In the LinkShare Network there are hundreds of advertisers that publishers can work with to earn commissions. Multiply that by thousands of offers and products and one quickly realises that there are thousands deals to push out to shoppers.
The challenge that many publishers face with vouchers (in any network) is making sure that they’re pushing out valid offers at any given time. An invalid voucher or an offer unrelated to a promised discount could turn the shopper away.
In 2010, LinkShare came up with a solution – our Voucher Aggregation. We start with all valid offers that Advertisers themselves have submitted to the ‘Deal Dispatcher’. Then the Publisher Interface is scraped for any text links that are vouchers, codes, offers or deals. All of the links are quality checked by LinkShare personnel to ensure that each offer is indeed a voucher or a promotional link.
LinkShare provide 3 different ways for publishers to access these links . A flexible approach, which allows them to be used as needed based on 3 levels of ability – advanced, intermediate and basic.
ADVANCED – COUPON WEB SERVICE
Through the Coupon Web Service publishers can access the aggregated vouchers, basically downloading all the voucher links and consumer promotions across ALL advertisers that they are partnered with – all without logging in! And of course, the feed is automated to include each publishers’ unique tracking ID.
There are now over 10,000 Publishers registered to use the Coupon Web Service, which shows the need for a clean, accurate stream of offers. The service not only helps Publishers, it also helps Advertisers get increased distribution for their offers.
INTERMEDIATE – VOUCHER FINDER TOOL
Because the Coupon Web Service works best for high-volume publishers who seek to automate the flow of data to their sites, it may not be the first choice for smaller, or less tech-savvy, publishers. For this reason, the Voucher Finder tool was created as a user-friendly interface to obtain the data available in the Voucher Feed.
ADVANTAGES of Voucher Finder
- No need to perform a web services call
- Publishers can search the Voucher Feed for the entries that are relevant to them by network, by category and by promotion type
- Publishers can sort their results in the way they need – by Advertiser, by Start Date etc.
- Select to view in the browser or create an XML list
BASIC – VOUCHERSNAP BOOKMARKLET
Released in May 2010, The VoucherSnap Bookmarklet is an even simpler solution for Publishers to use the information collected in the Voucher Aggregation. The VoucherSnap Bookmarklet lets Publishers create deeplinks to available vouchers, codes, offers or deals directly from an Advertisers page through a tab on their browser.
The VoucherSnap Bookmarklet can be found in the LinkShare Bento Box at www.linkshare.co.uk/bentobox
The development of LinkShare’s aggregated voucher service with three different points to access the data illustrates LinkShare’s commitment to develop tools that not only increase publishers’ efficiency but also appeal to a wide range of publishers regardless of their technological understanding.
Penny Mather, Marketing Manager
