Press Releases24/02/2011 ***UPDATE*** We now have browser plugins available through Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and Firefox to assist publishers in creating deeplinks. To see the user guide and download them click here.
We’ve had some feedback from our publishers about creating deep links on CJ and so we wanted to create a quick help guide to shed some light on the best and quickest way to do it.
To start with it should be stated that not all merchants allow deep linking. Most do, but there are some exceptions which are normally due to limitations on the advertiser’s end or the way that they’ve chosen to integrate with CJ. For the majority of merchants who do allow deep linking this is how it works:
First of all you need to identify the links which are deep linking enabled. There are two types of deep links – one which has been set by the merchant to go to a specific page and another which is a generic link (usually to the homepage) which can be altered by affiliates to go to any page within the advertiser’s site – I am going to focus on how to do the latter. (At the moment on the CJ system you have to check each link to identify which are deep linking enabled – sometimes advertisers will only have one link enabled so if you can’t find it you should give us a call on 020 8785 5870 to check. This is on our project plan to make easier for you.)
Using Thomson Holidays as an example, this screenshot shows how you can tell that a link has deep linking enabled. There will be a ‘destination url’ field.
Altering the link to go to a specific page is then easy.
Let’s say we want to link through to this landing page on Thomson: http://www.thomson.co.uk/late-deals/late-deals.html . We insert that URL into the Destination URL field and click ‘update link code’ and the link has been updated to go to that specific page.
The link structure in total will look like this (with a fictitious PID)
You can see that the link contains a click tag and an image tag. If we strip away the image tag and the text so that we’re just looking at the link in its most basic form you get this:
Looking at it like this you can see that the CJ tracking link and the encoded destination URL is connected by this parameter: ?url= (If you are unsure of how to encode URLs you can use a URL encoder tool like this one.
Now that you know all of this you have the structure to create links without needing to log into your CJ account. Providing that you know the link has been enabled for the url redirection (deep linking) you can use http://dpbolvw.net/click-1111111-AID?url= in front of any encoded destination URL.
My final example to wrap things up:-)
Basic Link Structure:
Chosen Landing Page URL:
Encoded Landing Page URL
Deep Link
I hope that this has helped. Happy deep linking and if you have any questions just email admin@cjblog.co.uk and it will work its way to me 
Am I right in thinking you can add your own tracking code in to the deep link by entering something in to the SID field? This appears to creates an sid parameter in the deep link which I presume will show up later in sales or click through reports.
I just learned about deep linking the other day from a new business. However, he didn’t tell me how to do it and CJ has nothing online. I ran across an article that semi explained the process, but not enough…Your article got me to go back and check the links again and I FOUND the deep link thingy. Wow! Thanks from Norm over in the oppressed Alabama United States Colony. Great job!
I am glad that I stumed upon this article. For the site http://www.fashionchicks.net fashion-chicks were doing the deep linking manually.Now they can just post the url and my php code will automatically generate affiliate code for them. Big time saver. Shan
Thanks for the feedback Shan – glad it was useful
Using helpful tips from here and other sites I created a php script. Now all of my links are automatically getting tracked by cj ,amazon.com and link-share network. See my blog http://www.infopint.com/web/how-to-add-an-affiliate-code-automatically-to-a-url/
I’m new to CJ and Affiliate marketing in general, and to find out we have to manually check each link by hand, in 2010, just boggles my mind.
I do hope you find a way to make this more obvious soon, or at least inform the publishers on some standard, to name a custom link in a certain way, that would be easy to find.
Cheers
Its been over a year and we have yet to see a feature which will allow us to identify links which support deeplinks (even more importantly it should be part of the API)
I’m a CJ affiliate that promotes mostly US based companies. I’m trying to find the deep linking enabled URL for blockbuster, but have been unsuccessful thus far. I noticed that this is a UK CJ blog, but do your directions apply to any affiliates with CJ or just UK affiliates? Sorry if that’s a silly question. Since the phone number you posted here is long distance for me could you email me with the information on Blockbuster’s deep linking enabled URL?
Thanks
Hi Books,
Thank you for the feedback.
Yes, we are looking into developing this part of our site, which is why we wanted to provide a guide to make things easier in the meanwhile. Your suggstion about tagging some links is a good one and I’ll look into this with our team. I’ll post back with any thoughts on our direction.
Thank you,
Daniel Powel
dpowel@cj.com
Hi War Movies,
These directions apply across the network. Blockbuster UK has all of their links enabled for deeplink, just pick on and you can generate your URLs.
However, it doesn’t look like Blockbuster US allows this, so I’m going to drop a line to the US team and see if there is a workaround.
Can you email me directly so I can get back to you with any details?
Thank you,
Dan
dpowel@cj.com
Hi,
I’m new at CJ but I have previous experience in affiliate marketing.
I have a question related to deep linking: If an advertiser does not have the deep linking option in the html menu, how else can I link to individual pages within the advertisers site?
I mean it’s relatively easy for me to introduce the desired url into the code because I’m used to modifying html, but would it then be track-able anymore?
This is of vital importance to me because I want to promote individual products and not whole pages. If my visitors click on a product link and land at the home page of this huge site, then the sale is 90% lost.
Thanks
Radu
Hi Radu,
Thank you for posting.
Not all advertisers offer deep linking amends to their tracking. Whilst someone of your experience could easily do this, in all likelihood the links would not be accepted on their way into the site resulting in an error page or broken tracking.
Where the linking isn’t enabled, I’d suggest reaching out the advertiser or someone at CJ (we can help with this) to see if the advertiser offers other options. In many cases the advertiser could have a product feed, which may give you the links required.
Let us know if we can help.
Thank you,
Daniel Powel
dpowel@cj.com
I only see it in the “get java script” section rather than the “get HTML” section. Seems like we should be able to do it programatically but it would be good to see it if we manually log in
Hi Chris,
Thank you for the question, it sounds a bit perplexing.
Are you saying that for particular advertisers you can only see JavaScript enabled? Therefore you can’t see HTML? Almost all advertisers have both enabled, so I’d be interested in understanding more.
Thank you,
Daniel Powel
dpowel@cj.com
For some advertisers it is hard to find links with Destination Url. Thanks for information about ?url=
It’s unfortunate that this functionality can be disabled by the publisher. After all, the cookie from any ad stays with the user even if they buy a different product.
Very frustrating.
I tried this with HotelsCombined but it seems (for some unknown reason) I couldn’t deeplink with this. Why not??? Do these companies not want to make money? Why do they force you to use their crappy links and banners which no-one wants to click on? I give up!!!
Come on guys – sort it out!
Hi Colin,
Unfortunately this is a US programme which does not allow deeplinking. Sorry about that.
Cheers
Hannah
It can be frustrating when a program does not offer the exact linking structure you need to place their links on your page. I hate having to drop a program just because I can’t link to a specific page in the way that I want. Off to check which of my programs allows deep linking.