Click Reporting
This article will cover the following:
Reporting :
- Clicks Column
- Total Clicks Column
Offer Settings:
- First Touch Attribution
- Last Touch Attribution
- Disable Click Deduplication
- Session Regeneration
- Throwout Click Period
- Lookback Window
Background
CAKE will display different click counts depending on which report you are looking at in the CAKE Admin portal.
Affiliate Portal Reports show traffic as unique to the Affiliate, as opposed to unique to the CAKE platform. This eliminates the need for Affiliates to open the Click Report to match click to click with their external tracking system.
Last-Touch-enabled Offers will exclude non-unique Affiliate touches in reporting. As an example, Affiliate A drives the first click, then Affiliate B drives a click, then Affiliate A drives another click.
In our traditional Last Touch click processing logic, Affiliate A would show two clicks, causing an inflation of the click count, and a negative impact to the EPC and Conversion Rate for that Affiliate. Moving forward, the click counts in all Affiliate-centric reports will show only unique clicks. In the Admin portal, this includes the Affiliate, Campaign, and SubAffiliate reports, which will continue to match their respective reports in the Affiliate Portal.
CAKE will deems duplicates as a “double tap” only, which is defined as the same exact click/impression request to CAKE (same Affiliate/SubAffiliate/Creative/Media Type/Price Format) within a configurable time frame called the “throw-out period.”
What is Attribution?
Ever wonder what’s working and what’s not working in your media mix? Are you crunching excel sheets every month to find out which sources are working best in which channels? Attribution is the process of identifying how various marketing sources are working together to influence a customer decision for a desired outcome, and then assigning value to each of these touches. CAKE can determine how much weight or influence a single touch has contributed to a conversion in a set or stream of clicks or views.
Reporting
Clicks Column
•The Clicks column counts different totals depending on the report you’re viewing
•In the Offer report it is the number of ‘first touch’ clicks
–At the time of the click, the user did not have any cookie for this offer
- Click cap logic set on the offer or campaign will look to the value reported here, not Total Clicks.
•In the Campaign report it is the number of ‘first touch’ clicks for the specific affiliate
–At the time of the click, the user did not have any cookie for this offer AND affiliate
–These clicks are not always conversions because the user may have already clicked on a link from another affiliate
Important Note
*** The Clicks column will always count first touch clicks regardless of whether the offer is First Touch or Last Touch or any other settings
Total Clicks Column
•The Total Clicks column counts all clicks including duplicates (in all reports)
–When opening a Total Clicks breakout, there is a ‘Show All Clicks’ checkbox that is checked by default
–‘Show All Clicks’ lists all clicks, including duplicates and excessive redirect loops, as an individual line item
–The Total Clicks and ‘Show All Clicks’ data is only available dating back to the first day of the previous month. Anything prior is only a count of total clicks.
–This checkbox is also available in the Clicks breakout and has the same functionality
Settings
First Touch
•The first Affiliate link a user clicks is counted as a conversion
•All subsequent clicks are not conversions
–In the Offer report, these subsequent clicks are counted in the Total Clicks column
–In the Campaign report, the first click on each new Affiliate link is counted in the Clicks column. All subsequent clicks are counted in Total Clicks
•Repeat users are identified by cookies or Session Regeneration (more on that later)
Scenario for First Touch
Last Touch
•Each new Affiliate link clicked is counted as a conversion
–In the Offer and Campaign report, these subsequent clicks will be counted in the ‘Conversions’ AND ‘Total Clicks’ column but not ‘Clicks’
–In the Offer report, only the first touch click is counted in the ‘Clicks’ column
–In the Campaign report, only the first click on each affiliate link is counted in ‘Clicks’ in the campaign report
Scenario for Last Touch
Disable Click Deduplication
Where?
–Offer Card >> Attribution Subtab
•What?
–Counts every click as a conversion… every click!
–If user clicks the same link 100 times in the same browser session: 1 click, 100 conversions, 100 total clicks.
Session Regeneration
Where?
–Offer Card >> Attribution Subtab
What?
–Identifies repeat users without cookies. The most common method is IP only
Use Case:
–Allows CAKE clients to more closely match tracking with Advertisers or Affiliates that dedupe based on IP
Scenario for Session Regeneration
Throwout Click Period
Where?
Offer Card > Attribution Subtab
What?
Determines if a click is a duplicate
How?
User must be in an existing session (cookied/Session Regen)
User must click the exact same unique link
Lookback Window
Where? (Only in CAKE for Advertisers)
Site Card > Attribution Subtab
What?
The C4A equivalent of cookie days
How?
The length of time in days, hours or minutes, from the first touch where a cookie is set, that CAKE will track and credit a conversion.