ClickMate

Overview

ClickMate provides a wrapper that you can use on any link to convert it, on the fly, to a SmartLink. This means that the link will go through our matching process and clicks will work through our real time auction system to re-route to the most beneficial advertiser.

Build a ClickMate Link

If you wanted to monetize a link to https://dermstore.com.example/shop/product1234 you would put that link in your HTML, or use our Chrome Extension to turn it into a SmartLink. ClickMate gives you another option. You would wrap the link in the form:

https://howl.me/link/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdermstore.com.example%2Fshop%2Fproduct1234&publisher_slug=myacct&article_name=my-story

On click, our system will create a SmartLink in your account if dermstore.com.example is one of the domains we handle. If the link is matched, an auction takes place on the link in order to redirect to the appropriate destination. If there is no match or auction, the link will just be redirected to the original URL.

The ideal usage for this is to set up a programmatic integration–either wrap all commerce links on your site or all of the ones you want Howl to monetize. Our system will make sure that your readers get to the appropriate destination while finding you all the best monetization opportunities. If the wrapping happens server side by your CMS, this will even work in no-javascript or ad-blocked environments like AMP.

The legacy url domain of shop-links.co is still supported.

https://shop-links.co/link/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdermstore.com.example%2Fshop%2Fproduct1234&publisher_slug=myacct&article_name=my-story&article_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mywebpage.com

Contact support to have clickmate enabled for your accounts.

Query Params

URL Path Parameter	Type	Description
url	string(2048)	Required The URL of the target link (must be URL encoded!). Without this, users will see an error page
article_url	string(2048)	Required The canonical URL of the article your link is coming from (must be URL encoded!).
article_name	string(100)	Required The readable name or title of the article your link is coming from (not a numeric identifier).
publisher_slug	string(64)	Required The slug provided by your Howl account rep. Without this we will not know what account to monetize clicks for.
exclusive	Integer	Optional Set this to 1 if you want to ensure that this particular link only goes to the original retailer.
u1	string(2048)	Optional Arbitrary tracking parameter that you may apply to links for your own tracking (will be passed to our stats).

URL Encoding

All parameters must be URL encoded. See URL Encoder.

Example Code

In Javascript:

var url = 'https://merchant.example/product1234';
var slug = 'myacct';
var articleName = document.title;
var articleUrl = window.location.href;
var clickmateUrl = 'https://howl.me/link?url=' + encodeURIComponent(url) +
   '&publisher_slug=' + slug +
   '&article_name=' + encodeURIComponent(articleName) +
   '&article_url=' + encodeURIComponent(articleUrl);