Choosing the Right Ad Attribution and Tracking Platform: Key Considerations
With increasing online competition, it's more important than ever to have insights into how your ads are performing. This requires tracking the success of each ad campaign, measuring customer engagement, and identifying where customers come from - all with accurate data.
Ultimately this is where an ad tracking and attribution platform can assist you and ensure you have comprehensive insights into your ad campaigns. With the many options that come up simply by Googling "ad tracking tools", it can be confusing trying to determine which platform is right for you.
Here we will discuss what to look for when choosing an ad-tracking platform to meet your goals as a brand marketer or e-commerce brand owner.
Explanation of Ad Attribution and Tracking
Before we get further, it's important to understand the basics of ad attribution and ad tracking.
Ad attribution is the process of determining which advertising effort led to a particular conversion.
Users who interact with your ad, whether by clicking on or viewing it, enter a conversion funnel. The funnel includes various stages, such as awareness, consideration, and conversion. Ad attribution assigns a value to each step, allowing you to understand which ad efforts led to the most conversions.
On the other hand, ad tracking allows you to track ad campaign performance. With ad tracking, you can monitor the number of impressions, clicks, and conversions your ad received. That's why tracking your ad campaigns is crucial to determine which ones are performing well and which need improvement!
The Importance of Ad Tracking for Business
Without a platform to manage all of the data coming in, trying to keep track of how well your campaigns are performing can become overwhelming. But with ad tracking tools, you can get more than just data; you can get insights that will help you make more informed decisions with your marketing efforts.
Having a tracking software tool makes optimizing campaigns easier, allowing for better budget allocations and increased ROI. Even more, these platforms provide brands with deep customer insights into individual purchasing behavior and interests, enabling you to create strategies tailored to specific audiences.
How Does an Ad Tracking Software Company Technically Track Ads?
Ad tracking captures various pieces of information whenever a user interacts with an online advertisement, using pixel tracking, link tracking, and UTM parameters.
Pixel tracking involves placing small snippets of code within adverts loaded onto a webpage or email when a person interacts with them. Link tracking records data every time an ad is clicked to navigate elsewhere. Lastly, UTM parameters are specific tags used to differentiate where traffic has come from.
Critical Considerations for Choosing an Ad Attribution and Tracking Platform
Consider a few critical factors when selecting an ad attribution and tracking platform. Here are a few main factors:
Cost Of The Platform
While it can be tempting to choose the least expensive option, consider all available features and if they suit your business needs before making a decision. Efficiently allocating budget is essential to the success of any venture, so be sure you're getting total value for your money when investing in an ad tracking solution.
Tracking Accuracy Of The Platform
High-quality ad attribution and tracking platforms utilize powerful algorithms, processor performance optimizations, and real-time data synchronization to ensure they have an accurate reflection of campaign performance.
Researching, or even trialing the software to determine the accuracy of available platforms is one of the biggest factors when choosing your platform.
Data Privacy of the Platform
With customers becoming increasingly conscious of how their data is used and shared, it's important to choose a trustworthy platform that can protect their information. This includes preventing unauthorized access or sharing of customer data with third parties.
Ad tracking platforms should clarify what types of data they collect from customers and how they use it securely. You should be wary of any platform that does not provide information on the type of data they store and their procedures for protecting it. Privacy enables businesses to build trusting relationships with customers - opt your company into an ad attribution and tracking service that you can trust.
Customization and Flexibility of the Platform
When selecting an ad-tracking tool, two essential factors to consider are customization and scalability. If you're starting to track ad campaigns, investing in expensive ad-tracking technology only makes sense if your business can justify the cost.
Choose a platform that can adapt to your brand's evolving needs as it expands while also offering flexibility to customize your solution to your budget.
Integration Capabilities of Ad Tracking Platforms
Choosing an ad-tracking platform is more complex than finding one with your desired features. You also want to consider the integration capabilities, and ensure the platform can smoothly integrate with other systems and data used in your marketing campaign.
It's essential to look for a platform with seamless connection points for additional connectors, allowing you to easily access other performance metrics and customize your reporting process for more robust insights. The right combination of integration abilities will help ensure your platform choice can support your team's current and future needs.
User Interface and Ease of Use
The user interface and ease of use of the ad tracking software you choose is critical. Your chosen platform should offer simple navigation and workflows, so you can easily keep track of important campaigns metrics, dive deep into the data details, and adjust goals as needed.
A tool with an easy user experience and straightforward look and feel can increase efficiency in marketing teams and simplify tasks across different departments. Do your research to see how their tracking links or pixels are set up, and how easy it is to use on a daily basis. If it's too complicated, that specific ad-tracking software may not be for you.
Make sure to test the platforms before making a decision. Most companies have a trial period for you to be able to do this. Trying a free trial will give you valuable insights into how effortless it will be to manage it daily.
Customer Support for Ad Tracking Platforms
Customer support should always be a key consideration when choosing an ad platform. After all, having access to solid customer support that can guide you along the process or answer any questions is just as important as ensuring the platform meets your needs.
If customer service is an issue, there's a good chance you'll be stuck with a product or tool that doesn't fit your requirements or has limitations you're struggling to work around.
The Importance of Choosing the Right Ad Tracking Platform
Ad tracking platforms are valuable for any business looking to increase its online marketing ROI. By tracking ads, you can make informed decisions on your marketing campaigns that set your business up for success.
The ideal platform integrates with your brand, gives you access to the key demographics you want to target, and is user-friendly.
Finding a platform that meets all those criteria can help differentiate you from competitors and give you higher conversion rates. Additionally, understanding how successful campaigns are structured will provide measurable returns on investment.
It's essential to consider the needs of your business, so you can choose the platform that best suits those needs. From there, you can use best practices to implement the platform correctly to get the most out of it. With the right ad-tracking software, you can make more strategic decisions about ad campaigns for more significant growth and success.
Sirge aims to cater to these key considerations. As we prepare to launch the latest version, we encourage you to sign up for our waitlist and add us to your list of ad tracking platforms to consider!