Home > Questions and Answers > Tracking Questions

---

Can't get my head around this... (27)

---

Hi everybody.. I was hoping someone can help out a bit with tracking and stuff. I spent the last half a day reading the same tutorial over and over again and I just can't connect the dots.

I am currently here: http://stmforum.com/forum/showthread...-The-Appetiser

Go to the "Start the cook" section and I am stuck at the two section 3's (It's probably a mistake but there's two section 3's)

I am using AdWork Media Publisher and Decisive and from according to what affpaying.com says, AdWork Media uses their own tracking platform and not CAKE. I got approved as a newbie to 2 other networks as well (Matomy and CPAWAY) but they also use their own tracking platform. I am mentioning this because the tutorials on STM talk about CAKE.

I come from a solo ad business background and we use trackers extensively but that's all just copy/paste work and nothing more. With that said, I thought it would help if I knew what a tracker is how it works in the solo ad sector... but apparently it doesn't work that way

On another note and a very newbie question...
If an offer requests for traffic only from China for example, It would be wise to translate the banner text to their respective language right ? And not create banners in english.

Thanks in advance,
Aris

---

Hi Aris,

Can you be a little bit more specific about whats not clear to you regarding the tracking?

Regarding your second question - yes. Its better to translate your creatives to the language of the designated geo. If you dont speak the language, there are those who provide you with a service of translation (if you dont want to do that via google translate...). Feel free to ask for recommendations if you need any.

---

Hi Affiliaxeoran and my apologies for not being clear.

I guess there's not an easy way to explain what the issue is here right now because I'm not even sure whats going on. Tracking from my experience is basically a report were you can see statistics for a certain campaign. You can see conversions, epc, geo location of clicks etc etc. In solo ads, clients would provide their tracking link to me and I would add it to my tracker ... that's it. In the tutorials here though, it talks about changing URL's and setting up tracking with the affiliate network and postback URLS and each tracking software from each company works differently etc etc ... How can tracking be so complicated? Unless there's an easy way of tracking campaigns and I haven't found out about it yet in my 24 hour experience in AM

Edit: I think I misunderstood something in the tutorial. Should I be using a tracking platform like Voluum or something ? I thought tracking software wasn't needed if you didn't have your own server or I may have misunderstood that in the tutorial.

---

Dont feel bad about it, tracking can be complicated, especially at first.

Yes, you will need to change URLs (a bit) and set postback URLs but your AMs can help you with that (each and his own tracking system). You can also search this forum (or the web) for examples of how these networks tracking systems work.

You can also write here the tracking systems these networks use and maybe there are affiliates here who have experience with them (Im sure there are).

So try searching this forum for some answers or just to get an idea on how to elaborate a little so that people here could help.

But first of all, contact your AM`s in these networks and ask for their help.

---

Thanks a lot for your reply.

You probably didn't see my edit above. Do I need another tracker for myself except the ones used in decisive and in the affiliate network?

---

Hi Aris! Welcome to STM!

I've moved your thread to the "Tracking Questions" subsection to keep things organized.

The answer here is YES! You can reference the languages spoken in each geo in this chart here. In cases where the country speaks several languages, I would test the major ones to see which one converts better.

As for tracking - yes it would be best to use a tracker. I suppose you could just use the traffic source and affiliate network to keep track of SOME of the stats, and get the affiliate network to post conversions back to the traffic source, but this is often not the best way to do things because most aff/traffic networks don't provide very detailed stats. Sooner or later you'll most probably need to get a tracker setup, and Voluum is like the industry standard (although I've heard good things about some of the new trackers that have recently come out).

Of the 3 networks you mentioned, I've only used Matomy, so I'll show you how to set up tracking for that network and you can try to do something similiar with the other 2. Do this exercise once and you'll understand the tracking process much better.

1)Log into Voluum, click on the little gear icon on the upper-right, then click the "Setup" tab, then copy the "Postback URL".


