Admitad launches Direct Advertiser Links — a new approach to working with modern traffic sources

Affiliate marketing is evolving alongside digital advertising. A few years ago, almost any traffic source worked comfortably with classic affiliate links and server-side redirects. Today the picture has changed.

In India, a growing share of purchases starts inside a messenger, a social feed or a shopping app rather than on the open web. At the same time, advertising platforms and services are tightening their requirements for how users can reach an advertiser’s website.

To help publishers work with these scenarios, Admitad is introducing Direct Advertiser Links — a new tool that allows publishers to use direct links to the advertiser’s domain without an intermediate redirect through Admitad infrastructure, while keeping the affiliate reward model and tools such as SubID and Deeplink fully functional.

When traditional affiliate links are no longer enough

For many years, the server-side redirect has been the industry standard in affiliate marketing. It remains the optimal solution for most publishers: it provides stable tracking, click statistics, SubID and deeplink support, and a wide range of other platform capabilities.

But the market is gradually changing. More and more platforms now set their own requirements for how a user transition should happen.

In some cases, privacy-focused services work exclusively with direct advertiser links and do not support third-party redirects.

In others, advertising platforms impose strict requirements on the redirect chain. Google Ads, for example, requires certification to use third-party click-tracking systems. For many market players, this becomes an additional constraint when launching campaigns.

On top of that, in mobile apps, in-app browsers and certain closed ecosystems, additional redirects can degrade the user experience or cause transitions to break. This matters especially in a mobile-first market, where most of the journey happens inside a single app.

As a result, situations where a classic affiliate link is no longer the best instrument for a particular traffic model are becoming more frequent.

Direct Advertiser Links — when the direct path matters

The new tool allows a publisher to send the user straight to the advertiser’s website, bypassing the intermediate Admitad redirect. Affiliate sales continue to be tracked correctly thanks to the advertiser’s integration with the Admitad platform.

Direct Advertiser Links are particularly relevant for:

• paid traffic specialists;
• mobile applications, including marketplace and shopping apps;
• WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram, ShareChat and other in-app browsers;
• traffic sources that require direct transitions;
• platforms sensitive to the use of third-party redirects.

This approach preserves all the advantages of affiliate marketing in environments where classic affiliate links are difficult or impossible to use.

Not a replacement, but an additional tool

Admitad stresses that Direct Advertiser Links do not replace standard affiliate links.

For most working models, classic affiliate links remain the most functional instrument thanks to built-in click statistics, SubID and deeplink support, and independence from changes on the advertiser’s side.

Direct Advertiser Links are designed for specific scenarios where the nature of the traffic source requires direct interaction with the advertiser’s domain.

That is why we grant access to the tool on request, after reviewing the publisher’s working model and the traffic sources they use.

“We don’t believe classic affiliate links are going away — they remain the best choice for most scenarios. But the market is becoming significantly more diverse. More and more platforms set their own requirements for how a user transition should happen, and Admitad’s job is to give publishers the tools they need to work in any ecosystem. Direct Advertiser Links are exactly that kind of tool.”

— Samrat Dutta, Commercial Director , APAC