Thread: Day 14: Understanding Tracking

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EXPLANATION

Up until now, we've been setting up all the tracking links together, step-by-step. You didn't need to understand how tracking worked exactly.

However, I can't hold your hand forever. In order to grow you'll need to run offers with more affiliate networks and traffic networks than what I'm covering in this beginner's tutorial.

So sooner or later, you'll need to figure out how to set up tracking links on your own.

Tracking is one of the most confusing topics for beginner affiliates. I remember when I first got started, it took me half a year of trial-and-error before I TRULY understood how tracking worked.

I promise you that it won't take you nearly as long. You should have a pretty good grasp of the topic after reading this post.

Don't worry if you don't understand everything 100% for now. When you expand to other affiliate and traffic networks and need to figure out how to set up tracking links, this post will be here to help.

Without further ado, below is the best darn explanation of tracking I've ever given or seen given anywhere.



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First Thing: What's a Tracking Token?

Let's look at a sample tracking link:

https://traffic.haka.mobi/click?hash=8877&pid=1111&aid={trafficsource}&keyword={clickid}

The tracking TOKENS in this link are {trafficsource} and {clickid}.

The bits on the other side of the equation signs - i.e. "aid" and "keyword" - are called PARAMETERS.

I'll be referring to PARAMETERS and TOKENS a lot in the rest of this post.

-> Each affiliate network, traffic network, and tracker has its own set of parameters and tokens. <-


Second Thing: Types of Tracking Links

We've been dealing with 4 types of tracking links thus far:

1)The campaign link created by your tracker.

2)The offer link you insert into the tracker.

3)The tracker postback link, which you need to insert into the affiliate network.

4)The traffic source postback link, which you need to insert into the tracker.

We only need to figure out how to construct the last three links ourselves - but I'm including the first link (which the tracker generates for us) for illustration purposes.

(Note: There's also the landing page link you need to add to the tracker, and a tracking snippet you need to add to the landing page. But to keep this lesson as simple as I can, let's defer that explanation to the lessons on landing pages.)


Third Thing: Relationship Between Caller/Generator and Tokens/Parameters

For each of the tracking links listed above, we need to ask these questions:

a)Who is CALLING the link? (i.e. the tracker? The affiliate network? The traffic network?)

b)Who GENERATED the link? (i.e. the tracker / affiliate network / traffic network?)

-> This is how every tracking link is constructed: <-

-The PARAMETERS are from the party that GENERATED the link.

-The TOKENS need to come from the party that is CALLING the link.

(Again, every tracker, every affiliate network, every traffic network has their own set of PARAMETERS and TOKENS.)


Fourth Thing: What Happens When a Tracking Link is Called

This is what happens when a link is called / triggered / visited (different ways of saying the same):

1)The party that is CALLING the link, will replace the TOKENS with actual VALUES! This is why the TOKENS need to come from the party CALLING the link - otherwise how could it replace something it doesn't recognize?

2)Then, the party that GENERATED the link will store those VALUES in their database, under the corresponding PARAMETERS. This is why the PARAMETERS are from the party the GENERATED the link - otherwise how would they know which parameters to store the values under?

Think of PARAMETERS as column headers or titles in a database (e.g. an excel spreadsheet). Each row of the spreadsheet corresponds with a single visit sent by the traffic source or tracker. The traffic source has a database, the tracker has a database, and the affiliate network has a database. And they each store VALUES under different PARAMETERS.


Most Important Thing: How Do We Construct a Tracking Link?

As was mentioned above, there are 3 types of tracking links we need to figure out how to create:

-Offer link (which we put into tracker as new offer)
-Tracker postback
-Traffic source postback

The general methodology on how to construct these links is as follows:

Step 1 - Take the original link (aff link from network / postback from tracker / postback from traffic source)
Step 2 - Decide what data we want to pass with the tracking link
Step 3 - Figure out who will be CALLING the link, and replace the TOKENS in the link with that party's TOKENS.


We'll apply this methodology on each type of tracking link below, to learn how to construct all tracking links (except the tracker campaign link - because that one we don't need to modify manually).



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(Note: Below I'll be using Binom tracking links as examples, but tracking principles are the same no matter which tracker you use. Only the tokens will look different from tracker to tracker.)


1)The Tracker Campaign Link

You don't need to meddle with the tracking tokens in this link directly - if you've set up everything else on your tracker correctly (the offer link and traffic source tokens) then the tracker would just spit out this link when you create the campaign.

But analyzing how this link works will help you to understand tracking better.

