Key concepts: campaigns, buyers, and suppliers

This article explains the three building blocks every Datahubb program uses: campaigns, buyers, and suppliers. Read it once before you configure your first program so the rest of the help center makes sense.

When you know what each piece owns, you spend less time hunting for settings and fewer leads fail because something was attached in the wrong place.

What is a campaign, buyer, and supplier?

Datahubb is lead distribution software. Leads come in from people who submit them, pass through rules you define, and go out to people who buy them. Those roles map to three objects:

Two related ideas show up often:

Everything hangs off the campaign. You create buyer user accounts once under Manage Users, then attach them inside each campaign where they should buy. Suppliers are created per campaign.

How the pieces fit together

A typical lead path looks like this:

1. A supplier posts a lead into a campaign.
2. The campaign checks fields, filters, and related rules.
3. Distribution chooses which eligible buyer should win.
4. That buyer receives the lead through their delivery method.
5. You review the outcome on the lead timeline, Dashboard, and Analytics.

If any piece is missing (no fields, no active buyer, no supplier credentials shared), the path breaks. That is why first-time setup follows a fixed order in Your first lead, end to end.

Prerequisites

• Admin access to your Datahubb workspace
• A clear idea of who sends leads (you, a publisher, or both) and who buys them

Walk the concepts in the UI

1. Open Campaigns. Each row is one program. Click a campaign to open the editor.
2. On Overview, note status and setup health. Health cards flag missing buyers, suppliers, fields, or distribution.
3. Open Fields, Distribution, Buyers, and Suppliers. Those four tabs cover the core path for most day-one programs.
4. Open Manage Users from the sidebar. Confirm you understand that a Buyer role user must exist before you can attach that buyer inside a campaign.
5. If you run your own affiliates, open the campaign Traffic Sources tab and treat it as affiliate tracking under an internal supplier, not as a separate ingest account.

Tips and gotchas

• Creating a Buyer user and attaching that buyer to a campaign are two steps. Skipping the user step blocks the campaign Buyers tab.
• One buyer user can be attached to more than one campaign. Pricing, delivery, caps, and schedules are configured per campaign attachment.
• Internal and external suppliers behave differently for affiliate tracking. Use internal when you host the page and track affiliates in Datahubb. Use external when a third-party publisher posts into you.
• Do not overbuild on day one. One campaign, one buyer, one supplier, and a simple distribution method is enough for a dry run.

Expected result

You can name which object owns fields, who must exist as a user before campaign attachment, and where suppliers and traffic sources live. You are ready to create a campaign without mixing those roles up.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a separate campaign for every buyer? Usually no. One campaign can have many buyers. Split campaigns when the lead data shape, offer, or program rules are truly different.

Is a traffic source the same as a supplier? No. A supplier posts leads into the campaign. A traffic source is an affiliate channel under an internal supplier so you can track and pay affiliates separately. External suppliers typically manage their own channels outside Datahubb.

Where do I set the price a buyer pays? On the campaign Buyers tab when you add or edit that buyer for the campaign, not only on the user account in Manage Users.

Where do suppliers get credentials? Open the supplier from the campaign Suppliers tab and copy the credentials shown on that page. Use the supplier's in-app API documentation for request examples. Share credentials only with the party that submits leads.

What is distribution in plain terms? After a lead is accepted by campaign rules, distribution decides which eligible buyer wins that lead for the run. Start with Waterfall, Highest Bidder, or Weighted. Advanced is available later when your routing needs grow.

Can I reuse the same supplier across campaigns? Suppliers are created inside a campaign. If the same publisher posts into multiple programs, add a supplier on each campaign and share the right credentials for that campaign's supplier page.

Related articles

• Your first lead, end to end
• Choose how leads are distributed
• Add your first buyer
• Add a supplier and connect traffic