Proxy Farms

Ad tracking

[bingymon]

I administer a post-click ad tracking system that serves cookies and tracks post-click activity anonomously. When a specific action page is hit, a web bug is loaded and the cookie retrieved matching creative and reffering site data. I am having descrepencies in stats because of proxy servers sending many users through the same ip address. the system has filters in place that delete repeat actions from the same ip within a five minute time frame which inevetibly screw the stats up. Does anyone have any advice on tracking methods that get around the proxy farm issue?

[littleman]

A question like this is hard to answer without getting into the intimate details of your setup. If you have the ability you could have the tracking program check against a pre-set cookie. If the surfer in question does not have the cookie than you could label that surfer as a new user.

[bingymon]

Thanks littleman. I feared I would have to go into more detail to get what I needed. Actually, the system only counts cookied actions. The problem is proxy farms don't distinguish from one user to another because they all have the same ip. I've heard of a token system that can assign a random id to an ip and therefore tell one user from another even though they have the same ip.
have you heard of such a thing?

[Brett_Tabke]

Goto a cookieless system like Engage or Burst. The cookies are not actually used by them to serve banners, but rather to track users. They deliver a unique ad to each user based on the js code they serve - thus, they really don't need the cookie the loop at all. Study the burst, double click, or flycast/engage code to see how they are doing it via random img file call strings.

[bingymon]

the system I use doesn't actually serve the ads. It only serves the first cookie upon the click. But that random img file call sounds pretty interesting. I'll look into those. Thanks