Greetings! It is the beginning of the new year and we invite you to continue to study the aspects of affiliate marketing with renewed vigor.
As is customary in an introduction, a little obvious, but it is still important to emphasize the relevance of today’s topic. For affiliate marketing, and for any advertising campaign, it is very important to accurately measure the results of an advertising campaign — who clicks where, who the lead came from, etc.
All this is done by the HOQU tracker, but only for those websites / landings that integrate with it. There are several ways to integrate with the tracker, and they all have their pros and cons. In our opinion, each of the methods is worthy of a separate article, so we will devote a whole cycle of materials to the topic of integration. And we will start with the easiest method of integration — the pixel.
A pixel captures how each specific user interacts with advertising and sends data to the tracker.
We will talk about pixels that capture the visitor’s performance of a target action (this is called a conversion) and creates a lead (transmits visitor data to the tracker) — conversion pixels.
There are 2 main types of conversion pixels:
1. HTML Browser Pixel can be JavaScript code, an image or iFrame. When using it, the actions of the site visitor are tracked using cookies, the data in the tracker comes from the site visitor’s browser;
2. Server Pixels (also called S2S integration — this is what we do, or postback) are tracking without using cookies. The data is transmitted to the tracker from the advertiser’s server.
This is the main character of our today’s story and the easiest way to integrate with the tracker, because all that users need to do is put a small piece of code on the site.
How it works for a specific offer:
1. Someone on the World Wide Web clicks on ads;
2. At this point, the pixel generates an ID for this transition to the website being promoted and stores it in a cookie in the browser of the site visitor;
3. The visitor gets to a promoted site;
4. If the visitor performs the target action, even if they perform it a few days after the first click on the advertisement, the pixel will send a signal to the HOQU tracker, which will record the lead.
Moreover, if the user does not give their consent to the storage of cookies, the conversion is not fixed.
Therefore, when using cookies to track leads, it is important to keep the following in mind:
1. This is not the most accurate and reliable way of tracking conversions, since too much depends on the visitors of the offer site and they must agree to the use of cookies and not delete / clear them.
In addition to this, each individual browser may have its own special relationship with cookies, limiting their use.
2. This is not entirely true for HOQU, but it is worth knowing: when using only a browser pixel, there are more opportunities for fraud, as it is enough to identify the pixel in the code of a promoted site and inflate the volume of fake conversions instead of real leads. And for HOQU, this is not relevant, because HOQU + anti-fraud = friends.
However, in general, browser pixels are a good solution when there is no way of organizing data transfer to the tracker directly from the advertiser’s server and it can be a good addition to other integration methods.
When working with HOQU, a pixel code is generated for each active offer rate: one pixel for each rate.
A small lyrical digression about the offer rates: the offer rate is how much the advertiser pays for a certain type of lead (for example, $5 for each installation of the application). The advertiser adds them to the offer, but the rates are not valid until the activation and are not visible to affiliates (they only exist in the advertiser and the network interfaces).
We only need to track the leads indicated in active rates, so first we activate the offer rate/rates and then we put the pixel code on the website.
Once again, let us summarize the information above more schematically:
- 1 active rate — 1 pixel; 2 rates — 2 pixels, etc.
- activate the rate → a pixel code is generated.
- if after a while we activate one more rate, we add an additional pixel to the website.
- if the rate is deactivated, and the pixel is not deleted, then the pixel simply will not work.
The activation of the offer rates is carried out by the network.
The pixel code is available to the advertiser and the network in the detailed information about the offer: Offers → All offers → the More button for the selected offer → scroll to the bottom to the “Detailed information and rules” block → Integrations tab → Pixel.
Temporarily, HOQU generates only code for a transparent image with a size of 1 pixel for offer integration, which contains the offer id and the lead price:
Subsequently, integration through JS and iFrame will be added.
This code needs to be copied and installed on the pages of the promoted site.
Some site management systems have built-in functionalities for setting pixels and tracking codes or ready-made plug-ins. You can also set the pixel code using the Google tag manager (GTM).
If the pixel is installed without the help of GTM or the plugin, it is very important to install it on the correct page of the promoted site, since the pixel is triggered when you go to the page on which it is installed.
Let’s take registration as an example of targeted action. If you place a pixel on the registration page, then we will not get the exact number of registrations. The pixel will simply count all the users who visit this page. The best solution is to place a pixel on the page, which is next after the target action is performed — for example, the page or window where we thank the user for registering.
