The first and most critical tool for an affiliate marketer is a tracker. Without this tool, managing an advertising campaign turns into an aimless attempts to find treasure in total darkness.
Sure, there is an option to calculate your income using Excel but why waste time when there is a free tracker that can automate all processes? This tool allows you to keep everything under close supervision and effectively manage your campaigns for a nominal fee or even for free.
What is a tracker in affiliate marketing
Tracker is a centralized tool for collecting information about ad campaigns and confirmed conversions, allowing you to effectively manage and optimize multiple campaigns simultaneously. It provides detailed traffic analysis, including device type, visit source, browser, and OS used, as well as user preferences in creatives.
One of the key features of the tracker is the unification of all stages of media buying in one system, which eliminates the need to constantly switch between different platforms to analyze data. This simplifies the process of monitoring campaigns and helps avoid missing important information.
Trackers also offer anti-fraud tools and other useful features, although their main advantage is in data collection and analytics, which makes them an indispensable tool for affiliate marketers.
How to choose a tracker for arbitrage?
When choosing an arbitration tracker, it is important to consider your needs. Determine which countries you plan to work with – neighboring countries or internationally, as well as the volume of events processed per month. These factors will help you make the right choice among available trackers and their tariffs.
The decisive factor is to choose between a cloud-based and server-based (self-hosted or cloud-based) tracker. Both options have their advantages and disadvantages.
Cloud trackers
Provide high-speed operation and access to all geographical regions. They are ideal for working with a variety of GEOs, providing fast data processing regardless of location. It is important to determine the required volume of events in advance, as you will have to pay extra for exceeding the set limit.
Server trackers
Require an initial investment in the purchase and configuration of a server, but then additional costs are not expected. This option is suitable for campaigns in countries closest to the server, as distance can affect traffic loss. Working with distant regions may require the installation of additional servers, but you will not pay for the volume of traffic or number of events.
Top trackers for arbitrage in 2024
BeMob
BeMob effectively analyzes lending, manages traffic flows to achieve the highest ROI, and allows you to develop customized templates for campaigns and tracking. All campaign information is saved in cloud storage. BeMob’s key features include:
- Monitoring conversion statuses;
- Estimation of traffic loss from each source;
- Redirecting traffic when the offer’s conversion limit is reached.
The tracker offers a free usage period that is limited to reaching 100,000 events per month, after which the cost will be $0.06 for every thousand events.
Rate options include up to 1,000,000, up to 10,000,000, and up to 30,000,000 events per month. Exceeding the limit in the basic tariff costs $0.06 per 1,000 events.
Although the interface is in English only, BeMob provides high-quality support in Russian.
Keitaro
Keitaro, a tracker often mentioned among professionals, offers server services with cloaking for Facebook, Instagram, and Google Ads, allowing you to distribute traffic without changing your domain. It offers more than 30 filters for traffic management and a built-in page editor.
In its arsenal:
- Over 30 metrics to create detailed reports;
- A variety of filters by geography, device type, provider, and other parameters;
- Ability to group data by key characteristics;
- Unlimited number of events in the basic plan;
- Fast redirect rates – 10 milliseconds, and display lendings – 15 milliseconds.
The granular permissions system provides clients with access to reports and colleagues with access to campaign management. The tracker requires installation on the server.
Keitaro works effectively with lendings and offerers, allowing you to target pages according to specified criteria.
It also protects landing pages from bots with an updated database of over 500,000 IP addresses. Keitaro offers cloaking functions, simplifying the process of passing moderation in advertising networks.
The price of the tracker varies depending on the selected tariff, starting from 25 euros. All tariffs come with a free trial for seven days.
Binom
Binom stands out as a high-performance tracker specialized in handling large traffic flows, demonstrating a leading position in click processing speed, with a record 7ms per click.
Its intuitive interface combined with outstanding reporting speeds places it among the ranks of top tracking tools.
Binom tracker features include:
- Time optimization for scaling projects.
- Separating traffic between blacklists and whitelists using filters.
- Tracking all clicks and conversions through different channels.
- Directing visitors to unique landing pages and offers they haven’t seen before.
Binom has an initial cost of $99, which is a bit higher than the competition, but this is offset by the lack of traffic volume limits and the ability of an entire team to work together in one account.
AdsBridge
AdsBridge is a cloud-based tracking and TDS solution for traffic arbitrage, successfully operating in the market for over seven years with seven data centers and coverage in over 160 countries.
AdsBridge is ideal for efficiently expanding campaigns with instant real-time reporting and ultra-fast click redirects, minimizing potential losses.
Features include:
- Split testing and A/B tests;
- Landing page creation tools;
- Filtering of unwanted bot traffic;
- URL rotation function;
- Link monitoring;
- Tracking of PPC costs.
A test period is provided, during which all features are available. After it ends, you can choose a suitable plan depending on the volume of traffic, with limits of 100,000, 1,000,000, 4,000,000, and 10,000,000 visits and prices starting from $29 per month. A free plan of up to 50,000 visits per month is also available. The tracker’s interface is fully localized for Russian-speaking users.
FunnelFlux
This unique tracker effectively visualizes conversion funnels, clearly showing the stages at which users enter and leave the process. Traffic is distributed with efficiency in mind, allowing you to find the most optimal route for your data.
The tracker is ideal for a variety of marketing purposes and processes including:
- Email Marketing;
- Opt-in Tracking (Opt-in Tracking);
- Multivariate Testing (MVT);
- Automation;
- Bot detection;
- Multivariate tests and other types of advertising and marketing activities.
FunnelFlux offers an open API and the ability to instantly test campaigns, providing a simple and intuitive system for analyzing data.
RedTrack
RedTrack stands out for its high speed of processing every click and detailed analytics, belonging to the category of cloud trackers.
In terms of functionality, RedTrack is in no way inferior to its more expensive alternatives, providing high speed, usability, and a wide range of features, for which many experts put it on par with Voluum.
Key features of RedTrack include:
- Cloud-based storage of campaign data.
- Unlimited number of user domains.
- Traffic distribution across 20 metrics within one campaign for better optimization.
- Bot and proxy filtering features, with the ability to customize unique redirects.
- Event limits on tariffs up to 1 million, 3 million, and 20 million, with the possibility of individual solutions. A fee of $0.06 per 1000 events is charged for exceeding the limit.
- Multilingual interface support: English, Russian, Chinese and Spanish.
- Multi-user access.
For marketers working with redirect-sensitive traffic sources (such as Facebook and Google AdWords), RedTrack offers advanced non-redirect tracking capabilities as well as many other features to enhance campaign performance.
Recommendations when working with CPA trackers
- Look at multiple metrics.
One metric like CTR is not enough to evaluate effectiveness. It is important to analyze how much revenue advertising sources generate, not just the number of clicks. Sometimes a high CTR can be accompanied by low-quality traffic, where users quickly leave the site. At the same time, an ad with a low CTR can bring high-quality customers and be more profitable.
- Limit the use of filters.
For those who are new to trackers, it is not recommended to complicate the settings right off the bat. Overly complex filtering can lead to incorrect click processing and loss of potential clients.
Choose a tracker that offers ready-made templates to integrate with your CPA platform. While connecting via API is also possible, templates usually guarantee faster data transfer, allowing for real-time analysis.
If you encounter misunderstandings or problems in operation, contact support specialists for help. They will help you set up the tracker in such a way that it will maximize your earnings.
