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Clicks are recording, the offer converts, but ClickFlare shows nothing — or shows conversions with no campaign attached. This is the single most common support request, and the cause is almost always the same: the click ID never made the round trip. ClickFlare can only attribute a conversion if the ID it issued on the click comes back to it on the postback.

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The round trip

Understand this and most conversion problems explain themselves.
1

ClickFlare issues a click ID

When a visitor clicks, ClickFlare generates a unique ID for that click.
2

You hand it to the network

Your offer URL appends that ID to whatever parameter the network uses to store it — sub1, s1, aff_sub, clickid, they all differ.
3

The network hands it back

When the conversion fires, the network calls your ClickFlare postback URL and fills its macro with the ID you gave it.
4

ClickFlare matches it

ClickFlare looks up that ID and attaches the conversion to the original click, campaign, ad and keyword.
Break any link and the conversion is either lost entirely or recorded with nothing attached to it.
The mirror that trips people up: in the offer URL you write their parameter and your token. In the postback URL you write your parameter and their macro. Getting these backwards is the most frequent single mistake.

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Check in this order

Open the offer in ClickFlare and look at the URL. It needs the network’s parameter set to the ClickFlare click ID token.
Two failures to look for specifically:
  • The token is missing entirely. The offer URL is the raw one the network gave you.
  • The braces are missing. cf_click_id without braces is sent as literal text rather than the ID. Conversions then arrive but attach to nothing.
See How to Add an Offer in ClickFlare and How to Dynamically Pass Traffic Source Data to the Offer.
Copy the postback URL from ClickFlare and paste it into the network. Then replace ClickFlare’s placeholder with the macro that network uses, matching the parameter you chose in step 1.If you passed the click ID in sub1, the network must return sub1 in the postback:
ClickFlare stores ready-made templates for many networks inside the affiliate network element — use those rather than writing the URL by hand.See How to Submit an S2S Postback URL to an Affiliate Network and ClickFlare Parameters in Postback URLs.
Check whether the network is calling ClickFlare. If no request arrives, the problem is on the network side — the postback was not saved, was saved against a different offer, or the network requires approval before it fires.Fire a test conversion manually before blaming the configuration.See Troubleshooting S2S Postback URL in ClickFlare.
The postback must point at your own tracking domain — the same one the campaign runs on. A postback aimed at a domain you no longer use, or at a shared domain, will not resolve to your account.See Custom Domains.
If you have configured conditional conversions, conversions that fail the condition are not recorded. Check the filter before assuming the tracking is broken.See Event Filter (Conditional Conversion API and Postback).

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Conversions arrive but have no campaign

If conversions appear with empty campaign, traffic source and ad columns, the postback is reaching ClickFlare but carrying no usable click ID. That narrows it to one of two things:
  • The offer URL sent literal text instead of the ID — check the braces, as in step 1.
  • The network is returning a different parameter than the one you filled — check that the parameter in the offer URL and the macro in the postback are the same field.

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If it used to work

Conversions that stopped rather than never started usually point somewhere else:
  • The offer URL was edited and the token dropped.
  • The network changed its macros or migrated platform.
  • The tracking domain expired, was flagged, or its SSL lapsed. See Domain will not verify.

S2S postback setup

The full walkthrough for server-to-server conversion tracking.

Conversion tracking methods

Postback, pixel, script and CAPI — which to use and when.