Tag Archives: tracking

Tracking for iPhone Application Downloads

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Long time no post on the affiliate tracking front. I just want to share some exciting news with you.

As you know for a while I’ve been working for Sponsormob, the CPA Network for the Mobile Internet. We’ve released our download and conversion tracking for iPhone applicatiions. This means we can track installations of mobile apps on the iPhone, iPod Touch and the iPad.

Ads will be placed within other applications or on the (mobile) web. This is a 100% in-house solution and proprietary technoloy. While most of the online marketing world is still struggling with non-web transactions we went the extra mile and made it happen. We’re going to expand this to other mobile device platforms as well.

Thanks to Shawn Collins of Affiliate Summit and James Coops of Mobyaffiliates for the buzz. You should check out their blogs as well:

Small Networks Set The Standards

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Usually the larger an institution gets the less innovative it becomes. There are a few exceptions, but generally the big players of an industry don’t drive innovation.

After UK-based AffiliateFuture the German 2nd-tier affiliate network belboon has also introduced a tracking technology based on local shared objects, also widely known as “Flash cookies”. Back then AffiliateFuture observed a 7% increase in conversions. I’d be really interested to see belboon’s figures.

I haven’t heard of any large affiliate network implementing something similar. For example Commission Junction has become so slow over the years. I take these types of networks are going extinct like the dinosaurs at some point.

Flash cookies are somewhat similar to regular browser cookies. Essentially they are files stored on a user’s computer. The main differences are:

  1. Traditional browser cookies are stored in separate folders for different browsers. Flash cookies are always stored in the same folder, no matter which browser you’re using. That way the tracking works even if a user switches between browsers.
  2. The browsers can only delete the cookies in “their” folders. They don’t auto-delete the Flash cookies.
  3. Unless users block Flash elements, the tracking still works even if they run their browsers in a super-privacy mode.
  4. Traditional cookies follow an open standard. Flash cookies are controlled by one company: Adobe.

Ditching Google Analytics for Piwik

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I’ve been using Google Analytics for about two years now. It’s a comprehensive improvement of the old Urchin tracker. The integration with Google AdWords is easy and gives a lot of insight. The product also gave the web analytics industry a big push and also played a role in the acquisition of Indextools by Yahoo.

However, I decided to remove Google Analytics from all my sites step-by-step. Why? Google won’t delete your websites’ data if you unsubscribe from Google Analytics. I hate data being collected and stored outside my sphere of influence. Using Google Analytics is like forwarding your server log files to your competition. I’d like to be in control of everything, especially when it comes to sensitive data.

As a Google Analytics alternative I’m using Piwik, an open-source web analytics package. It’s a free PHP/MySQL application that runs on standard LAMP servers. The front end consists of a fancy Ajax interface. The software also offers an API so that you can export data in a customized manner or put live statistics on your website. One Piwik installation can collect data for unlimited websites too. Seriously, it looks like Piwik is the way to go.

Ziel des Affiliate-Trackings

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Werbetreibende fragen oft, was eine Werbemaßnahme konkret bringt. Im Gegensatz zur Offline-Werbung bietet das Internet eine sehr bequeme Möglichkeit, mittels technischer Kniffe die Herkunft eines Kunden genau zu bestimmen und den entsprechenden Vermittler daraufhin zu provisionieren.

Ziel des Affiliate-Trackings ist also die punktgenaue Messung des Erfolgs von Online-Werbemaßnahmen. Bei Eintreten bestimmer User-Aktionen wie z.B. einer Registrierung oder einem Kauf soll also festgestellt werden, wer den User auf die Webseite des Anbieters gebracht hat.

Wie das genau funktioniert und welche verschiedenen Systeme und Methoden des Trackings es gibt, das wird in den folgenden Beiträgen erläutert.