Let's use this campaign link as an example - offers are from Haka and the traffic source is PropellerAds:

https://trackerdomain.com/click.php?key=alphanumericstring&visitor_id=${SUBI D}&cost={cost}&zoneid={zoneid}&campaignid={campaig nid}&device={device}&browser={browser}&os={os}&osv ersion={osversion}&country={country}&language={lan guage}&isp={isp}&carrier={carrier}

Who is CALLING the link? PropellerAds - each time it sends a visitor.

Who GENERATED the link? The tracker.

Therefore: The PARAMETERS are from the tracker, and the TOKENS need to come from PropellerAds.

So when you look at any "PARAMETER=TOKEN" pair in the link, for example visitor_id=${SUBID}, the PARAMETER is assigned/defined within the tracker (in the PropellerAds traffic source settings in the tracker, under the "Parameter" column):



Whereas the TOKEN comes from PropellerAds: https://propellerads.com/blog/conver...ick-campaigns/



And these PropellerAds TOKENS were programmed into the template settings for PropellerAds (under the "Placeholder" column):



Here's what happens when this campaign link is called/triggered/visited:

-When we run traffic from PropellerAds, PropellerAds will be the party CALLING the link, and in doing so it will replace all the TOKENS with actual VALUES. For example taking the same link above:

https://trackerdomain.com/click.php?...r=SAFARISOM-KE

-The GENERATOR of the link, which is the tracker, will then store all of these VALUES in their database. e.g. store "123456789101112" as "visitor_id", "123456" as "zoneid", etc.

-Then, the tracker will direct the visitor according to the campaign flow you specified when you were setting up the campaign in the tracker - in this case to a Haka offer - which is what we'll be covering next.


2)The Offer Link

This is the offer link you paste into the tracker, when setting up the new offer in the tracker.

To construct this link, we follow our 3-step methodology below.

Step 1 - Take the original link

Here's an example of a Haka affiliate link:

https://haka-mobi.com/click?hash=9105&pid=1111&aid={your_source_id}&keyw ord={your_click_id}&keyword2={app_name/site_name}&keyword3={your_session_id}

So we need to modify this link and put it in the tracker as a new offer.

Step 2 - Decide what data we want to pass with the tracking link

The bare minimum we need to include is the clickid or hitid token (depending on which tracker you use) as this is the token that tracks each visit and all the data that is associated with that visit (geo, device etc. etc. etc.) All other tokens are optional, but I would recommend to also include the traffic source ID token - passing this information to the affiliate network can be beneficial.

(We haven't talked about lead quality yet, but simply put, some traffic sources has lower quality traffic than others, which can result in lower-quality conversions. Sometimes the affiliate network will tell us that our conversions are too low-quality. If we pass the traffic source to the affiliate network, they may be able to tell us which traffic source we need to stop buying traffic from, instead of having to ask us to stop running that offer altogether.)

So we know we want to include the clickid (or hitid if using funnelflux) and the traffic source id.

Step 3 - Figure out who will be CALLING the link, and replace the TOKENS in the link with that party's TOKENS.

Remember we covered above how the campaign url is called by PropellerAds? After that point, the tracker takes over by directing the visitor to the lander/offer you've specified in the tracker's campaign settings. In this case we're direct-linking to Haka offers, so the tracker will CALL the offer link.

Therefore: The TOKENS need to come from the tracker. This means we need to take the affiliate link above and replace the TOKENS with the tracker's TOKENS!

Where do we find the tracker's tokens? You can find them in the offer's settings in the tracker (when you create a new offer or edit the settings of an existing offer):



We know from step 2 that we want to include the clickid and the traffic source id, but which parameters do we want to use to pass these tokens?

Some affiliate networks will make "suggestions" of which parameters they want you to use to pass which tokens. Haka does this for example. Look at this part of their affiliate link: aid={your_source_id}&keyword={your_click_id}. They obviously want us to pass the traffic source using the "aid" parameter and the clickid using the "keyword" parameter. So we modify the affiliate link accordingly into this offer link to put into the tracker:

https://traffic.haka.mobi/click?hash=9105&pid=1111&aid={trafficsource}&keywo rd={clickid}

Note that we excluded the keyword2 and keyword3 parameters. We don't have to use ALL the parameters unless we want to.

