Affiliate tracker

What is an affiliate tracker?

Affiliate tracker by definition is a tracking software that gathers the ad campaigns’ data from different sources and presents it in one place. Affiliate marketing trackers collect the data on clicks, conversions, impressions, redirections and other key metrics. With that information, affiliates can better understand the audience, evaluate approaches’ performance and optimize the campaigns’ parameters to maximize profit.

Affiliate tracking software can be integrated with many sources and platforms, for example, ad networks and CPA networks, via S2S (server-to-server) postback technology. Postback allows affiliate marketing trackers to synchronically gather the data on traffic sources, conversions, clicks and impressions, presenting it in one place.

Why do marketers need an affiliate tracking software?

For marketers the meaning of affiliate tracker concludes in monitoring and collecting all the essential data to analyze it and increase the effectiveness of the affiliate marketing campaign. As a tool affiliate marketing tracker can be compared to a Swiss Army knife featuring all the needed arsenal to work with the statistics.

Among the key benefits of an affiliate marketing tracker are:

Precise data monitoring and collection.
Affiliate tracking software monitors and records every click, conversion, impression and redirection within the ad campaign. With such data affiliates can accurately evaluate the effectiveness of a specific campaign, ad creative or even affiliate links. Among the tracking methods there are cookies reading, cursor positioning detection, pixels and S2S postback that allow to collect correct information from various sources.
Real-time statistics report.
Affiliate trackers also visualise the gathered data in real-time so that marketers can evaluate how the campaign’s running on the go, not only as a report after the event. With the help of real-time statistics display affiliates can immediately manage the campaign’s parameters to increase performance.
Split-test and optimization.
Since affiliate marketers have the access to such detailed data on the campaigns’ elements, they can conduct A/B tests, examining the performance of several creatives, landing pages, complex approaches, marketing funnels and strategies. Affiliate tracking platforms allow marketers to efficiently segment and analyze the data, thus increasing results and conversion rate.
Multi-source integration and data streamline.
Many affiliate tracking services can smoothly integrate with different affiliate tools and platforms, for example, CRM systems, programs, mailing affiliate marketing software, ad networks and affiliate programs. It allows affiliate trackers to freely streamline the data collection from all the needed sources in one place.
In-depth audience examining.
Along with clicks and conversions monitoring, affiliate trackers can also show insights on the audience. That includes the geographical location, device representation, behaviour patterns and browsing regularities. Marketers can utilise this data to improve their campaigns’ parameters to approach the target audience.

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Self-hosted and cloud-based affiliate tracking systems

As choosing an affiliate tracking software to go with, there are two kinds of it based on server functionality architecture: self-hosted and cloud-based. Each type of these affiliate tracking systems comes with its own pros and cons, since the server structure affects the core functionality.

Self-hosted affiliate marketing trackers are services that perform on their personal server, for example, a local one. An affiliate tracking software with such a server-based architecture provides more control over the data collection and management, along with adjusting the flows exactly up to specific needs. But to use such systems, it’s required to possess advanced technical skills to program, manage and maintain the server.

Cloud-based affiliate tracking systems are services that operate on the providers’ servers. Such affiliate tracking solutions can be more cost-effective since there’s no need to maintain the server manually. Also, the cloud-based services are highly scalable, since the provider can give access to use power from other servers. Nonetheless, the cloud-based affiliate trackers lack flexibility to adjust data collection and management compared to the self-hosted ones.

14 best tracking solutions for affiliate marketing in 2024

How to set up an affiliate tracker with RichAds

RichAds ad network’s platform supports connecting with various popular affiliate trackers. Within the postback integration there are added a traffic source, meaning RichAds ad network, connecting an affiliate network, CPA offer and creating a united tracking campaign at an affiliate marketing tracker.

There are many affiliate tracking solutions supported by RichAds, for example, Voluum, Binom, Keitaro, BeMob, PeerClick, RedTrack and CPV Lab. By selecting one in the “Tracking” tab at RichAds’ platform, there will be a detailed guide on setting up this tracker.

What benefits does a postback integration give at RichAds?

Apart from obvious benefits such as getting actual data from several platforms in one place there are some more advantages following. At RichAds platform a postback integration grants you access to services and features, which can perform only with back-up by postback tracking.

With RichAds connected to postback you get access to:

TargetCPA mode.
Launching campaigns in TargetCPA mode is the option that allows you to get better optimization on traffic sources and target parameters. The mode is perfect to try to get as many conversions as possible within the ad campaign budget and desired CPA.
Set up Automated rules for your ad campaign.
With the help of Automated rules you can set specific criterias for traffic sources, by which they will be sorted into either whitelist or blocklist automatically. You can set criterias based on how converting or non-converting the traffic sources are according to desired CPA.
Set up Micro bidding for your ad campaign.
The Micro bidding feature allows you to set custom bids for particular targeting parameters of your campaign. For example, you can set a lower bid on a certain targeted device or region, which would potentially save the budget draw.
Improved assistance from RichAds’ managers.
If the RichAds support team can see the data on conversions of your ad campaign from different angles, they would be able to provide an even more quality help. As managers can help you set up optimal bids, Automated rules and targeting options.

Guides on setting up an affiliate marketing tracker

On our blog there are many guiding materials that explain the affiliate tracker setting up in detail. For example, in the article on how to set up a postback you will find an instruction step-by-step. More to that, you can find detailed guides on setting up postback integration in many popular tracking solutions by the tag “Affiliate tracking tutorials”.

Below you will find a video tutorial on setting up a postback by the example of Voluum tracker.

Launch ad campaigns on RichAds’ quality traffic!

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Dmitry Makarov

Bringing the experience of writing sales texts for IT-agency, Dmitry Makarov has also worked as a content manager and SEO specialist in affiliate marketing agencies operating within the iGaming vertical. While composing marketing materials for the past 2 years, Dmitry has provided in-depth expertise within the topics of utilising different ad formats (push and in-page push ads, popunder and native ads), iGaming niche advertising and overviewing industry tendencies. His passion in creating has also been developed towards broadcasting, music and fiction novels.