2nd GENERATION AD TRACKING - Why You Need to Know About It
As the architect of the first remotely hosted ad tracking solution on the Internet, it's a little hard for me to admit that my technology has become obsolete. Then that moment of egocentric self-indulgence passes and I look at the 2G ad tracking only inspired to say (in the ancient tongue once spoken freely in the early days of the Internet):
"Cool!"2G
Ad Tracking Technology is here and it's been ushered in by the visionary upstarts Kevin Wilke and Matt Gill
At this stage of the game, NitroStats appears to be the only player in the 2G Ad Tracking field and it appears the field is clear for them to dominate the market. I don't see any other players that have accomplished this yet.While the Nitrostats service has a host of wonderful features that make life easy for the marketer (I've given up even our proprietary in-house tracking in favor of NitroStats - it's that much better), there are two key elements that define the 2nd Generation:
1. Offsite Visitor Tracking
This new feature has perhaps the highest "Cool!" factor I've seen in a long time.Check it out. Here's what life used to be like before 2G ...
A visitor is at your site. He's clicking around from page to page and then suddenly he leaves.
Your log says he clicked on a link to one of your affiliate programs, but what happened after that isa mystery.
What did he do? Did he purchase the product you recommended? Did he just stop surfing?You just don't know.
That's the old days. ENTER 2G ...
A visitor is at your site (woo hoo!). He's clicking around from page to page and then suddenly he leaves.
NitroStats tells you not only how he left your site, but WHAT HE DID AFTER HE LEFT.
Yes, the deserves "all caps".
2G ad tracking can tell you what your visitor did after he left your website. Want to find out if your affiliate program is paying you for all of your sales? Now you know. Want to find out what websites your visitor is checking out after he leaves? Now you know.
2. Complete Data Integration
2G Ad Tracking technology must allow for complete integration of several forms of marketing data.
In the past, you had to track different types of visitor behavior with various programs, all of themoperating independently.
NS replaces 5 different mission critical webmaster tools (1G ad tracking services, log file analyzers,hit counters, affiliate trackers, search term trackers) and allows you to integrate data from each of them dynamically.
For example, would you like to know which of your pay-per-click terms are resulting in sales and which are simply making you bleed cash? Now you'll know without having to do the math yourself.
Another example, would you like to track the path of every one of your visitors on your site withouthaving to analyze your log file? Would you also like to know which paths result in sales? Or which paths result in an affiliate sale? Now you'll know.
The 2G technology developed by NitroStats was so far ahead of what we were doing at ROIbot that I realized it would take us years to catch up.
NitroStats has since acquired ROIbot and it's probably the best thing that's ever happened to my ROIbot customers.
This is a great day for the consumer, but not such a great day for ad tracking companies. It's hard to compete when a clearly superior solution comes out on the market (I wonder how other donut companies are doing now that Krispy Kreme is nation wide?).
I'm sure other companies will come on board with 2G at some point, but it probably won't be fast enough to re-capture the market.
Now, it's hard to imagine what 3G can do to improve upon 2G. What are they going to do? Go out and find customers for you?
Posted in: on Saturday, 19 April 2008 at at 11:16
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