Overview

Adspect is an easy-to-use cloud-based service for protecting affiliate campaigns (CPA offers, landing pages) from “bad” traffic. By bad traffic we mean:

• click fraud, ubiquitous in display ads and popunder;
• moderators and policy teams of ad networks;
• spy services used by competitors to steal your creatives and landing pages;
• content scrapers;
• credential stuffing bots;
• bots of antivirus companies;
• and other flavors of unwanted or outright hostile visitors.

We work with all traffic sources, both existing and those that will appear in future–our filtering algorithms are perfectly universal and equally efficient across all possible origins of traffic. We support all the largest advertising networks, including:

• Google Ads
• Microsoft Advertising (Bing Ads)
• Facebook
• Instagram
• VK
• Yandex.Direct
• myTarget
• ZeroPark
• ExoClick
• Taboola
• MGID
• PropellerAds
• TrafficStars
• and hundreds of others

We protect your landing pages and offers from various antivirus, security, and ad scoring companies, including:

• GeoEdge
• Adscore
• Google Safe Browsing
• Kaspersky Labs
• Avast
• Forcepoint
• and many others

You may find additional information in our FAQ.

We support several types of integration that differ in technical details but all provide equally high levels of protection:

• PHP integration via standalone index.php file;
• JavaScript integration via <script> HTML tag:
  • Passive mode without cloaking, like Google Analytics–perfect for collecting bot statistics;
  • Cloaking via JavaScript redirect to content page using the location.replace() method;
  • Cloaking via iframe overlay without redirecting.

PHP Integration

In PHP integration filtering is done by a special index.php file that you place in your landing page directory or elsewhere accessible via HTTP. This file acts as an entry point for web traffic and is wired to our servers that do the actual filtering. Depending on filtering decision a visitor may be directed to your actual page or to a “white page”, that is, a page that contains no sensitive content. In other words, Adspect acts as an intermediary stage in your traffic flow, actively filtering unwanted traffic from legitimate visitors.

Traffic flow chart

Several copies of the same index.php file may be used for protecting several offers or landing pages without interfering with each other.

JavaScript integration

JavaScript integration is meant to be used with third party services like Shopify, Tilda, or OpenCart, where you cannot upload our index.php file for PHP integration. It may also come handy if you want to direct visitors to your white page first and keep them there if they are flagged by Adspect, for extra protection and authenticity, which is especially desirable when working with Facebook and Google Ads in particular.

Traffic flow chart

You will also need to download and host our PHP file adspect.php anywhere, but its final location does not matter as it will be linked into the white page via <script> HTML tag. When a visitor comes to the white page, the <script> tag accesses the remote adspect.php file which produces JavaScript code that will do the job. What happens next depends on the mode of operation that you choose during integration:

• In passive mode our statistics will be updated, but no further action will be taken–the visitor will remain on the page. This mode is like Google Analytics, meant for collecting passive insights and blacklists of bot-ridden sources in cases that do not require cloaking.
• In JavaScript redirect mode, legitimate visitors as determined by our filters will be directed to the content page via JavaScript redirect using the location.replace() method, i.e. the URL in the address bar will change.
• In iframe overlay mode, legitimate visitors will be shown the content page via an iframe overlay without redirecting them anywhere, i.e. the content iframe will be placed over the white page.

index.php and adspect.php

index.php is a PHP script that serves the purpose of a bridge between your premises and our backend servers. The file name index.php is just a convention that we use throughout the system, however, you may rename it as you like. The fact that we use a PHP script to filter traffic naturally implies that you need a PHP-enabled web hosting or a tracker with support for landing pages written in PHP. For this reason, Keitaro TDS in particular is not suited for hosting index.php as it lacks PHP support for landing pages.

The script is carefully written to be compatible with a wide variety of web hosting environments, ranging from virtual hosting and VPS to dedicated servers and Amazon AWS. Both Windows and Unix-like operating systems are supported, to the extent supported by PHP. PHP 7 is recommended, PHP 5 is also supported.

The only requirement is that PHP has to be built with cURL support. You may check if cURL is supported by examining phpinfo, but cURL is supported by almost every PHP build out there.

The adspect.php file is just a different version of the index.php file, so everything described above applies.

Workflow

The common workflow with Adspect for affiliate marketing campaigns consists of the following steps:

1. Create an Adspect stream for your campaign and place it in “On Review” mode.
2. Choose an appropriate integration method and follow instructions on the integration page.
3. Create an ad campaign using the link to the index.php file if using PHP integration, or to your white page where you put our <script> tag for JavaScript integration.
4. Wait for campaign approval and switch the stream into “Filtering” mode.
5. Run traffic and explore statistics in the Reporting section.

We will describe caveats of these steps in detail in the next chapters.