Better ad results using tracking pixels
I am using my start-up Clever Moe to market Clever Moe — clever, eh?! I am running ads on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Reddit.
Each of the ad networks uses different techniques to target my ads to what they think are the best audiences. They want to know what happens to a person after they click an ad. Why?
The ad networks charge more for running my ads when my ad achieves a pre-defined objective. For example, Facebook ads I set with a campaign objective to consideration/conversion cost a minimum of 4 times more than an objective of consideration/traffic. These objective names indicate a 3 tiered process a prospective customer goes through to be a customer: They become aware of your product, consider your product, and convert. Consideration/traffic means someone clicks from my ad to my landing page.
There is no independent third-party auditing organization to determine that an ad network is doing any extra work targeting my ad with one objective versus another. I wish digital marketers had a Nielson Ratings service for ad networks.
The ad networks each give me a small Javascript program — often called a tracking pixel — to embed in the Web pages of my on-line store, landing page, and Web site.
Managing all these pixels becomes a big task after a while. I’m now managing 5 pixels — Instagram uses the Facebook ad network.
Here are references that may help you manage tracking pixels:
Google Tag Manager is a free utility for managing tags. It gives you one single super tag. Install it on your site, store, or pages. It imports the other pixels you define dynamically.
Facebook and Instagram tracking pixel
LinkedIn tracking pixel
Google Ads tracking pixel, includes YouTube
Reddit Ads tracking pixel
Tracking pixels are compatible with modern browsers (Chrome, Firefox, IE, Safari). They are sometimes compatible with mobile application; However, they require specialized programming skills to embed into an app. They are sometimes compatible with on-line stores. For example, Shopify provides editing access to the HTML codes that make-up a store. Etsy provides no support for customizing the HTML codes of their pages.
There are no tracking pixel compatibility labs. Some tracking pixels conflict with others. For example, my pages suffered a 3x page load time slowdown after installing tracking pixels from Google and Twitter and managed by Google Tag Manager. Google’s help desk was earnest in wanting to help and yet unable to offer a solution. Same for Twitter’s help desk. I change the loading order of the pixels and that cured the problem.
Unfortunately, tracking pixels are not designed to work across domains. When a person clicks on an ad, sees your landing page, then moves to YouTube to find an unboxing video for your product, the ad network tracking pixels no longer are able to track the user journey. To understand why see my Medium article Filling The 3rd Party Cookie Gap.
I invented a single Clever Moe tracking pixel to track ad results. It’s a first-in-the-ad-industry technology. A single pixel tracks the ad clicks from all the digital ad networks. A 2 minute video explains it here.
About Frank Cohen: A 30 year technology veteran of Silicon Valley and digital marketing expert. Frank Cohen invented Clever Moe technology to leverage social media for large, measurable increases in advertising effectiveness. He has 4 patents, including targeting technology to bring a brands ads to the right digital audience automatically.
