Concepts & glossary

TrackCrown is operated by Web Cue LLC. This page first explains how the main objects relate, then defines every term alphabetically.

How the objects fit together#

• A workspace holds everything below. It has one time zone and one default currency.
• An advertiser owns offers. An offer may also have no advertiser (then the workspace postback token is used).
• An offer has a destination URL, revenue and payout, one or more events, caps, targeting, landing pages and creatives.
• An affiliate (partner) gets access to an offer (automatic for public offers) and sends traffic through tracking links.
• A click belongs to one offer and one affiliate. A conversion belongs to one click (or to a coupon or e-mail owner when there is no click) and one event.

Glossary#

Access (offer access) — the row that connects an affiliate to an offer, with status approved, pending, rejected or blocked and optional per-affiliate caps. See Offers.

Advertiser — the company whose offer is promoted and who pays for conversions. Each advertiser has its own postback token; advertisers see revenue (their cost) and never partner payouts.

Advertiser event — an event defined once per advertiser and linked to its offers; postbacks name it with adv_event=. See Events & goals.

Affiliate / partner — a publisher or media buyer who sends traffic and is paid per conversion, click or impression. Each affiliate has a public code used in links.

Allowed destinations (allowlist) — the hostnames a transparent url= may redirect to. Anything else gets a 403 page, never a different redirect. See Transparent links.

Attribution window — how many days after the click a conversion still counts (per offer, 1–365). Later conversions are rejected with outside_window.

Cap — a limit on clicks, conversions, payout or revenue per day, week, month or in total (plus hourly click and conversion caps), per offer, per affiliate on an offer, per offer group or as an advertiser budget. See Caps & pacing.

Click ID — the 32-character lowercase hex identifier of every click: 12 hex characters of the click time in milliseconds followed by 20 random hex characters. Conversion endpoints accept it as click_id, transaction_id or tid.

Click mode — parallel when Google requested the tracking template in the background (the url= target was google.com/asnc/…), sequential for other Google Ads clicks, empty otherwise.

Commission tier — a payout that changes once an affiliate's volume in a period passes a threshold. See Payout rules & commission tiers.

Conversion — an action reported by the advertiser (lead, sale, install) and attached to a click. Statuses: approved, pending, rejected.

Coupon — a code that credits orders to an affiliate without a click. See Coupons.

Destination URL — the landing page of an offer, used by affiliate and smart links without url=.

Event (goal) — a conversion step of an offer with its own revenue and payout. Every offer has a default event.

Fail route — where a click goes when it cannot reach the offer (paused, capped, off-target…), instead of the fallback URL. See Fail routes & fallbacks.

Fallback URL — where an affiliate or smart link sends a click it cannot accept. Order: offer fallback → smart link fallback → workspace default fallback → a neutral "link not available" page. Transparent links never use it.

force_transparent — an optional parameter placed just before url= in Google Ads templates. Accepted and ignored: transparent links are always transparent.

Forwarding rule — sends matching affiliate clicks of an offer to another offer, a smart link or a URL.

gclid / gbraid / wbraid — Google click IDs. gbraid and wbraid (iOS) have no ValueTrack tag; TrackCrown reads them from the landing URL inside url=.

Impression — a view counted by the /i/ pixel; feeds CTR and CPM/RPM money.

Landing page (offer URL) — an extra destination of an offer, chosen with url_id= or by weight. See Landing pages.

Link key — the part after /c/: a workspace ID (slug), an offer code, or OFFERCODE-PARTNERCODE.

Macro — a {name} placeholder filled at click or conversion time. See Macros reference.

Offer — a campaign: destination, revenue and payout, events, caps, targeting, visibility and status (active, paused, pending, archived).

Offer group — offers that share conversion, payout and revenue caps.

Payout / revenue — payout is what you pay the affiliate; revenue is what the advertiser pays you; profit is revenue minus payout.

Postback — a server-to-server request. Incoming postbacks (/pb) report conversions; outgoing postbacks notify partners or ad platforms. See Conversions & postbacks.

Postback token — the secret an advertiser (or your workspace) passes as token= on /pb.

Pre-lander — a page shown before the offer (prl=1) whose call-to-action continues to the offer. See Pre-landers.

Smart link — one link that picks an offer per click by rules (country, device, OS) and a routing mode.

Source ID — a free-form value (source_id, source, pubid, site_id) identifying the partner's site or source.

Sub IDs — sub1…sub10: free-form values a partner adds to a link for its own reporting. See Sub IDs & parameters.

Targeting — country, device, OS and extended rules (region, city, ISP, browser, language, IP, schedule, parameters) an affiliate click must match.

Tracking domain — a hostname that serves tracking links. Statuses pending, active, disabled, plus a Google certification status. See Tracking domains.

Tracking template — the URL Google Ads requests for each click; for TrackCrown it ends with url={lpurl}.

Traffic control — an allow or block list on a sub ID, source ID, referrer or ISP. See Traffic controls.

Transparent link — a /c/ link, or any link carrying url=, that redirects exactly to the url= value in one 302.

Unique click — the first click of a visitor on the same offer and affiliate within the offer's unique window (24 hours by default, identified by IP + user agent unless configured otherwise).

url_id — the ID of a landing page, passed on an affiliate link to pin that page.

ValueTrack — Google's click-time placeholders such as {campaignid}; see ValueTrack reference.

Visibility — public (any active affiliate), approval (affiliates request access) or private (only affiliates you approve; hidden from the marketplace).

Workspace — one network's account. Its Workspace ID (slug) appears in partner sign-up links (/join/…) and in workspace-wide transparent links.