Tracking

Paid events

Voluum's pricing plans include various numbers of paid events. The paid events are: visits, clicks and conversions. Each event is equal, meaning that they use your pricing plan's quota in the same way.

Free Events

Free events can be available for the following group of users:

Overage Events 

In case the number of recorded events in Voluum exceeds your plan's event quota, you will be billed for overage events according to your plan's charges. The overage charges are applied to your invoice at the end of a billing cycle.

Lander Tracking Script

We recommend that you implement a lander tracking script to your landing page even if you use a redirect method of tracking. This script will act as a fail-safe mechanism that will allow Voluum to record a visit with all possible device and browser configurations. Note that Voluum has a mechanism that prevents it from recording the same visit twice (from a redirect and a script).

First transition with a redirect method

When a visitor clicks an ad and activates a campaign URL, they will be directed to Voluum servers. Voluum will then do four things:

After that, Voluum will direct a visitor to a destination set in a campaign setup: an offer or lander. Path alteration features, such as rule-based paths, weights, A/B testing or AI can be used.

With a lander tracking script present on a landing page, this script also makes a request to Voluum in case a cookie wasn't saved due to a browser’s settings. If this visit was already recorded, Voluum will not record it for the second time. If it wasn't, Voluum will record this visit even without this cookie.

Second transition with a redirect method

Second transition is optional. When a visitor clicks a CTA button and activates click URL on a landing page, they are redirected through Voluum servers again. Voluum does three things on that occasion:

After that, Voluum will direct a visitor to an offer set in a campaign setup. Path alteration features, such as rule-based paths, weights or AI can be used.

First transition from an ad to a landing page or offer

When a visitor clicks an ad and activates a destination URL, they are directed straight to the destination set in a campaign setup: an offer or lander. When the destination page loads, a tracking script will be launched, and two things happen:

The visitor is already on a destination page, so no path alteration features, such as rule-based paths, weights, AI, or A/B tests are possible.

(Optional) Second transition from a landing page to an offer

When a lander loads and a visitor activates a click URL, two things will happen:

Usually, there are two transitions:

There also can be funnels that only use one transition that directs a visitor straight to an offer.

The section below describes various scenarios of using different tracking methods throughout the campaign funnel.

Scenario 1: First transition from Ad → Offer with a direct method

This simple campaign funnel requires you to put an offer tracking script on an offer page. Then you have to submit an offer tracking URL to your traffic source and users will be taken from an ad directly to an offer without the initial redirect.

This of course means that you have to be able to edit the offer page. If you cannot edit this page (as it often is with offers from affiliate networks), go with scenario 2 and use the standard redirect method. But if you still want the first transition to be direct, please go to the scenario 3 or 6.

Scenario 2: First transition from Ad → Offer with a redirect method

This basic campaign funnel will work just fine without the 3rd party cookies support. After activating a Voluum campaign URL that is hidden behind an ad, Voluum will count a visit and redirect to the offer page.

Because there is no landing page in the middle, no 3rd party cookies are required for this method to work.

Scenario 3: First transition from Ad → Landing page with a direct method and second transition from Landing page→ Offer also with a direct method

This scenario requires:

The tracking script will count both a visit (arrival to a landing page) and a click (leaving a landing page after clicking a click URL). This setup works with a single click URL or with multi-offer click URLs.

When a lander loads, the script will replace a click URL with a direct offer URL. This enables you to use paths and weights for offers even with the direct method of tracking.

You don’t need to put any script on an offer page in this scenario, unless you want to track conversions with a conversion pixel, with conversions occurring on an offer page load. Read the Set up conversion tracking section.

Scenario 4: Ad → Landing page with a redirect method and Landing page → Offer also with a redirect method

Without the support of 3rd party cookies and no further adjustments, this funnel may encounter problems in certain scenarios. The lack of cookie with a click ID value will cause the aforementioned disconnection between a visit and a click.

That is why from 11-24-2020 we have made adding a lander tracking script to a landing page obligatory even for a redirect method of tracking.

This will keep your data reliable and consistent, while at the same time it will allow you to benefit from the advantages of a redirect method of tracking: rotations, paths and AI.

Don’t worry, your visits won’t be counted twice, by activating a campaign URL and by a direct script for landers - we have a fail-safe mechanism for that.

Scenario 5: First transition from Ad → Landing page with a redirect method and a second transition from a Landing page → Offer with a direct method

You can use different tracking methods on various steps of the campaign funnel. With this scenario you still benefit from various forms of altering paths to landers (by rules, weights, AI or A/B testing), while reducing the time needed to go from on a lander to an offer.

