Affise and ClickFlare Integration Guide

Affise is the platform behind many CPA networks, especially in iGaming, nutra and mobile. As an affiliate, you log in to the network’s own Affise panel, often on yournetwork.affise.com or the network’s domain, pick offers, get tracking links and add postbacks. Affise tracking links usually run on a g2afse.com domain or the network’s own. To track Affise offers in ClickFlare, two links have to carry the ClickFlare click ID in both directions:

The offer URL sends the ClickFlare click ID to Affise in sub1.
The postback URL sends it back to ClickFlare with every conversion, together with the payout and a transaction ID.

This guide covers the full setup, which Status to pick so a conversion isn’t sent several times, how to keep goals apart, and how to test the postback.

Only need the two values? The Click ID & postback macros page has them ready to copy with your tracking domain.

How the data flows

Ad click
  → https://trk.yourdomain.com/cf/r/CAMPAIGN?...
     (ClickFlare records the click and generates the click ID)
  → [optional lander → CTA uses the ClickFlare click URL]
  → https://network.g2afse.com/click?pid=123&offer_id=456&sub1=CF_CLICK_ID
     (Affise stores the ClickFlare click ID in sub1)
  → Visitor converts on the advertiser's page
  → Affise fires your postback:
     https://trk.yourdomain.com/cf/cv?click_id=CF_CLICK_ID&payout=40.00&txid=ORDER-ftd
     (ClickFlare matches the conversion to the original click)

The two links mirror each other:

Link	Built from	Affise side	ClickFlare side
Offer URL (in ClickFlare)	Affise’s parameter + ClickFlare’s token	`sub1`	`{cf_click_id}`
Postback URL (in Affise)	ClickFlare’s parameter + Affise’s macro	`{sub1}`, `{sum}`, `{transactionid}-{goal}`	`click_id`, `payout`, `txid`

Offer URL = their parameter + your token. Postback URL = your parameter + their macro. Affise writes the click ID into sub1 on the way in and reads it back with the {sub1} macro on the way out. Affise has no {clickid} macro for affiliate postbacks: the click ID always comes back through the sub you put it in.

What you’ll need

An active ClickFlare account with your own tracking domain set up. Shared domains get flagged by networks and blocked by browsers. See Tracking domains.
An affiliate account on the network’s Affise panel, approved for the offer you want to run.

What the Affise template contains

ClickFlare has an Affise affiliate network template. It fills in the Affise macros ClickFlare needs.

The Affise template in ClickFlare: Click Id is {sub1}, Payout is {sum} and Transaction ID is {transactionid}-{goal}

Field	Affise macro (AN Token)	ClickFlare parameter	What it does
Click Id	`{sub1}`	`click_id`	Returns the ClickFlare click ID that the offer URL put in `sub1`. Pre-filled by the template.
Payout	`{sum}`	`payout`	Your payout for the conversion, not the advertiser’s revenue. Pre-filled by the template.
Transaction ID	`{transactionid}-{goal}` (change it)	`txid`	Unique per conversion and goal. The template fills in `{transactionid}`: add `-{goal}`. See why.
Event Type	leave empty, or set per goal	`ct`	The conversion type. See Offers with several goals.

Setup

Everything in ClickFlare is done from inside the campaign editor. Create the offer and the affiliate network inline as you go.

Set up your own tracking domain

Add a custom tracking domain before anything else, for example trk.yourdomain.com. The postback URL is built on this domain, so changing it later means updating the postback in Affise too. See Tracking domains.

Report conversions by postback time

Go to Settings → General Settings and set Conversion registration time reporting to Postback Timestamp.Affise reports a conversion on the day it happened. With the default Visit Timestamp, ClickFlare reports it on the day of the original click, so a conversion that comes in days later lands on a different date in each platform. See Conversion registration time.

This is an account-wide setting. It changes the date conversions are reported on for every campaign.

Create the campaign

Go to Campaigns → New Campaign, choose Redirect tracking, pick your traffic source and select your tracking domain. See Creating a campaign.

Create the Affise affiliate network

While creating the offer for the campaign, create a new affiliate network in its Affiliate Network field. You can also create it first under Affiliate Networks → + New. Either way:

Search for Affise and pick the template.
Name it after the network, for example “Affise - NetworkName”. Each Affise network has its own panel and its own postbacks, so create one affiliate network per Affise network.
Change Transaction ID from {transactionid} to {transactionid}-{goal}.
Leave Event Type empty.
Under Conversion tracking, select your own Tracking Domain and keep S2S Postback URL as the tracking method.
Set Payout currency to the currency the network pays you in.

