

Ask HN: How to keep track of my online ad? - terrykohla

I posted an ad on a website where I get charged by CPM (cost per thousand views).<p>My questions is how do I know I'm not getting over charged?<p>How do I know they're running my ad? I can't check the website all day and they revolve many ads on the website.
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dangrossman
Well, you have two options:

1) Get them to point the image URL to your server instead of them hosting it
so that you can log each access.

2) Don't worry about it, just measure actual results like conversions and
revenue.

If you spend $100 and earn $50, it doesn't matter so much if it's because they
underserved the ad or that their audience isn't a good match for your product
-- either way, it wasn't a successful campaign so you don't renew.

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ScottWhigham
+1

This is really all that matters. The only thing I'd add is that for you to be
able to accurately gauge the success of a given campaign requires that you
understand what the lifetime value (LTV) of a customer is. If, for example,
you don't know your LTV, then you can make critical errors. Let's say that you
spend $100 on a campaign and get 12 signups and $50 immediate money. On the
surface, it appears this is a bad campaign - after all, you've lost $50. But
if the LTV of each member is $12.50 and you've added 12 new members, you're
LTV amount is actually $150 thus making this a $50 profit. Sure, maybe it
takes six weeks or five years to get that money but, if your LTV number is
close to accurate, then you can rest easy knowing that you should renew the ad
campaign.

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iworkforthem
Setup VPS & Prosper202 ( <http://prosper.tracking202.com/apps/> ) else just
pay a bit more the hosted version at Tracking202.

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dangrossman
Prosper202 does not track ad impressions.

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iworkforthem
I really dun think he should be tracking ad impressions, instead of focusing
on the conversions of its ads.

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t0
Is it an image? You can serve the image data with a language like PHP and add
the user's IP and browser to a database each time the image is loaded.

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sharemywin
you should be able get the number of referals from your server logs.

You could also use google analytics.
<https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1247839?hl=en>

You could also create a specific landing page that the ad directs to.

