Affiliate Tracking

Best methods for affiliates to track Adwords Campaigns.

[chief72]

Looking to start a discussion re. different methods of tracking affiliate traffic given the limitations of not owning the destination page - page where desired action takes place i.e. sales page.

[koncept]

I have a sponsor who actually puts the tracking code for their affiliates using adwords/yahoo or any other ppc right on the purchase or sign up pages for us. So I can see my conversions right in adwords for direct ppc campaigns.

This is only one sponsor however, but I hope it becomes a trend! It might be worth asking your affiliate manager about.

[smallcompany]

This has been mentioned here and there, but as a query only, unfortunately. I am not even sure how many of affiliate networks are offering any kind of service that you could use to develop a solution where you would connect your cost and earning data on a single screen. Major search engines offer API, so do some affiliate networks. Now we need somebody to develop that platform.

It would be cool if affiliate networks would start putting more code into merchants’ sites. Something that would allow us to connect AdWords with sales actions.
That way, there would be no need to ask each merchant to do that, except those that run their own programs.

[chief72]

Both these things sound great and yes there are merchants who offer excellent stats on clicks. The problem for affiliates are the ones who do not.

There are several software applications that I believe claim to address this problem, but do they? Has anyone had any experience with any of these types of apps?

[sem4u]

Interesting discussion if you use PPC as an affiliate. You could ask the merchant to put your tracking codes on their "thank you" pages. However, would this work if more than one affiliate wanted to do this?

[chief72]

Interesting point sem4u. Koncept mentioned a merchant who does this for them. Koncept, maybe you could let us know if the merchant in question does this for multiple affiliates or just you.

With the declining quality of adwords clicks, particularly those coming from search network partners - I don't even bother with the content network anymore, though I am aware some people find these effective - it is more important than ever that we can track our traffic effectively.

[aruns]

From the above answers, it looks like many affiliates are forced to run direct to merchant PPC campaigns without any kind of tracking. Is this widespread?

How do you run a direct to merchant PPC campaign profitably without tracking?

[RhinoFish]

you can pass optional tags fpr keywords or ad groups and then mine that data from the affiliate interface to tie back clicks and sales.

at ShareASale, they call the optional paramter afftrack.

in MyAp/Kolimbo, it's subid.

and on and on.

so you can do it, it's just more of a manual process.

[smallcompany]

Good tracking is not the problem with most of networks today. Some give you even more than one parameter to use.

It is more about connecting it to the cost and finding where the profit is. If you do it manually, it is either a quick glance with many gaps, or endless process that takes too much time.

Having merchant doing something that returns data to AdWords is great, but how to get 500 or 5000 of them do it? I guess it would be about combination of Google AdWords and affiliate network code doing it – to return sale data to the account where the sale process has originated from.

If done right, this would be applicable to both direct linking and site based campaigns.

[RhinoFish]

For other reasons, most networks allow the merchant to pass a parameter that includes the aff network and affiliate id (in addition to setting the typical tracking cookie). If the merchant writes the last in aff referrer data to a cookie on their domain, they can optionally and dynamically load the conversion snippet for that affiliate. The affiliate networks should all have a place where we can upload our conversion snippet so that the call from the merchant for the affiliate specific snippet can just be a call to the network.

For each merchant in the network that adds this to their cart then, the affiliate would just have to select whether they want conversion tracking added.

As soon as we get one network to do it, others will follow.

Problem is getting one to understand their search affiliates needs.

I think I'll chat with my favorite network about this sometime soon.

[chief72]

I have a couple of merchants who allow me to add kwords in my links. All of these individual kwords show up in their reporting stats along with clicks, conversions etc. Nice and simple and very useful. Wish more were doing the same.

[smallcompany]

chief72,

Some of use already confirmed that most of networks and merchants will allow you to have your tracking passed which will show in sales reports. That is not a big deal and is widely available.

We talk more about seeing cost and earning in one report. This would be in your Google AdWords account for example.

That is how some of us understood your initial post. If you are referring to passing keywords only, as I said, all networks already have it, from long time ago. If you go directly with merchant, it will vary.

[chief72]

What I'm interested in is tracking all of my clicks - be they adwords or otherwise - to the point of sale or no-sale.

I both direct link to merchants and also have my own sites. Only a small part of my overall spend is through affiliate networks. The large percentage is with in-house affiliate programmes at the merchant site. Many of these do not have sophisticated kword tracking at all.

My goal here is merely to get a discussion - one which I've not before encountered - started around issues pertaining to tracking affiliate traffic. All ideas are most welcome.

Smallcompany, your idea re. combined reporting at the ppc account level has great merit. Not sure how feasible it is though. Most networks have a lot of affiliates which = a mountain of code.