Tracking online marketing campaigns with Web Analytics Tools William Reed Business Media Page 1 of 6
1 Addressing discrepancies between your Web Analytics tool and Smart Ad Server (WRBM s) When we place your advertising (banners, text ads) on our websites and/or our newsletters, we do it through an ad server. The goal of using an ad server is to deliver your banner, track the number of impressions, and the number of clicks. Our ad server (like any other ad server used by publishers) works as follows: 1. Your banner/text ad CTU (Click Through URL) is replaced by our ad server URL. This means that if you provide us with http://www.yourwebsite.com, our ad server will replace it with something like http://sas.decisionnews.com/diff/86/do0.asp?24585. 2. When a user clicks on your ad, he is redirected to our ad server URL that will track the click on your banner. 3. After the click is tracked, our ad server redirects to your website (your provided URL). Figure 1. Classic ad server tracking process (here Smart Ad Server) During this process, your Web Analytics tool (Google Analytics or any other one) loses the referral and does not report any traffic from us. This is a universal issue with all ad servers. However, there are easy workarounds which allow you to accurately track the traffic coming from our websites and newsletters in your own Web Analytics Tool (i.e. Google Analytics, Omniture, Webtrends, etc). This is an Internet standard solution that gives you total transparency regarding the effectiveness of your online marketing campaigns and allows you to easily measure your ROI (return on investment). William Reed Business Media Page 2 of 6
1.1 If you use Google Analytics The process is very simple: you need to create a CTU (Click through URL). 1. Use the Google Analytics URL Builder tool: http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578 2. There you have to provide specific parameters that Google Analytics will interpret. The main parameters are: Campaign Source. For example: FoodNavigator.com Campaign Medium. For example: Banner Campaign Name. For example: Banner LR 2 For example: 3. Your new CTU will look the one below instead of http://www.yourwebsite.com. This URL below is the one that you need to send to our Production Team. http://www.yourwebsite.com/?utm_source=foodnavigator.com&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=banner %2BLR%2B2 How to view your campaign results in Google Analytics William Reed Business Media Page 3 of 6
In Google Analytics you can now track your online campaign results in the tab Traffic Sources Campaigns. There you can add the Source filter in the Campaign column to have more information. If your campaign name does not show up on the first page, you can search for it by clicking Show rows: (on the bottom) and set it to 25, 50, 100, 250 or 500, or you can simply search for your campaign name using the Filter Campaign: field option on the bottom too. William Reed Business Media Page 4 of 6
1.2 Using any other Web Analytics tool (Omniture, Webtrends, etc) The approach with any web analytics tool is the same. 1. You have to change the CTU (Click through URL). Let s see a couple of examples: Simple CTU http://www.yoursite.com/ http://www.yoursite.com/page.html New CTU http://www.yoursite.com/?from=banner_foodnavigator http://www.yoursite.com/page.html?from=banner_foodnavigator Tip: please ensure that you include all parameters that will allow you to track your campaign e.g. name of website or newsletter, source, description of campaign such as banner size or position and the name of the ad version such as blue or red. Here s an example: http://www.yoursite.com/page.html?from=foodnavigator_daily_newsletter_top_banner_blue_version 2. This URL above is the one that you need to send to our Production Team. 3. Now you can track the results from your campaign in your Web Analytics tool. You have to look for the Pageviews on your website. Generally you will find it (depending on which tool you use) under the Content tab (as opposed to Traffic Sources). There you will find the name of the page you provided, ie: http://www.yoursite.com/?from=banner_foodnavigator When compared with the same period (campaign period), the number of Pageviews for this specific URL will be the number of visits you received from us, that you can compare with the results from our ad server. William Reed Business Media Page 5 of 6
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