You are still required to put a lander script on a lander (this is obligatory for both methods of tracking from 11-24-2020).

Scenario 6: Ad → First transition from Ad → Landing page with a direct method and second transition from Landing page → Offer with a redirect method

This type of a campaign funnel allows you to be compliant with the requirements of many traffic sources, as well as use various techniques of hiding referrer data, such as meta-refresh and double meta refresh. Read the Expand article.

But you can go with a simple redirect for the second step of your campaign funnel. The direct script for landers is still required though.

Scenario 7: Organic traffic

With a lander tracking script present on your landing page, you can track organic traffic with ease. Read the Track Organic Traffic article to learn more.

Redirect modes govern how the traffic is handled during the second transition (from a landing page to an offer). The Meta refresh and Double meta refresh modes offered by Voluum are useful ways of protecting the intellectual property an affiliate marketer may have built up by running successful offers. They allow you to prevent the traffic source (referrer data) being sent through to the offer or the landing page.

There are four redirect types:

You need to select one of the redirect modes while configuring a flow or a campaign in the Voluum platform:

Moreover,  the redirect mode can be applied either globally, Default redirect mode, or individually per path, Redirect mode.

Example:

If you have a campaign funnel with a landing page then, when visitors click a call-to-action (CTA) link on the landing page, they are redirected to a promoted offer. While having set one of the redirect modes, Meta refresh and Double meta refresh, the offer's owner (affiliate network) will not see the referrer data to identify your landing page, but will see the domain's referred data passed instead.

An affiliate network is an optional campaign element that helps you to organize promoted offers by their source, apply additional tracking-related options and add tracking parameters to an offer URL and postback URL.

Templates

Voluum offers a selection of affiliate network templates that define the element's settings. You can select an appropriate template or create a custom affiliate network element.

An offer is where you want your visitors to land. You can get offers either from affiliate networks or use proprietary offers.

A traffic source is any platform that generates visitor traffic you can use in your campaign funnel. This includes publishers, ad networks, ad exchanges, Facebook or Google and Demand-Side Platforms. To properly read that send from a traffic source platform, you need to add a traffic source element in Voluum. You have two options available:

A lander is an optional web page that you put between an ad and an offer. This web page has to be hosted externally. Using landers is a common practice. To correctly set a campaign funnel, you should implement a click URL on this page and additionally, as a recommended step, a lander tracking script.

Benefits of using a lander

Extending visitors journey with an additional step might seem counterproductive, but it is considered beneficial in the long run. Some of the benefits include:

A campaign binds all elements in Voluum together, so it should be added at the end of the process of preparing a funnel.

Simple and Standard Campaign Forms

Voluum offers two distinct views of the campaign creation form.

Selecting a Campaign Form Type

Converting Campaign Type

You can convert a simple campaign to an advanced one with just one click. To do so, perform the following steps:

Before You Start

These are elements that you should have already created before.

Creating a Campaign Element:

The following 3-step guide will instruct you how to add a campaign element in Voluum:

The following articles describe different ways of managing traffic inside Voluum.

You have two ways to track conversions. Choosing one over another will most likely be dictated by your affiliate network platform. If they only support it, use a server-to-server postback URL method. It is the most reliable and safe. If you cannot use it, you have a conversion tracking pixel at your disposal.

Steps of passing information:

Additional options for passing Information:

Recording costs and payouts is an integral part of tracking. It is a complex topic, involving different cost models and support for cost and payout tokens by traffic source or affiliate network platforms. But the aim of this set of articles is to make it easier.

What is Cost and What Are Cost Models?

Cost is an amount of money that you have to pay for a single event. To paraphrase a saying, "there is no free traffic". This expense is your investment that you have to make in order to get money as a result. The payment is made in your traffic source platform. Typically, you have to top-up your account in the traffic source platform with some amount of money and then the money will be drawn from your account when an event occurs.

Tracking Costs

Remember, you want to pay as little as possible for the most converting traffic. Once you set tracking costs correctly, you will be able to see how much you pay in the Cost column in Voluum.

What is Payout?

A payout is an amount of money you get from offer owners after a successful conversion occurs. Your summed payouts make your revenue. Each payout is given out by your affiliate network platform. Typically, payouts are paid in batches per every predefined period of time (for example: bi-weekly, monthly). Some affiliate networks support instantaneous payments for bigger clients. 

Every successful conversion recorded by an affiliate network platform generates a payout. Typically a single visitor generates one conversion, but sometimes this person can generate subsequent conversions. Read the Upselling: Tracking Subsequent Conversions article to learn more.

