CJ Affiliate (Commission Junction) is one of the world's largest affiliate marketing networks, connecting advertisers with publishers to drive commission-based sales. This guide will walk you through setting up the CJ Affiliate data connector in Power My Analytics, creating reports in Data Studio, and understanding the commission data CJ provides.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have:

• An active CJ Affiliate advertiser account
• A CJ Personal Access Token, created in the CJ Developer Portal
• The Advertiser ID (the Company ID, or CID) of each CJ company you want to report on

CJ Affiliate authenticates with a Personal Access Token plus your Advertiser ID rather than a standard sign-in. Both are required: a Personal Access Token alone will not return data. If your CJ account has not used the API before, you may need to contact CJ support to enable API access.

Adding CJ Affiliate as a Data Source

1. Navigate to your Power My Analytics hub and select Sources from the menu.
2. Click + Add new source and choose CJ Affiliate from the gallery.
3. Enter your Personal Access Token.
4. Enter your Advertiser ID (the CID of your advertiser account).
5. Enter a name for your CJ Affiliate account and click Connect.

If you manage more than one CJ company, connect each company's CID as its own data source.

For step-by-step connection instructions, see How to Connect to CJ Affiliate.

Creating a Data Studio Report

Follow these steps to create a Data Studio report using your CJ Affiliate data:

1. In the PMA hub, navigate to Reports > Data Studio.
2. Select CJ Affiliate under Create Data Studio Report (this will open the official Data Studio application in a new window).
   • Name your data source (e.g., "CJ Affiliate - Organization Name").
   • Power My Analytics Hub: Choose your PMA hub from the dropdown.
   • User Account: Select your CJ Affiliate account.
   • Optional: Leave "Use report template for new reports" checked to use the PMA demo template.
   • Click Connect (top right) to complete the data source configuration.
   • Click Create Report (top right).

You can also start from the ready-made CJ Affiliate Data Studio demo template.

Key Reports and Fields

CJ Affiliate data in Power My Analytics offers a wide range of metrics and dimensions for your reports. Some popular metrics include:

• Key Performance Metrics: Sale Amount USD, Pub Commission Amount USD, CJ Fee USD, Order Discount USD by Publisher Name; Sale Amount USD by Action Type
• Publisher and Website Performance Metrics: Sale Amount USD by Publisher Name; Sale Amount USD and Pub Commission Amount USD by Publisher Name and Publisher ID; Sale Amount USD and Pub Commission Amount USD by Website Name
• Commission Detail Metrics: Sale Amount USD, Pub Commission Amount USD, CJ Fee USD, and Order Discount USD by Order ID, Event Date, Publisher Name, Action Tracker Name, Action Status, Coupon, and Country
• Sales by Country Metrics: Sale Amount USD, Pub Commission Amount USD, and Order Discount USD by Country
• Daily Cost Metrics: Adv Commission Amount USD; Publisher Commission; Sale Amount USD; Adv Commission Amount USD and Sale Amount USD

For a complete list of available CJ Affiliate fields, refer to the Schema Explorer.

When building a "cost" or "spend" column, use Adv Commission Amount USD. This is the amount CJ bills the advertiser, and it already includes the publisher commission plus the CJ network fee. Adding Pub Commission Amount USD and CJ Fee USD to it would double-count your costs.

Limitations and Important Considerations

• No clicks or impressions: CJ's API does not return click or impression volume, so EPC, conversion rate, and click-through rate cannot be calculated in Power My Analytics. This is a limitation of the CJ API itself (CJ only exposes clicks via CSV export from its UI), and it applies to every data connector vendor.
• Backfilling: Up to 2 years of historical data. Power My Analytics performs an initial backfill of 24 months of data when you first connect your CJ Affiliate account as a data source.
• Commissions are not final when they first appear: CJ commissions move through a lifecycle (new, extended, locked, closed). On CJ's standard cycle, a transaction locks on the 10th of the month following its Event Date; custom cycles lock 7 to 60 days after the Event Date, and open-ended programs stay in New status until the advertiser locks them manually. Advertisers can also extend a commission for one additional pay period. Expect recent-month figures to change as commissions finalize.
• Corrections are separate rows: CJ writes corrections as new rows rather than updating the original transaction. Filtering to Original = 1 gives gross figures; including Original = 0 rows gives net figures. Do not de-duplicate on Order ID.
• CJ has four different date fields: Click Date, Event Date, Posting Date, and Locking Date. The same period will not total the same on each date basis. When comparing your PMA reports to the CJ UI, make sure both are using the same date basis.
• All CJ dates are UTC: The CJ API reports dates and times in UTC (ISO 8601). If your other data sources use a local time zone, day boundaries may differ slightly.
• Bonus and performance-incentive actions: The Action Type dimension includes perf_inc (performance incentive) and bonus rows, which carry commission amounts but no sale amount. Left unfiltered, they can distort calculated metrics such as average order value and effective commission rate.
• Advertiser-scope fields: Adv Commission Amount USD, CJ Fee USD, and New To File are returned for advertiser accounts. A publisher-scope connection cannot produce network-fee or new-to-file reporting.
• Flag fields are numeric metrics: New To File, Is Cross Device, Original, and Reviewed Status are 0/1 fields typed as metrics. They sum correctly into transaction counts, but they cannot be used as a breakdown dimension without a calculated (CASE) field.
• ID fields are numeric metrics: Publisher ID, Website ID, Action Tracker ID, and Commission ID are typed as numeric metrics. They can appear as table columns, but they cannot be used as grouping dimensions without a calculated field.
• Advertiser- and publisher-currency fields: Fields reported in the advertiser's or publisher's own currency (such as Sale Amount Adv Currency) have no accompanying currency-code field, so they cannot be safely aggregated across advertisers. Use the USD fields for cross-account reporting.
• Alpha connector: The CJ Affiliate connector is newly released and currently in alpha. If you spot anything unexpected, we would love to hear from you.

Unavailable Data

The following CJ data is not available through CJ's Commission Detail API and therefore is not available in Power My Analytics:

• EPC (7-day and 3-month), conversion rate, click-through rate, and click and impression volume generally
• Publishers with clicks but no sales (zero-conversion partners are not present, so "active publisher" counts read low)
• Item and SKU level detail (SKU, quantity, per-item sale amount and commission)
• Situational commissioning detail (which commissioning rule fired on an order)
• Correction reason and the link back to the original transaction
• Locking method and validation status
• Creative/link ID, shopper ID, and sub-ID (publisher-side tracking parameters)
• Order Inquiry Manager data (missing-commission claims)
• Network benchmarking and Network Earnings
• Affiliate customer journey, assist, and incrementality reporting (only the last-click converting publisher is present)

If there are additional CJ Affiliate fields or reports you would like to see in Power My Analytics, please submit a ticket with screenshots of the reports you would like to build.

Troubleshooting

• No data returned: This is almost always a missing or incorrect Advertiser ID (CID), or advertiser-scope fields requested on a publisher-scope connection. Verify the CID of the advertiser account you want to report on at members.cj.com.
• Totals do not match the CJ UI: Usually a date-basis difference (Event Date vs Posting Date) or currency conversion. Compare on the same date basis and use the USD fields.
• "My numbers changed since last month": This is expected behavior; see the commission locking cycle under Limitations and Important Considerations.
• Average order value or commission rate looks wrong: Exclude bonus and perf_inc rows from the Action Type dimension.
• Duplicate-looking transactions: Corrections post as their own rows; see Corrections under Limitations and Important Considerations.

See our article Basic Troubleshooting for information on general issues that may affect the CJ Affiliate connector.