SMART and Comparing folders advanced guide

In this article, you can find detailed information on how to properly work with SMART and Comparing folders, including some tips and examples for advanced usage.

As you may have learned from this article, the SMART folder is an innovative and advanced Rotation Control element designed to automatically allocate traffic among necessary advertisers, thus saving your time.  

Although we have already described the basics of how to create such an element in this article, there are some important details that need to be highlighted for in-depth usage.

When creating a SMART folder, pay special attention to the following fields:

• “Parameter To Compare” – select up to 5 parameters which will be compared among all the selected advertiser to define their priority for traffic allocation.
  Example: You may select a funnel (country or any other parameter) to find out what funnel brings more profit for every selected advertiser.

• “Prioritize By” – criterion (metric) according to which the items you set for “Parameter To Compare” will be compared.
  Example: You may select the conversion rate (or total FTDs, profit, etc.) so all the funnels of selected advertisers will be compared to define which has a higher conversion rate. The higher conversion rate, the more traffic will be sent to the corresponding advertiser.

Note: Mind that the SMART folder aims to increase the metric you selected for “Prioritize By”. Therefore, do not select such options as rejected leads (or similar) for this parameter.

Thus, the SMART folder configuration according to the example above will look as follows:

Once you have created such a folder, it will automatically analyze which advertiser’s (Main advertiser or New advertiser) funnel brings more pushed leads. If, say, a New advertiser’s funnel does so, the major (calculated) part of traffic will be sent to the funnel.

Once the statistics have been gathered, the traffic will be distributed proportionally among the advertisers.

If there are no statistics on traffic performance, the traffic will be allocated evenly among all advertisers until the data is collected.

Note: If an advertiser’s performance is low, the traffic for one will not be disabled completely. They will be receiving a small amount of traffic.

To stay informed on traffic performance, you can study the statistics. Feel free to find it here:

In the appeared window, you may see how leads are allocated among advertisers according to compared parameters with the help of diagrams.

For example, in the screenshot above, we can see that the amount of pushed leads on the 1st funnel is bigger for the New advertiser (meaning that the major share of traffic by this funnel will be sent to this advertiser). Whereas the amount of pushed leads for the 2nd funnel is bigger for the Main advertiser (meaning that in this case, most of the traffic will be sent to this advertiser).

As it was already mentioned in this article, the Comparing folder is an upgraded alternative for the already existing Split folder. The new option allows you to prioritize traffic distribution not only by advertisers (as it is in the Split folder) but by any other elements such as affiliates, countries, etc.

Additionally, the new folder has another important functionality. It enables you to test the SMART folder performance and compare it with manually set priorities for advertisers to distribute traffic in a most efficient way.

Though the setting-up basics of this folder are explained in this article, there are some crucial details for advanced usage that should be emphasized.

Advanced Split Folder mode

If you want to prioritize some affiliates, countries, etc., follow the procedure described below:

1. In “Rotation Control”, create a new Comparing folder by clicking “Add New” at the top right corner.

2. Select the “Comparing Folder” option and choose the rule to filter traffic (to learn more about all the traffic filtering rules, read this article).

3. Create elements among which you need to allocate your traffic by clicking the + icon next to the newly-created Comparing folder.

Now, you can prioritize traffic distribution by any criterion required. For example, you can prioritize it by country as follows:

In this example the countries are prioritized. Here, you can see that the same advertiser requires leads from 2 countries. However, they need more traffic from one country (Spain) and less from the other (France). So, we prioritize the countries accordingly (40% of fitting traffic will go to France and 60% – to Spain).

Note: In order not to exceed the number of leads required for each country as well as to limit the rejected lead amount, do not forget to manage traffic capacity settings. Get familiar with this article to learn how to do it properly.

Comparing mode

If you want to test the SMART folder performance to decide whether to use it or to keep specifying advertiser weights manually, you can create a Comparing folder according to the steps below:

1. In “Rotation Control”, create a new Comparing folder by clicking “Add New” at the top right corner.

2. Select the “Comparing Folder” option and choose the rule to filter traffic (to learn more about all the traffic filtering rules, read this article).

3. Add 1 SMART folder and 1 Split folder inside by clicking the + icon next to the newly-created Comparing folder and set them up as needed.

Note: You should split the weight evenly among the SMART and Split folders (i.e., set 50 for SMART and 50 for Split folders).

Important: Mind to set the same advertisers for both folders for the comparing data to be correct and precise.

The example shows that there are 2 folders – SMART and Split ones – inside the Comparing folders. The traffic will be evenly distributed among them as they have the same weights. Also, the folders have the same advertisers for the statistics to be comparable and relevant.

Once traffic passes, you can study both folder performance via Drilldown Reports as described below.

To compare what strategy (automatic or manual traffic allocation) suits you most, you can generate the report.

To do that, go to Reports → Drilldown Reports → Metric Report and select “Compare Rotation Node” as a group.

Thus, first subelements of Comparing Folder (i.e., the SMART and Split folders you added) will be displayed in the report.