What is an API and how can you benefit

Surfing the internet, especially if you are a Digital Marketer, you’ve likely seen the term “API” mentioned a few times, maybe associated with big brands such as Facebook, Google or Amazon. Or even operating systems, web browsers, and app updates often announce new APIs for developers.

Application Programming Interface 

API stands for Application Programming Interface and at some point or another, most large companies have built APIs for their customers, or for internal use. You have been using APIs yourself without maybe even knowing while commenting on a Facebook post from a third-party website while paying for those brand-new pink shoes on that fancy website using your PayPal Account, or even while checking on a shop’s website and searching for your local store using Google Maps. But what is it? What exactly is an API?

You can think of an API like the menu from your favourite restaurant. Each menu gives you a list of dishes available to order, along with the description of what will be served. When you specify what you want from the menu, the waiter takes your order to the restaurant’s kitchen, which carries out the work and provides you with the finished dish. You don’t know how the restaurant prepares your food, and in reality, you don’t really need to.

This little metaphor maybe doesn’t cover all the API scenarios (especially if you are a developer!), but it is a good compromise to explain broadly how APIs work. 

APIs : Scalability and flexibility 

Nowadays, in the era of fast data consumption, where data can be accessed/provided from any sort of device, it is important for companies supplying digital services to provide their users (both internal and external) with a range of APIs. Reporting, product feeds upload/download, conversion piggybacking, voucher upload/fetching, claims handling are just some of the APIs that Tradedoubler provides to advertisers and publishers to help streamline their processes and increase their performance.

Using an API doesn’t just give you access to a huge amount of data, but also means you don’t even need to worry about storage. Our APIs give you the flexibility to access data in real-time, without the need to develop a solution for storage or costly database maintenance. Some examples? We have many publishers in our network using our Voucher Feed API to take control over their discount and promotional coupons in real time, grabbing the latest deals from our advertisers. Additionally comparison sites or even full eCommerce shops are not storing a single product on their database and fetch all products in real time from our Product Feeds API: in this way they don’t need to update the existing products as the API will always serve the freshest data (updated pricing, descriptions and availability). You can find a quick demo built on top of our Product API here.

Our mission is to connect and grow our advertisers and publishers, and by developing new APIs and leveraging their usage we are building a platform to let them work together with ease

 

Product API and the benefits of automatic item updates 

In one of our latest blog posts we’ve talked about product feeds, that we identify as an area of major interest. Product feeds are of undeniable importance for all verticals, but some specific industries require very specific characteristics in order to deliver profits to their maximum potential.

In the era of fast data consumption, retailers are adapting their business models to meet consumers’ expectations and of course to stay ahead of their competitors. Dynamic pricing data is becoming more and more utilized on different verticals, from fashion to retail, passing through grocery.

At Tradedoubler we provide our advertisers with the Product Open API service, which allows them to programmatically push product data to our systems and make them available for our publishers in real time. In this way, publishers will always get the “freshest” products, giving them the chance to display the best relevant offer for their users.

 

APIs: a fundamental future of our platform

During the last 10 years Tradedoubler has increasingly supported the use of an innovative suite of integrations and APIs to facilitate efficient and agile information exchange. All new developments, starting with our new Publisher Interface and new Publisher API, are developed fully based on the recently announced vision of a modern, future looking Open Platform where advertisers and publishers can work together with ease and Connect and Grow through Tradedoubler.

If you are a developer and you want to know more about our APIs, please follow this link or reach out directly to me at Riccardo.favara@tradedoubler.com, or if you are a client and need any support for the integration please contact your local Technical Client Manager.

Share this on:

Suggested posts

The Performance Group

Voorbij de klassieke prestatiemarketing: Uw Omnichannel Marketing met The Performance Group van Tradedoubler! Kom nu meer te weten over de slimme #PerformanceMarketing oplossingen!