Cloaking: all you need to know about this affiliate tool
Many affiliates exploit grey and black promotion methods that are prohibited by advertising networks. These types of methods can yield more profit than the permitted ones. In our article we will explore the cloak and explain what it is, why you need it and which services you can use for cloaking.
What is a cloak?
Cloaking (from the verb to cloak) means to disguise or hide. It is a tool used to divide traffic, which enables one to display different content of the page to specific segments of the audience. In simpler terms — substituting the displayed content.
Moderators and bots will see a “white page”, while ordinary users — the offer. Usually, a cloak is used when working with grey and black offers. For example, Facebook and other social networks do not permit openly advertising gambling, adult offers, crypto and similar profitable verticals. That is why affiliates who want to work with these offers have 2 options:
- To use other traffic sources
- To try trick the system
Nobody wants to lose their multi million audience, so many people use cloaking in affiliate marketing to force the advertising of prohibited products into social networks.
Cloaking is not only used to pass moderation with “gray” offers.
Content can be hidden from:
- Advertisers. They will not see traffic from prohibited sources.
- CPA networks. You can use the cloak to bypass affiliate monitoring systems.
- SPY services. In this way, others won’t be able to access your creatives or unconventional details in your content.
- Other affiliates. The competition in this niche is overwhelming, and colleagues are always looking for profitable bundles.
The main advantage is that the site is quick to reach good standing in the search results, and everyone gets their own: real people — the offers, and unwanted users — an optimized page.
How does cloaking work?
For those who have never cloaked before, it would be interesting to know the principle of cloaking content. Newbies often think that to do this you have to master programming, but that’s not the case. In fact, there are many ready-made scripts and services on the web that meet all your needs.
The mechanism of the cloak is very simple. The affiliate sets the criteria for separating the traffic or uses a standard set of conditions in the service. Algorithms continuously analyze the traffic and, depending on the specified conditions, split the traffic flow. The undesired audience sees the “decoy”, while the target audience sees the link with the offer or the other content that the affiliate wanted to conceal.
The great thing about the cloak is that the smart algorithms accurately identify visitors. If they see that a bot or a user from another country is trying to visit the page, a protection mechanism is triggered. Instead of prohibited content, the user will see the “white page” information.
Customers are identified by User-agent and IP-address. In the first case, the script gets the User-Agent of the visitor, scans it against the database, and if it finds a match, it displays the “white” page. In the second case the script checks the IP address. If an ad is configured for users from Russia, but a foreign visitor is trying to enter the site, he will not see the offer.
A cloak consists of three elements:
White page. The white page is used as a disguise. It should not have any prohibited content or links to suspicious resources.
Black page. The page that is customized for the offer. It is created with a maximal focus on performing a targeted action.
The cloaking tool. A tracker or cloak service, which is divided by a set of instructions into two streams.
Successful cloaking in affiliate marketing depends on all three elements. Of particular importance is the planning of landing pages. Cloaks have approximately identical capabilities, although simple scripts are still inferior to specialized services, which are constantly updated.
If you conceal data from moderators, it is also important to use domains that have not emerged in the radar of advertising networks, such as Facebook, and are not in its ban list.
What cloaking services are used by affiliates?
There are two groups of services that can be used for cloaking:
The first is a separate cloaking software. It merely analyzes users and substitutes the content of the page for each one. These can be cloud solutions or box solutions.
The second group is trackers. They are traffic tracking systems. They collect comprehensive analytics on each conversion, reveal the whole user path to the target action, and enable to compare the real ROI in different campaigns. In addition, they feature split testing, smartlinks, automation of activities, and cloaking capabilities.
Trackers can also be cloud based in the form of an online service. They can also be boxed, but they need to be installed onto your server.
We take a look at the most popular affiliate marketing cloaking services.
IM KLO
Ad networks — Facebook, Yandex.Direct and Google Ads
Cost — $330 for a lifetime license. You can try the demo version as well.
The cloak has been in use for 3 years, with over 1800 active webmasters that use it.
IM KLO has its own database of bots for all geos and it is updated monthly. Traffic filtering is available, so you can select the parameters, according to which the cloak will filter out suspicious users, as well as bots and moderators.
Websites can be connected in different ways, e.g. via redirects, proxy uploading, and JS connection. You can personalize the service thanks to the open API.
demo:demo
Keitaro
Type — box
Ad networks — Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads
Price — €25
Trial period — 7 days
Keitaro is one of the most popular trackers with cloaking functionality. Traffic is distributed without modifying the domain and redirects in it. You can create landing pages inside the service.
The service has its own database of bots. For each navigation to a website, it will provide detailed statistics according to over 30 parameters.
CLOAK IT
Type — cloud
Ad networks — Facebook, Yandex, MT, TikTok and others.
Price — $30
No trial period
CLOAK IT is a cloud service with its own database of bots and other undesirable users. It has filters and algorithms that operate on the basis of machine learning.
The service is characterized by a high speed of processing requests, and no transition delay. Websites can be connected in different ways, using PHP, JavaScript, Webview, iOS, Android, WordPress. Integration with trackers is available, too.
CPA Tracker
Ad networks — most popular
Price — ₽2500 per month
Trial period — available, permanent
CPA Tracker is another popular tracker for collecting detailed stats. Besides analytics, it has a cloaking function. It is a little limited, but suitable for beginners: the service has its own database of bots and options for filtering traffic.
Only the box option is free for free (with a limit of up to 10,000 clicks per day). The online version is paid.
FairLab
Type — cloud
Advertising networks — Facebook and Google Ads. VKontakte, Pinterest and others are extras.
Price — from $19/day to $499/month
Trial period — 7 days
FairLab is one of the most expensive and effective cloaks on the market. The service works on a self-learning neural net. It makes the ban probability in the advertising network minimal, because it evaluates each click according to over 25 parameters. The algorithm identifies a bot or moderator, even if they are accessing via a VPN or using a proxy.
Zeustrak
Type — cloud
Advertising networks — Google Ads, Facebook Ads and others
Price — $249/month
Trial period — 7 days
Zeustrak is another multifunctional tracker with a cloaking option. It has large databases of bot IPs, moderators and suspicious users. It supports direct cloaking.
Inside the service, you can manage landing pages, i.e. create them on WordPress or your own “reverse-proxy-on-steroids” technology. Integration with website designers is also available.
The cloak is designed to handle a large amount of traffic. It can be integrated with other services via API.
Adspect
Aspect is a service that has its own cloak and tracker. It works when cloaking links in Facebook, Google, TikTok and other services. It can also be used to hide manual link verifications in the ad campaigns and antivirus bots.
It has a database of 1.6 billion IPv4 addresses and several dozens of thousands of IPv6 networks. You can configure your own rules for links and distribute traffic between affiliate networks.
Cloak features:
- built-in JS fingerprinting and machine learning for fingerprint analysis;
- fully automated operation;
- direct cloaking with PHP or JS support;
- CloudFlare support and other CDN services with proxy;
- white page generators, the ability to copy sites;
- rotation of timer-set links;
- A/B testing.
Statistics are updated every minute. The price starts from $300 for a basic subscription.
The cloak is an essential, moreover, a useful tool of the affiliate marketer. It’s definitely worth paying attention to. We hope that our article was interesting and useful for you! Stay tuned so you don’t miss the latest and most valuable content.
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