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Posted

I'd like to be able to pass a tracking ID to each and every instance of an ad. That tracking ID would be unique to the visit and created at the time of the visit so it would be dynamic. This helps me track a conversion back to a single visit and thus a particular keyword/etc (for PPC campaigns). It is important in my biz to be able to track every conversion back to a visit. (Primarily for fraud and PPC refinement reasons.)

 

The only way I can figure out how to do it is to create an intermediate PHP page which creates a unique ID and passes that ID to the ad in question. Obviously that is less then ideal.

 

Any other suggestions?

 

Thanks

Posted

I need the ad being called to see a unique ID not the Revive system. I don't care about Revive's tracking right now. The ads I'm having it serve are for me on my sites to better manage them. I have a custom visitor tracking script that grabs, among other things, the keyword and IP from the AdWords provided URL. However, that script runs for every visitor and creates a unique ID of its own. The visitor data is saved in a file named using the unique ID. Then on a conversion, typically of a form not a standard banner ad, the form data is put into a file (different directory) named using the unique ID. That way I can have another server take the two data files and merge them into a coherent visit, dump into a DB, and look for trends such as fraud.

 

But it only works properly if I can create the unique ID outside of Revive and pass it to the ad/form called by Revive. Every ad serving system that CPA and my form data buyers use allows for a subid to be passed to their ads via URL query parameter. Most of them provide me with iframe code to serve their ads, those that don't provide iframe code provide javascript. All allow for subid to be passed via at least 1 URL query parameter. Therefore even when displaying one of their banners I can track it back to a particular visit. The obvious benefits being that I can track my conversions back to particular keywords without having to expose my keywords to my buyers (who are often also my competition). It also means I don't need to obfuscate the keywords, I can track patterns by IP, etc. all in one solution.

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

I am a newbie to Revive but not a newbie to tracking and the internet in general. I also understand that this is free software. Supported by a free forum. But I'm not getting any support what so ever. I'm told Revive tracks things on it own. Great but that's not particularly relevant to my question unless someone can tell me how to tie into that tracking in real-time. But I can't get this forum to even tell me that the software isn't capable of what I'm asking, nor can I get anyone to say I don't understand what you want to do, or hack this file, or Revive does this already provide your id here dummy. I just get one response after almost a week that doesn't relate particularly well to my question and no follow up response at all.

 

Tracking of conversions is pretty fundamental to any good ad serving solution. As far as I'm concerned, a click on the ad isn't a conversion it's a click. A conversion is when someone hands over money or provides you their email or does something beyond clicking on an ad. With javascript Revive could probably track a true conversion but I'd have to define what a conversion really was before Revive could track anything. A simple iframe can't do that so far as I'm aware.

 

I'm a pretty decent PHP programmer, I'm perfectly happy to hack the Revive files to add the functionality I need if someone can point me at the right files. I don't really want to dig endlessly learning the entire program in an attempt to figure out where a URL query parameter would need to be added to the system and then where it would later need to be extracted so that it could be passed to the displayed ad. I would guess that providing this functionality would require 10 lines of code (maybe less, with most of the code going to the UI).

 

Obviously allowing a dynamic ID would open up the system for XSS attacks but I think that could be solved entirely by not allowing spaces in the dynamic ID. I don't know of a single SQL query that doesn't require a space; admittedly I could be wrong. However, Revive should be secured against XSS anyways given the variety of places someone could place malicious code into the Revive UI.

 

If I can't even get a simple response in a couple of days then the support for Revive is broken. IMO, having a forum that doesn't answer questions promptly is worse than no support since you just wait and wait and wait but never get any help. I don't see how anyone can count on Revive for their business without much more active support. I certainly can't and that's a shame. I like the UI, response time, ease of install, and flexibility to serve up forms not just ads.

 

Good luck

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