What is Conversion Tracking

Conversions differ vastly but the common factor is that they are the end goal of most paid advertising campaigns, excluding brand awareness campaigns, which sole purpose is to increase overall brand exposure.

Conversion tracking is the process or technique of recording conversions when they occur. Marketers use various techniques to capture conversion data and pass it to their analytics software.

Conversion tracking is a crucial component of well-optimized campaign funnels and marketers that opt-out from conversion tracking leave a lot of valuable data and optimization possibilities on a table.

Benefits of Conversion Tracking

Measurable ROI: Conversion tracking enables businesses to quantify the return on investment (ROI) for each advertising channel. By understanding which channels drive conversions, you can allocate resources more effectively, optimizing your marketing spend.

Data-Driven Decision Making: Accurate conversion data empowers marketers to make data-driven decisions. By analyzing conversion metrics, you can refine ad creatives, targeting, and overall campaign strategies to boost performance.

Budget Optimization: Conversion tracking helps in allocating your advertising budget efficiently. You can redistribute funds from underperforming campaigns to those generating the most conversions, ensuring maximum impact with minimum investment.

Improved Targeting: Conversion tracking data helps you better understand your audience. This knowledge allows for precise audience segmentation and targeting, leading to more relevant ad campaigns that resonate with potential customers.

Enhanced Customer Insights: Tracking conversions provides valuable information about the customer’s journey. You can identify touchpoints and user behavior patterns, allowing you to tailor marketing messages at each stage of the sales funnel.

Conversion Tracking Methods

Conversion Pixel

A conversion pixel, also known as a tracking pixel or pixel tag, is a snippet of code embedded in a webpage. When a user visits the page and performs a specific action (e.g., making a purchase or filling out a contact form), the pixel triggers and sends data to the advertiser’s tracking platform.

Postback URL

A postback URL, also known as a server-to-server (S2S) callback or webhook, is a method of tracking conversions that doesn’t rely on client-side code like pixels. Instead, it involves a direct communication between the advertiser’s server and the tracking platform’s server.

Conversion attribution

Conversion attribution describes the process or techniques dedicated to connecting a conversion with the original click on the ad (or other interaction with an advertising campaign). Ad tracking is not only about just recording numbers but also about having those numbers connected in a pattern. Marketers need to know which clicks resulted in a conversion, so they can optimize their advertising strategy towards this specific part of an audience.

Conversion attribution works with correctly set up conversion tracking. For it to work, a unique identifier of each click needs to be passed, firstly, to an offer page, and then, secondly, back to an ad network or analytics software. Only by comparing this identifier, usually called ‘click ID’, that was passed from an offer with a click ID that was originally generated, a conversion can be verified and tied (attributed) to this concrete click.

Conversion attribution can be problematic when relying on conversion tracking pixels, which store click IDs in cookies. Cookies are small text files set by a web browser to store important information about a user session. Some browsers, plugins or other software may block these cookies, thus disrupting the conversion attribution process.

Similar problems exist on mobile devices running iOS14.5 or higher, when their users opted out from tracking. In this scenario, a mobile app can’t access Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA), a unique string of characters that is assigned to each mobile device. This also disrupts conversion attribution. Some analytics software, including Voluum, deals with it by enabling advertisers to record conversions without click ID but with using campaign ID as a fallback.

In conclusion, conversion tracking is a fundamental tool for advertisers seeking to make informed decisions and maximize their ROI. By harnessing conversion pixels, postback URLs, and other tracking methods, businesses can gain a deeper understanding of their audience and tailor their marketing efforts for success. The benefits are clear: improved ROI, data-driven strategies, and the ability to fine-tune campaigns to reach the right audience at the right time. In the rapidly evolving world of digital marketing, conversion tracking remains an indispensable asset for advertisers aiming to stay ahead of the competition.