Direct Linking In Facebook Ads – How To
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I have been getting the question, “How do I direct link when using facebook ads? Is it ok to direct link?”
What is Direct Linking?
First, for those that don’t know, direct linking means you link your ads on facebook directly to your affiliate link and thus directly to the advertisers page. You do not link to a landing page you made in other words.
Best Way To Direct Link
First, Facebook has no problem with you direct linking to affiliate offers. It’s not against TOS or anything. You should however know that direct linking is not always the best way. You should try both making your own landing page and direct linking to get best conversions.
The best way to direct link in facebook is pretty simple. You want to use a php redirect so that you always control the location of the ad. The problem with using a php redirect is many people do not know how to track subid’s using them.
You will want to track you sub id’s so you know what ads are profitable and which are not. Simple enough.
Setup Your PHP Redirect
- First you need a domain – it can be any domain, name means nothing in this case. It can even be laksdjflkasjdfkas.com! You pick.
- Next you need hosting. You can get it anywhere. Redirects are low load on the server, meaning just about any package you get will be able to handle it. Still, if you want a really good host, check out liquid web.
- After you’ve got all that setup, you will need to make your PHP redirect file. Here is an example of it.
You can copy this into notepad, save as index.php, and replace the url with your affiliate link. Make sure that the affiliate link ends with SUB= or the variable that equals sub id from your affiliate network. Leave ['sub'] the same no matter what the affiliate link is. - Now in your facebook ads you will link to your http://www.domain.com/index.php?sub=1234. Change the sub= to whatever you want to track each different ad.
- To see what converted, pull a SubId report from your affiliate network, and Bam, instant breakdown of what is working and what is not. Simple enough, right?
Now you should be all set to direct link with facebook.
