Frequently Asked Questions

1. What are the primary components of the Advertiser Partner and Cardlytics integration?
   The integration consists of four main components: the Merchant Ingestion API for managing merchant data, the Offer Ingestion API for managing offer details, the Redemption Feed which provides transaction redemption data from Cardlytics to the partner, and the Aggregate Reporting API enabling partners to retrieve performance metrics for their offers.

2. How should Advertiser Partners provide merchant and offer data to Cardlytics?
   Advertiser Partners can provide merchant and offer data through our REST APIs for near real-time updates and data access. For our REST APIs, partners have access to the full suite of integration, including Performance Reporting.

3. What are the key requirements for the merchant and offers?
   Content must be in JSON format and named according to the convention with all required fields. It is recommended to provide as much of the information, even those marked as optional, to help us accurately match user transactions and for redemptions.

4. How does Cardlytics handle updates and deletions of merchants and offers?
   In our REST APIs, partners explicitly call PUT endpoints to create or update and DELETE endpoints to remove individual merchant or offer records. It's important to note that even if an offer is deleted by the partner, it will remain valid for customers who have already activated it until the end of its 30-45 day redemption period. Our alternate and less recommended SFTP option has similar functionality using additional merchantStatus or offerStatus field.

5. How frequently are merchant and offer data expected to be updated?
   For REST APIs, updates should be sent in near real-time only when a merchant or offer is created, modified, or needs to be deleted. For less recommended SFTP option, if there are any new, updated, or deleted merchants or offers, a new file must be uploaded daily. If there are no changes, no upload is required, and Cardlytics will continue using the previously uploaded data.

6. What information is included in the Redemption Feed, and how can partners access it?
   The Redemption Feed contains daily files uploaded by Cardlytics, providing details of transaction redemptions. This includes a unique, anonymized transaction ID, partner-provided merchant and offer IDs, store ID, merchant name, card type, last four digits of the card, transaction amount, and a transaction timestamp in ISO 8601 format. Partners can access and pull this file daily via our REST API or less recommended SFTP option.

7. What kind of performance reporting does Cardlytics provide to Advertiser Partners?
   Cardlytics provides an Aggregate Reporting API that allows partners to retrieve offer performance metrics at both the merchant and offer levels. Partners can invoke this API to access detailed reporting data such as purchases, revenue, reach, impressions, and activations. The API supports filtering by specific offer IDs (up to 1000 at a time) and a specified time range. Note: only REST API is supported.

8. What are the key considerations and guidelines for ensuring a successful integration?
   Successful integration relies on proper formatting and adherence to the specified JSON schemas for all data exchanges. Partners should ensure consistency in merchant and offer identifiers across all updates. For REST APIs, partners should stay within the provided daily quota and requests per second (RPS) limits to avoid HTTP 429 errors. It is also crucial for partners to understand the file naming conventions and the meaning of the status fields for both merchant and offer data.