Getting started

This guide takes you from a new workspace to a tracked click and its conversion. Each step names the part of the portal where you do it, and the guide that goes deeper.

What you are setting up

A visitor clicks your ad on a traffic source (a push, pop or native network, Meta, Google, TikTok…). The ad’s URL points at a campaign on your tracking domain. The campaign sends the visitor on, by a flow or a single path, to a lander and then an offer on an affiliate network. When the network reports a sale, a postback tells Tallyray, and Tallyray credits the click, shows your cost, revenue and profit, and sends the conversion back to the source.

A click's path: the ad, your campaign, the lander and the offer. The way back is the network's postback to Tallyray, and the conversion Tallyray sends to the source.

You make	Where in the portal	Guide
A connection to your traffic source	Setup, Traffic sources	The source’s own page
A tracking domain	Setup, Domains	Domains
A network, with its postback URL	Tracking, Networks	Postbacks and conversions
An offer	Tracking, Offers	Campaigns, flows, landers and offers
A lander (optional)	Tracking, Landers	same guide
A flow (optional)	Tracking, Flows	same guide
A campaign	Tracking, Campaigns	same guide

1. Your workspace and plan

You sign up as a buyer for a workspace of your own. It starts pending: you verify your email, sign in, and choose a plan under Workspace, Billing. A pending workspace reads as before, but its tracking domains take no visits until the first payment goes through. See Plans and billing.

Under Workspace, Team, the workspace’s owner invites other people as buyers (who change things) or viewers (who read). The owner alone manages members, API keys, domains, secrets and billing.

2. A tracking domain

Every workspace has a default subdomain on the platform’s pool domain, so you can track at once. You can add your own domain too (a CNAME and a TXT record, then a certificate the platform issues for you). The portal shows the exact records and the status. See Domains.

3. Connect your traffic source

Open Setup, Traffic sources, and pick the source’s template. Each template page in Traffic sources lists the fields to fill in, whether you connect by OAuth, an API key or a login, and the tracking macros that go in your ad’s URL. If your source has no template, use Any other source: it records visits by their UTM parameters, and you enter spend by hand.

Secrets are set by the workspace’s owner and never shown again. Use the connection’s test to check that it works.

4. Add your network and its postback

Under Tracking, Networks, add the affiliate network you promote offers from, on its template (Affiliate networks), or on Any network (postback URL) if yours has none. Make the network’s postback token, copy the postback URL, and paste it into the network’s postback settings, with the network’s own macros where the click id and payout go. The token is shown once.

5. Add an offer

Under Tracking, Offers, make an offer on the network. Its URL must contain {click_id}, in the place where the network takes the click id. Give it a payout: either the amount the network’s postback reports, or a fixed amount.

6. A lander and a flow (or neither)

With no lander, a campaign can send each visitor straight to an offer (direct linking). With one, you make the lander, and its calls to action point at Tallyray’s /click link. A flow adds rules (country, device, hour…) that choose between paths. A simple campaign needs neither: it can carry one path of its own.

7. Make the campaign and paste its URL

Under Tracking, Campaigns, make a campaign on your connection. Choose its cost model (the options are the ones the source’s template allows), its redirect mode, and where it sends visitors: a flow, a path, or a URL. The portal then shows the campaign’s URL: your tracking domain, the campaign’s key and the source’s tracking macros. Paste it as the destination URL in the source’s ad.

To see the URL for your source before you make the campaign, pick it here:

Traffic sourceEvaDavGoogle Ads (offline click conversions)Meta (Conversions API)MGIDMicrosoft AdvertisingAny other sourceOutbrainPropellerAds (OnClick popunder)PropellerAds (push)PushgroundRevcontentTaboolaTikTok (Events API)Zeropark (pop and domain redirect)Zeropark (push)

Your tracking domain

Campaign URL

https://trk.example.com/{url_key}?click_id={CLICKID}&source={SOURCE_ID}&cmp={CAMPAIGN_ID}&creative={CREATIVE_ID}&zone={ZONE_ID}&format={FORMAT}&sub_period={SUB_PERIOD}&cost={COST}

Copy

Paste the campaign URL into the source's ad. {url_key} stands for the campaign's own key, which the portal fills in; the macros are the source's, which it replaces with each visit's values.

8. Check it

1. Open the campaign’s URL yourself, or use the source’s test traffic. Under Activity, Visits, and Clicks, your visit and click appear.
2. After the network reports a conversion, it appears under Activity, Postbacks, and then Conversions. If nothing appears (a wrong token or a click id Tallyray never issued is answered but never recorded), see Postbacks and conversions.
3. Under Reports, group by campaign, placement or any token and read cost, revenue, profit and ROI. See Reports.

Note

Pausing a campaign makes its URL answer 404 at once, but your ad goes on spending at the source until you pause it there too. Tallyray can pause the source’s own campaigns, ad groups and ads for sources whose template supports it: see Rules, bidding and schedules.