Posted by Bart on October 29, 2010
I will not go too much in details about what Tracking is and how it works, because it is quiet technical and I am not a technical guy 
, however, the basic is that by using tracking tools we are able to follow Internet users activities on the Internet.
There are several tracking techniques and you should be at least vaguely familiar with “IP Address tracking” (tracking visitors with the IP Address of their computers), “Cookie tracking” (putting a “cookie” on a visitor’s computer to remember him) and “tracking pixel” (putting a pixel on a page to measure the activity of this page).
However these notions can be understood later on.
What is important to remember for now is that with Online Advertising we are able to show an Ad only to target members, and that we are able to know who saw the Ad, how many times, if they clicked on it, if they stayed on the landing page (the next page after they click on the Ad), how long, if they visited other pages, how many, and if they registered to a service, requested a brochure or bought something.
Online Advertising is profitable because it is measurable. Tracking is the key here. An advertiser is able to know exactly how an Ad performs, and to calculate very precisely the Return On Investment.
More about Online Advertising? Visit the Training page!
Posted by Bart on October 26, 2010
An Ad Banner is composed of 2 things:
- an image (or a video)
- a link
An Ad Banner works like an Hyperlink. It is actually an Hyperlink with an Anchor, the image and a Target, the link.
The image:
The image can of course be a drawing, a picture, etc. and contain text or even music and video. The image is either a file (GIF file or video file) or a link to an hosted image. This means that the Ad on a website may either be a file hosted on the website, or a link that will upload an image from another website. This is transparent for the Internet User, but important for the Ad Management.
The link:
The link is an Hyperlink that will redirect to the website of the product or service the Ad is promoting.
A basic link is:
http://www.costperwhat.com.
However the link can be a bit more complex and include additional information.
For instance the link can redirect to a specific page of the website: http://www.costperwhat.com/glossary/ (it will then redirect directly to the Glossary page).
But a link can also contain much more information, like the link below:
http://tmc.go2jump.org/aff_c?offer_id=36&aff_id=5
We will see in a next post what all this information is for.
The technology of putting a maximum of information into the links is what allows Online Advertising to do some tracking, and that’s what makes Online Advertising such a powerful tool compare to traditional (offline) advertising.