Affiliate sub ids are one of the most crucial and robust part of affiliate marketing. With these values, affiliates can specify what campaigns the clicks are coming from, information regarding the lead, or like many, used for passing session values between tracking systems. There are many uses for the affiliate sub ID, but the overall objective is the same: storing and passing values from affiliate. You can pass up to 5 affiliate sub IDs for any session.

Sub IDs are dynamically passed values that the affiliate can opt to pass to your tracking system and view any metrics for that value. These values often are implemented to either store a session ID from the affiliates system that they want to pass forward (most commonly, when using Server Postback tracking) or they want to track in their stat reports the performance of certain campaigns, websites, or banners. You can also use sub ID values to pass form information to pre-fill a form on the advertiser landing page (however the Custom Variables feature is better used for this.)

When an affiliate adds a sub id value to a link for example the string of ‘123456789’, this will be added to the session values stored in the ad servers on the click and is refernced with the transaction ID on the conversion. The system will then redirect the user to the offer landing page, with the option of passing the sub ID to the landing page URL. Here is a simple flow chart of how the sub id is passed on click.

There are two ways to add a sub ID value to the affiliate tracking link: in the offer page, or adding manually. The fastest way of adding a sub ID value is in the offer page in the ‘Generate Tracking’ section. Here, check the Sub ID box and a field will appear, where you can enter the sub ID value here. Click update and the sub ID will be added to the tracking link above.

The sub ID will show in the aff_sub variable. This is for the first sub ID value. If you want to add more than one sub ID to the tracking link, click ‘More Sub IDs’ and four more fields will appear below. These are for aff_sub2, aff_sub3, aff_sub4, and aff_sub5 variables in the tracking link, respectively. You can pass up to 500 characters into each sub ID field, and they have to be URL encoded so the tracking link remains intact.

Sometimes you or the advertiser will want the sub ID values that affiliate passed onto the offer URL. To set this up, you simply have to go to ‘edit’ in the details section and go to the default offer URL. Here you want to use the {aff_sub} macro and place this macro in the proper parameter in the URL, for example:

This will pass any value that is inserted into the aff_sub parameter in the affiliates tracking link, and relay it onto the default offer URL. You can also use these macros with additional offer URLs as well.

To pass a sub ID value into an impression pixel, you would do this similarly to the tracking link. Here is an example of how an impression pixel would catch a sub ID value:

These sub IDs will then associate to impression stats, and not just clicks and conversions.