Pixel-based conversion tracking is considered the easiest and most robust ways to track conversions. Networks that want to quickly get up and running with their offers often choose to use pixels for tracking because of the short amount of time they take to setup with an advertiser and the ability to track affiliate conversion pixels as well.
SLICE DIgital supports 3 kinds of pixel-based tracking methods:
- JavaScript
- IFrame
- Image
With these 3 methods, a cookie is placed in the users browser that clicked a SLICE Digital tracking link. This cookie contains all the session info for that user, and on conversion the offer pixel will pull this session info from the user’s browser to authenticate they came from a tracking link. If everything checks out, the conversion is created and shows in the conversion report.
Pixel Tracking Concepts
Pixel-based tracking, also known as client-side tracking, relies on the user's browser to track conversions by placing a cookie on the click that is called again on conversion to authenticate the session and attribute the conversion to the correct affiliate. The end-user won't notice this happening as the entire process of placing a cookie on click and calling that cookie on conversion takes a fraction of a second, usually within 20 - 50 milliseconds.
Pixel-based offers use cookies to track because they can store the session values in the cookie, and the way pixel are designed to track, can extract this information from the browser easily. As a result, setting up an offer to tracking using pixels is very simple and only involves placing the offer pixel on the conversion page.
Placing Cookie in Users Browser
For most situations the click is the event that starts the session, and with pixel-based offers this is where the session cookie is placed in the user's browser. When a user clicks on a tracking link, they are redirected to SLICE Digital network, who identifies this user is going to be tracked in, the offer id, and the affiliate id. These two variables are required to start the session.
With these values recognised, a session will be created with clickid that will be used to attribute this click to a future conversion. A cookie will be created and placed in the user's browser. This cookie contains some simple session info, mainly the clickid itself so that it can quickly be retrieved on conversion. Besides the IP address and geographical location, no information is obtained from the user.
Note: Users that do not accept cookies in their browser will not be able to use pixel-based offers since these offers rely on the cookie functionality to track conversions. While this amount of users is minor, to ensure that you are as accurate as possible with pixel tracking, we suggest implementing a cookieless tracking setup to accommodate these users by passing the clickid to the pixel on the server-side.
Integration tracking types
Use the links below to find the additional information regarding tracking implementation for the SLICE Digital network: