Tracking & optimisation · also called revenue API, stats API, reporting feed
Reporting API
A reporting API is a programmatic interface that lets software automatically fetch revenue, cost or performance data from a feed, ad platform or tracker.
Instead of a person logging in and downloading a spreadsheet, a program asks the provider's server for the numbers and receives them in a structured format. That is a reporting API. Ad platforms offer them for spend; search feeds and feed providers offer them for earnings.
In search arbitrage the reporting API is how revenue reaches the tracker at all when no per-click postback exists. The tracker calls the feed's API on a schedule, receives revenue grouped by Sub ID, Channel ID, country, device or keyword, and matches it to its own click records. Vendors such as ClickFlare list direct integrations with providers including System1, Tonic and Sedo, and pull ad platform costs every few minutes.
Knowing an API's habits prevents bad decisions. How often does it refresh? Does it restate past days as estimates are revised, and does your system re-fetch them? What time zone does it report in, compared with the ad platform? Mismatches here create phantom profits and losses. API keys also deserve care: they expose commercial data and should be stored and shared as securely as passwords.
An example
Say the feed's API reports in UTC and the ad platform in US Pacific time. Revenue for "1 March" then covers a period eight hours ahead of the spend for "1 March". Daily ROI is distorted until both are converted to one time zone.
Related terms
Tracker (campaign tracking platform)
A tracker is software that records every click an arbitrageur buys, matches it to the revenue it later earns, and reports profit by campaign, ad and keyword.
Postback (server-to-server tracking)
A postback is a message sent directly from one company's server to another's to report that a tracked click produced a conversion or revenue.
Revenue reporting delay
Revenue reporting delay is the gap between a visitor clicking a feed ad and the arbitrageur seeing, and later confirming, the revenue for that click.
Estimated revenue
Estimated revenue is the provisional earnings figure a search feed reports soon after clicks happen, before final checks for invalid traffic are complete.
Keyword-level reporting
Keyword-level reporting breaks down clicks and revenue by the individual keyword or related search term the visitor clicked on the landing page.
Sub ID
A sub ID is a custom label a publisher passes to a feed or network with each visit, so reported revenue can be broken down by that label.