CJ Postback Setup: Can Publishers Track CJ Sales by Video?

CJ lets publishers tag every link with a sid value, and that value comes back with each commission, which is how you tie a CJ sale to a video. What CJ does not clearly offer publishers is a self-serve server postback. Tracking tools report that CJ must enable publisher postbacks on request, and some say CJ stopped offering them to most accounts, so ask CJ before you plan around one.

This guide explains what works today, how to ask for a postback, and what to paste if CJ agrees.

How CJ tracks your sub ID

CJ calls its sub ID the SID. CJ's own material describes it as an optional value a publisher can pass for internal tracking, for example to know which page on a site drove the click. You add it to a CJ link as the sid parameter:

https://www.anrdoezrs.net/click-1234567-7654321?sid=storm-video

When a buyer from that click makes a purchase, the commission record keeps the SID. Publishers see it in CJ's commission detail reporting, and CJ's developer API exposes it on each order.

That gives you two ways to use it:

1. One fixed SID per video. Simple, but you have to build a new link for every video, and you only learn about clicks that end in a sale.
2. A unique SID per click. A redirect adds a fresh ID on every click. Matching sales back then needs software, because nobody reads click IDs by hand.

Can you get a CJ postback?

Here is what we could confirm, and what we couldn't.

• CJ's publisher help doesn't document a postback setting you can switch on yourself.
• Tracking tools that support CJ disagree on the details. One says CJ has to approve each publisher for postback URLs before they work. Another says CJ deprecated publisher server-to-server postbacks around 2019 and that only some older accounts still have them.
• Several tracking tools now connect to CJ through its API with a personal access token, rather than a postback. That suggests postbacks are not the normal route.

The honest answer is that it depends on your account. If CJ offers you postbacks, the setup below works. If not, you will have click data per video but CJ commissions won't flow back automatically.

How to ask CJ for a postback

Contact CJ publisher support or your account manager and ask for something like this:

I'd like a server-to-server postback for my publisher account. For every commission, please call my postback URL and fill in the SID from the click, the order or commission ID, the sale amount, my commission amount, the currency, and the action status if possible.

Give them your postback URL. If they agree, they will tell you the exact macro names to use, or place the URL for you. Ask them to confirm:

• that the postback fires for every advertiser you promote, not just one;
• whether it fires again when a commission is corrected or reversed;
• that it is sent from CJ's servers, not as a browser pixel.

What to paste if CJ agrees

If you use Vyrl, connect CJ under Networks to get your postback URL. It contains Vyrl's placeholders, and each one needs to be swapped for CJ's macro:

We can't list CJ's macro names here because CJ doesn't publish a publisher postback macro list that we could verify. Use the names CJ gives you.

About status: Vyrl understands pending, approved and reversed in any capitalization, plus common words such as declined or cancelled (counted as reversed). If CJ sends something else, the postback is refused, so start without &status={status} and every sale counts as approved.

Set up your CJ links for sub ID tracking

Whatever happens with postbacks, set up your links so the data is there when you need it:

1. Copy your CJ link for the advertiser or product.
2. If a link tool adds the SID for you, paste the link without any sid parameter. A link with two SID values can confuse the match.
3. Share the tool's link, never the raw CJ link, in your video descriptions, pinned comments and bios. A click that skips the tool has no SID, so its sale can't be matched to a video.

Testing, if you have a postback

1. Tap one of your own tracked links.
2. Ask CJ support to send a test postback, or make a small real purchase through that link.
3. In Vyrl, a matched sale shows in revenue within a minute, credited to that click.

If the sale arrives but isn't credited to a click, the SID probably didn't come through. Check that the click went through your link and that the click_id macro is the one that returns SID.

What you get without a postback

A missing postback doesn't make tracking useless. You still learn which video and which place sent people to each CJ link, and how often. Because CJ keeps the SID on each commission, a per-video SID scheme still lets you total sales by video inside CJ's reports. You just can't see commission and earnings per click side by side in one dashboard without the sales data flowing back.

Using Vyrl with CJ

In Vyrl, add your CJ links under Links with Affiliate network set to CJ. Vyrl adds sid= with its own click ID on every click, so each click is tied to the video address or share link it came through. If CJ enables a postback for your account, sales arrive against those clicks and you can see earnings per click by video and by link. If you also work with Impact or Awin, both let publishers set up sale notifications in their own dashboards: see Impact setup and Awin setup.