Voluum to Cake = Click loss / discrepancy :( (25)

Checked my lps for click jackers and there were none so I'm kind of at a loss as to why this might be happening. I can't find anything about dupe clicks in Voluum or how it shows them but even if we show them in Cake for the affiliate network, there's still a huge discrepancy where Voluum shows more clicks.

I also checked the server logs and it seems as if all visitors are arriving at the lp with the voluum data attached to the URL which means there should be no problem clicking through to the offer.

Any suggestions or ideas?

cake tracks unique clicks while Voluum is tracking raw clicks (duplicate clicks from the same ip)....could that be the reason?

What Nusolutionz said, Voluum tracks raw clicks.

In reporting, though, Cake has the option to track/show the duplicate clicks and there is still a discrepancy when we look at that.

Also, is there some sort of way to view clickids in Voluum? They get passed to the offer Cake but I'm not sure how to pull them up in Voluum.

Originally Posted by thelpguy

In reporting, though, Cake has the option to track/show the duplicate clicks and there is still a discrepancy when we look at that.

Also, is there some sort of way to view clickids in Voluum? They get passed to the offer Cake but I'm not sure how to pull them up in Voluum.

Running desktop..
$300 spend/910 clicks (870 unique)
Cake showed 40 clicks/offer = 4.6% CTR
My stats show 170 clicks/offer = 19% CTR

I use Voluum, and also use clicky.com, shows the traffic in real time, can watch their actions, click the links etc..Also shows IP address, ISP, geo location etc..
I went through each visitor (clicky stats), pulled the visitors IP that clicked through to offer, put their single IP into xcel (170 total), no duplicates, just a single IP who clicked through to the offer - then matched them with the 40 from cake. so 130 leftover, maybe were not unique?
Downloaded my YTD database from Cake, could not find any of the 130 in there.

Having LP's checked for click jackers or sneaky code, I test all my links and the 'test' shows up in Cake no problem... what can it be? How can I literally watch traffic click the links, spend 5-6mins looking around, click the other offer link...then it doesn't show in Cake?

What am I missing? Feels like it's something obvious...

Show us a schematic of your setup. E.g.

Banner on X source > Ad URL is Voluum campaign URL > Voluum redirects to lander > Lander contains Clicky javascript > Lander CTAs are all xxxxx.trackvoluum.com/click > Goes to affiliate URLs through Voluum campaign settings.

hey mate, yes that setup is correct

I'm still learning Voluum...but the example I gave above did not include Voluum at all...it was purely cake vs clicky...i can and will test it again with voluum set-up. I just had a feeling cake wasn't acknowledging many visitors i could clearly see clicking the CTA's to the offers. i checked with clicky support "We wouldn't report a click unless it actually happened"...especially when you can visually see it happen...I guess I should have included voluum to back up the clicky data, but I literally have all 900 visitors and their actions in a pdf, and did what I mentioned above...

suggestions, test again with voluum set up? change offer and test?

Oh right, so it's really Clicky vs Cake.

Firstly, what countries does the offer allow, and what countries do you have listed for your visitors in Clicky?

Geo-redirection of people outside of the allowed countries for an offer will lose you clicks on virtually every campaign you ever do.

Secondly, how are you tracking clicks with Clicky? Is it just the clicks they report? Or do you have javascript OnClick events attached to your CTA, or are you using their API?

I used to use them and I used their PHP API to fire clickthrough conversions as it was (is) by far the most accurate method.

It's US offer from a good traffic source. # of US visitors in clicky = # from traffic source. Pretty sure it was purely US traffic, you can drill down and see their ISP and town etc... I use clicky only as a back-up really, to see the traffic start flowing (ie. seeing intl clicks on a US campaign would tell me i've fucked up my settings haha) and make sure things are running smooth before increasing budget etc..

"Secondly, how are you tracking clicks with Clicky? Is it just the clicks they report? Or do you have javascript OnClick events attached to your CTA, or are you using their API?" - yea nothing fancy, just the clicks they report and the traffic source (running 1 placement so nothing too technical needed)

tracking is something i'm definitely working on, but in this case i was trying to find out why only some clicks to the offer were registering in cake, and wanted the IP's and screenshots etc for something I could present to my AM if needed...unless it's something I am doing/not doing...

I would check your page in every browser available and make sure there is no technical issue.

