voluum clickURL issue (5)

Hi! Just 2 days ago I have discovered there's something wrong with my Voluum clickURL

http://track.domain.com/click
When I access my clickURL directly on desktop, it leads me to a random sweepstakes offer (for my geo)
When I access my clickURL from my mobile, it shows the correct page, which is the Error 400, and that the link cannot be accessed unless it is linked from a Voluum tracking link

Just 30 mins ago, I tried the clickURL again on my desktop - and it leads me to the correct page (which is the error 400), as I am just typing this clickURL into my browser, and not accessing it from a voluum link
And now, accessing it again just to double check, the clickURL leads me back to the random sweepstakes offer again

I've sent in help to voluum support, waiting for a reply
But would like to hear on anyone's experiences of this?

Does this have anything to do with the custom domain?
I am using namecheap + Cloudflare DNS for my clickURL
Could it be that my server is hacked or something?

EDIT: or could it be that the voluum clickURL has some kind of cookies tagged to it? that's why when I access from a new device, it is ok

There's nothing wrong with the click url. It's just the browser's cache that is causing these things.

Just to be sure, open the click url with the browser that redirects it to the sweepstakes offer and at the same time in another browsers where you haven't opened previously the click url.

Hope this helps

Hi beverparkes,

Your suspicions were right - the ClickURL relies on cookies. The cookie that is required for the ClickURL to work is dropped when you go through the campaign URL, so if you navigated to the landing page directly and just clicked on the Click URL, it will throw an error.

There are some fallbacks in place as well. As you have probably noticed, when you go through the campaign URL, we're adding an extra parameter to the landing page URL, that's called 'voluumdata', and it's a long BASE64-encrypted string. When there's no cookie available, the Click URL looks for 'voluumdata' in the referrer, or in the Click URL itself (appended to it, ie. xxxxx.voluumtrk.com/click?voluumdata=BASE64(...) ) - so if there's no cookie, but voluumdata is present, ClickURL will work properly.

On a side note - if you're worried about organic traffic - there's a way to handle it as well - you can check if 'voluumdata' exists in the URL, and if it doesn't - replace ClickURLs with direct link to the offer, or with a link to the campaign - with some extra parameter appended (ie. &trafficType=ORGANIC), so you can track that all as well.

Kind regards,
Pawel

Originally Posted by Voluum

Hi beverparkes,

Your suspicions were right - the ClickURL relies on cookies. The cookie that is required for the ClickURL to work is dropped when you go through the campaign URL, so if you navigated to the landing page directly and just clicked on the Click URL, it will throw an error.

There are some fallbacks in place as well. As you have probably noticed, when you go through the campaign URL, we're adding an extra parameter to the landing page URL, that's called 'voluumdata', and it's a long BASE64-encrypted string. When there's no cookie available, the Click URL looks for 'voluumdata' in the referrer, or in the Click URL itself (appended to it, ie. xxxxx.voluumtrk.com/click?voluumdata=BASE64(...) ) - so if there's no cookie, but voluumdata is present, ClickURL will work properly.

On a side note - if you're worried about organic traffic - there's a way to handle it as well - you can check if 'voluumdata' exists in the URL, and if it doesn't - replace ClickURLs with direct link to the offer, or with a link to the campaign - with some extra parameter appended (ie. &trafficType=ORGANIC), so you can track that all as well.

Kind regards,
Pawel

Originally Posted by beverparkes

Thanks for your help
Is 'voluumdata' automatically sent through in the campaign URL parameter? Or is there some sort of setting that needs to be input