---
title: Overview
description: What PostbackX does, the five steps traffic moves through, and where to start.
updated: 2026-07-30
order: 1
---

PostbackX sits between your ads and your offers. It records every click, matches
each conversion back to the click that caused it, and reports revenue against ad
spend — so you can tell which campaign, ad set and creative actually made money.

This documentation is for the people running those campaigns.

## The shape of the thing

Five moving parts, in the order traffic moves through them:

1. **A campaign** gives you one tracking link to put behind your ads.
2. **A click** on that link is recorded, then redirected onward.
3. **A landing page or a flow** decides where the visitor lands.
4. **The visitor converts** on your offer.
5. **Your offer source calls a postback URL**, and PostbackX matches that
   conversion to the original click — then reports it and forwards it to the ad
   platform's pixel so its algorithm learns.

If something is wrong, it is almost always step 5: the conversion arrived without
a click id, or arrived at the wrong URL, and had nothing to attach to. That is
what [Conversions are missing](/guides/missing-conversions) is about.

## Getting started

If you are setting up an account for the first time, do it in this order — each
step needs the one above it:

- [Your first campaign](/guides/first-campaign) — the whole path end to end
- [Connecting an offer source](/guides/offer-sources) — so conversions can get back in
- [Sending conversions back to ad platforms](/guides/pixels) — so the algorithm optimizes for buyers
- [Custom tracking domains](/guides/tracking-domains) — so links carry your own name

## If you would rather ask than read

PostbackX exposes your own reporting data to AI assistants over
[MCP](/reference/mcp). Connect it once and you can ask, in a normal sentence,
which campaigns lost money last week — instead of building the report yourself.

There is also a [REST API](/reference/api) with an
[OpenAPI specification](https://api.postbackx.com/v1/openapi.json), if you are
building something that reads your numbers on a schedule.

> These docs are written to be read by assistants too. Add `.md` to any page URL
> for its Markdown source, and see [llms.txt](/llms.txt) for the index.

## Reference

- [Vocabulary](/concepts/vocabulary) — what each word means here, and which
  words mean two things elsewhere
- [How attribution works](/concepts/attribution) — click ids, matching windows
  and why a conversion goes missing
- [Postback parameters](/reference/postback) — every parameter the postback URL
  accepts
- [Tracking snippets](/reference/snippets) — the JavaScript for landing pages and
  direct links