Awin, publishers paid for customers, not clicks.

Who Awin is

Awin describes itself as a global affiliate marketing platform. It connects advertisers with publishers, the sites and people who send them customers, and pays those publishers a commission for each sale or lead they bring. The company behind it, AWIN AG, is registered in Berlin, has worked in affiliate marketing since 2000 and is part of the Axel Springer group. It counts over 30,000 brands and over a million approved partners. Among them are cashback sites, whose members earn money back on what they buy, comparison sites, discount code sites, and content creators and influencers.

An advertiser's programme on Awin has commission groups, which set what each kind of sale or lead pays, and a validation step: every tracked transaction waits as pending until the advertiser approves or declines it. Awin's Conversion API takes transactions from the advertiser's server, a second API approves, amends and declines them, and sales made in an app are tracked through a mobile measurement partner such as AppsFlyer, Adjust, Branch or Singular. Awin is certified to ISO 27001. It brings its own publishers and pays them itself, which is why it is one of the affiliate and partner programme connectors of our Rewards & referrals module.

What it does in your platform

• Rewards & referrals

  Brings customers through Awin's publishers, and pays those publishers only for the customers who really arrive. The platform's server tells Awin when a referred visitor has met the conditions your team set, for example passed KYC and made a first card payment. It approves the commission once that payment is safe, and declines it after a refund. The reward here is a commission that Awin pays to the publisher, not a credit in your ledger, and Awin never receives a customer's name, email address, card number or balance.

How the connection works

On the web, your server keeps Awin's click ID, the awc value Awin adds to the address of your landing page, and the platform later reports the conversion to Awin's Conversion API. For links that open the app, Awin's tracking runs through a mobile measurement partner, so it uses the attribution connector your apps already carry. Awin asks all its advertisers to track from server to server, which is how the module works anyway, and the API token never leaves the server.

1. A reader follows a link

   On a comparison site, a reader taps the link to your card account. Awin records the click and sends the reader on to your landing page, adding its click ID to the address as the awc parameter. A click earns the publisher nothing yet.

2. The click ID is kept

   If the visitor agreed to marketing tracking, your website's server stores the awc value in a cookie marked Secure and HttpOnly, as Awin's guide asks, and at sign-up the platform keeps it next to the new customer's random platform ID. If the link opens the app store instead, it runs through your attribution connector's link, which carries the same click ID: Awin's guides name the parameter cks for AppsFlyer and awin_click_id for Adjust.

3. A sign-up is not enough

   The visitor opens an account, and nothing is reported. The rule your team set in the backoffice asks for a passed KYC check and a first card payment within 30 days. KYC / AML and Fraud & risk also check that this is a new person on a new device, not an existing customer who came back through a publisher's link.

4. The server reports the conversion

   When the ledger settles the first card payment, the platform's server posts an order to the Conversion API, at api.awin.com/s2s/advertiser/{advertiser_id}/orders. It carries a random orderReference, the awc, the currency, the channel aw and the commission group for a funded account, and as its amount the number of leads, one, which is how Awin counts a lead. No name, email address, card number or payment amount is in it. For a customer who came through the app link, the server reports the event to the attribution connector, whose postback passes it to Awin with the order reference and the commission group.

5. The commission is approved

   In Awin the transaction is pending. Once the waiting period your team chose has passed with no refund or chargeback, the platform approves it through Awin's validation API, a POST to /advertisers/{advertiserId}/transactions/batch with the action approve. Awin adds the commission to the publisher's next payment and pays the publisher itself, in one of its two payment runs a month. A cashback site then rewards its own member. Nothing is credited to anyone in your ledger.

6. A refund stops it

   If the first payment is refunded or charged back while the transaction is still pending, or the account turns out to be fraudulent, the platform sends the action decline with a declineReason, and the publisher is not paid for it. A programme that pays a share of what a customer spends would send amend, with an amendReason and the new saleAmount. Awin lets only pending transactions be amended, and a commission already paid to a publisher cannot be reversed, which is why approval waits.

Next to other providers

Awin works at the start of a customer's path, before the module's other groups come in. For links that open the app it relies on the mobile attribution connectors of our Analytics & monitoring module: Awin's guides cover AppsFlyer, Adjust, Branch and Singular. KYC / AML and Fraud & risk decide whether an account belongs to a real new customer, and the Ledger says when the first payment settled. A customer who arrived through Awin can still join your refer-a-friend programme, run with Referral Factory, GrowSurf or Friendbuy, or earn points with Talon.One, Voucherify or Open Loyalty. Those rewards are credits in your ledger; Awin's commission goes to the publisher. Where regulation limits incentives, the module can switch the Awin programme off for a country or a product.

Awin is one of the module's affiliate and partner programme connectors, next to impact.com, PartnerStack and Everflow. Awin is a network that brings its own publishers and pays them. impact.com presents itself as one platform to manage creators, affiliates and referrals, PartnerStack is dedicated to B2B software companies and their partners, and Everflow is a partner marketing platform that also follows media buying. The conversion rule, the KYC and fraud checks, the waiting period and the record of every click ID and conversion stay in the platform, so moving between them swaps a connector. The publishers, their links, the commission groups and the programme's terms live in Awin, and would be recruited and set up again in the new tool.

When Awin fits best

How we get you live

• The contract

  We help you get your Awin account and contract in place, on Awin Accelerate or Awin Advanced, the plans whose Advertiser APIs the connector uses. With Awin's onboarding team we agree the commission groups, the attribution window, which has to be at least as long as your conversion rule, and the auto-validation period, after which Awin approves whatever is still pending. Awin sets that period to match your refund window, and it cannot be switched off.

• The data

  For each funded account Awin receives a click ID, a random order reference, a currency, a commission group and a count of one. The Conversion API has no field for a name, an email address or a phone number, and card numbers, account numbers, balances and identity documents never go to Awin. Its journey tag, the MasterTag, goes only on the public pages of your website: Awin itself says to keep it off any page that shows or processes payment or personal details. The visitor's consent choice reaches Awin through its Consent Signals or through the IAB Transparency & Consent Framework, where AWIN AG is vendor 907.

• The keys

  An Awin API token belongs to a user and covers every account that user can reach, so we create a user for the platform alone, with access to your programme only. Its token goes into your platform's secrets, and is sent to the Conversion API in the x-api-key header and to the validation API as a Bearer token. It never reaches the apps or a browser. Awin allows 20 API calls a minute for each user, so the platform sends conversions and validations in batches.

• A full test run

  Awin's documentation describes no separate sandbox, so the test runs on your own programme before it opens to publishers. Tracking Diagnosis in Awin's interface creates a test link. We follow one click from it through sign-up, KYC and a first card payment in your test environment, confirm with Awin's integration contact that the transaction arrived, and decline it through the validation API. While the platform's own checks run, its orders carry the Conversion API's isTest flag, which keeps them from being tracked.