Traffic Routing Rules: Splitting by GEO, Device and Schedule

Why route at the link

One ad rarely reaches one audience. A campaign bought for "Europe, all devices" sends you German desktop users and Polish Android users, and the best offer for each is different. Routing rules at the tracking link decide per click where the visitor goes, so you do not need a separate campaign at the source for every segment.

Rule order and fallbacks

Routing works top to bottom: the tracker checks rules in order and sends the visitor along the first one that matches. Three kinds of rules cover most setups:

• Interception rules come first and catch traffic you never want on an offer: wrong GEO, unwanted devices, suspect clicks.
• Main rules split the good traffic by segment and rotate landing pages and offers inside each.
• A fallback rule without conditions catches everyone the others did not, so no click ends on an error page.

In XPNSR Tracker these are streams of type Catch, Normal and Default. Whatever your tool calls them, always end with a fallback.

Four rules worth copying

1. GEO split: DE, AT, CH to the German offer; FR, BE to the French one; everything else to a global offer.
2. Device split: iOS to the app store offer, Android to the APK or Play offer, desktop to a lead form.
3. Language over GEO: for multilingual countries, route by browser language so the visitor gets a page they can read.
4. Returning visitors: send a visitor who already converted to a different offer instead of the same one twice.

Caps and schedules

• Daily caps: when an offer reaches the number of conversions the network accepts per day, move traffic to a backup offer instead of sending leads that will not be paid.
• Schedules: route by day of week and hour when a call-centre offer only works during office hours, or when night traffic converts on a different offer.
• Time zones: schedules follow the time zone you set. Check it before you blame the offer for empty nights.

Mistakes that leak traffic

• An interception rule without conditions catches all traffic, and the main rules never see a click.
• Overlapping rules where the first match wins and the second never fires. Review the order after each change.
• No fallback, so unmatched visitors land on the campaign's default URL, which may be an old offer.
• Too many small segments, each with too few conversions to judge. Merge until each rule has enough data.