2)Log into your Matomy account. In the left side menu click on Toolbox > My Global Pixel, paste your voluum postback url into the "Postback" field.


3)Now we'll need to replace some of the variables in that postback url with Matomy's tokens - which are shown on the left. Replace "cid=REPLACE" with "cid=[DP2]". Replace "payout=OPTIONAL" with "payout=[CMN_AMOUNT]" or "payout=[[CURRENCY]" or "payout=[S_AMOUNT]" (depending on which currency you want your commissions to show up in voluum in - read the token descriptions and decide which one you want).

I don't know what the "&txid=OPTIONAL" variable is for and have gotten by just fine without using it - so just delete it for now.

Don't forget to click "SAVE" to save that postback link!

4)Still in Matomy - click on "Campaigns" in the left menu, search for and fine the campaign you want to promote, then click on that campaign in the "Campaign" column. You'll get a popup that shows all the details of that campaign. Click on the "Links" tab. Paste "{clickid}" into the "DP2" field, then click "Add". Copy the resulting link.





5)Back in Voluum, click on "Affiliate Networks" in the top menu, then click the "+New affiliate network" button. Type "Matomy" into the "Name" field and click "Save".

6)Still in Voluum - click "Flows > Offers" in the top menu. Click the "+New Offer" button. Give the offer a name (I like to just copy the campaign name from Matomy), specify the country and affiliate network (i.e. Matomy). Set "Payout" to "Auto". Paste the tracking url we copied from Matomy into the "URL" field. Click "Save".





Next steps:

After that, you'll need to add your traffic source to Voluum, and then add a new campaign in voluum to generate a tracking link you can paste into your traffic source. If you can't figure out how to do that then come back to ask questions.



Notes:

-The ClickID is used so that voluum will generate a random ID for every click from every visitor. Every time Voluum sends a visitor to Matomy it will "tell" Matomy what this random ID is (e.g. "Hey Matomy this visitor is 12345"), and when a visitor converts, Matomy will look up that random ID and "post back" or "tell" Voluum that the visitor has converted (e.g. "Hey Voluum - visitor 12345 has signed up!") so the conversion will show in voluum stats.

-The "payout" parameter in the postback url enables Matomy to also "tell" voluum what the payout amount is when it's posting back. Because we're using this parameter, we were able to set "Payout" to "Auto" when setting up the new offer in voluum.

-Instead of using "DP2" to track the ClickID, you could have used any other variable (DP1/DP3/DP4) - just make sure that you're using the SAME VARIABLE in BOTH the voluum postback (pasted into Matomy) and the offer url (saved in Voluum).

-As you may have noticed, voluum has its own tokens (see the "Available URL tokens" in the last screenshot above), and so does Matomy (see the second screenshot). When setting up an offer in voluum, the variables need to be Matomy tokens. When pasting a voluum postback into Matomy, the variables need to be Voluum tokens. It's much like when you're speaking with a foreigner you need to use a language they'll understand. Tokens are like languages - they differ across networks and platforms.



Hope that has cleared some things up for you! If you have further questions please update this thread with them and I'll do my best to help you out. (Although - clicking on the "Support" button in the upper right corner in voluum and sending a quick message to voluum support will get you a faster response.)



Amy

---

Hey dude,

I just spent the last few minutes trying to explain, but I couldn't find a question in here and to explain tracking as it is is a course in itself. However, let me try.. I sense that you are basically confused about how to setup tracking.

That's exactly what it does. All you need to do is set it up right. Now most people use a tracking software for this, like Voluum or Prosper (you can find them here).

Let me first explain it without the tracker. So now you have two ends. One is the Affiliate Network (Matomy etc) and the Traffic Source (Decisive). Here is the flow assuming we are direct linking to the offer url:

Banner displayed to user (Decisive records the impression) ->
User clicks the banner (Decisive records the click) ->
The url you provided loads on the user's browser. This is the url of your network, lets say Matomy (Matomy records the click) ->
User makes a purchase / submits email / do whatever needs to be done to record a lead (Matomy records the lead. Also sends back postback to the traffic source. Not all traffic sources can receive the postback, but Decisive can) ->
Decisive receives the postback and records the lead too.

