DM University - Understanding the Pixel

Understanding the Pixel

by Tanya Alvarez

After encountering pixel placement issues with a number of affiliate managers, advertisers, and their tech team, a 101 pixel refresher course is much needed.

Pixel Process

As you can see from the diagram, this is the process that occurs:
1.User clicks on email creative or link
2.Cookie from blinkaccess is put on user’s computer
3.User is redirected to landing page
4.User completes form and gets thank you page (or confirmation page)
5.Pixel is placed on confirmation page inside html code
6.Pixel searches for cookie placed by blinkaccess link on the user’s computer
1.If the cookie is found, a lead/sale is tracked in direct track. Pixel “fires”.
2.If the cookie is not found, no lead/sale is tracked. Pixel does not fire.

In a script pixel, the only difference (in appearance) from the image pixel is that there are 2 lines, a script and noscript section.
In short, the script section says: If the user has javascript enabled, fire the pixel.
If the user does not have javascript enabled, then fire the <noscript> pixel

This is a rare occurrence, since most users have javascript enabled on their computers. But there is a small percentage of users who don’t. It’s like having an outdated version of internet explorer.

Why are there discrepancies in stats?

We asked this question to our affiliate software provider because we noticed we were tracking more leads/sales than other tracking systems. We were surprised since this did not happen before with our previous affiliate software. We wondered how much revenue we were missing out on with these discrepancies. We noticed that about 10-15% of our traffic was unaccounted for with our other tracking systems.

Bret Grow, Burstabit Media, Inc from explained why this occurred:

“Most online tracking platforms use simple cookies to track conversions and store critical tracking information. However, pixel tracking with cookies alone is insufficient if you need truly accurate statistics. To squeeze more out of pixel tracking for our clients, we utilize a secondary or back-up system to capture and store tracking information in the even that a cookie is not written or able to be read by the consumer’s browser. On method is based upon the unique IP address of the consumer. LinkTrust stores a backup of all critical tracking information in a database for just a few minutes. The reason LinkTrust stores the information for only a brief time is to prevent conflicts with the same Internet Service Provider (ISP) sharing an IP across multiple consumers. We have found that by utilizing this backup methodology and a few other creative optimizations, pixel tracking accuracy has increased substantially.”

Hopefully this article sheds some light about pixel tracking and ways to improve it.

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Tanya Alvarez
Co-founder of Connectingmoms.com
President BlinkAds.com
www.blinkads.com
e: tanya@blinkads.com

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Posted by: Jennifer Date: June 23, 2008
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