pixels? for tracking keywords

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ubaidabcd

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I'm trying to find out which keywords are converting, and I'm on a network, don't have my own site, sending traffic directly to the merchant. Currently, I'm using sub-id's, but with thousands of keywords, it's taking up too much time to create sub-id's for all of them. I e-mailed my AM and he suggested to use pixels, I asked what that was and this is what he said:

"A pixel is placed on an offer, everytime the offer is fired, the pixel will fire. The pixel will contain a php script that will track such variables as sub id's.
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So you are able to track your subids externally besides on our network."

Can anybody explain this further? I'm not familiar with php. I would reply again to my AM for further details, but I don't want to bother them with simple questions unless I have to. Do I not need sub-id's anymore? and he said I can track externally does that mean I don't need to login to my account to get this information?


Thanks

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Shit, you think now that they know that 89483 converted, they'll fuck me over? ;(

You probably meant don't use keyword as the sub id, which you shouldn't.
 
yep thanks for the clarification gopherr - since he's doing them by hand and doesn't know what a pixel is, i thought i'd point it out. obv i typed faster than i thought
 
I agree, unless you really trust your network, dont use your keyword as your subid, instead, setup a database then have keywords inserted into the database and have the subid be a unique number that correlates to that keyword in the database...
 
LazyD said:
I agree, unless you really trust your network, dont use your keyword as your subid, instead, setup a database then have keywords inserted into the database and have the subid be a unique number that correlates to that keyword in the database...
Click to expand...
Or take it one step further, and create a unique id for each visit, that way you can track everything; time, ip, geo location, keyword, search engine or referring site, browser etc.
 
I'm not using my keywords as sub-id's, I'm using codes.

I have a list of keywords to which I have assigned codes, so I know which keywords are getting conversions and the network doesn't know the keyword.
 
So, what's the difference between a pixel and a sub-id? are they the same thing different terminology?
 
What you want to do is go start using google adword's / analytics conversion tracking. You can setup tracking easily for adwords as well as setup cross-channel for other sources like abc, ask, yahoo, etc.

Google will spit out some tracking codes, you email that to your AM and tell him/her which offers to put it on. If you get a conversion it will show up in adwords under the appropriate keyword. This makes it super easy to track your shit and kill the non-performing keywords.

Tob
 
tob said:
What you want to do is go start using google adword's / analytics conversion tracking. You can setup tracking easily for adwords as well as setup cross-channel for other sources like abc, ask, yahoo, etc.

Google will spit out some tracking codes, you email that to your AM and tell him/her which offers to put it on. If you get a conversion it will show up in adwords under the appropriate keyword. This makes it super easy to track your shit and kill the non-performing keywords.

Tob
Click to expand...

Where is my AM going to put that code? The code has to go on the merchants "thank you page" (this is a sales program I'm promoting). My AM doesn't own the website, so how can they put that code on that website? Also, I'm not the only affiliate, so won't that effect the results, getting traffic from different affiliates, keywords, etc..?
 
They control some real estate of that page, where they can toss in an affiliate's tracking code dynamically. The networks can inject code into there on the fly, trust me.. I have my own home made tracking code on all of my advertiser's pages (azoogle, neverblue, primaryads, copeac).
 
Can this also be done with Yahoo/MSN?

Yahoo/MSN also have ability to produce JavaScript for conversion tracking.
Can this be used ? Can this be injected into the "Thank You" pages on Azoogle /Hydra?

Thanks
 
tob said:
They control some real estate of that page, where they can toss in an affiliate's tracking code dynamically. The networks can inject code into there on the fly, trust me.. I have my own home made tracking code on all of my advertiser's pages (azoogle, neverblue, primaryads, copeac).
Click to expand...

Alright then, I'll e-mail my AM and see what they say.
 
A pixel is a tracking image used to dynamically track visits to a given page. When used in this context, it is used on the merchant's "Thank You" page after a transaction has been completed. This is part of DirectTrack's technologies and how most affiliate networks log your conversions,

The premise is this: the code <img src="http://domain/tracker.php?id=SUBID" width="1" height="1" /> or something similar is added to your page. tracker.php takes the information and processes it into a database so you can view it later.

As you can see, sub-id and pixel tracking systems are best when used in tandem.

Jason
 
I use subids. The key is to automatically generate them and match them to your keywords.

I generate a unique subid per outbound click on my site - its actually the database click table id field.

Then when I get a CSV transaction report from the affiliate network I can match the sales to the database table and hence to the keyword, matchtype, ppc engine, refering site, browser, time of day, etc etc.

Crispin
 
How do you automate them with your PPC campaign? since each keyword has it's own unique sub-id, I have to edit each keyword to change the url accordingly. With thousands of keywords it's going to take forever. Can anybody help me automate this? I think using the google analytics code would be much easier, but I won't know if this is something that they can do until Monday.

Thanks
 
ubaidabcd,

well, I have each affiilate network link as a generic template and I populate it on the fly using php.

So I write the click into the mysql database, grab the id
from mysql then grab the URL template.

and str_replace() in the id into the template to add the subid. (I also replace in the product/offer id, etc as needed).

The ppc network can be set up to append the keyword or you can use the "raw" search term from the referer (or both). You store those in the db as well.

Then you can match the subid to the keyword.

It's not that tricky for a decent programmer. (took me ages!).

If you wanted to stick with one id per keyword you could (although you lose information).

1) get access from ppc engine - URL is something like yoursite.com/landingpage?kwd=keyword

2) look up in your database table of keyword. (if it's not there add it). Grab the id that corresponds to your keyword.

3) populate the links with the id as subid dynamically.
(I'm adding a level of cloaking here so my links look like they are to my site until you click them)

4) once they click and buy you have the id for the keyword and can match it to your db table.

Crispin
 
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