Introduction

An affiliate subnetwork is a business model in which a publisher recruits other affiliates to work with them without those affiliates registering with Rakuten Advertising as independent publishers.

Subnetwork transparency is a feature that allows subnetworks to pass Rakuten their sub-publisher data. Subnetworks that agree to this partnership with Rakuten create a more transparent relationship with their advertiser partners by enabling these partners to review and understand how the individual sub-publishers within the subnetwork are performing.

Enablement

Your publisher team can help assess your compatibility with the technical and legal subnetwork requirements, provide you with technical documentation, and get a signed agreement. Contact your publisher manager to learn more.

If you do not have a publisher manager, you are not currently eligible for subnetwork transparency, as it is only open to managed publishers.

Link Code

Once you are enabled for subnetwork transparency, you must modify your link code to track sub-publisher activity successfully. This is a two-step process:

1. Assign a non-0 numeric value to each sub-publisher.
2. Append a &subid= parameter to your link code with this value. This parameter should be placed at the end of the URL or before the &murl= parameter if there is one.

For example, if your sub-publisher's assigned value is 1234, the link code should look like this:

<a href="https://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/click?id=lMh2Xiq9xN0&offerid=7097.10000034&subid=1234&type=4">Text link copy or Image Location</a><img border=0 width=1 height=1 src="https://ad.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/show?id=lMh2Xiq9xN0&bids=7097.1000003&subid=0&type=4">

Reporting

In the Reporting Interface, use the Sub-Publisher ID, Sub-Publisher Name, and Sub-Publisher URL columns to gain insights into how your sub-publishers are performing.