When is a Click a Click?

Status
Not open for further replies.
cyberworkspace

cyberworkspace

Beat Me @ MyStockBet.com
Feb 2, 2007
392
5
0
i have now streamlined my cpm/ppc/affiliate reporting and really dug into the figures for the first time.

first thing that came to my attention was

- 31 reported cpm clicks in google
- 31 reported clicks in my database
- 20 reported clicks in my affiliate program's reporting app

well. 11 clicks got lost somewhere on their way. this is more than 48 hours ago, so given that they do realtime reporting there should be no lag anymore.

so, i don't think that this is fraud somehow from side of the aff.-manager, as i simply cannot believe them doing this (one of the big three).

but then i want to know, what makes a click a click from their or from other aff. progams perspective.

as i redirect directly from the advertisement via my url to the merchants landing page, i assume that one point of failure could be, that the customer gets aware that he his redirected to an offer he doesn't really want to see and hence closes his browser before the page fully loads.

any other explanations? problems with the landing page? but then again, the trigger should fire once the jumplink is called, right?

i asked my aff. manager about this and am awaiting an answer.
 


That is almost exactly what I would expect from the big networks.

1/3 of your clicks will not be credited to you, despite the customer getting to the landing page.

This means that 1/3 of your sales will also likely not be credited to you.

I have supporting data from two different independent data points.

I ran a Fortune 500 companies internet marketing and the person who ran our affiliate program reported to me. Every month, we were undercharged by them by almost exactly 1/3 (6000 leads we know we got, but only 4000 billed). Having been an affiliate myself, I knew that if I paid people, they would just send me more traffic. I made every effort to make sure we
tried to pay them, but the major affiliate network we used basically acted like they were doing us a favor and basically said "dont worry about it". We even offerred to implement new tracking, they were totally unconcerned with the problem.

Second. It is not always possible to start with a white label site. Often we get stuck starting as a plain old affiliate and have to go through a network while we establish that we can drive volume. It is a major pain , but it has gotten us some lucrative deals. We fell lucky to break even in this stage. Without fail, once we can get to a white label our conversion rate will improve by 50% almost magically overnight. We will go from 8% conversion to 12%. It is regular like clockwork, happens every single time. We budget for it.

If you are relying on a network for accurate tracking and reporting, you are getting screwed. This is the number one reason you want to work directly with merchants.
 
The first thing to realize is the # clicks will NEVER ever match up completely. There are just too many variables along the path of a click from end user to its final destination.
 
Where are your clicks coming from? They could possibly be outside the targeted area of the offer - and your users might be redirected to another campaign. (geo redirect)

There are so many reasons for this, I dont think that that the big networks are trying to skim off the top.
 
Diorex said:
That is almost exactly what I would expect from the big networks.
Click to expand...

that is hard to swallow but just motivates me to do much more thorough stats tracking. as this is your past experience you are referring to, i am taking this matter very serious now. thanks for this explanation!

i really wish i could do white labelling for some of those offers as i feel that they have great potential but just leave me with too few options to effectively sell them.

Ang said:
There are so many reasons for this, I dont think that that the big networks are trying to skim off the top.
Click to expand...

well, the only thing i am believing in are facts.

the traffic i am sending is pure usa traffic. the click is registered by google, going via my script, whih ist stored in my database. those numbers reconcile perfectly. one click in google is one click in my database.

now, a click on my link however does not seem to be a click reaching my affiliate stats. i just found another case: 44 clicks google, 44 clicks in my database, 33 clicks in my affiliate reporting view.

NOW, 2 things could happen:

a) the reporting tool is faulty by not showing all clicks BUT correctly registers all conversions
b) 11 clicks incl. any possible conversion is skimmed

i am patient and just awaiting an explanation from side of my affiliate manager, which i have not gotten during the last 24 hours.
 
Wait to see what your AM says. I think that their is always going to be a little discrepancy between the amount of clicks on search engines and your affiliate program. Keep in mind that the search engines are not 100% fullproof on where the traffic is coming from, some users might have blocked ip's. Furthermore, as you mentioned earlier they could be closing the box before it is fully loaded.

Nevertheless, keep us updated on what your AM says.
 
well, they replied.

their answer was, that they only count uniques and the difference might hence come from multiple clicks from one ip. i don't understand how it could happen that any of my prospect customers would click on an adsense ad, go back and click on that same adsense ad again, but lets pretend that shit like this could happen.

well, as i however do not only store the number of clicks, but the referral-url, ip, exact time and date of the click and a bit more i would now be able to check whether i have duplicate ips.

turns out though, that i have directed 29 unique clicks from the usa towards their offer. i checked the other case, 43 uniques.

i am a bit in alert mode now. will have to check all my campaigns now back to when i started taking detailled stats a week ago.

anyhow, i did send them my excel-file containing the uniques. i am really looking forward to their answer on this.
 
