What is a Conversion Tracking Postback
A Postback URL (server to server pixel) is used to pass conversion data between two different servers (for example, from the advertiser’s server to Pushground’s server).
The general term is Postback URL but there are different names referring to it: Server to Server Pixel, S2S tracking pixel, server-side, server call.
Why is the Postback URL important?
- So affiliate marketers can track and attribute their conversion to each ad campaign.
- They do not rely on cookies that can be potentially blocked by some browsers.
- So the health of your campaigns are displayed in order to be optimised later. You can optimise towards the supply source or towards the creative. The amount (payout) shows the profitability of your campaigns.
How do Postback URLs work?
These are the steps that explain how Postback URLs work, in a matter of a second:
- The user sees an offer
- The user decides to click on that offer
- The click goes to the Pushground server. The server records the click, then generated and records the ID for that session (that would be the click_id)
- Pushground immediately directs the user to the offer’s landing page, including the ID for that session in the offer URL (the click_id)
- The user sees the offer’s page on the advertiser's site
What happens when the user converts on that offer?
In this case, the advertiser’s server sends a signal to Pushground (a.k.a. Fires a postback) that includes the click_id that Pushground initially supplied and amount or the payout of the offer. The user is not directed back to Pushground in any way. Pushground then records the conversion for that session.
Available variables
The following variables are available for you to track data from your campaigns:
{click_id} - unique visitor ID
{supply_id} - publisher ID
{site_id} - sub-source 2
{source} - sub-source 3
{country} - visitor’s country
{campaign_id} - campaign ID
{deviceName} - visitor’s device
{city} - visitor’s city
{language} - visitor’s browser language
{bid} - bid CPC price model
{bidcpm} - CPC per mille
{creativity_id} - creativity ID
{format} - visitor’s campaign format
{userAge} - visitor’s user freshness
{trafficType} - campaign’s traffic type (mainstream/adult)
{reach} - audience retargeting reach
Tracker Integration
As an advertiser you can use a tracker or not (although we strongly recommend using one).
You can use any existent tracker to keep track of your campaigns, but there are some with which Pushground is integrated with:
Implementation steps
Pushground has a Postback URL that looks like this:
https://lupush.com/conversion?click_id={your_extenal_id_paramater}&amount={payout}
As an advertiser, you need to fill in the following fields with your macros:
For example:
- For {your_extenal_id_paramater} it is common to use click_id
- For {payout} it is common to use payout
Your offer URL would then have this structure:
http://advertiser.com/?your_paramater={click_id}&amount={payout}
And after Pushground fills in the values for the macros, the user will be redirected to a URL that will look similar to this:
http://advertiser.com/?your_parameter=push_71872t38713891u12u0313&amount=5
Once this user completes the conversion on the advertiser’s site, the advertiser will need to tell Pushground that a conversion was made. That’s what we call “firing a postback”, and the advertiser’s site does that by sending our servers a signal that uses three elements.
Postback elements:
- Postback URL
- click_id for that session
- amount of payout
Example:
If the advertiser had earlier received a click_id of push_71872t38713891u12u0313 from Pushground and the payout of the offer was $5, then the postback URL becomes:
https://lupush.com/conversion?click_id=push_71872t38713891u12u0313&amount=5
Pixel Integration
In order to integrate different data sources you will not only need to integrate the S2S Postback but also the pixel.
The pixel integration will allow you to take control over the engagement rate in your campaigns, by capturing different engagement metrics or events (such as Content View).
Take a look at this article to integrate the pixel in less than 2 minutes! Integrating the pixel is important to provide new essential information of your campaign’s engagement rate and see the user behaviour. This will help you optimise your campaigns and create powerful automatic rules.
What are events?
Event tracking allows you to easily track the on-page events from your campaigns. This will allow you to see things like which sources have the best engagement rates, and therefore better optimize your campaigns, by focusing on areas with higher engagement.
How does it work?
You first must implement our Pixel onto the landing page along with passing the {click_id} macro as a UTM parameter. Once done, the pixel records certain activity from users and passes it back to Pushground allowing you to see the activity within the stats page broken down by dimensions like source, device, and user freshness.
How does it appear?
Generally speaking, low Content View means lower performance. As an indicator, Content View should be at least 70%. Otherwise it means that a high % of users are not fully loading your landing page, which translates to click loss.
It is possible that you see a Content View higher than 100%, for example, 120%, 150%, etc. This happens when the same user loads the page twice, there is a percentage of non unique visitors that loaded your landing page successfully.
How to implement it?
It takes two simple steps to implement it to start seeing events: add the Pushground pixel to your landing page in the head section and pass the click_id UTM parameter to your landing page. Head to our pixel implementation documentation for more details.
Trackable events
Currently, we only offer one trackable event but we plan on adding more in the future. They are displayed on the stats page as a percentage of the clicks that triggered the event.
- view_content: This event is triggered when a user lands on your landing page and is able to view your offer. This helps to identify areas with higher misclick rates
How to use this to optimise your campaigns?
You can use this information to better target and bid for the segments of traffic that engage more with your landing page. You will be able to use this information to create automatic rules like "Pause source with ROI less than -10% and view_content is less than 70%". This feature will increase your visibility on your campaign performance, allowing you to more effectively target profitable sources.
Audiences
Once you integrate both the S2S Postback and the Pixel, the system will start collecting visitors into your audiences, and that’s how you’ll be able to target (or exclude) different audiences after that.
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