Tracker Not Showing Correct Cost (7)
Hey guys, I'm pretty new here. I've been running a couple successful campaigns and have been noticing something weird with my tracker.
For example this week my tracker (
Does anyone have any clue why? Is the traffic source auto-detecting double clicks and bot traffic and then removing that from my cost? Or is
Any help would be appreciated, it's just a bit confusing as to why.
If you are passing costs to your tracker using traffic source’s tokens you will never have an accurate cost of your traffic. That’s just the way it is and all you can do in your tracker is to manually update cost 
That's exactly what I'm doing. So basically that's just the way it is and I should update manually from now on if I'm really concerned about it.. thanks platinum!
Originally Posted by rtking
1. Clickloss ... some clicks will get lost on the way from the source to the tracker. This is the most common with POP traffic in GEOs with generally slow internet, part of the visits simply times out. It can also indicate a problem with your hosting setup or the tracker. In this case, you will see less traffic in your tracker than at the source.
2. BOTs ... some sources do not count bot clicks that they detect, same with traffic that seems questionable. They still send you the visit, but it won't show in their stats. In this case, you will see more clicks in your tracker than at the source ... this is your case.
3. Different metrics ... sources, trackers, affiliate networks ... they all might use different metrics when it comes to counting visits. Some count true raw hits, so every single hit gets recorded, some resort to uniques or even sessions. Traffic sources, for example, love to show RAW data, as they can bill you for every click and banner CTRs look better this way. Affiliate networks, on the other hand, usually show uniques, because it makes the EPCs look better
The cost can also be different when you are using SMART bidding options... the algo charges you a rate that is below the max that you've set, so if you've used that one in the tracker, the cost reported there will be higher.
Matej.
Originally Posted by matuloo
1. Clickloss ... some clicks will get lost on the way from the source to the tracker. This is the most common with POP traffic in GEOs with generally slow internet, part of the visits simply times out. It can also indicate a problem with your hosting setup or the tracker. In this case, you will see less traffic in your tracker than at the source.
2. BOTs ... some sources do not count bot clicks that they detect, same with traffic that seems questionable. They still send you the visit, but it won't show in their stats. In this case, you will see more clicks in your tracker than at the source ... this is your case.
3. Different metrics ... sources, trackers, affiliate networks ... they all might use different metrics when it comes to counting visits. Some count true raw hits, so every single hit gets recorded, some resort to uniques or even sessions. Traffic sources, for example, love to show RAW data, as they can bill you for every click and banner CTRs look better this way. Affiliate networks, on the other hand, usually show uniques, because it makes the EPCs look better
The cost can also be different when you are using SMART bidding options... the algo charges you a rate that is below the max that you've set, so if you've used that one in the tracker, the cost reported there will be higher.
Matej.
Ran into another situation with the tracker. Now I'm having conversions show up in my affiliate network, but not in my tracker. But only a percentage. So lets say I had 50 conversions today. Only 40 of them show up in my tracker. I'm assuming that this just happens sometimes as well? Seems like you have to always be on top of this stuff to make sure you're getting the correct ROI. Also, without conversions tracking properly setting up offer caps in
Originally Posted by rtking
The reason for me to ask this : when a conversion happens, the affiliate networks shows it in the day when it happened, while the tracker will show in the day when the visit was sent to the offer. So in case of delayed conversions, you would see more conversions for the same day in the affiliate networks stats than in your tracker.
Other than that, there might be a problem with reporting, some conversions will always remain unreported, but it's like 20% in your case and that's way to much.
Also - some aff networks won't post back conversions to the tracker right away. Your postback must have been set up correctly or else you wouldn't see any conversions in the tracker at all.
If you want to make sure, pause traffic for a few hours and see if the conversions will catch up.
Or, compare the clickids corresponding to the conversions, do this both for your aff networks stats and tracker stats. Identify conversions that are in aff network stats but NOT in tracker stats, and look at their timestamps - if they're all the most-recent conversions then you know for sure that there's a delay in the aff network posting back to the tracker.
Amy
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