Recommendation of 3rd party conversion tracking tool

looking for a conversion tracking tool for multi-channel support

[ThreeMikes]

Can anyone recommend a good third-party conversion tracking tool to track not just PPC but display/banner ad buys, Facebook ads, etc?

It can't be using Google Analytics because I can only place code on the conversion page, which means it has to be a scheme where it forwards thru an interim link to place a cookie. And I don't need a double-click ad serving solution either. I just need a good, clean solution to tracking traffic and conversions from a wide variety of sources in one place.

Is it crazy that I can't seem to find one that fits my seemingly normal needs?

[shorebreak]

[Disclosure: I work at Omniture, who provides multi-channel tracking solutions to 5000+ advertisers, NASDAQ: OMTR]

Omniture, WebTrends and are just a few names of companies that provide what you're looking for, and there are others as well.

[deadstar32]

I've got somewhat similar questions in my thread--although it's more about custom conversion tracking; custom because I need to input some of the parameters into my own database with php/ mysql--

I recently saw the site "hitlinks". It has a PR of 8, so I figure they must be a well known web analytics provider. I'm just worried about getting some overly complex solution which I can't customize to my own needs...

Here's my thread if you have a suggestion:
[webmasterworld.com...]

Otherwise, good luck finding some good conversion tracking.

[cgrantski]

If you can only place code on the conversion page, then Omniture etc can't do any better than free programs. Unless I'm reading it wrong and the Omniture person saw some other possibility. Omniture has a big consulting group and they can do quite a lot for a fee, including the solution I'm describing:

I think you'd have to make a cookie to keep the original referrer alive in the visit, then on the conversion page add code pull that info out of the cookie and makes it available to the tracking tag. The analytics program (tag) cookie won't do you any good because it wasn't on the visit's opening page.

If the landing page etc belong to somebody else and you only have access to the conversion page ... that referrer information is long gone by the time the conversion page happens, without this special code.

So, yes, you ARE asking for something out of the ordinary! Though, actually, it's not that hard and a lot of people have done it.

[deadstar32]

I'm actually surprised that there's no free vanilla tool out there to track users--I would think almost any webmaster would want something like that.

I believe you that it's out of the ordinary--because I'm looking for something similar and can't seem to find it.

[scobb]

While a vanilla tool to do this would not be hard to create, what could be hard/costly is coming up with the storage to keep all the data available to sites that might sign up to use the tool. As one of the richest companies in the world, running possibly the largest server system in the world, Google is in a unique position to offer free analytics.

That said, I'm not sure why ThreeMikes can't use Google Analytics, which tracks conversions and traffic source, or am I missing something.