Jack (and all interested),
Sure I'll elaborate. Keep in mind this is my first time hosting banners and
am learning as I go. Clients come to me to host their banners. They ask for
expected click-throughs. I have none and have just recently installed page
counters. The site just opened July 17 so the traffic is not very high.
I put the client banners on 3 pages (so far) with an addendum to their URL
like this: http://client-url/page.html?LinksRx and tell them to watch their
server logs for entries from our site. This will show them the
click-through rate. Thinking about this, i could put a page number on each
link too, like ?LinksRx1, ?LinksRx2, etc. That way they will know which
page has the largest draw.
The largest drawback with that is I will need to rely on their feedback to
know how their banners are doing. With the use of a CGI script I can
monitor page views, click-throughs, banner rotations (should I decide to
use them in the future), beginning and expiration dates of individual
banners, and allow the advertisers to change their banners at any time
without my intervention.
This script has its good and bad points. The best performance comes from
using SSI calls to track the click-throughs, manage 'zones' (ads on various
pages), etc. The biggest disadvantage of SSI calls, other than the fact
that they simply can't be used on some servers, is the fact that they can't
be used "across system boundaries" (from one server to another). Using IMG
tags (Non-SSI or "raw html") overcomes this but does not have all the
flexibility of SSI calls.
I've looked into page views, click-throughs, and all the other stats that
are associated with banner ads and have settled for a simple weekly rate.
That's what has been luring people to advertise with us. There's no
guessing at how much their monthly bill will be. So my biggest job here is
to get the traffic to the site and offer a way to track the click-throughs.
The rest takes care of itself.
I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible, yet effective. Using this CGI
script has dug a bit deeper than the 'simple' format and taken on a life of
its own. Whatever works the best with the least amount of maintenance and
expense is what I'm looking for. Last time I looked at WebTrends it was out
of my price range. So I'll put in more time for configuring a script.
Being a designer and not a programmer makes this job more challenging. I
have a partner that could do it (and most likely write his own) but I have
him busy enough as it is.
With that said, it's back to work! Any questions?
Jim
At 05:28 PM 8/30/98 -0500, Peter wrote:
>On 30 Aug 98, at 15:28, Jim Hutchinson wrote:
>
>> There's a free trial cgi script called WebAdverts at
>> http://awsd.com/scripts/webadverts/ that will allow you to track banner ads
>> or even run a full fledged banner exchange. You can track by click
>> throughs, impressions or even number of days running.
>
>Jim,
>
>Would you mind elaborating?
>
>I see two perspectives here:
>
>1. Serving the banner/ad
>
>2. Recieving the click-throughs.
>
>
>If you are in position 1 then I think you need some control over
>banners you serve. I would do it through a rdbms and create forms to
>interface with that rdbms. It would be nice to buy a software
>package for this that a)provided source code, b) worked with a
>number or rdbms systems.
>
>
>If you are in position 2 what more do you need than good logs? I had
>a customer who paid for a banner ad on another website. I wrote a
>script for him to track who was sent from that ad. Another script
>could be written to check how many people who came from the banner ad
>responded to his online questionaire which was the whole point of his
>website. After using webtrends for a few months it seems to me that
>I can just do a log analysis and only include data when the referer
>is equal to the site serving the banner.
>
>My perl script would be much more exact --- the other site was told
>to use this url:
>
>http://the_domain.com/cgi-bin/click.pl
>
>And there could be elaborate stuff done at this point. But the main
>thing was that I logged data that is normally logged in the log
>files.
>
>Another factor is that one site where we have banner ads the ad is
>rotated among many different pages. If we wanted to track a specific
>ad then I would have to use the perl script. But otherwise I think
>Webtrends would be the tool.
>
>So, if you are number 1 then I think you need a management tool
>specific to serving ads. Ummm... but now that I think about it, I
>think that Webtrends even has something for that.
>
>If you are in position number 2, do you really need more than
>WebTrends?
>
>And then is anyone going further and tracking what the users do on
>the site who come from the click-through?
>
>Peter
>
>
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