impact.com Tips and Power Features

Quick Answer The impact.com features that save the most time are SharedId for placement-level tracking, deferred deep linking for app and mobile journeys, Discover's filters for smarter recruitment, and scheduled reports. Most managers use a fraction of the platform — these four are the ones worth learning first.

What it is

impact.com is one of the more capable platforms in the space, which means most of its value is hidden behind features people never open. Power features are the options that only pay off once you know they exist — like finding out your phone had a whole settings menu you'd never scrolled to.

The four with the biggest payoff for an advertiser: SharedId (placement-level labels partners pass through), deferred deep links (so mobile and app journeys land in the right place), Discover filters for targeted recruitment, and scheduled reports so your data arrives without you fetching it.

Why it matters

Repetitive manual work in the platform is time stolen from recruiting and optimising, and painful reporting simply gets done less often. Some of these features also unlock outcomes you can't get otherwise: SharedId reveals which placements actually convert, and deferred deep links rescue conversions that would otherwise break on mobile. Learning them lowers the cost of doing the right things often, which is the whole game.

How it works

Have partners pass SharedId values to label placements, then read them in reporting to see which placements truly convert.
Use deferred deep links so mobile and in-app journeys land on the right product instead of dumping users at a generic screen.
Filter Discover by partner type, region and performance to build a focused recruitment shortlist.
Save the reports you use often and schedule the key ones to email you so review is automatic.
Use bulk contract actions to update terms or message partners in batches rather than one by one.
Keep the creative and link assets current so partners self-serve live offers instead of emailing you.

! Common mistakes to avoid

Ignoring SharedId, then being unable to tell which of a big partner's placements actually sell.
Letting mobile journeys break instead of using deferred deep links, quietly losing app conversions.
Recruiting on instinct instead of filtering Discover for genuinely relevant partners.
Rebuilding the same report every period instead of saving and scheduling it.

💡 Reporting tips

Segment by SharedId and the picture sharpens fast: a single 'top' partner often turns out to be one strong placement carrying several weak ones, and you can act on that precisely. Schedule your core reports into a fixed review slot so the numbers land right when you've set time aside to use them. A report you must remember to pull is a report you'll eventually stop pulling.

In practice: a worked example

Half your traffic is mobile, and you notice app conversions mysteriously dropping. The culprit: links that break when a user passes through the app store or opens your app, dumping them on a generic home screen instead of the product they wanted. You switch your partners to deferred deep links, which carry the destination through that journey, and the lost conversions come back. Separately, you have partners pass SharedId so you can finally see which of a big partner's placements actually sell. Two features most managers never touch — deferred deep links and SharedId — between them recover mobile sales and turn a vague 'this partner is big' into 'this specific placement is the one that works'.

When to lean in — and when to hold back

Worth setting up when	Probably overkill when
Partners run several placements you want to compare	Each partner has a single placement
You have meaningful mobile or in-app traffic	Your journeys are desktop-only and simple
You're actively recruiting and want a shortlist	Your partner mix is settled
You check the same reports on a schedule	You only log in for the occasional total

Related guides

Frequently asked questions

It's a value a partner passes through their link to label a specific placement or campaign. Those labels appear in your reporting so you can see which placements drive sales.

It's a deep link that survives a journey through an app store or app open, so a mobile user still lands on the intended product rather than a generic screen — which protects conversions on mobile.

Yes — you can schedule saved reports to be delivered automatically, which makes regular review far more likely to actually happen.