For every advertising campaign, advertisers can now get a treasure trove of detailed monitoring information. By monitoring how people engage with their online campaigns, advertising teams may refine their methods of measurement, testing, and iteration.
What exactly is ad tracking, then?
The practice of gathering information and feedback from users on the effectiveness of internet advertising campaigns is referred to as ad tracking. Cookies, tracking URLs, and tracking pixels are just some of the several techniques that marketers might use to compile this information.
If this is your first experience managing an internet advertising campaign, take some time to establish which metrics will be most useful when asking how does ad tracking work? Advertisers now have the capacity to gather data on a wide variety of topics, including views, clicks, impressions, and activity across a variety of sessions and websites thanks to the proliferation of ad tracking across a wide variety of tools and platforms.
Instruments for Technical Tracking
In order to get a decent start with ad monitoring, technological tools are a smart place to look. These include choices for monitoring URLs within your website, advertisements put in emails or on sidebar displays or websites, and tracking based on cookies, all of which are used to deconstruct user behavior and hone your marketing strategy. Let’s investigate each in greater depth.
Keeping tabs on URLs
The standard URL of a page on your website is converted into a tracking URL by adding a tracking token to the end of it. The following is an example URL for a landing page, along with a tracking token: (in bold).
Simple and standard URL for a landing page:
http://www.yourwebsite.com/your-landing-page/
URL of the landing page that includes a tracking token:
http://www.yourwebsite.com/your-landing-page/?utm campaign=test-campaign&utm source=email
What precisely do you mean when you say that this “additional material” helps you monitor things?
A UTM parameter appended to a URL basically acts as a click confirmation signal delivered back to your ad monitoring service whenever the URL in question is clicked on by a user. The tracking token’s “source=_____” field might reveal the user’s referral URL. In a similar fashion, the “campaign=_____” bit may be used to inform your tracking technology that the link in question should be bucketed as a component of a campaign.
For instance, if you were to display the same advertisement on a number of different websites and you desired to see which one created the most hits, you could identify the two distinct websites as origins in the UTM attributes of your links. This would allow you to determine which website generated the most hits.
When to utilize tracking URLs
Tracking URLs are the best way to determine how many views, leads, and conversions your PPC campaign, email campaign, or advertising on another website has brought in.
Whether in an email, a display ad, or just a website, a tracking pixel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_beacon), a small, usually transparent image—can be put to monitor user engagement. When it loads, it tells your tracking tool a person saw the page.
However, you should only monitor information that is easily beneficial to your customer lifecycle and will deliver a better, more tailored experience for the consumers you are targeting. Tracking pixels are therefore capable of gathering rather thorough data around a user’s behavior and browser setup.
When implemented properly, tracking pixels may assist in the optimization of your advertisements and the placement of those advertisements in front of an audience that is receptive to them. Banner ad pixel tracking, for instance, may tell you how many people saw your ad but didn’t click on it, crucial information for gauging an ad’s efficacy.
Monitoring pixels are important for tracking online marketing progress throughout the conversion funnel. They are able to provide you with information on how customers are engaging with your advertisements and assist you in optimizing each step of the user experience, from the very first point of contact to the final purchase.
Cookies
Cookies may assist you in gaining insight on the behavior of users on your website throughout numerous sessions of activity, which can be beneficial to you. Before a marketer may use cookies to follow a user’s activities, they need to have the user’s express permission to do so. Cookies may be used to personalize a user’s experience on a website if the user has provided their prior permission. If you are interested in gaining a more in-depth understanding of how cookies operate, then continue reading for a more in-depth look at this topic.
From the point of view of tracking advertisements, cookies are the primary motivating factor behind the majority of ad retargeting efforts. Marketers may utilize the information in a user’s cookie file to target advertising more effectively depending on the person’s browsing history and habits. They are also able to get information on the setup of the user’s browser, as well as the user’s location and preferred language.
When should cookies be used:
When you want to offer advertisements to a user that are aligned with the activity that they engage in while surfing the web, or when you want to retarget them with advertisements for items that they have expressed an interest in, cookies are the best tool to utilize. Website visitors may be given a more tailored experience based on their prior interactions with your business by using cookies; for instance, when a visitor adds an item to their shopping cart but then abandons it, you can send them a cookie-triggered email reminding them of their cart.
Solutions for Tracking Ads in Search and Social Media
Brands may improve their ad tracking capabilities by employing solutions that interact with popular search engines and social media platforms. This ad tracking method is more comprehensive in its reporting of user actions and preferences, which may be used to improve a business’s advertising strategies.