The Power of APIs and System-to-System Integrations

Photo by Philipp Katzenberger on Unsplash

As part of our commitment to empowering marketers to Do More With Less, Worry Free, the teams at TUNE are always looking for ways to empower our customers. One way we do that is by providing access to every single feature and function in our platform via API. (And with over 650 API endpoints, that’s saying something.) In this post, team member Alon Bresky describes how our API is structured and how it can be used to develop any solution our customers can think of.

An API, or application programming interface, is a piece of software that allows two different applications to communicate (or interface) with each other. As a defining feature of our platform, the TUNE API is a powerful tool for affiliate networks and programs looking to differentiate their businesses and empower their partners. In this post, I’ll outline how our platform and our APIs make that possible.

Meet the Industry’s Most Powerful API

The TUNE API is known in the affiliate marketing industry as the most advanced and flexible API available. It provides access to every single feature and function that can be found in the TUNE platform. As such, it opens a world of rich possibilities for our customers, from personalizing and enhancing current features to creating virtually any custom tool or workflow. Our customers even use it to build their own web interfaces, where only the ad server functionality is managed by TUNE and the interface is fully maintained by the customer.

One of the big factors behind the success of the TUNE API is the fact that it is divided into four specialized types: a Network API, an Affiliate API, an Advertiser API, and an Integrator API. This gives the flexibility to integrate with TUNE’s platform via API not only to network owners, but also to their affiliates, advertisers, and third-party service providers.

Let’s break each of them down.

Network API

The Network API provides read/write access to any data available in the platform. As such, it is mostly used by network and program owners to develop custom functionality for their TUNE platform instance. With the Network API, customers can build custom reports and tools in the web interface, integrate with any CRM or third-party platform, import and export data in every possible format, automate time-consuming tasks, and much more.

For more examples of what can be achieved through the Network API and customer use cases, see our articles on leveraging our API integrations and how to use the our APIs for your secret sauce, or contact the Solutions Engineering team for a technical consultation.

Affiliate API

The Affiliate API provides network affiliates read-only access to their data within TUNE. The main way our customers use the Affiliate API is to automate the process of integration between networks, giving affiliates direct access to their TUNE account outside of the platform. This lets affiliates quickly and easily accomplish essential tasks, such as downloading offers from an advertiser’s network, or pulling click and conversion data for use in their own business intelligence tools.

Advertiser API

The Advertiser API is similar to the Affiliate API, but limits access to advertiser-specific information. This API lets advertisers process and pull important statistics on their ad campaigns, network performance, detailed and aggregated cost data, and more.

Integrator API

The Integrator API allows technology providers that are integrated with the TUNE platform to manage data on behalf of TUNE customers who use their integrations. While the Integrator API expands on functionality found in the Network API, it also wraps endpoints in an OAuth2-powered authentication and authorization layer. This layer limits access by network ID and API endpoint (controller and method), does not require full customer account access, and does not consume customer account API rate limits.

These enhancements and others in the Integrator API benefit TUNE customers, their technology providers, and their mutual clients by providing stronger data security, better platform stability and flexibility, and a shorter time to market.

“We know that data security is one of the most sensitive questions for networks. It was very important for our customers to have better control on how we access their data. With the new HasOffers Integrator API, our customers are able to choose if we have read-only or read-write access to their HasOffers instance, and can even specify any custom scope of API methods that should be allowed. This level of flexibility is a huge win for both us and our clients.”
– TUNE Technology Provider

System-to-System Integrations

Since TUNE APIs provide infinite possibilities to develop custom solutions and add-ons for the platform, many third-party companies have already built products using our APIs and offer these solutions to TUNE customers. Here are some of the most popular use cases:

Fraud Prevention

One fraud solution integrated with TUNE is 24metrics, which provides customizable fraud detection with transparent decision tracking that detects IP duplication, VPNs, proxies, emulators, bots, click spam, and more. 24metrics uses the Network API to access real-time data from network accounts. It accesses all conversions tracked, analyzes them, and then via API rejects fraudulent conversions and blocks traffic from suspicious affiliates. Thanks to the Network API providing powerful read/write access to the data, companies like 24metrics can monitor traffic in real time to actively prevent fraud traffic.

Third-Party Platform Integrations

One of the most popular solutions for TUNE customers is the system-to-system platform integration. These integrations are easy to perform via automated scripts, which download data such as offers, affiliates, conversions, and more from one network and import it into a second network. In this case, either the Network API or the Affiliate API can be used — it depends on the scenario. The benefit of using an API for this process is that it can fully automate the integration to keep data between networks synchronized at all times, which can prevent traffic loss and other costly technical issues.

In Closing

The TUNE API opens a world of possibilities for making the jobs of networks, advertisers, partner program managers, and more easier. With TUNE’s platform and API functionality, our customers and their partners can develop any possible solution they can think of.

If you’re interested in working with one of our integrated technology partners or developing your own solutions using the TUNE API, get in touch with our team. Questions? Let us know in the comments below.

For more articles by Solutions Engineering team members, check out:
• Why We Moved to Serverless Computing to Deploy Custom Builds
• How to Use the TUNE API for Your Secret Sauce
• How the TUNE Solutions Engineering Team Makes Platform Migrations Easy

Author

Becky is the Senior Content Marketing Manager at TUNE. Before TUNE, she handled content strategy and marketing communications at several tech startups in the Bay Area. Becky received her bachelor's degree in English from Wake Forest University. After a decade in San Francisco and Seattle, she has returned home to Charleston, SC, where you can find her strolling through Hampton Park with her pup and enjoying the simple things between adventures with friends and family.

The Power of APIs and System-to-System Integrations