multiple regional Apple Affiliate Program

Question

We have a web application that serves users from all over the world. Now we want to apply Apple Affiliate Program to get referral links from iTune music store. We already applied from LinkShare for United State and everything works fine. However, Apple has different affiliate networks for different regions/continents. I was wondering do we also need to apply affiliate programs (e.g. Europe—TradeDoubler, Australia & New Zealand—dgm) in order to serve users from those regions? and if so how can we integrate these affiliate programs: do we need to identify user locale and provide referral links using different affilate programs based on his locale?

Answer 1

The short of it is that each of the iTunes / App Store Affiliate Programs is country specific so using the US/LinkShare program will only affiliate sales made in the US stores.

You will need to use the UK/Tradedoubler program (and appropriate tracking parameters) to earn commissions for sales in the UK store, the AU/DGM program to properly affiliate traffic for the Australia store, etc.

To fully capitalize on your international traffic and correctly affiliate those clicks you will need to have a relationship with the multiple region-specific affiliate networks (4 total) and have been approved into and use the appropriate affiliate tracking parameters.

Then, as you mentioned, you'll need to match up the right set of affiliate tracking parameters with the user's store for them to be effective.

Further, when you are dealing with music it's important to note that the link for a song in one country's store probably won't work internationally. That means besides building a link that uses the correct affiliate parameters, you'll also want to make sure that link works in your user's local store.

eg.

• Adele's 21 album in the US: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/id420075073
• Adele's 21 album in the UK: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/id405293187

We built GeoRiot specifically for this international challenge so let us know if you have any further questions or need help getting set up with each of the programs.

Here is an interactive map showing the 45 affiliate programs and the affiliate networks that manage them: http://www.georiot.com/using-georiot/itunes/affiliate-programs

Answer 2

Worth noting that this is a changing landscape. For example, as of May 2014, Tradedoubler is no longer being used by Apple (http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/resources/phg-transition.html)

As I'm discovering, there's a LOT of obsolete information out there on the web about this.