Cloaking: Why You Need It, How to Set It Up and Use It in Affiliate Marketing

Many profitable offer categories do not fully comply with the rules of major traffic exchanges, while social media impose numerous restrictions on ad campaigns. Some subjects are completely banned, while others require passing moderation. "Gray" and "black" promotion methods are prohibited by ad networks despite their high ROI. To bypass these restrictions, webmasters use cloaking in affiliate marketing.

In affiliate marketing, cloaking means a method of traffic distribution where different content is shown to different site visitors. For example, ad network moderators and bots see a "white" landing page that fully complies with the network rules, while the target audience sees a more aggressive one that doesn't meet the platform's requirements and regulations.

Among affiliate marketers, "cloaking" most often means hiding part of the content from prying eyes. In most cases, this is done to protect against ad network moderators’ actions, but there are other scenarios as well: it’s also a way to protect yourself from competitors when you are not so eager to reveal your working strategy.

Cloaking not only helps in bypassing moderation, but also solves other tasks:

• Hiding profitable strategies and creatives from CPA networks, advertisers, or other marketers;
• Attracting traffic to offers from sources banned by advertisers;
• Blocking undesirable GEOs;
• Masking the actual page content from spy services to hide it from those using monitoring systems.

Put simply, cloaking is a set of algorithms and filters that identify undesirable visitors and direct them to a white page. The real offer is isolated from bots and moderators, and their IP addresses are collected in databases of special cloaking services.

Traffic distribution works like two doors that open quickly for a specific audience; if an unwanted "guest" enters the door that’s not meant for them, they face an inevitable ban.

Now you know what cloaking is, so let's move on to the next step and see how to set it up. We will use the site MagicChecker.com, which offers a free 7-day trial.

To start, register and confirm your email. After that, go to the main page.

1. Click ADD CAMPAIGN.

2. Enter the campaign name, white page, and black page.

3. Set the campaign status. To launch it, select Active.

4. Filtering is set up according to the tasks of the campaign.

5. Select the geographical location where the campaign will be shown ("Allow Only") or blocked ("Block Only"). To do this, enter the desired country in the search field or select it from the list.

6. Choose the list of devices for which the black page will be shown. In our case, these are computers with the Windows OS.

7. Next, select the browsers for which the black page will be shown. Similarly to GEO settings, you can filter by specific languages used in the browser. We selected all browsers that support English.

8. Optionally, you can filter the white or black page display by proxy providers.

9. In the IP List section, you can allow or block access for specific IP addresses using the "Allow Only" and "Block Only" functions respectively.

10. Set up filtering based on where the traffic comes from. The "Allow Only" option allows access only from a specific referrer. The referrer is the traffic source, such as Google, TikTok, X (ex-Twitter), etc. By enabling the "Block Blank Referers" checkbox, direct access to the black page via a direct link will be impossible.

11. The following is a complex setting used to modify URL parameters. It should be done individually for each case and is recommended only for advanced users.

12. The User Agent setting allows you to specify a particular browser version and other parameters.

13. Set the operating time of the cloak; we recommend setting it to 24/7. Then click SAVE CAMPAIGN.

14. You will see a new line with the created campaign on the list. Next, you need to download the cloaking file. To do this, click the "Get file" button, and the index.php file will start downloading.

15. After downloading the file, place it in the root folder of the website.

As a result, when accessing the domain from any IP address that does not pass the created filters, the user will be redirected to the white page. If all filters are successfully passed, the cloaking system sends the user to the black page. This means that you can start launching ad campaigns.

In the world of affiliate marketing, sometimes you have to take risks and go against the rules to attract target traffic. To successfully promote offers, an affiliate marketing specialist will have to master several additional tools, besides cloaking services. One of them is a multi-accounting (anti-detect) browser, which will inevitably become very useful in your work.

Multi-accounting browser technologies allow you to simultaneously run a large number of ad campaigns, try new affiliate strategies, and test different creative approaches in various regions. What is especially important when working with "gray" traffic, multi-accounting browsers bypass blocks on advertising platforms, social media, and other websites.

Currently, there are many anti-detect browsers on the market offering their multi-accounting solutions. Among them, we have chosen Octo Browser for ourselves. This browser ensures the highest quality of fingerprint spoofing and is highly regarded by its users.

Our own tests using Whoer and Pixelscan showed that spoofing offered by Octo Browser is almost impossible to detect. Moreover, we were happy with the convenient configuration of the digital fingerprint parameters and the creation of quick profiles and templates. All this allows for rapid scaling of successful ad campaigns and achieving a higher ROI, bypassing restrictions.

Now you know what cloaking is and the basic principles of its operation with a step-by-step example of campaign setup. If you use "gray" methods to promote offers, you won’t be able to achieve success without a multi-accounting browser and traffic distribution services, as you constantly risk losing accounts on online platforms with strict advertising rules.

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Cloaking can be viewed from different angles, but it certainly solves specific problems for affiliate marketing specialists and provides an opportunity to earn more. If you find useful information sources, this technology can be successfully mastered even by beginners, as in practice it is not that complicated. We invite you to join our channel Trusted Google Ads/BING 2024, where you can share your experiences, learn more information, and get recommendations from experienced affiliate marketing professionals.