The system has been completely rewritten as AdTrackZ Gold with a host of powerful new features and can operate as both software hosted at your site or as a tracking service.
We will soon be providing a summary of the new features but for now check them out on the sales page
by Harvey
Segal
www.supertips.com
In "The Ad Tracking Guide" you will find information and independent reviews of the main ad tracking programs.
Here I give my personal preference and explain some of the reasons why I choose AdTrackZ to be the ad tracking tool which I use across all of my sites.
If you are not familiar with tracking programs - and to demonstrate the ease of use of a good tracking program - here is a simple example.
As an illustration I'll focus on a web page where I have my free ebook "Guru Magic: Super Tips From the World's Top Internet Marketing Experts".
This page can be found at
http://www.supertips.com/gurus/
Now if I want to track all hits to the Guru Magic page for a particular ad campaign I need to set up a tracking URL. Suppose the campaign is to run in the ABC Ezine. Then I would choose the name "abc" for the campaign and feed that name and the URL into the AdTrackZ program: and it produces this tracking URLhttp://www.supertips.com/cgi-bin/b/t.cgi?abc
That is the URL which I place in the ad. So now when someone reads that ad and clicks on that URL they will actually be taken to http://www.supertips.com/gurus/ and the ad tracking system will register that the click came from the ABC newsletter.
Now with most tracking programs you need to repeat the above process for each ad campaign. Every campaign will require a new tracking URL.
And when it comes to comparing the results of all these campaigns you will need to collate figures from many different areas of the tracking reports
But with AdTrackZ you can use the unique sub campaign feature and you don't need to create any additional URLs.
What you do is to start by creating a more general campaign name - say "guru" We feed that into the AdTrackZ program and it provides a tracking URL
http://www.supertips.com/cgi-bin/b/t.cgi?guru
That is the only tracking URL you need to set up.
Now, for each campaign you simply invent a different suffix and attach that to the URL.
If I want to mention my book in edition 101 of my newsletter I use the URL
http://www.supertips.com/cgi-bin/b/t.cgi?guru_e101
If I want to mention my book in various discussion forums I use
http://www.supertips.com/cgi-bin/b/t.cgi?guru_forum1
http://www.supertips.com/cgi-bin/b/t.cgi?guru_forum2
If I want to mention my book in some classified ads I use
http://www.supertips.com/cgi-bin/b/t.cgi?guru_ad1
http://www.supertips.com/cgi-bin/b/t.cgi?guru_ad2
When I look at the tracking reports showing how many clicks have been made to that page from all the different sources the stats will look something like this
| Sub Campaign | Hits |
| ad1 | 30 |
| ad2 | 50 |
| e101 | 80 |
| forum1 | 20 |
| forum2 | 15 |
So, at a glance I can compare the effectiveness of all these campaigns. And with AdTrackZ you can produce figures for any date range or select from a standard list such as: today, yesterday, this week, last week, this month, last month etc
By the way, AdTrackZ will also distinguish between total hits and unique hits (where one visitor may click several times)
Suppose you want to hide the fact that you may be measuring the clicks made to your Url.
A typical situation is where you promote your URL in the signature of a posting in a discussion forum. Many forums allow discreet advertising such as this but would draw the line if you would appear to be measuring the effectiveness. An Url such as http://www.supertips.com/cgi-bin/b/t.cgi?guru_forum1 would probably be removed.
Another situation is where you may prefer a shorter URL because of length restrictions in an ad.
The solution ?
You can create a redirect page such as
http://www.supertips.com/ebook.htm
and have it link tohttp://www.supertips.com/cgi-bin/b/t.cgi?guru_forum1
AdTrackZ will actually create both the page and the link for you. Just say what name you want to give it (e.g. ebook) and it does the rest.
Apart from its other uses anyone writing an Ebook should take heed of this tip.
My book Guru Magic uses a viral marketing technique that allows the reader to customize it with their own promotional page, generate traffic and earn affiliate commissions.
It's vital that I use tracking links in the place of all external links in the book as this allows me to modify URLs even after the book is downloaded and to obtain stats on the number of hits.
And it's crucial that these links will always remain working as the book continues to get circulated.
The only ad tracking program I would consider for this is AdTrackZ.
The main reason ?
AdTrackZ falls into the category of programs which you host at your own site. The other category contains programs like AdMinder which are hosted at the supplier site. With such programs you are tied in to the supplier - I would not be able to change supplier because I would then be stuck with copies of my Ebook dotted around the Net with links which no longer work. I would always be at the risk of such a supplier going out of business or increasing their monthly rental fee.
With AdTrackZ my links will remain unchanged for ever.
What made you click to this page ?
- was it a coloured text box with an attractive link ?
Where did you come from ?
- did you read the reviews page first or did you just leap in from the home page ?
It's finding answers to questions like these that can make your site a winning one. I constantly test and check the response to my links using ad trackers.
The Url that brought you to this page was created by AdTrackZ. As explained above (sub-campaigns) I just created the one Url - a ten seconds job - and simply add a different suffix each place I use it.
So I can tell exactly what time and from where you arrived here - even your browser and operating system.
Unless you have the tool to discover how your visitors find your site, how they travel through it, and what attracts their attention - you are only guessing.
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