Perform[cb]’s new mobile app for publishers and partners, PerformLEAP Partners, has drawn attention since its recent introduction. It provides ubiquitous access to performance data, in combination with campaign optimization, new offer opportunities and messaging, all presented in a fast, easy-to-use form factor. We spent two weeks putting it through its paces.

Introduction

Affiliates and publishers are the great pioneers of online marketing. They constantly innovate and were at the forefront of the industry’s move to mobile, yet too often they have been forced to use outdated network interfaces that do not account for the “always-on” aspect of their working lives. At a time when the whole world has switched to mobile, too many network platforms are still desktop-only.

In an environment where most marketers have dozens of apps installed on their phones, what is still missing is a good mobile app that allows publishers to monitor their campaigns on an hour to hour – or even minute to minute – basis, and in particular to alert them if something goes wrong.

Networks have been slow to react to this need and even the most popular SaaS network platform is poor in this regard. While it does offer an app, it hasn’t been updated since 2017 and has suitably mediocre ratings on the app stores as a result. The need for a great mobile solution for publishers and affiliates has largely been ignored. Until now.

Last month Perform[cb] announced the launch of its proprietary mobile app designed to address these needs. If it lives up to their claims, it is a game-changer, providing new offer discovery, reporting, campaign management and messaging; all packaged in a mobile app that’s available on both Android and iOS. We spent a couple of weeks using it to see whether it lives up to expectations. Spoiler alert: it does.

Imagine a banking app, but for affiliate marketing

In speaking with the Perform[cb] Development team, PerformLEAP Partners was assimilated with mobile banking apps. Banks have largely perfected a model in which their mobile apps provide an overview of accounts with access to simple transactions like deposits and transfers. PerformLEAP Partners does something very similar, but for affiliates and partners.

The app offers a simplified view of campaign pacing and optimization, easy access to both current campaigns and new offer opportunities, as well as quick messaging with account managers. Perform[cb] has avoided the temptation to make it a full-featured desktop replacement and the app is better for it. Instead, PerformLEAP Partners focuses on the questions that are most important to publishers: am I making money, can I make more, and are there any problems?

Functionality: what you need, when you need it

There are five main tabs arrayed across the bottom of the screen: Dashboard, Discovery, My Offers, Offer Groups, and Messages.

Dashboard

The Dashboard is the first thing you see when you open the app. It is heaviliy focused on the financial performance of partner campaigns, with today’s earnings at the top, a chart showing one-day, one-week, and one-month performance, and a series of progress bars showing pacing compared to forecast across the same timescales.

Scroll down and you find what Perform[cb] is calling an Optimization Score, which is a metric designed to provide affiliates with an intuitive grasp of how well their campaigns are performing and where they may need attention. It is a simple percentage figure derived from how well your traffic is being utilized, taking account of offer caps, secondary offers, forensic traffic analysis, and other campaign data.

If your personal Optimization Score isn’t 100%, the app will suggest ways to improve it. This is one of our favorite features. Affiliate marketing is a complicated business, so we are fans of anything that brings attention on ways to quickly improve your income.

Finally, the Dashboard presents an Insights section, which can be customized to provide notifications of new offers, approvals, pauses, blocks, payouts, and other updates. Taken together, the information shown in the Dashboard is enough to reassure you that you are on top of things. We found ourselves checking it multiple times a day.

Discovery

The Discovery tab is all about providing a variety of ways to find new offers. Whether by keyword, vertical, or traffic type – it is all super easy to navigate, with additional areas that list top offers, new and newsworthy offers, and even offers recommended by affiliate managers. New and exclusive to the app, affiliate managers can set up suggested offer groups based on their knowledge of best-fit for a given affiliate’s traffic. We are told that Perform[cb]’s Development team was aiming for a “Netflix-style” discovery engine, and it is certainly one of the most user-friendly interfaces we have encountered.

My Offers

This tab includes all the offers available to partners within the entire Perform[cb] Network, with the ability to bookmark individual offers for later reference and to create bookmarked lists of favorite offers.

Offer Groups

This is where partners can find their currently running offers and offer groups. The app provides a simple performance chart for each offer, suggested actions, and optimizations, and the ability to change settings within any offer group. It isn’t a replacement for campaign management via the desktop interface, but is more than good enough for on-the-go tweaks and changes.

Messages

As one would expect, this is where direct messaging with one’s affiliate manager is available, together with API and Help documentation.

Widget: at-a-glance performance monitoring

When we first realized that the app offers an associated widget that can be placed on your Home screen on both iOS or Android devices, we didn’t think much about it. What we found in use though was that having a simple representation of your daily traffic pacing data available at a glance is compelling. If, like us, you pick up your phone 50 times a day, you may soon find yourself glancing at the widget as a matter of habit. We did.

Appearance: easy on the eyes

The app offers a modern, up-to-date interface. We wouldn’t usually take time to point this out, but given the dearth of alternatives available, and their seemingly decade-old designs, one has to tip a hat to the Perform[cb]  Development team for making something that not just works well but actually looks good too. Functionality is key, of course, but the fact that Perform[cb] has taken time to make it visually attractive speaks to the care with which they have developed this app. It’s modern, it has a nice teal color scheme, and it has tabs so it is well-organized and easy to use. What more could you ask for?

Technology: a solid foundation

The platform is built on the React Native mobile app framework. Without getting too technical, using an app framework helps developers build in scalability, security, robustness, and integration; and React Native is one of the best frameworks available. It is based on Facebook’s JavaScript library and was used to build the Facebook, Bloomberg, and Airbnb mobile apps, for example. What does this mean for you? Corners haven’t been cut, Perform[cb]’s Development team knew what they were doing – the app is built upon a solid foundation. This isn’t amateur hour. With any new tech product there is the possibility of teething problems, however, the underpinnings of this app give me confidence that this is a professional tool for professional affiliate marketers.

Conclusion

PerformLEAP Partners fills an important need for publishers. Ubiquitous access to campaign performance metrics, notifications, and new offers provides real advantages in a competitive market. Perform[cb] has taken the time to listen to what people want and, on the basis of our testing, have done a terrific job of delivering on the brief. We are enthusiastic about this step forward for the industry. This kind of publisher support should be standard for network platforms, and we hope to see many more of these kinds of apps in future.

In the here and now, we believe this is the best mobile app available from any CPA network, and have no hesitation in describing it as Blue Book Recommended.