Media Buying

Total Control: Tools to Track Your Performance

Last updated on May 4, 2018 by Elena Rudneva 4 min read

Table of Contents

Introduction

Control.

It’s a powerful word, isn’t it?

It may annoy some and even make others writhe with fear.

However, life teaches us that the ability to control is a necessary quality.

You need to know what’s around you.

You need to be able to measure, understand, perceive and act upon it.

In this game, if you wanna reach the top and have stable results, control is key.

That’s why I’m gonna tell you about some tools that can help you get up-to-date info that’s certainly gonna be crucial for you to track your performance.

The Best Tools to Track Your Performance

Postbacks

Nowadays there are lots of high-tech tracker solutions for media buyers.

These basically give you the ability to control your performance by gathering all your info from ad networks and affiliate networks and then cross-matching it.

It’s usually something that costs some money.

Even so, it’s a real life-saver.

Remember:

At the end, you’ll have all the relevant info right before your eyes.

That’s right!

You’ll get your costs, revenue and margin of each campaign.

On Mobidea, we can easily set the postback option.

In fact, if you’re using this option, we can even create an integration with Voluum.

There are two stages that you need to go through in order to integrate it:

You need to add an additional parameter data3 to your Smartlink/offer link equal to the clickid token of your tracker.

Note: this how the ending of your Smartlink must look like:

&data1=Track1&data2=Track2&data3=YOUR_CLICLID_TOKEN_FROM_YOUR_TRACKER

Please skip this step if you’re using Voluum.

Activate the postback option. If you’re using Voluum, just insert your Voluum subdomain in the empty space of the Voluum option. If not, choose the “custom” option and add {{DATA3}} in the space of your postback url to track the clickid or another unique parameter and {{MONEY}} for the revenue of a transaction.

You can track two more unique parameters using {{DATA4}} and {{DATA5}}

The process of tracking is quite easy. When the user is landing on your smartlink/offer link, data3 detects the clickid of the user and sends info about him back to your tracker (because the postback is already incorporated in your smartlink).

Thinking about using Voluum?

Then read more about affiliate tracking platforms right here in the Mobidea Academy!

Notepad/Excel/Pen and Paper

This is so obvious you may think it’s silly to even mention it.

Even so, you should really get used to writing down all the changes you’re planning to make.

In the near feature, that process may help you understand what was the impact of your change; whether or not it was positive.

Let’s imagine you’ve increased a bid and, suddenly, you started getting more traffic, your conversion rate improved and your performance is flying high.

How do you get to know what you’ve done?

Because you wrote it.

By scribbling what you’re doing, you keep track of your actions and become a much better media buyer.

You get to know which moves work and which don’t; which simple change became the solution to your problems and what mistakes have created a mess.

Now, let’s assume you decided to get even more volume and still keep great eCPMs.

You’ve further increased your bid but, quite contrary to your predictions, your performance dropped.

If you keep on writing each and every change you make, you’ll see you can easily go back to the past; go back to what you were earning before you’ve made that specific alteration that ruined everything.

Bear in mind that this doesn’t only concern numerical parameters.

You can use this simple method of writing down everything so as to understand every change in banners, OS, operators, and categories you test.

Dynamic Tracking

Dynamic tracking allows you to send info from your ad network to your affiliate network.

Thus, your affiliate network will display visits, conversions and revenue split by parameters.

This way, you can cross-match and track data at a campaign, or banner, or site level, etc.

If you do this, you’ll see how much each of these parameters have earned on the stats of your affiliate network.

With dynamic tracking, you’ll always get a detailed report on the revenue of each campaign, or site, or banner and so on and so forth.

That’s a great tool, because it gives you the chance to compare and learn which, at the end of the day, will help you to optimize.

Note:

On Mobidea, the ending of our Smartlinks and Single Offers looks like this:

&data1=Track1&data2=Track2

In order for you to receive data you want, you need to replace Track1, Track2 or both with dynamic parameters from your ad network.

If you have more than two parameters, you can track others as well, using an underscore between the parameters.

Even so, in this particular case, in order to not mix data, you should try exporting it to Excel.

Here’s an example of how the ending of our smartlink might look like, if you’re using ExoClick traffic.

&data1={campaign_id}&data2={src_hostname}_{variation_id}, where the first parameter sends data on the campaign id on Mobidea; the second, on the site; the third, on the banner ID.

Being a Media buyer is hard work. It requires a great deal of logical ability. It demands intuition and, most importantly, experience in this tough world.

Related Content: How to Become a Successful Media Buyer

Moreover, you gotta be careful and analyse every possible detail, making sure you’re organized and know how to cross-match data.