Now Decisive nor Matomy is an analytical software. They both provide some basic analytics, but for the whole picture you need a tracking software. I use Voluum and its the easiest and arguably the best option you have right now to get started for free.

Lets take a look at it with Voluum added to the chain. Now you have three elements. Affiliate Network (Matomy) - Tracker (Voluum) - Traffic Source (Decisive). Again, we are direct linking to the offer url for simplicity.

Banner displayed to user (Decisive records the impression) ->
User clicks the banner (Decisive records the click) ->
The url you provided loads on the user's browser. Now this is the url of your tracker, Voluum (Voluum records the click and records all the data it can like the device model, the refferer, the ip, the geo, the what not) ->
Voluum redirects the user to Matomy (Matomy records the click) ->
User converts and lead is generates (Matomy records the lead and sends back the postback to Voluum) ->
Voluum records the lead and sends back a postback to the traffic source if the source can receive postbacks. ->
Decisive receives the postback and records a lead.

Now each traffic source has its own set of parameters that you can optimize and work on. Like some traffic sources let you target by gender, some can target by carrier. This information is sent to the tracking software by means of dynamic parameters that you add to the url and is called tokens or macros.

Not all traffic sources sends back all the information to the traffic source. In fact most trackers can track a hell lot of information on itself, like the location and the carrier can be deduced from the user's IP.

Decisive has macros that look like {{{carrier}}}

So if you submit a url on decisive that looks like yourdomain.com/awesomelandingpage?xyz={{{carrier}}} , when the ad is displayed to a user on Verizon, the url will look like: yourdomain.com/awesomelandingpage?xyz=verizon and on AT and T, it will be like: yourdomain.com/awesomelandingpage?xyz=atnt . Hope you get the idea.

Now if two users are on verizon, they both will have the same url right? Thats where the unique impression ID comes handy. For Decsivie, its {{{bidhash}}} and this will be unique for each impression and will be a combination of letters and numbers (like adfslkjd24dskjs)

(with me so far? If not start over. If yes, read on)

Now lets see how it would work with the unique impression ID. Your url looks like yourdomain.com/awesomelandingpage?xyz={{{bidhash}}}

Banner displayed to user (Decisive replaces {{{bidhash}}} with the unique ID in the url and records the impression. Every reference of {{{bidhash}}} in the following steps would be the actual value.) ->
User clicks the banner (Decisive records the click) ->
The url you provided (with {{{bidhash}}} replaced with the actual unique ID) loads on the user's browser. Now this is the url of your tracker, Voluum (Voluum records the click and records all the data it can like the device model, the refferer, the ip, the geo and the actual {{{bidhash}}} value.) ->
Voluum redirects the user to Matomy. Voluum also sends the {{{bidhash}}} value passed to Matomy (Matomy records the click) ->
User converts and lead is generates (Matomy records the lead and sends back the postback to Voluum along with the {{{bidhash}}} associated with the click that converted) ->
Voluum matches up the received {{{bidhash}}} with the ones that are recorded in Voluum and records the lead corresponding to it. Then sends back a postback to the traffic source if the source can receive postbacks along with the {{{bidhash}}} ->
Decisive receives the postback and records a lead again matching up the {{{bidhash}}} with the ones it have in its record.

This is how we know which exact impression converted.

Let me give you a real example.

I haven't used Matomy in a while, but this should be the same still. Say, this is the url you got from Matomy: http://network.adsmarket.com/click/xxxxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxxx . Now afaik, matomy uses dp, dp2, dp3 etc for its subid's (The custom parameters are called sub-id's. Remember this url yourdomain.com/awesomelandingpage?xyz={{{bidhash}}}? xyz is the parameter and {{{bidhash}}} is the subid)

So the url you enter in Voluum would look like: http://network.adsmarket.com/click/xxxxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxxx?dp={campaign.id}&dp2={clickid}&dp3={ country}&dp4={countryname}

Note that {campaign.id} and {clickid} etc are dynamic tags of Voluum. So regardless of the traffic source, it will always be the same for Matomy.

