Tracking Systems for Display Advertising

The gift of online marketing is that everything is measurable. It’s a gift because for the first time in history we know exactly what marketing works and what doesn’t. We know what message in what medium brings us results and we can optimize them in ‘real-time’.

To get this information we need to get an understanding of the systems involved in measurement. Most commonly there are three to four systems that data flows thru; from banner impression to becoming a client:

1. The media show your banner to their visitors thru an adserver which loads the banner from your own adserver (if you have one).

2. The visitors go to your site by clicking on the banner; this is recorded in both adservers.

3. The visitors land on your site and whatever they do after is recorded by a web analytics package.

4. The visitor signs up for a free trial or requests more information and becomes a lead, this is recorded in the web analytics package, your adserver (thru a code on the confirmation page* ) and your CRM system.

5. The lead becomes a client; this is recorded in your CRM system.

*the confirmation page is typically the page that comes after a visitor takes a desirable action. An example is the ‘thank you for downloading’ page that comes after signing up for a free trial. As you are sure the visitor has completed the sign up you can now ‘tell’ the ad server and your web analytics package that a conversion has happened by executing a conversion code.