A long, long time ago in an office not so far away, we published a little blog post called Affiliate Marketing Terms Explained. While still mostly correct, the affiliate marketing industry has changed quite a bit since since 2013. With it, the methods PeerFly allows and disallows have also evolved so we thought it high time to reexamine what we do and don’t allow.

Social Media

Social media traffic has long been a go-to for affiliate marketers but since 2013 we’ve seen a huge boom in publishers capitalizing on fanpages and viral traffic to promote offers. In additional to paid advertising platforms, we do allow traffic from Facebook fanpages, Instagram influencers and Twitter accounts. We just need you to make sure your promotion methods are inline with our guideline.

Facebook Fanpages

We began to allow publishers to promote offers on Facebook fan pages a couple years ago and we’ve seen some great campaigns come from it. As a result, we’ve relaxed our restrictions just a bit.

• Offers may not be direct linked to PeerFly.
• Offers must allow Social PPC.
• Personal pages are not allowed.
• Fan pages should be centered around a specific topic – Justin Bieber fans, traveling to France, Golden Retrievers. Pages devoted to posting offers are not allowed.
• Creatives, links and pages need to be submitted to your Affiliate Manager for approval before going live.

Facebook Groups

With the launch of Sale Groups, Facebook groups have definitely grown in popularity. However, due to the potential for abuse we’ve mostly stayed away from them. If you own a Facebook group that you would like to monetize with affiliate offers, please contact your Affiliate Manger. No Facebook group promotion without written approval from PeerFly is allowed at this time.

Twitter

While previous disallowed, we have started to allow advertiser via Twitter’s paid advertising platform. Our guidelines are as follows:

• Offer must allow Social PPC.
• Offer may not be direct linked to PeerFly.
• The ad copy, links and images you’re planning to use must be submitted to your Affiliate Manager for approval.

YouTube

• The offer must have Social listed under Allowed Marketing.
• You must own the rights to the video content you are promoting on.
• The offer must be related to the video content.
• You must use a redirect on your own domain if you are going to direct link.
• You are not allowed to post links in the comment sections of the video, just the description and in your video.

Snapchat

We do allow promotion through Snapchat’s paid advertising platform. Please make sure the offer allows Social traffic and that allow creatives are submitted for approval using the “Custom Creatives” tab on the offer page. 

Instagram

We allow publishers to promote offers on Instagram on a case-by-case, approval basis.  Our guidelines for approval can be found below:

• Offers may not be direct linked to PeerFly. You may set up a custom tracking domain.
• Offers may not be promoted in comments.
• You may not tag other users in promotional images (posts intended to drive users to PeerFly offers).
• The number of promotional images posted per day should be limited, pages should balance promotional images with non-marketing content.
• Any offer mentioned on Instagram must allow Social PPC.
• Email submits may not be promoted on Instagram.
• All Instagram campaigns must be approved by your Affiliate Manager before going live.

Search Traffic

Purchasing search traffic on networks like Bing is fine for any offer that allows Search. Make sure you’re aware of any keyword bidding guidelines before getting started. Here’s a blog post that goes over some of the finer points of what is and is not trademark bidding.

PPV/Pop Traffic

PPV stands for pay per view which usually means that your ad will appear in a pop up. If that’s how you’re planning to send traffic, make sure you pick an offer that allows Pops.

PPV can also refer to:

• Pop unders
• Interstitial traffic
• Modals
• Exit intents  

If you’re planing to use any of those, just make sure the offer you’ve selected allows PPV.

Contextual Traffic

Contextual traffic refers to two traffic sources at this point. The first of which is in-text traffic that publishers can typically purchase from PPV networks. Once users have downloaded ad supported software onto their computer, publishers can bid to hyperlink offers to certain relevant text. 

Contextual traffic has also come to refer to traffic from native ads. Native ads have been a huge traffic source for PeerFly publishers in the last couple years. Even if you’ve never heard of them before, you’ve seen them all over the internet on sites like Buzzfeed, CNN and Business Insider.  

Our post popular sources for native ad traffic are: 

• Taboola
• Outbrain
• Adplexity 

Push Notifications

Push notifications are a great way to monetize mobile traffic and like native ads, you’ve definitely seen them even if you didn’t know what they were called yet. 

Users opt-into receiving notifications when they view a website on desktop or mobile. Affiliate marketers can then purchase that traffic to show users offers on the smart phones. 

Our most popular push notification traffic sources are: 

• PropellerAds
• RTX Platform
• MegaPush

We’re fine with push traffic on any mobile offer that allows banner display. If you’re interested in getting started, Luke has a great blog post on push notification traffic sources and getting started on his blog.

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Let us know if you have any questions! 

Lauren Hostert

I'm an Affiliate Manager at PeerFly.com.