Third Party External Tracker

Sometimes you may want to use an external tracker to also track certain metrics in our ad tag. Our ad tag support external trackers to track a few of the standard metrics. Let’s explore some of these trackers below.

5 Types of External Tracker

  1. Impression Tracker
    • A tracker that triggers as soon as the ad is loaded
    • This tracker triggers in the background and user will not notice when this tracker triggers
    • Using this tracker, you can track how many times the ad is loaded and shown to the user
  2. Click Macro
    • A tracker that act as the landing page URL that opens in the browser when user clicked on the ad to go to landing page
    • So instead of opening the actual landing page that is set during the ad creation, the click macro is being opened instead
    • Click macro will accept the actual landing page URL as a parameter and will do a redirection to the actual landing page once the click is tracked
    • Click macro comes in 3 different formats such as below (do check with your click macro provider on which format to use):-
      • Non Escaped Macro – macro with url that is not encoded (i.e http://mobileads.com)
      • Single Escaped Macro – macro with url that is encoded only once (i.e http%3A%2F%2Fmobileads.com)
      • Double Escaped Macro – macro with url that is encoded twice (i.e http%253A%252F%252Fmobileads.com)
    • Using this tracker, you can track how many times user click on the ad that brings them to the landing page
  3. Clickthrough Tracker
    • Similar to a click macro where this tracker triggers when user click to landing page
    • However, this tracker triggers in the background, unlike click macro which opens the tracker url in the browser
    • Use this tracker if the click macro provided by your provider does not support redirection to landing page
  4. Click-To-Expand Tracker
    • A tracker that triggers when user click on a teaser banner to expand the ad
    • This tracker triggers in the background and user will not notice when this tracker triggers
    • Only applicable for Expandable Ad
    • Using this tracker, you can track how many times user click on a teaser banner to view it’s expanded content
  5. Tab Click Tracker
    • A tracker that triggers when user click on any tab in the ad
    • This tracker triggers in the background and user will not notice when this tracker triggers
    • Using this tracker, you can track which tab is being clicked the most and which tab performs best

Tracker Variations

Tracker comes in 3 different variations such as below:-

  1. Standard URL
    • This is the most basic format
    • i.e http://track.domain.com?id=123
  2. Macro
    • This is a placeholder URL that will be replaced with an actual URL in real time during ad serving
    • i.e {tracker_macro} which will then be replaced into http://track.domain.com?id=123 during ad serving
  3. Combination of Standard URL + Macro
    • A combination of a standard URL and a macro in some part of the url
    • The macro in the url will then be replaced with an actual value in real time during ad serving
    • i.e http://track.domain.com?id={tracker_id} which will then be replaced into http://track.domain.com?id=123