Some affiliate networks won't give you suggestions as to which parameters they want you to use for which tokens - for example they would just give you s1 s2 s3 s4 s5 or sub1 sub2 sub3 sub4 sub5 and you can set them to whichever tokens you want to pass to the affiliate network. For example this is how ClickDealer does it:



So they have the parameters s1 s2 s3 s4 s5 available, and when we put tokens in certain fields, those are the parameter=token pairs that will appear in the final affiliate link at the bottom.

Worth mentioning here is that on some affiliate networks, the first parameter - often called s1 or sub1 or subid1 - is intended for non-unique values, whereas the clickid/hitid is a unique or dynamic value. There's no need to understand what this means, but to be safe, avoid assigning the clickid/hitid token to the first parameter of the affiliate network UNLESS they explicitly suggest that you do.

Finally - so what happens when this offer link is called/triggered/visited?

-> Backtracking a step - remember we covered above how the campaign url is called by PropellerAds? After that point, the tracker takes over by directing the visitor to the offer link, thereby CALLING the offer link. In so doing, the tracker will replace all the TOKENS with actual VALUES. For example:

https://traffic.haka.mobi/click?hash...yword=51324682

-> The GENERATOR of the link, which is Haka in this case, will then store these VALUES in their database, i.e. store "12345" as "aid", "51324682" as "keyword".

At this point you may be asking: Why is the clickid or hitid so important? I'm getting around to that next.


3)The Tracker Postback

This would be the tracker postback link, which you need to insert into the affiliate network, so that the affiliate network can post conversion data to the tracker.

Again we follow our 3-step methodology to modify the link.

Step 1 - Take the original link

Let's take this example of a Binom tracker postback url:

https://trackerdomain.com/click.php?cnv_id={network_token}&payout={payout}

We need to modify it and paste it into Haka.

Step 2 - Decide what data we want to pass with the tracking link

Every tracker conversion postback link needs to include two TOKENS: The one representing the clickid, and the payout of the offer.

Step 3 - Figure out who will be CALLING the link, and replace the TOKENS in the link with that party's TOKENS.

Who is CALLING the link? Haka.

So we'll need to replace the link's TOKENS with Haka TOKENS!

And where do you find Haka's postback TOKENS? In Haka click on "Postback" in the left menu and you'll find them:



Remember we decided we wanted to include 2 pieces of data: clickid/hitid and the payout. From the screenshot of Haka postback tokens above, we can see that the payout token is {payout}. But which one of those represents the clickid??

One second - remember when we were setting up the offer link, we included "keyword={clickid}"? So all the clickid VALUES are stored in Haka's database under "keyword"!

So, now that we want Haka to retrieve these clickid VALUES and pass them back to the tracker along with the payout values!

Therefore, we modify the postback like this and save it at Haka:

https://trackerdomain.com/click.php?cnv_id={keyword}&payout={payout}

Mission accomplished!


4)The Traffic Source Postback

The traffic source postback link, which you need to insert into the tracker.

This would be the traffic source postback link, which you need to insert into the tracker, so that the tracker can post conversion data to the traffic source.

Step 1 - Take the original link

Let's take this example of a PropellerAds postback url:

http://ad.propellerads.com/conversion.php?aid=12345&pid=&tid=67890&visitor_id =${SUBID}&payout=${PAYOUT}

We need to modify it and paste it into the tracker.

Step 2 - Decide what data we want to pass with the tracking link

Every traffic source conversion postback link needs to include two TOKENS: The one representing the external id (it's like the "clickid" but not from the tracker - from the traffic source), and the payout of the offer.

Step 3 - Figure out who will be CALLING the link, and replace the TOKENS in the link with that party's TOKENS.

Who is CALLING the link? The tracker.

So we'll need to replace the link's TOKENS with the tracker's TOKENS!

And where do you find the tracker's postback TOKENS? No matter which of the three recommended trackers you're using, you'd find the postback tokens if you go into the tracker's traffic source settings - so in this case the tracker settings for PropellerAds:



For binom you need to click on the two token buttons to see what the TOKENS actually are. In Funnelflux and Voluum they'll be shown without the need to click on anything.

So for binom, the TOKENS are {externalid} and {payout}. Therefore we replace them in the link:

http://ad.propellerads.com/conversion.php?aid=12345&pid=&tid=67890&visitor_id ={externalid}&payout={payout}

And don't forget to paste this postback in the tracker, under the traffic source's settings, and save it:

https://trackerdomain.com/click.php?cnv_id={keyword}&payout={payout}



Mission accomplished!



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That was the absolute best I could do in terms of simplifying the whole topic of tracking. If you're still confused please do ask questions - it's not a simple area to master.





Amy