So now you have your offer in Voluum. Now you need to add Decisive in Voluum. This is what it looks like: http://prntscr.com/7gwe9y

Notice how {{{bidhash}}} is placed in the external Id box and how {externalid} is used in the postback url as: http://win.crwd.io/convert/{externalid}

Now that you have your offer and traffic source added in Voluum, next step is to create the campaign. Here is how the campaign url will look like:
http://xxxxxx.trackvoluum.com/xxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx?media={{{media}}}&app={{{app}}}&site={{{site }}}&placement={{{placement}}}&cat={{{category}}}&d evice={{{device}}}&isp={{{carrier}}}&os={{{os_vers ion}}}&cid={{{creative_id}}}&adid={{{ad_id}}}&bidh ash={{{bidhash}}}

This is the url that we give in Decisive. All the dynamic parameters will be replaced and the data will be sent to Voluum. Its now time to run the campaign and wait for your data to come in. Master the data, and money will rain in.

I hope this has helped you understand things bit more. Phew, that was quite long!

---

Amy beat me to it. I had the thread open and went for dinner in between. Between Amy's screenshots and my explanation, you have everything you need.

Dude, I think your STM membership just paid off. haha!

---

haha .. awesome .. ill have to go through everything when i get back home. But I just noticed something ... doesn't Matomy have CPA offers ? ive seen only CPL and 1 CPS... tutorial said CPA would be best for now and don't know what I should do here.
Thanks

---

CPL and CPS are more like children of CPA afaik.

CPA is cost per Action. Action can be a Lead (CPL includes SOI, DOI, App Installs) or a sale (CPS includes Pin Submits, Credit Card Purchase, Mobile Subscriptions etc).

This is my understanding of it, not something I read anywhere. Matomy has everything you need.

---

Holy sh*t Arun! That's the best d*mn explanation I've read on how tracking works!!

I always thought I was long-winded - well you've just made me feel a LOT better about myself!

Seriously though - thanks for all your contribution! We're blessed to have you here.


Amy

---

Aww, thats like the best compliment ever!!

And about the length, I once worked as a ghost writer for a prominent writer and when I asked her how long does it have to be, she said "As long as it NEEDS to be".

---

Amen to that! As long as each word serves to enlighten as opposed to being "fluff", length really doesn't matter much.

Looking forward to bumping into you in other threads Arun!

Amy

---

Arun and Vortex, you guys are beasts on steroids ... Seriously that info combined is absolutely priceless and should be sticky'd or something. Just by reading and not actually taking action yet, im 95% sure I know how tracking works in this sense. But I do have a couple of minor questions :

Arun Said:
" Master the data, and money will rain in."

I am trying to think of ways of how data can make you money but not really getting it. It can save you money in the sense that a traffic source can be sending wrong traffic or fraudulent data.. other then that... can't really think of anything else and your statement meant a lot more than that I am sure.

I might have more questions but I'll have to get home and put this to action first. Can't thank you guys enough.

I haven't seen a single CPA offer in Matomy yet. I filter results by CPA and all it comes up with is CPL only. Am I missing something?

---

That was more a generic punchline, but there are a lot of ways data can make you money. Penny saved is a penny earned, so saving money is also making money.

- Split Testing. Split test headlines and images and copy and what not.
- Knowing which placements work. Knowing what works on a traffic source is what will make you more money long term. You match up the offers to the things that work.
- You will see what I meant in time when you see real data.

Yes, my response from before is what I have for you:

CPL is same as CPA.