Does the link open in a new tab? New window? Self?

Are you using https anywhere?

You can ask your AM for a report on out-of-geo clicks.

This kind of click loss is not normal -- so I imagine there is some issue somewhere that you haven't yet spotted.

yea definitely not normal, 75% click loss...i obviously need to find what's going on as the campaign could be pretty good

links open in new tab (..... target="_blank") - keep or remove?

all links begin with http (not using https that i know of, were you talking about links?)

When I look through the pdf which shows all the actions visitors took, you can see the link is correct that they have clicked on, I've compared a click that registered to one that didn't and they are the same...i'm at a complete loss here as to what's going on

_blank should be fine since people are causing the pop to happen by clicking (so browser shouldn't block).

As a test, try connecting via something like Overplay and cycling through each available US server and refreshing your page > clicking link each time.

See if you actually make it through the click > affiliate link > offer flow each time.

I did this a few times with witopia, each time the link went through to the advertiser/offer no problem and could see my aff ID in the top of the advertisers page. None of these showed up in Cake though. Don't know if it's because of cookies etc...There must be a disconnect somewhere. Maybe the advertiser is getting my traffic but cake isn't...but the AM said this would be impossible. My Lp's are now checked and apparently clean....
any other ideas?

Do that test again but this time do it in Chrome Incognito in a new private window every time you change VPN servers -- you really should test that the clicks you send through to the offer are correctly reported in Cake. Change your s1 each time to be sure.

At least you're getting to the offer though!

so I did this test 4 times, as you said above, and all 4 showed up in cake..

so what does this mean, if anything?

If I was you, I would log clicks on a redirect to get a second opinion - to make sure that Clicky is not misreporting.

This is quite easy, just change your outgoing page link to e.g. go.php, which dumps info to a CSV file then redirects to your affiliate link.

For example, the following would GET s1, s2, s3 and dump them all into a CSV then redirect to an affiliate link:

<?php
   $s1 = $_GET['s1'];
   $s2 = $_GET['s2'];
   $s3 = $_GET['s3'];
   
//Log to CSV
$fp = fopen ( date("Y-m-d").'.csv', 'a' );
fputcsv ( $fp, array ( $s1, $s2, $s3 ), ",", '"' );
fclose ( $fp ); 
header("Location: http://affiliateurl.com?s1=".$s1."&s2=".$s2."&s3=".$s3);
exit;
}
?>

hey mate, yea i know what you mean here...good idea.
I set it up however got a syntax error on line 12, and also so this will create a CSV? or do I need to specify a CSV file in the code?

cheers

It will automatically make a CSV with the current date as the filename.

I probably left a bracket in there from editing a large file - remove the final } and it should be fine.

great, thanks a lot, so where should the CSV end up once it gets auto created?

do you think its possible that it's a server issue? i'm struggling to find what the cause might be, unless clicky is making up phantom traffic that likes clicking on offers etc

It could be a server issue... but server stuff is usually consistent - works or it doesn't, unless it's volume causing the issues (i.e. server getting swamped).

The file will save in the same dir as the PHP file creating it.

Hm, this is a weird one. I'd usually expect a tracking solution like Clicky to underreport, not overreport.

Let us know what the CSV shows!

i had a bit of an issue with the csv, for some reason it didn't show up in the folder. also, changing the links to eg. 'offer.php' it doesn't show up as an 'action' in clicky when someone clicks, ie. so when watching in real time you can't see the user click through to the offer...so I would get a 'click' in cake without seeing it happen in clicky which is the reverse of what was happening when i could see the user click the link in clicky but it wouldn't show up in cake...

not sure what to do so i tried other offers (same set-up without Voluum and without csv)...one in same vertical & one different, same traffic source, ...and both seemed to track fine. saw the user click through -> showed up in cake.

so could it be something with the original offer?

Whether or not it reports a click in Clicky should have nothing to do with what the href destination is of the CTA o.O

You could check your PHP error logs to see if the CSV dump isn't working properly.

I don't think the destination offer will have any effect on Clicky, but I do think you are better off not using Clicky if it is causing such confusion.

I'm not quite sure why you would use it unless you want supplementary tracking for organic traffic.

For paid traffic, Voluum is a far superior fit.

yea i just use it as more of a visual tool and its handy in some circumstances as i mentioned before...

cheers for the help