Safe and Reliable Ad Tracking System?

[byepolar]

I am beginning to do some advertising, and before I began, I wanted to get an ad tracking system that would count how many visitors were being sent from various places.

As you all know, the ad tracker gives a URL for a new campaign, and you're able to set where you want it to re-direct to.

The problem is that I don't know who to trust. I don't want to sign up with someone that can read into my stats and see where all my traffic is coming from.

Are there any good ones that you know are worth trusting?

[roitracker]

If you don't want to trust a 3rd party with your stats, you'll need to run the tracker on your own domain (ie. purchase tracking software).

[larryn]

byte,

The key thing to doing when tracking ads, no matter what method you elect to gather and analyze your stats, it to make sure that each unique ad is trackable - typically buy using "Tracking URL's"; some sites automatically provide tracking URL via a check box, others you need to add the tracking info manually: it can be as simple as adding a few query fields to your destination URL:

For example, instead of sending the ad click to:

www.mysite.com/landingpage.html

send the click to something like this:

www.mysite.com/landingpage.html?plc=adplacement&kw=adkeyword&cmp=adcampaign 
www.mysite.com/landingpage.html?uid=uniqueadid

Then make sure your tracking software can use this information from start to finish, so you can evaluate the performance of each individual ad.

Good Luck,

Larry