ClickFlare builds the postback URL from these fields:

https://trk.yourdomain.com/cf/cv?click_id={sub1}&payout={sum}&txid={transactionid}-{goal}

The Conversion tracking section of the Affise network in ClickFlare, with the generated postback URL: click_id={sub1}, payout={sum} and txid={transactionid}-{goal}

Copy the postback URL and save the network.

Get the offer's tracking link from Affise

In the Affise panel, go to Offers, open the offer and find Tracking link. Below it are fields for Affise’s link parameters. Type {cf_click_id} in sub1: the link updates as you type. Then copy it:

https://network.g2afse.com/click?pid=123&offer_id=456&sub1={cf_click_id}

pid is your affiliate ID and offer_id is the offer. You can also copy the link without sub1 and add it in ClickFlare in the next step.

Use sub1 to sub8 for the click ID. Values in ext1 to ext3, ref_id and os_id don’t show in Affise’s statistics, and Affise has no clickid link parameter for affiliates.

Create the offer in ClickFlare

In the offer form:

Name the offer.
Select the Affise affiliate network you just created.
Paste the Affise link into Offer URL, with &sub1={cf_click_id} at the end if it isn’t there yet:

https://network.g2afse.com/click?pid=123&offer_id=456&sub1={cf_click_id}

The ClickFlare New Offer form with the Affise affiliate network selected and sub1={cf_click_id} at the end of the Offer URL

If you pasted the link without sub1, you can turn on Append Click ID to Offer Url instead. ClickFlare then adds sub1={cf_click_id} from the template. Use one or the other, not both.

Write {cf_click_id} with braces. Without them Affise stores the literal text cf_click_id, the postback returns that text, and the conversion cannot be matched to a click.

Set the payout to Auto so ClickFlare uses the payout value from the postback.

Add the postback in Affise

Back in the Affise panel, open the same offer, find Your Postbacks and click Add postback. Then set:

Field	Value
URL	The ClickFlare postback URL you copied
Status	Approved, or By creating. Not Any. See Which status to pick.
Goal	Any, or one goal if you add one postback per goal
Integration method	Default

Save it.

To cover every offer on the network at once, add the same URL as a global postback under Profile → Settings → Postback information → Global postbacks (some panels: Settings → Global Postbacks). A global postback has no goal filter. Don’t add the same URL both globally and on the offer, or a conversion can be sent twice.

Add a lander (optional)

If you send traffic through a lander before the offer, the lander’s CTA must use the ClickFlare click URL, not the Affise link. ClickFlare then adds the click ID when it redirects to the offer. See Paths with landers and offers.

Save the campaign and launch

Save the campaign, copy the campaign URL from the Tracking tab and use it in your ads. Before you spend money on traffic, run the checks in Verify the setup.

Which status to pick

Affise conversions have a status: Approved, Pending, Declined or Hold. Each postback has a Status setting that decides when it fires:

Status	When the postback fires	Use it?
Approved	When a conversion is approved	Yes, if you want ClickFlare to count only what the network pays
By creating	Once, when the conversion is created, whatever its first status	Yes, if you want conversions fast and accept that some are later declined
Any	When the conversion is created, and again on every status change	No
Pending, Declined, Hold	Only conversions with that status	Only for a dedicated postback with its own `ct`

With Any, one conversion can reach ClickFlare as pending, then approved, then declined, each time with the same click ID and transaction ID. ClickFlare doesn’t read Affise’s status, so it treats them as one conversion and keeps the last one received: a conversion the network declined can stay in your numbers.

The network decides which statuses affiliates can see. A status the network hides never fires a postback, whatever you select. If nothing arrives on Approved, ask your affiliate manager whether approved conversions are visible to affiliates.

Keep conversions apart with txid

By default ClickFlare keeps one conversion per click ID. If several postbacks arrive with the same click ID and no transaction ID, ClickFlare treats them as the same conversion, and you only see one of them (the last one received). The txid parameter tells ClickFlare that each postback is a separate conversion, so its value has to be different on every conversion.

Affise macro	Value	Use it as txid?
`{transactionid}-{goal}`	The advertiser’s conversion ID plus the goal	Yes
`{transactionid}`	The advertiser’s conversion ID. Empty if the advertiser doesn’t send one.	Only on single-goal offers
`{goal}`	The goal, for example `1` or `ftd`	Only if each goal can happen once per click
`{rand}`	A random ID, new on every send	No: a resent postback counts twice

{transactionid} is the ID the advertiser sends Affise for the conversion, such as an order or deposit ID. Many advertisers send one, but not all, and Affise has no macro for its own conversion ID. Adding -{goal} covers both cases: with an advertiser ID, each conversion is unique; without one, each goal still is. Affise replaces each macro wherever it appears in the URL, so it arrives as, for example, A1B2C3-ftd, or -ftd when the advertiser sends no ID.