Completely agree with this, although i make money using these companies, the stats always look a bit fishy to me when i take a close look at them.

Diorex said:
That is almost exactly what I would expect from the big networks.

1/3 of your clicks will not be credited to you, despite the customer getting to the landing page.

This means that 1/3 of your sales will also likely not be credited to you.

I have supporting data from two different independent data points.

I ran a Fortune 500 companies internet marketing and the person who ran our affiliate program reported to me. Every month, we were undercharged by them by almost exactly 1/3 (6000 leads we know we got, but only 4000 billed). Having been an affiliate myself, I knew that if I paid people, they would just send me more traffic. I made every effort to make sure we
tried to pay them, but the major affiliate network we used basically acted like they were doing us a favor and basically said "dont worry about it". We even offerred to implement new tracking, they were totally unconcerned with the problem.

Second. It is not always possible to start with a white label site. Often we get stuck starting as a plain old affiliate and have to go through a network while we establish that we can drive volume. It is a major pain , but it has gotten us some lucrative deals. We fell lucky to break even in this stage. Without fail, once we can get to a white label our conversion rate will improve by 50% almost magically overnight. We will go from 8% conversion to 12%. It is regular like clockwork, happens every single time. We budget for it.

If you are relying on a network for accurate tracking and reporting, you are getting screwed. This is the number one reason you want to work directly with merchants.
Click to expand...
 
Your going to be chasing your tail for a long time if you are trying to account for every click. It's just not possible. Even if your tracking system and the affiliates were perfect (which they are not), clicks are lost based on the very nature of the internet and routing. Your click that you tracked on your site may have to go through 20 hops to get to the affiliate, which could fail at any one. It's not an error free system. If your affiliate network is tracking 90% of the clicks that you are, be happy and call it a day....
 
SonicReducer said:
Your going to be chasing your tail for a long time if you are trying to account for every click. It's just not possible. Even if your tracking system and the affiliates were perfect (which they are not), clicks are lost based on the very nature of the internet and routing. Your click that you tracked on your site may have to go through 20 hops to get to the affiliate, which could fail at any one. It's not an error free system. If your affiliate network is tracking 90% of the clicks that you are, be happy and call it a day....
Click to expand...

sorry, but are you implying, that like 10% of all internet connections suffer from connection losses. the real number though is more like 2%. 98% qos is pretty much standard today.

then again, in the examples above we are talking about 30% respectively 20% missed clicks.

so, i am by far not looking for a perfect solution, but for an acceptable ratio.

a risk premium of 20% - 30% on top of the current adwords costs renders quite some affiliate campaigns unprofitable at their current conversion rates.
 
cyberworkspace said:
sorry, but are you implying, that like 10% of all internet connections suffer from connection losses. the real number though is more like 2%. 98% qos is pretty much standard today.
Click to expand...

Not implying that at all, I was just throwing out 1 of probably 10 more factors where clicks could be lost that you weren't considering.
cyberworkspace said:
a risk premium of 20% - 30% on top of the current adwords costs renders quite some affiliate campaigns unprofitable at their current conversion rates.
Click to expand...

That's why search engine marketing is tough! We are all dealing with the same amount of loss. That why your conversion rates have to be high enough to allow for this factor. I have thousands of dolllars in unaccounted for clicks every month and it really bothered me at first. Now I just consider it a cost of doing business.
 
SonicReducer said:
That's why search engine marketing is tough! We are all dealing with the same amount of loss. That why your conversion rates have to be high enough to allow for this factor. I have thousands of dolllars in unaccounted for clicks every month and it really bothered me at first. Now I just consider it a cost of doing business.
Click to expand...

well, but you got to admit, that this is not really a topic that is been discussed pretty transparent ;)

i am ok now by knowing that as long as i am dependent from the man-in-the -middle i will have to take a possible skimming as well as a certain loss from lost clicks into account on top of the clicks i lose due to the technical problems

but most noobs like me do the more simple equotation by simply deducting their costs of advertising from their profits :)

i understand now, that this is way too simple and will adjust my calculations accordingly to allow for the required reserve to cover at least a risk-premium of 25%.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom