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Losing 50% of my clicks on the way to the offer? (8)

07-30-2014 11:47 PM #1 the_writer (Member)
Losing 50% of my clicks on the way to the offer?

Hey guys,

Got an odd situation.

Tested a new PPV campaign today, split testing an offer between two networks. Same offer.

I'm paying 1.5 cents per view, and I ran $20 through it. CPVLabs reported that I got around 1300 visitors, 650 to each offer, which is about right.

But both networks are reporting only around 330 clicks to the offer. About half, basically.

And here's the kicker - it's direct linked on both counts.

WTF?

I feel like I'm missing something really obvious but I have no clue what.

At this point I've set up 40 or 50 campaigns in CPVLabs, and I'm far from infallible, but there's nothing I can see that's set up wrong. The exact number of visitors each URL target has sent to the offer looks correct to me - and I don't necessarily think I'd be able to see such precise detail if my tracking were somehow wrong.

Anybody have a clue what could be happening here?

The reason I've got my knickers in so much of a twist is that I'm only -27% ROI. If I'm only sending half the traffic, for whatever reason, I could be instantly profitable if I can figure out the issue.

Oh and FYI, I have offers running on other networks through the same CPVLabs install and the tracking is close to perfect as far as # of clicks showing at my end vs being shown at the CPA network.

So yes, confused.

Thank you in advance for your time.

07-31-2014 10:08 AM #2 caurmen (Administrator)

Have you asked the network about out-of-geo clicks on that offer?

My immediate thought on hearing this is "oh dear, for some reason the network's detecting half of those clicks as being from a different country".

07-31-2014 03:52 PM #3 the_writer (Member)

No sir, but will do so ASAP. Thank you.

07-31-2014 03:53 PM #4 the_writer (Member)

I was fairly certain somebody here would say "yes you've got THIS setup wrong and it's sending your clicks elsewhere or something" and I wanted to make sure it wasn't an obvious goof on my part.

08-01-2014 12:38 PM #5 zeno (Administrator)

What country?

My intuition says:
a) Network is defining a lot of clicks as out-of-geo whereas your tracking system and/or traffic source does not - networks always seem to give you the shorter end of the stick here, funnily enough...
b) Affiliate network link is loading very slowly > large click loss.

08-01-2014 06:29 PM #6 the_writer (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by zeno View Post
What country?

My intuition says:
a) Network is defining a lot of clicks as out-of-geo whereas your tracking system and/or traffic source does not - networks always seem to give you the shorter end of the stick here, funnily enough...
b) Affiliate network link is loading very slowly > large click loss.
Thank you for the reply, Mr Dave.

Country is US traffic going to a US offer.

I checked with both the traffic network and the affiliate network, and they both
said there are zero out-of-geo clicks being sent/received - so it shouldn't be that.

I grilled my AM about it at length this morning, and he said what's probably happening
is that even though Lead Impact are delivering the pops, unless the user CLICKs on
that pop, it doesn't count as a click at the affiliate network end - even though it's
direct linked. He said they usually see a lot of them being blocked by popup blockers
or just being closed by the users, and that drastically reduces the number of clicks the
affiliate network actually registered.

I can see the logic in this, but I have always operated under the assumption that
the pop up "popping" counted as a click when direct linking. We live and learn, I
guess.

I just went back and compared this with a different direct linked offer from last week,
at a different network, and they showed 585 clicks out of 699 visitors, which is much
better than just 50%.

I'm guessing that what you mentioned plays a part - different loading times of offers
will have a huge impact on what percentage of your clicks actually get in front of
some eyeballs.

Very interesting, a new wrinkle to consider when planning things out.

Thank you sir. Unless I get a "Eureka!" moment I'm going to consider this solved
and stop wasting time puzzling over it. If there were a way to speed up the offer
loading time I could maybe test that, but I have no idea.

Thanks!

08-02-2014 05:47 PM #7 zeno (Administrator)

AdBlock and NoScript could potentially block the affiliate network URL but I doubt it would lead to that kind of click loss.

Since CPV Lab records the clicks fine it's not an issue of the pops being blocked, and affiliate networks will register clicks based on the link being loaded... Requiring someone to click inside the window is nonsense, I have never heard that before and it would be a retarded requirement for a click tracking system.

Everything points to the affiliate link not loading properly, or loading too slowly/timing out, or getting blocked.

You could be sneaky and try to CNAME one of your domains over the affiliate network domain, or just test the offer on a different network.

08-02-2014 06:57 PM #8 the_writer (Member)

Thanks man. I actually just got approved by TrafficVance (after about 700 thousand people told me Lead Impact is lower quality traffic and that they have questionable biz practices) so I'm moving the whole campaign over there to see what happens.

Will post back here and let you know the results. Will also be testing the offer in several different places.

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