Tracking Payouts

As you want to get as much money as possible for the biggest number of conversions. Once you set tracking payout correctly, you will be able to see how much you get in the Revenue column in Voluum.

What are Profit and ROI?

Profit is the money you have earned minus the money you have spent. In Voluum, you can see what is your profit in the Profit column. 

Return on investment (ROI) is the main indicator of the profitability of your campaign. It shows the percentage of the money you earned as a fraction of the money you have invested. You can find this indicator in the ROI column in Voluum.

Automatic Cost and Payout Tracking

Cost and payout are information like any other and they can be sent to Voluum from a traffic source platform or an affiliate network platform in a token. Not all platforms support passing cost and payout information in tokens, but if there is an option to do so, we recommend doing it.

Cost Tracking for Fully Integrated Traffic Sources

If you use the Automizer feature, cost information for integrated traffic sources will be fetched using a reliable API connection. Read the article about Automizer to learn more.

Using Different Currencies

By default, Voluum shows all financial information in USD. However, you can change the currency of cost and payout. Voluum will record this information in the selected currency. You can also select the default display currency and recalculate all cost and payout values to this currency using live exchange rates.

To learn more about using different currencies in Voluum, read the Multicurrency in Voluum article.

Voluum's default Click ID cookie lifetime is 180 days. During this time, the conversion can be attributed to the last Click ID stored in the visitor's browser.

No, you upload creatives or ads in your traffic source platform (ad network, social network such as Facebook, search engine like Google, etc.).

Voluum is a performance ad tracker that can record clicks on ads, clicks on CTA button on a landing page, and conversions. It can also record time it took to install the app. It cannot, however, record time spent on site.

Cloaking is considered to be a blackhat technique and it is not allowed in Voluum.

According to our Terms and Conditions, which are accepted when setting up Voluum account, we do not perform refunds.

No, Voluum does not have a compliance team nor it does not approve campaigns.

Voluum is a performance ad tracker, while Zeropark is an ad network. You can use Voluum to track Zeropark traffic.

We recommend not using any link shortening services for paid advertising because traffic source won't be able to append any data to our tracking URL. In case of organic traffic it makes more sense if you are sharing the link in social media but generally, we do not recommend it.

You cannot delete a recorded event in Voluum.

A lander, or landing page, is an optional web page that you set up and host on your own and it is used to provide more information on your offer. The lander goes between an ad and an offer page, and it contains a click URL link hidden under CTA button that directs a visitor to the offer page.

You can find click ID in Voluum panel by going to the 'Live events' section or to 'Conversions'.

Voluum click IDs start with either 'w' ('Offer only' scenario) or with 'd' and 'w' ('lander & offer' scenario).

Conversion discrepancies can occur due to several reasons, such as the data being delayed in the tracking system or data not been properly configured to flow through the tracking system. Here are a few steps you can take to troubleshoot this issue:

If none of the above steps help, please provide us with your campaign details so we can investigate the issue further.

If you want to show the error page for your current campaigns, but still be able to create and track new ones, the best idea will be to ask us to ban all your current campaigns. All the traffic sent to banned campaigns will not be handled and will be resolved with a response 403, and information that the campaign has been banned. You still will be able to track visits, clicks and conversions for your active campaigns, however.

If you want to show the error page for your current campaigns, and you are not going to use your Voluum account anymore, we can remove your tracking domains from Voluum so all the redirections will result in the 404 error - not found. Events won't be reported to Voluum anymore and it won't be possible to create any new campaign for tracking purposes. Please note that once your dedicated domain is removed, it's not possible to reverse that action.

You may get the Click ID:

You cannot upload visits in Voluum. If you want to correct cost, use the Manual Cost Upload feature.

Unfortunately, onboarding sessions are available for existing Voluum users only.

No, Voluum cannot be used for remarketing. This is something that has to be served by a traffic source.

To track conversions using 1st party cookies, you need to track your visitors using the direct method of tracking. Implement a lander tracking script on your lander (if you use one), an offer tracking script on an offer page and a conversion tracking pixel on a 'Thank you' page. The cookies set by Voluum will be treated as first party and a conversion tracking script will be able to pull click ID data from the first party cookie and report conversions correctly when 'Thank You' page loads.

Voluum doesn't track visitors' gender on its own. If such an information is registered by a traffic source, it can be passed to Voluum as a custom variable. Then it can be used in rule-based paths as a basis for a redirect.

Voluum panel can only be displayed in English.