---

My bad.. just realized what you said

In a nutshell though, is this whole business about creating banners and testing them, picking the ones that convert and investing in them while keeping a close eye on data? I assume the people who are claiming that they can make 1k,- 2k per day are actually running multiple campaigns .. and receiving multiple streams of income?

I think it's best i fully understand where I'm heading before jumping into details and setups

Edit: And one more thing about traffic source. In this case I am using Decisive. Is hopping around to different traffic sources something common? For example, testing banners from 2 different traffic sources. I can see that being extremely expensive but not sure how much it would be worth doing so.

---

WOW, Amy and arunbasillal!

Hats off to you two.

That is some help you got here Aris...

There is much more to AM than picking banners. That is way too simplistic.

For 1K-2K per day you dont have to run multiple campaigns, not at all.

Exploring and testing different traffic sources is very common.

As you will soon realise from reading in this forum, testing (various things) is a major part of AM.

---

This whole business is about selling a product to a customer and receiving a commission for doing so. IF the customer finds the product useful and if the advertiser is making a profit, you can run that campaign till the end of eternity, if not you will get kicked out of the offer at which point you jump onto a new offer.

Creating banners. landing pages, angles etc is how you sell it.

1k to 2k is possible with just one offer and one traffic source. Think of an antivirus offer that pays 5$. Think of the amount of traffic you have for a Geo on Decisive (always in millions). All you need is 200 conversions to make 1k.

If you hop around too many traffic sources, you will be spending all your money and learning very little. My advise is to stick to one or max two sources that you like.

---

Thanks a lot guys... really... priceless.

Hopefully I get things up and running before i get kicked from every single offer

Aris

---

Hey Aris - interesting discussion and some priceless insight from Arun and Oran.

Based on the questions you're asking, I'm getting the feeling that you haven't read that many threads on STM yet.

That would actually be my first and foremost recommendation: Spend at least 1 solid week just reading the guides in the "Newbie Zone" section, then read some sticky threads and follow-alongs in some of the other forum subsections. That will give you a foundation on how AM 'works'. Then you can pick a vertical (a niche if you will) and a traffic type to start with, THEN pick offers to test. You ask good questions and we don't mind answering them, but if you don't even have a basic foundation of knowledge, all our advice would just fall on deaf ears, and we'd just be trying to answer a lot of the same general questions that are addressed in the newbie guides anyway.

So definitely go do that - and THEN come back to ask more specific questions.

Have fun reading!


Amy

---

Thanks Amy for the guidance but the reason I am asking these questions is because im following the mobile cookbook. I haven't really read anything except a few success stories and some Q&A sections to see what other people are struggling with.

Other than that, im just following the appetizer guide and moving as per instructions. I doubt I would've found a solid answer like the ones above if I didn't ask

I'll definitely spend more time reading though thats for sure.

Thank you
Aris

---

No worries Aris! Hope what I said didn't come across as complaining - I'm a straight-shooter (often to a fault!) and I sincerely felt it would benefit you way more if you'd establish a better foundation through further reading. Please do continue to ask more specific questions when they arise - I'd feel really bad if what I said has deterred you from asking further questions!


Amy

---

Never asking another question again .. EVER!

Thanks for all the assistance

---

That's alright....if anyone needs me I'll be off in a corner somewhere shedding some tears...

Seriously now - you WILL have more specific and advanced questions after you do more reading - come back to ask those then.

Also consider starting a follow-along to get feedback - I know a lot of people have found that helpful!

Take care bud...


Amy

---

I found this thread very helpful at explaining the intricacies of tracking. Just wanted to give a big Thank You to vortex and arun

---

Glad to hear man. I am sure, Amy would be really happy to hear this as well, I just know it. haha

---

VERY helpful! I can assure - the length does not matter, I would have read on and on. Simple, detailed and advanced. It seems like the best info comes when there are many people writing the one thing at the same time and post it also. Two different approaches of explaining. Refreshing. Thanks, guys, for this.

This forum is getting more useful every day.

---

Home > Questions and Answers > Tracking Questions