Offers with several goals

An Affise offer can pay on several goals, for example a registration and a first deposit.

One postback with Goal = Any counts every goal: with txid={transactionid}-{goal}, each goal arrives as its own conversion, and the payout differs per goal.
One postback per goal lets you report each goal as its own column in ClickFlare. Add a postback per goal with Goal set to that goal, each with &ct= and a custom conversion parameter at the end:

https://trk.yourdomain.com/cf/cv?click_id={sub1}&payout={sum}&txid={transactionid}-{goal}&ct=deposit

The ct value must exactly match a parameter of a custom conversion in ClickFlare. If it doesn’t, ClickFlare records a regular conversion instead.

Verify the setup

Click through the campaign

Open the ClickFlare campaign URL (with a lander, also click the CTA). When the offer loads, the first request goes to the Affise click link. Check that it has sub1= followed by a real ClickFlare click ID, not the literal text {cf_click_id}.

Ask for a test conversion

Affise has no test button for affiliates. Click your campaign once, then send your affiliate manager the postback URL and ask them to fire a test conversion on your click. The network’s postback log shows whether ClickFlare answered with HTTP 200.

Check the conversion in ClickFlare

The conversion should appear on the campaign with the payout from Affise. In Logs → Event Logs, check that its txid has the goal at the end, for example A1B2C3-1. If you see {goal} literally, the panel didn’t replace the macro: check the spelling.

Troubleshooting

Conversions show in Affise but not in ClickFlare

Work through these in order:

The status filter doesn’t match. A postback on Approved doesn’t fire for pending conversions. Check the postback’s Status, and whether the network shows that status to affiliates.
The goal filter doesn’t match. A postback on one goal doesn’t fire for the others. Use Any, or add a postback per goal.
sub1 is empty in Affise. The offer URL is missing sub1={cf_click_id}, or the lander CTA links straight to Affise instead of using the ClickFlare click URL.
The sub numbers don’t match. The offer URL uses sub2 but the postback reads {sub1}, or the other way around.
The postback uses {clickid}. Affise has no such macro for affiliates. Use the sub that holds the click ID.
HTTP 0 in the network’s postback log. The request never reached ClickFlare: check the tracking domain and its SSL certificate.

See Troubleshooting S2S postbacks for the general checks.

Only one of several conversions shows in ClickFlare

The postback uses txid={transactionid} and the advertiser doesn’t send a conversion ID, so every goal arrived with the same empty txid. Change the transaction ID to {transactionid}-{goal} in the ClickFlare affiliate network and in the Affise postback. Conversions that were already merged are not restored.

Declined conversions still count in ClickFlare

The postback’s status is Any or By creating, so the conversion reached ClickFlare before the network declined it. Switch to Approved if you only want paid conversions, and adjust the ones already recorded.

The payout is 0 or in the wrong currency

Check that the postback has payout={sum} and the offer’s payout is set to Auto in ClickFlare.
{sum} is your payout in the offer’s payout currency. Set the affiliate network’s Payout currency in ClickFlare to the same currency. {order_sum} is the order value, not your payout.

FAQ

Why sub1?

sub1 is the ClickFlare template’s default and what Affise’s own tracker guides use. Any of sub1 to sub8 works as long as the offer URL and the postback use the same one.

Is the macro {offer_id} or {offerid}?

{offerid}, without the underscore. offer_id is only the name of the link parameter.

Can I pass more data to Affise?

Yes. Use the other subs in the offer URL, for example sub2={campaign_id}&sub3={trackingField1}. Affise shows them in its statistics. Keep sub1 for the click ID.

Can I send the conversion back to my traffic source?

Yes. Once ClickFlare records the Affise conversion, it can send it to the traffic source through the traffic source’s postback or conversion API integration. Nothing changes on the Affise side.

Macro reference

Every network’s values

Custom conversions

Report each goal

Postback issues

Troubleshoot S2S

Overview

Traffic Sources

Affiliate Networks

Search Arbitrage

Pay-Per-Call

E-commerce & Funnels

Affise and ClickFlare Integration Guide

How the data flows

What you’ll need

What the Affise template contains

Setup

Which status to pick

Keep conversions apart with txid

Offers with several goals

Verify the setup

Troubleshooting

FAQ

Macro reference

Custom conversions

Postback issues

​How the data flows

​What you’ll need

​What the Affise template contains

​Setup

​Which status to pick

​Keep conversions apart with txid

​Offers with several goals

​Verify the setup

​Troubleshooting

​FAQ

​Related

Macro reference

Custom conversions

Postback issues

How the data flows

What you’ll need

What the Affise template contains

Setup

Which status to pick

Keep conversions apart with txid

Offers with several goals

Verify the setup

Troubleshooting

FAQ

Related