affiliate Sign Up Filters, Affiliate Payment Log and Mass Creative Import.

Affiliate Fraud Scoring will allow you to see if an affiliate application matches a previously denied sign up or suspended affiliate throughout the LinkTrust system. It will also check for duplicates among existing affiliates in your account.

Custom Affiliate Sign Up Filters allow you to automatically deny applications which meet criteria you enter.

The Affiliate Payment Log will allow you to track payments made to affiliates. Affiliates will be able to see information on these payments in the Affiliate Center. This is the first of several features we are working on to help with accounting.

The Mass Creative Import will allow you to upload a tab-delimited file with creative information.

These are just a few of my favorite enhancements. More details will be posted here and on our support site in the next few weeks. Happy Holidays from the LinkTrust Technology Department!

LinkTrust version 6.1 summary

With the release of version 6.1, we updated and added several features to LinkTrust. Check out our October Newsletter where we've highlighted a few of the most anticipated updates.

The list was too long for our newsletter, so if you're a LinkTrust partner, be sure to check out the home page of the help center for the entire list.

If you don't have your password for the help system, please visit the Help page of the LinkTrust Support Desk. If you are new to the LinkTrust Support Desk, please register to take advantage of this great addition to our services.