Redirect modes determine, firstly, how redirection to the offer (campaign endpoint) is handled and secondly, whether referrer data is passed through or not.
The Meta Refresh and Double Meta Refresh modes offered by PeerClick are useful ways of protecting the intellectual property. They allow you to prevent the traffic source (referrer data) being sent through to the offer or the landing page. While having set one of the redirect modes, the offer's owner (affiliate network) will not see the referrer data to identify your landing page, but will see the domain's referred data passed instead.
Referrer data is unique information that is readable by servers / browsers / applications. It can be used to ascertain the origin of a visitor and can be relayed as full referrer URLs and / or cookies.
To enable redirect mode for a campaign:
1. Go to the settings of the selected campaign.
2. Select the required type of redirection. There are three types of redirection:
There are three redirect modes:
Without (302): This is a default option, a standard temporary HTTP redirect that sends a visitor directly to the desired location – your promoted offer. The referrer data is passed to the campaign endpoint.
Meta Refresh: When set, the browser starts loading the page - but only the head, not the body of the page - before going to the new destination. In the tag of the HTML page, triggering the browser to refresh and load a new URL. The referrer data is hidden with this mode selected.
Double Meta Refresh (DMR): Double meta refresh is just meta refresh, but performed twice consecutively. This way, the first meta refresh page contains the referrer you want to hide. It goes to the second page, and the first meta refresh page becomes the referrer. This goes to your affiliate link with the referrer from the second refresh of the page. Due to this extra redirect, DMR is the most reliable redirect mode to ensure that the referrer data is not leaked to the owner of the offer, usually an affiliate network. It might also be the slowest one because of this double redirect.
If you redirect visitors using the Double meta refresh mode, the redirect domain name will show up in their browser’s address bar. We highly recommend adding a custom redirect domain and setting it up the same way as a custom domain. If you do not set up the custom domain, then a standard domain will be used.